Posted by _a9 2 days ago
But they don't, because the former would require them to perjure themselves, and the latter just requires them to lie to a hosting company.
Misrepresentation of Fact
Knowledge of Falsity
Intent to Induce Reliance
Justifiable Reliance
Resulting DamagesAt first that seems pretty unlikely, but I could see them wanting to nip this in the bud so it doesn't become more common.
However, ICANN has a whole procedure they follow where complaints are fact-checked, whereas DMCA takedowns put an unreasonable burden on hosting providers that requires immediate action, and many hosting providers will take such action automatically to protect themselves.
I doubt they care about perjury. They care about results, and the DMCA gets them exactly that.
The phishing reports are interesting, providers aren't necessarily required to act as fast on those. Although, I suspect companies like Cloudflare who get used by countless phishers will probably also set up some kind of automated anti phishing system.
You are confusing false claims with filing DMCA requests on behalf of someone you don't have permission from.
>and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed
A false DMCA request is misrepresentation.
Doesn't stop anyone with DMCA... DMCA is coming up on almost three decades of being a law, and requires statements made under penalty of perjury.
However many millions (likely billions) of DMCA takedowns issued, who knows how many false/bad faith... I wonder how many have led to prosecutions for perjury, even when filing tens of thousands, en masse...
No need to wonder, the answer is simple. Starts with a "Z" and ends in "ero".
Those take on the order of months to go through. Even if they did so, you wouldn't notice until much later. Meanwhile cloudflare and hetzner are faster. If you want to reduce harm by taking down a site you can't just let it stay up for weeks while the ICANN process plays out.
But I think the real issue with Flock will be private security. Random Home Depot parking lots, etc.
https://www.29news.com/2025/12/17/charlottesville-ends-flock...
If someone would like to engage in grassroots activism on this, may I suggest the perfect domain: getTheFlockOutOfMyCity.com
dang/tomhow, does Y Combinator have a code of ethics that comes into play when one of your funding recipients does something unethical and/or illegal like this?
To HN's credit I haven't seen this rule violated.
For example I wouldn't have known it was a YC company if not for your comment.
Well, that’s what dang says he does. There’s no transparency and no publicly available data that would demonstrate adherence to the rule.
> To HN's credit I haven't seen this rule violated.
I don’t think you’d observe anything different if it were violated.
What kind of data would satisfy you? I imagine any data coming directly from YC would be untrustworthy and third-party data would be incomplete (say, it wouldn't catch content removed before it's published).
Is there a similar data set for other private platforms?
If the mods were in the practice of moderating like this, yes, it would almost certainly be noticed by someone whose post/comment got deleted.
HN, like every other community on the Internet, relies on trust between the users and mods. If you don't trust them, you can always leave.
> If the mods were in the practice of moderating like this, yes, it would almost certainly be noticed by someone whose post/comment got deleted.
“You” in the original was referring to avaer specifically, not the generic “you.” They were the ones making the observation on little to no data.
> HN, like every other community on the Internet, relies on trust between the users and mods.
This is exactly my point. One must trust (or more precisely have faith in) them, because claims like the one up-thread are impossible to verify.
Would it?
HN has all sorts of sneaky punishments to keep people from noticing what's going on. Shadow bans, limiting how many comments you can post per day, sometimes outright refusing to serve you pages with a "Sorry." error, and even flagging isn't visible to the person whose comment got flagged. HN doesn't notify you in any way for any of this. How often do you check your comments while logged out? That includes old comments, of course, which need to be rechecked on a periodic basis. Archives provide some limitation to how much manipulation can happen, but flagging is a thing, can be abused by anyone with enough karma, and provides a lot of plausible deniability for dang should he opt for a stealthier approach to moderation.
Even this account is shadowbanned - and this comment automatically flagged - because I had the audacity to create an account with a VPN, in a world where VPNs are a requirement for unrestricted Internet access for a growing number of people living in "democratic" countries. The only way I know this is through testing, of course, because HN gives no indication that your account will be shadowbanned on creation.
