3 ms·

They froze tons of accounts without warning, it was not just a matter of setting daily limits

refulgentis 1y ago
If I understand correctly*, they froze 3 million accounts tied to 177K mules. Couldn't find anything that indicated there was a mass freezing of legitimate accounts, or a singular complaint of an incident of that happening. * Can't copy paste...is the article an image!?
- debugnik 1y ago
  > is the article an image!? I can't check right now, but I'm guessing they set `user-select: none` in CSS.
  - mystraline 1y ago
    About that. A browser is a 'User agent', as in it is supposed to act on MY behalf, and things in my intent and benefit. Similar agents are real estate agents, or attorneys as my agent. So... For something that is MY agent, why are browsers creating, and instituting anti-agent choices against my will? Barring excuses of "following the spec", I should be able to easily disable my user-agent's execution of said onerous code. (I'm ignoring this for Google chrome. They're an adtech company, and they won in court as a monopoly. Fuck them.)
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      >A browser is a 'User agent', as in it is supposed to act on MY behalf It's supposed to implement the spec. Why are you and many other people on this site so attached over the wording of "user agent"? It is supposed to mean the software making the request, it doesn't mean anything more than that.
      - ameliaquining 1y ago
        The argument is that the W3C shouldn't have included this feature in the spec, because it (allegedly) prioritizes the interests of publishers who want copy protection over those of end users who want to copy stuff. If true, this would violate the "priority of constituencies" HTML design principle: https://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#priority-of-constituencies https://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#priority-of-co... As it happens, the relevant standard actually includes a response to this argument (https://www.w3.org/TR/css-ui-4/#valdef-user-select-none https://www.w3.org/TR/css-ui-4/#valdef-user-select-none): "As user-select is a UI convenience mechanism, not a copy protection mechanism, the UA may provide an alternative way for the user to explicitly select the text even when user-select is none. Note: none is not a copy protection mechanism, and using it as such is ineffective: User Agents are allowed to provide ways to bypass it, it will have no effect on legacy User Agents that do not support it, and the user can disable it through the user style sheet or equivalent mechanisms on UAs that do anyway. Instead, none is meant to make it easier for the user to select the content they want, by letting the author disable selection on UI elements that are not useful to select. Tools such as CSS validators, linters or in-browser developer tools are encouraged to use heuristics to detect and warn against incorrect or abusive usage that would hamper usability or violate common user expectations."
        charcircuit 1y ago
        >If true, this would violate the "priority of constituencies" Not neccessarily. For example, piracy is so harmful that it could still outway the cost to a user even with a multiplier given to the user's cost. For example the user's cost is 10 and the author's cost is 100. Even with a 5x priority for the user, the needs of the author outweigh it.
    - nofriend 1y ago
      Sometimes not being able to select is useful. You can trivially create a user style that overrides user-select: none if you'd like, something that isn't possible in most gui software.
- ameliaquining 1y ago
  Article's not an image, it's regular HTML text content. The site just uses some extremely obnoxious JavaScript that blocks text selection, right-clicking, and the view-source and developer tools keyboard shortcuts. The latter is especially pointless since anyone who knows about those features also knows that they can be accessed via the browser menu, which JavaScript can't block.
  - hedora 1y ago
    Or, at least in iOS/macOS, just take a screenshot, then select the text from there.
- miohtama 1y ago
  Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45241082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45241082
- pjc50 1y ago
  Very difficult to freeze three million accounts with no false positives.
hnlmorg 1y ago
It does say those were tied to “mules”, so freezing those accounts is the right course of action. In fact the last thing you want to do is give criminals warning that you’re going to freeze their accounts. I’d imagine that would be extremely counterproductive for everyone bar those criminals.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Believed to be tied to "mules" unless their classification method has zero false positives. If it does have false positives then those non-mules have a right to complain.
  - msm_ 1y ago
    What is the threshold? If two people accounts were unjustly frozen (and they have to do some work to unlock them), and at the same time two hundred people life savings were saved, would that be OK with you? I don't know about them, but there are plenty of ways for law enforcement to get mule account numbers. After all that's the whole point - actual criminals don't have to reveal their own identity, instead they convince a "mule" to (knowingly or not) participate in a crime.
  - Muromec 1y ago
    They used to just kill without trial those believed to be tied to drug deals too.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    Everyone has the right to complain about practically anything they want. But that doesn’t mean that freezing an account suspected of fraud isn’t the right course of action. Yeah there’s going to be false positives. However that’s precisely why you freeze the account: to allow you time to follow due process and investigation. If you assumed the process was infallible then you wouldn’t need to freeze the account; you would just skip straight to the punishment and remediation stages ;)
    - kayamon 1y ago
kijin 1y ago
The article is unclear about when the freezings took place, but the sentence starting with "By July" seems to suggest that 3 million is the cumulative total of all the accounts that were frozen from January to July. So it probably wasn't a sudden mass freezing, just constant whack-a-mole.
- seunosewa 1y ago
  I feel that 3 million is a lot even over a six month period. Over 16,000 accounts per day.

