33 votes

Topic deleted by author

33 comments

  1. [17]
    sid
    Link
    There was a discussion about that and the consensus was that it provides a false sense of privacy, since anyone could construct their own copy of the user history by scraping the site if they...

    There was a discussion about that and the consensus was that it provides a false sense of privacy, since anyone could construct their own copy of the user history by scraping the site if they really want to.

    27 votes
    1. [6]
      UrsulaMajor
      Link Parent
      in my understanding, this is sort of like saying "why put locks on your door if you can just break a window?" of course, the user history can still be constructed, but there's no sense leaving the...

      in my understanding, this is sort of like saying "why put locks on your door if you can just break a window?"

      of course, the user history can still be constructed, but there's no sense leaving the metaphorical door unlocked

      31 votes
      1. [5]
        Michael
        Link Parent
        That's not really an apt metaphor. It would be more accurate to say "why put locks on your door if everybody has the key?"

        That's not really an apt metaphor. It would be more accurate to say "why put locks on your door if everybody has the key?"

        2 votes
        1. [4]
          UrsulaMajor
          Link Parent
          I don't know about you, but I don't know how to write a script to scrape for web data and I don't know or care enough to look up a third party api or website that already does so. sure, learning...

          I don't know about you, but I don't know how to write a script to scrape for web data and I don't know or care enough to look up a third party api or website that already does so.

          sure, learning how would probably be as difficult as tossing a rock through a window or figuring out how to pick the lock, but that small amount of effort will deter 99% of the people who go trolling through comment histories looking for a reason to hate you.

          Locks keep honest people honest, as the saying goes.

          1 vote
          1. [3]
            Michael
            Link Parent
            Honestly, It just takes a plugin like RES (for tildes) to restore a comment history page. It's not like everyone needs to write a script, it just takes one person.

            Honestly, It just takes a plugin like RES (for tildes) to restore a comment history page. It's not like everyone needs to write a script, it just takes one person.

            3 votes
            1. [2]
              UrsulaMajor
              Link Parent
              I still think that the average person is a lot like me, where I might give enough of a fuck to look at a profile, but not enough of a fuck to download a plugin

              I still think that the average person is a lot like me, where I might give enough of a fuck to look at a profile, but not enough of a fuck to download a plugin

              1. Michael
                Link Parent
                I agree, but the possibility is still there. People just want to see as much information as possible. Remember the revolt when they took away the downvote count?

                I agree, but the possibility is still there. People just want to see as much information as possible. Remember the revolt when they took away the downvote count?

    2. [11]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. [7]
        xiretza
        Link Parent
        Well, if the site gets big enough, there will be services like SnoopSnoo, and they will scrape the site if hidden histories are a thing. The average person will not see a difference should they...

        Well, if the site gets big enough, there will be services like SnoopSnoo, and they will scrape the site if hidden histories are a thing. The average person will not see a difference should they decide to use such a service.

        There was also the idea of marking posts/comments as "anonymous" before posting, which is basically just a built-in throwaway creator. This actually makes the information inaccessible.

        15 votes
        1. IDontKnowHowToPM
          Link Parent
          I love this idea. It would save people time as well as not have the servers potentially bogged down by a bunch of throwaway accounts that are no longer active. Not sure how much that would really...

          There was also the idea of marking posts/comments as "anonymous" before posting, which is basically just a built-in throwaway creator.

          I love this idea. It would save people time as well as not have the servers potentially bogged down by a bunch of throwaway accounts that are no longer active. Not sure how much that would really bog things down since I'm sure it's really only a few bits here and there, but it's still a neat idea.

          6 votes
        2. [5]
          Comment deleted by author
          Link Parent
          1. [2]
            nacho
            Link Parent
            There are searchable databases of every piece of content submitted to reddit. The whole shebang going back years and years. This is why the sense of false security is a very real concern: people...

            Imagine creating a service that scrapes the entirety of Reddit to search for one user.

            There are searchable databases of every piece of content submitted to reddit. The whole shebang going back years and years.

