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It's used by all kinds of groups. Developers, gamers, but also left and right groups, etc. I don't understand what the problem is if someone who supports somet

It's used by all kinds of groups. Developers, gamers, but also left and right groups, etc. I don't understand what the problem is if someone who supports something I don't like (be it alt-right, liberal, whatever) uses the platform, as long as he doesn't bother me personally :/ (My account was just banned by sctb for this ;P)

NelsonMinar 9y ago
American Nazis were using it to organize the Charlottesville demonstration. That's not a form of legal liability nor brand identification you want. https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/26/discord-chats-may-help-charlottesville-lawsuits/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/26/discord-chats-may-help-c... Also the bad people never stay confined to their private hate club. See the linked article here about "raids" on other channels or literally the entire history of Internet social media.
- casione 9y ago
  >American Nazis were using it to organize the Charlottesville demonstration. That's not a form of brand identification you want. The only "people" at fault here are journalists, putting Discord in the title of the article. They do it to put pressure on the service providers so they ban those people, but they will just go elsewhere. It's frankly stupid. The only side who's hurt with those articles is Discord, who don't deserve it.
- katastic 9y ago
  So by that same logic, then Reddit should be sued into oblivion because both left and ring wing extremists have used Reddit subreddits for harassment campaigns. They even left up an anarchy thread that posted all of the phone numbers in the White House so people could fill the lines with hate speech... because... Trump... and everyone in the white house answering phones is automatically a trump supporter and deserving of harassment. Multiple people filed complaints directly to the admins. They did nothing and left it up. That's far worse than Discord merely having some users that are Nazis, and haven't been sued. And if we're talking about harassment, and bigotry, why not the holy grail of the toxic internet? Twitter. If Discord "needs" to remove bigots from their lines (yes, or, no, pick one), then don't cell phone companies need to do the exact same thing? Why should cell phone companies be allowed to "give Nazis a platform" over texts and phone calls? What's the difference between a group text chat and a Discord text chat? Nothing. Except one is directly using the internet, and the other ... is using the internet as a backbone. Discord even runs on a phone. So isn't Verizon a "Nazi enabler" by the same logic? So let's do it. Let's scan everyone's text message and phone calls to stop the Nazis. Clearly the ends justify the means, so let's do it.
- hellbanner 9y ago
  So it's every communication service's responsibility to keep only the people they like using their service?
  - meebs 9y ago
    Responsibility to not allow it to be abused by Nazis at the very least.
  - skybrian 9y ago
    Companies that try to prevent their customers from attacking each other tend to do better than companies that don't protect their customers. This isn't new. For example, Gmail hit it big in part by being better at spam filtering. The specific issues have changed, though.
    - cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
      Whew lad, are Verizon and AT&T next? I heard some actual Nazis used AT&T in the past. Surely by that logic all T-Mobile customers are suspect by default.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - astrodust 9y ago
    There's a difference between "communication service", as in "carrier", and "social platform" as in "community". When you run a carrier you're expected to be neutral. What people do with your service is not your responsibility. If the service is being used illegally then law enforcement can intervene. When you run a community you have an obligation to pick and choose who participates. You can strive to be inclusive, but when you start to include those that seek to exclude you'll find your community being hijacked and perverted into someting that reflects the wants and needs of a tiny, dedicated, often highly motivated minority. It's the responsibility of anyone running a community to police and weed out bad actors. I they don't the good citizens will leave and your community will be worthless. That's probably a bad thing if you've got shareholders to answer to.
- koolba 9y ago
  I bet they use Gmail too.
  - pluma 9y ago
    I wager some of them even have Facebook accounts. Clearly Corporate America is in on this.
- meowface 9y ago
  Discord was right to ban them once they became aware of them, but it's very easy to create a private Discord server to do bad things just as it's very easy to create an AIM/MSN/Skype group chat to do bad things. The portrayal of Discord as somehow naturally encouraging or inducing neo-Nazis to use their platform is silly. Once a communication system (telephone, email, IM) becomes popular enough, bad people are inevitably going to use it as well.
nkrisc 9y ago
Nazis and white supremacists might not have you in their sights but that can't be said about everyone.
geofft 9y ago
> (My account was just banned by sctb for this ;P) Hm, I looked at your account and you posted another comment which looks for all the world like an attempt to imply by dogwhistle that the Jews are planning on replacing you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15870471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15870471 Are you sure you were not banned for being a Nazi, hiding behind the label "alt-right"? People dissatisfied with mainstream right-wing politics are one thing. Nazis are another entirely, and they have no place on this forum or in our industry. (Can the decent people in the alt-right -- assuming any exist -- denounce dogwhistle anti-Semitism as having no part in the movement?)
- PeCaN 9y ago
  While this may or may not be true, I'm still shadowbanned by sctb and that raises some questions about moderation. You're welcome to check my comment history. It may be somewhat snarky but I hope it is mostly positive contributions. Unfortunately, I tend to dislike YC's business and silicon valley in general.
- geofft 9y ago
  To the shadowbanned user who replied to me: I looked at your comment history and found - a comment about "Silicon Valleetards" - a lot of non-killed comments, mostly (apparently) high quality - one comment with what looks like casual racism, a handful of comments with extreme condescension towards other users, all killed - a comment by 'dang saying part of his moderation activity includes personally looking at your comments and manually un-killing the vast majority of them This seems entirely commendable on the moderators' part, and the only question it raises is how they have so much time. I have had the misfortune of being in multiple communities (a club in college, a job, a programming language, a church) where there was a skilled contributor who provided genuinely valuable and helpful work 80% of the time and hurtful behavior 20% of the time, and the community could never admit to itself that the harm they were causing to other skilled members was causing them to be net negative for the community. "We will shadowban you and manually review and approve the 80% of your comments that build up the community" is a great approach if you can implement it, and I'm pleasantly surprised the mods think it's sustainable. Also, in your specific case it seems more like 98% than 80%. I would really encourage you to take 'dang's advice in one of the threads where he responded, and 'sctb's advice in the thread where he banned you - agree to be civil. There's a difference between snark and insult. As someone who used to get a kick out of gratuitous public confrontation (as long as it was online and not in person!) and still needs to consciously suppress the occasional instinct to make technical disagreements personal (and doesn't always succeed), I totally get it. It feels super hypocritical for me to tell you not to do a thing that I do. But I hope this comes off as friendly advice from someone who's been there before, not hypocrisy. The comment that got you shadowbanned genuinely did not contribute to the community, and also genuinely is nowhere near your usual standards, so I'm surprised you're standing by it. (Two concrete suggestions: first, don't be afraid to type the comment you want to write and then close the tab, or submit it and then delete it 5 seconds later once you think better of it. I do that a lot. Second, if you're coming here to blow off steam, think hard about the thing in your life that's building up steam and whether you can get rid of it.) I hope that, given that this is a thread about the merits of active moderation in online communities, a digression about active moderation in this online community is not too far off-topic.