Another way of putting this is that HN has very standard mechanisms in place to combat spam and other sources of low-signal comments.
> Shadow bans, limiting how many comments you can post per day
Like these.
> Sometimes outright refusing to serve you pages with a "Sorry." error,
This just sounds like downtime/server problems. Every site has them, and even the most law-abiding posters on HN will see that sometimes.
> even flagging isn't visible to the person whose comment got flagged.
Yes it is?
> HN doesn't notify you in any way for any of this.
This is by design; HN doesn't offer notifications of anything on its own. Besides, most platforms don't usually notify people of these things by default either?
> Even this account is shadowbanned - and this comment automatically flagged - because I had the audacity to create an account with a VPN, in a world where VPNs are a requirement for unrestricted Internet access for a growing number of people living in "democratic" countries. The only way I know this is through testing, of course, because HN gives no indication that your account will be shadowbanned on creation.
I don't think you need to be so indignant. VPNs are also abused. All of these mechanisms are tradeoffs for making HN one of the best sites I've ever been on for productive, intelligent discussion; and the mods are well aware of this and manage to balance it well. For example, you were still able to register, and you and I are still able to exchange comments. If you contribute to discussions (on an account you don't just throwaway) for a little while, the limitations go away.
I'm not sure this is the supportive argument that you think it is, as HN doesn't notify users of anything akin to what you're discussing, be it positive or negative, ever. They don't have notifications whatsoever.
>Even this account is shadowbanned - and this comment automatically flagged...
No it's not. Edit: mea culpa, see response
>The only way I know this is through testing, of course...
How did you test this? Your single comment on a brand new account appears to be showing up just fine, as any new account would. Did you unflag your throwaway comment from a different account?
I get the feeling you pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable here at one point, and didn't like the result.
It was, actually. New accounts' comments being flagged by default is, I'm fairly certain, very much a thing.
Odd, I don't remember that being a thing when I joined. Mine showed up a-okay.
* how I will now always refer to them
That said, I don't think Flock has anything to do with speed cameras in school zones or anywhere else.
"Even if you can't see kids at a school you should assume they're around".
Judge had about as much patience for that argument as I did. Dismissed.
License plates are trivially short, hashing them accomplishes no additional level of privacy if the hashes could be bruted in seconds on an antique GPU.
I think it'd sound pretty dumb.
(Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_(cryptography) off you want to be fancy)
I don't support this decision but I respect it.
Curious what the Cloudflare HNers have to say about this debacle.
I have yet to see it. All the stereotypical “asshole jocks” I can recall from school tended to be from upper middle class families. They’re doing much better than many of the nerds many of who are unemployed NEETs.
Though I admit these sort of social cliques are much more complex in real life than in a corny 80s coming of age movie.
I understand that childhood bullying can leave some scars. I have faced my fair share too. But life teaches you ever bigger lessons and shifts your priorities. There are much bigger problems now! But if you had the luxury of harboring your grudges against some kiddie bullies, then you have some serious insecurity problems and too much time in your hands. In fact, that's exactly the problem that convert some shy rich kids into destructive oligarchs who lack any empathy. They end up with the delusions that they're somehow special, extra-intelligent and the rightful heirs to the future of humanity. They see their former bullies as sub-human creatures who stand in the way of their and humanity's glory.
I'm not making this up. Go ahead and read the literature that guide these techno-authoritarians. You'll see this philosophy repeated time and again. If you don't want to put in that much effort, there are numerous articles and media that psychoanalyze them based on these literature. You can see that fingerprint in all of their destructive behavior, including their disdain for democracy. And then check your own comment. See how much it resembles them!
Professionally, they're marginalized by finance-bros, who actually decide what gets built and which morals get followed. Privately, everything you might want to repair or tweak or invent is still getting locked down or patented or criminalized.