
Show HN: A decentralized index of banned users and where to find their content - Mattasher
https://beforetheban.com/
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sverige
This is a very timely service, given the current climate in which de-
platforming is poised to accelerate.

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nickthemagicman
Anger and Rightousness are powerful human emotions. Especially towards people
deemed to be 'different' than your in-group.

It basically is a fundamental part of our psyche. It's never going away.

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dvtrn
_It basically is a fundamental part of our psyche. It 's never going away._

What a piss-poor cop out argument this is. There are lots of impulsive,
animalistic features still baked into our slightly more evolved reptilian
brains, and it seems we haven't had much problem ironing out some of the worst
of those impulses for net positive outcomes.

Clubbing people from different tribes over the head with tree branches, for
example-being one of them.

Why, pray tell-is/should this be any different?

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SuoDuanDao
Because labelling emotions toxic and unacceptable makes them come out in other
ways. Try as they might, the Victorians could not get rid of 'licentiousness'.

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finaliteration
> Given a diverse enough population, your beliefs are almost certain to
> already be offensive to some sub group

That is some top notch rationalization of hateful and racist speech and such a
reductionist view of the issue. Let’s maybe take a step back and consider the
reasons -why- someone may find a belief offensive rather than making some
blanket statement about the issue. Let’s also consider that being offended by
racism is not the same thing as being offended by someone calling you out for
being racist.

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iamdave
The quote doesn't seem even slightly remarkably contentious or incendiary, but
you've somehow managed to make some sort of value statement about what was
said and immediately made the association that the writer is rationalizing
hatred for stating a pretty tame quantitative opinion.

You've also described the quote as a 'reductionist view of the issue'. What
issue? The decentralized archiving of content that some in a specific group of
a certain segment of online denizens have deemed objectionable? Isn't this
just proving exactly the point of the quote you're taking issue with? Where is
the rationalization?

How did you come to this conclusion? I'm curious what that logic ladder may
look like.

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finaliteration
In the context of the article and other footnotes, it seems like the
implication is, “someone is always going to be offended therefore we can’t
label some things legitimately offensive and others not”. It’s a form of
linguistic nihilism that comes up a lot during discussions about how “PC”
things have become.

The racism comment is an example and not necessarily directly targeted at the
article, but more at what’s implied given the context (e.g. the comment about
The NY Times article having the race changed from “white” to “black”).

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iamdave
_It’s a form of linguistic nihilism that comes up a lot during discussions
about how “PC” things have become._

And so your first response to engage this is to immediately play political-
word-association and tie this service up with the worst elements of the "PC"
divide, because of how some _other_ groups, not even involved in the
discussion right now, deploy bad-faith debate tactics?

That doesn't seem at all any more helpful than whatever it is you're
portending to have an issue with, at the core of a service like this.

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geoah
I'm wondering if the service will eventually take sides. After all they are
still serving content that people got banned for, so what happens if the
content is actually illegal or is deemed offensive by the service? Will they
get banned from it as well? Or would that content be removed?

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joemaller1
Take sides or reveal bias?

If this gets traction it will be fascinating to see whose claims of systematic
oppression are validated.

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TeMPOraL
I expect that if this ever becomes a metric that is looked at, it'll be gamed
by "victims" getting themselves banned on purpose, and then crying foul.

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hokumguru
If this catches on, I could see it becoming a bastion for conservative voices
who have found themselves at odds with Twitter and other social media
platforms.

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cbasoftware
These aren't conservative voices, they're hate voices and should be banned.
There's lots of legitimate conservative voices out there who are not being
listened to. And, they're not banned either.

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Mattasher
Lead dev on the service here. Please have a look at the page, especially the
comments about how unpopular views can change over time, and how the views you
hold are certain to seem deplorable to someone out there (hn user nostrademons
has a good quote about this which I used).

At core though, for me this is about protecting access to information and the
importance of decentralized (uncensorable) identity, not about who private
companies should or shouldn't allow on their platforms.

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insomniacity
Matt, it sounds like you've rebuilt the graph I already have through Keybase
([https://keybase.io/](https://keybase.io/)). Can I not just use that instead?

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Mattasher
I love the Keybase project (I'm user @mattasher)! You guys are on my list of
people to contact as we get closer to public rollout. Anyone at Keybase I
should contact specifically?

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malvosenior
Thank you for making this!

I can't help but think the big platforms are shooting themselves in the foot
by acting as censors and opening the door up to whole new categories of
services (like this) that will ultimately replace them. Betting against
decentralization seems like a long term losing strategy. Censoring content and
promoting particular political viewpoints will accelerate the move away from
centralization.

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Mattasher
I tend to agree about the shooting themselves in the foot part, the more these
platforms decide to remove objectionable content, the more it looks like they
are endorsing all content that hasn't yet been removed. Banning also
encourages more users to try and get opposing viewpoints banned, not just
downvoted or ignored.

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jasonmp85
Also, I like the Indiana Jones logo where they couldn't even Do It Right
enough to have the correct kind of hat.

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shawn
This is especially relevant considering YouTube killed Terry’s videos.
(Losetheos, templeos)

He had literally hundreds. For reference, pewdiepie has around 2800, I think.

I believe you can still access them through archive.org. I’ve thought it might
be worthwhile creating a new YouTube account for terry, reupping all his
videos, then give him the keys. But I bet that’d run afoul of YouTube’s tos.

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jasonmp85
Cool. All the Nazis in one handy list

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Joeboy
Having read the comments here, I think it would be useful if we could see a
realistic sample of the kind of content this would be hosting. My guess is
that it would primarily end up being a repository of racial epithets, threats,
doxxing, child pornography etc. I think the framing of this as being about
opinions that are somewhere in the ballpark of the Overton window is maybe
causing some commenters to present themselves more righteously than they might
if they were mindful of what most actual banned content looks like.

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pjc50
Is it going to include people driven off the Internet by FOSTA/SESTA, for
example, or is it just going to be the collection of alt-right types who are
currently getting banned from major services?

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Joeboy
If I'm understanding the intent correctly, there would be no authority capable
of keeping any of those people off the service.