NelsonMinar 9y ago

American Nazis were using it to organize the Charlottesville demonstration. That's not a form of legal liability nor brand identification you want. https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/26/discord-chats-may-help-charlottesville-lawsuits/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/26/discord-chats-may-help-c... Also the bad people never stay confined to their private hate club. See the linked article here about "raids" on other channels or literally the entire history of Internet social media.

casione 9y ago
>American Nazis were using it to organize the Charlottesville demonstration. That's not a form of brand identification you want. The only "people" at fault here are journalists, putting Discord in the title of the article. They do it to put pressure on the service providers so they ban those people, but they will just go elsewhere. It's frankly stupid. The only side who's hurt with those articles is Discord, who don't deserve it.
katastic 9y ago
So by that same logic, then Reddit should be sued into oblivion because both left and ring wing extremists have used Reddit subreddits for harassment campaigns. They even left up an anarchy thread that posted all of the phone numbers in the White House so people could fill the lines with hate speech... because... Trump... and everyone in the white house answering phones is automatically a trump supporter and deserving of harassment. Multiple people filed complaints directly to the admins. They did nothing and left it up. That's far worse than Discord merely having some users that are Nazis, and haven't been sued. And if we're talking about harassment, and bigotry, why not the holy grail of the toxic internet? Twitter. If Discord "needs" to remove bigots from their lines (yes, or, no, pick one), then don't cell phone companies need to do the exact same thing? Why should cell phone companies be allowed to "give Nazis a platform" over texts and phone calls? What's the difference between a group text chat and a Discord text chat? Nothing. Except one is directly using the internet, and the other ... is using the internet as a backbone. Discord even runs on a phone. So isn't Verizon a "Nazi enabler" by the same logic? So let's do it. Let's scan everyone's text message and phone calls to stop the Nazis. Clearly the ends justify the means, so let's do it.
hellbanner 9y ago
So it's every communication service's responsibility to keep only the people they like using their service?
- meebs 9y ago
  Responsibility to not allow it to be abused by Nazis at the very least.
- skybrian 9y ago
  Companies that try to prevent their customers from attacking each other tend to do better than companies that don't protect their customers. This isn't new. For example, Gmail hit it big in part by being better at spam filtering. The specific issues have changed, though.
  - cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
    Whew lad, are Verizon and AT&T next? I heard some actual Nazis used AT&T in the past. Surely by that logic all T-Mobile customers are suspect by default.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- astrodust 9y ago
  There's a difference between "communication service", as in "carrier", and "social platform" as in "community". When you run a carrier you're expected to be neutral. What people do with your service is not your responsibility. If the service is being used illegally then law enforcement can intervene. When you run a community you have an obligation to pick and choose who participates. You can strive to be inclusive, but when you start to include those that seek to exclude you'll find your community being hijacked and perverted into someting that reflects the wants and needs of a tiny, dedicated, often highly motivated minority. It's the responsibility of anyone running a community to police and weed out bad actors. I they don't the good citizens will leave and your community will be worthless. That's probably a bad thing if you've got shareholders to answer to.
koolba 9y ago
I bet they use Gmail too.
- pluma 9y ago
  I wager some of them even have Facebook accounts. Clearly Corporate America is in on this.
meowface 9y ago
Discord was right to ban them once they became aware of them, but it's very easy to create a private Discord server to do bad things just as it's very easy to create an AIM/MSN/Skype group chat to do bad things. The portrayal of Discord as somehow naturally encouraging or inducing neo-Nazis to use their platform is silly. Once a communication system (telephone, email, IM) becomes popular enough, bad people are inevitably going to use it as well.