If I understand correctly*, they froze 3 million accounts tied to 177K mules. Couldn't find anything that indicated there was a mass freezing of legitimate accounts, or a singular complaint of an incident of that happening. * Can't copy paste...is the article an image!?

debugnik 1y ago
> is the article an image!? I can't check right now, but I'm guessing they set `user-select: none` in CSS.
- mystraline 1y ago
  About that. A browser is a 'User agent', as in it is supposed to act on MY behalf, and things in my intent and benefit. Similar agents are real estate agents, or attorneys as my agent. So... For something that is MY agent, why are browsers creating, and instituting anti-agent choices against my will? Barring excuses of "following the spec", I should be able to easily disable my user-agent's execution of said onerous code. (I'm ignoring this for Google chrome. They're an adtech company, and they won in court as a monopoly. Fuck them.)
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    >A browser is a 'User agent', as in it is supposed to act on MY behalf It's supposed to implement the spec. Why are you and many other people on this site so attached over the wording of "user agent"? It is supposed to mean the software making the request, it doesn't mean anything more than that.
    - ameliaquining 1y ago
      The argument is that the W3C shouldn't have included this feature in the spec, because it (allegedly) prioritizes the interests of publishers who want copy protection over those of end users who want to copy stuff. If true, this would violate the "priority of constituencies" HTML design principle: https://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#priority-of-constituencies https://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#priority-of-co... As it happens, the relevant standard actually includes a response to this argument (https://www.w3.org/TR/css-ui-4/#valdef-user-select-none https://www.w3.org/TR/css-ui-4/#valdef-user-select-none): "As user-select is a UI convenience mechanism, not a copy protection mechanism, the UA may provide an alternative way for the user to explicitly select the text even when user-select is none. Note: none is not a copy protection mechanism, and using it as such is ineffective: User Agents are allowed to provide ways to bypass it, it will have no effect on legacy User Agents that do not support it, and the user can disable it through the user style sheet or equivalent mechanisms on UAs that do anyway. Instead, none is meant to make it easier for the user to select the content they want, by letting the author disable selection on UI elements that are not useful to select. Tools such as CSS validators, linters or in-browser developer tools are encouraged to use heuristics to detect and warn against incorrect or abusive usage that would hamper usability or violate common user expectations."
      - charcircuit 1y ago
        >If true, this would violate the "priority of constituencies" Not neccessarily. For example, piracy is so harmful that it could still outway the cost to a user even with a multiplier given to the user's cost. For example the user's cost is 10 and the author's cost is 100. Even with a 5x priority for the user, the needs of the author outweigh it.
  - nofriend 1y ago
    Sometimes not being able to select is useful. You can trivially create a user style that overrides user-select: none if you'd like, something that isn't possible in most gui software.
ameliaquining 1y ago
Article's not an image, it's regular HTML text content. The site just uses some extremely obnoxious JavaScript that blocks text selection, right-clicking, and the view-source and developer tools keyboard shortcuts. The latter is especially pointless since anyone who knows about those features also knows that they can be accessed via the browser menu, which JavaScript can't block.
- hedora 1y ago
  Or, at least in iOS/macOS, just take a screenshot, then select the text from there.
miohtama 1y ago
Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45241082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45241082
pjc50 1y ago
Very difficult to freeze three million accounts with no false positives.

hnlmorg 1y ago

It does say those were tied to “mules”, so freezing those accounts is the right course of action. In fact the last thing you want to do is give criminals warning that you’re going to freeze their accounts. I’d imagine that would be extremely counterproductive for everyone bar those criminals.

ryandrake 1y ago
Believed to be tied to "mules" unless their classification method has zero false positives. If it does have false positives then those non-mules have a right to complain.
- msm_ 1y ago
  What is the threshold? If two people accounts were unjustly frozen (and they have to do some work to unlock them), and at the same time two hundred people life savings were saved, would that be OK with you? I don't know about them, but there are plenty of ways for law enforcement to get mule account numbers. After all that's the whole point - actual criminals don't have to reveal their own identity, instead they convince a "mule" to (knowingly or not) participate in a crime.
- Muromec 1y ago
  They used to just kill without trial those believed to be tied to drug deals too.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  Everyone has the right to complain about practically anything they want. But that doesn’t mean that freezing an account suspected of fraud isn’t the right course of action. Yeah there’s going to be false positives. However that’s precisely why you freeze the account: to allow you time to follow due process and investigation. If you assumed the process was infallible then you wouldn’t need to freeze the account; you would just skip straight to the punishment and remediation stages ;)
  - kayamon 1y ago

kijin 1y ago

The article is unclear about when the freezings took place, but the sentence starting with "By July" seems to suggest that 3 million is the cumulative total of all the accounts that were frozen from January to July. So it probably wasn't a sudden mass freezing, just constant whack-a-mole.

seunosewa 1y ago
I feel that 3 million is a lot even over a six month period. Over 16,000 accounts per day.