nkrisc 9y ago

Nazis and white supremacists might not have you in their sights but that can't be said about everyone.

geofft 9y ago

> (My account was just banned by sctb for this ;P) Hm, I looked at your account and you posted another comment which looks for all the world like an attempt to imply by dogwhistle that the Jews are planning on replacing you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15870471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15870471 Are you sure you were not banned for being a Nazi, hiding behind the label "alt-right"? People dissatisfied with mainstream right-wing politics are one thing. Nazis are another entirely, and they have no place on this forum or in our industry. (Can the decent people in the alt-right -- assuming any exist -- denounce dogwhistle anti-Semitism as having no part in the movement?)

PeCaN 9y ago
While this may or may not be true, I'm still shadowbanned by sctb and that raises some questions about moderation. You're welcome to check my comment history. It may be somewhat snarky but I hope it is mostly positive contributions. Unfortunately, I tend to dislike YC's business and silicon valley in general.
geofft 9y ago
To the shadowbanned user who replied to me: I looked at your comment history and found - a comment about "Silicon Valleetards" - a lot of non-killed comments, mostly (apparently) high quality - one comment with what looks like casual racism, a handful of comments with extreme condescension towards other users, all killed - a comment by 'dang saying part of his moderation activity includes personally looking at your comments and manually un-killing the vast majority of them This seems entirely commendable on the moderators' part, and the only question it raises is how they have so much time. I have had the misfortune of being in multiple communities (a club in college, a job, a programming language, a church) where there was a skilled contributor who provided genuinely valuable and helpful work 80% of the time and hurtful behavior 20% of the time, and the community could never admit to itself that the harm they were causing to other skilled members was causing them to be net negative for the community. "We will shadowban you and manually review and approve the 80% of your comments that build up the community" is a great approach if you can implement it, and I'm pleasantly surprised the mods think it's sustainable. Also, in your specific case it seems more like 98% than 80%. I would really encourage you to take 'dang's advice in one of the threads where he responded, and 'sctb's advice in the thread where he banned you - agree to be civil. There's a difference between snark and insult. As someone who used to get a kick out of gratuitous public confrontation (as long as it was online and not in person!) and still needs to consciously suppress the occasional instinct to make technical disagreements personal (and doesn't always succeed), I totally get it. It feels super hypocritical for me to tell you not to do a thing that I do. But I hope this comes off as friendly advice from someone who's been there before, not hypocrisy. The comment that got you shadowbanned genuinely did not contribute to the community, and also genuinely is nowhere near your usual standards, so I'm surprised you're standing by it. (Two concrete suggestions: first, don't be afraid to type the comment you want to write and then close the tab, or submit it and then delete it 5 seconds later once you think better of it. I do that a lot. Second, if you're coming here to blow off steam, think hard about the thing in your life that's building up steam and whether you can get rid of it.) I hope that, given that this is a thread about the merits of active moderation in online communities, a digression about active moderation in this online community is not too far off-topic.