            This is why the sense of false security is a very real concern: people think deleting their nudes or whatever an hour after posting leaves them "safe". it doesn't. Everything is scraped, and there have been serveral sources backing up all image links submitted to the site too.

            13 votes
            1. ruspaceni
              Link Parent
              Yeah, there's api's like this that have everything you could ever need tied into one without actually ever touching reddit directly https://github.com/pushshift/api

              Yeah, there's api's like this that have everything you could ever need tied into one without actually ever touching reddit directly

              https://github.com/pushshift/api

              6 votes
          2. [2]
            xiretza
            Link Parent
            Possibly, if you're not careful. But tilde is a few magnitudes smaller than reddit, and probably always will be - there's just not enough fluff to attract the broad masses.

            Possibly, if you're not careful. But tilde is a few magnitudes smaller than reddit, and probably always will be - there's just not enough fluff to attract the broad masses.

            4 votes
            1. [2]
              Comment deleted by author
              Link Parent
              1. xiretza
                Link Parent
                I'd rather focus on fixing the real problem: attacking someone with unrelated topics from their comment history. I honestly don't think this will be much of a problem with how "moderation-heavy"...

                I'd rather focus on fixing the real problem: attacking someone with unrelated topics from their comment history. I honestly don't think this will be much of a problem with how "moderation-heavy" tildes is designed to become (everyone gets privileges corresponding to their trust level).

                4 votes
        3. Dr_Douchebag
          Link Parent
          The idea of making a part anonymous before posting would definitely be nice but depending on how it works may also just be a false sense of security

          The idea of making a part anonymous before posting would definitely be nice but depending on how it works may also just be a false sense of security

          1 vote
      2. sid
        Link Parent
        The other point that was brought up was that other sites might be created for the explicit purpose of maintaining user comment history. That would be problematic if it happened, and if users feel...

        The other point that was brought up was that other sites might be created for the explicit purpose of maintaining user comment history. That would be problematic if it happened, and if users feel like comment history is a feature they want to see then such a site will certainly appear given time. It's better to just maintain the history on tildes.

        3 votes
      3. [2]
        sqew
        Link Parent
        I like the idea of hiding comments, or at least making it an option to do so, mostly for this reason. On reddit and other sites, a tactic in arguments that I see used way too often is to go...

        bringing back something I said last year to use in our current conversation

        I like the idea of hiding comments, or at least making it an option to do so, mostly for this reason. On reddit and other sites, a tactic in arguments that I see used way too often is to go searching through someone's older comments and drag up some old point to use against them. I think that ~ should probably avoid allowing such tactics to become commonplace, and, though the comment tagging system or moderation could be used to this effect, it almost seems like a better idea just to remove the possibility to begin with.

        3 votes
        1. hightrix
          Link Parent
          Couldn't agree more. One of the most frustrating situations on Reddit is when you're having a conversation and it devolves into "oh you post on x, your opinion doesn't matter".

          Couldn't agree more. One of the most frustrating situations on Reddit is when you're having a conversation and it devolves into "oh you post on x, your opinion doesn't matter".

          4 votes
  2. [5]
    Tergeron
    Link
    I disagree with this for the express reason you're asking for the feature in the first place. Being able to mask or delete your posting history does nothing but embolden concern trolls and people...

    I disagree with this for the express reason you're asking for the feature in the first place. Being able to mask or delete your posting history does nothing but embolden concern trolls and people who will pretend to be someone or something they aren't. I firmly believe that people both online and offline should have to stand behind the statements they make when the things they say have an impact on discussion. Who you are DOES play an important role in discussion because your site-wide identity is tied with what you say and what you believe.

    21 votes
    1. [5]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. cfabbro
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        You sort of are though... because you’re asking each of your comments to be judged in a vacuum, in total isolation from the rest of your history, which makes identifying patterns of behavior...

        I'm not asking for this to hide from my statements

        You sort of are though... because you’re asking each of your comments to be judged in a vacuum, in total isolation from the rest of your history, which makes identifying patterns of behavior impossible. Sentences communicated through text are often hard enough to judge the intent behind but without a history is impossible. This makes determining good and bad faith impossible.

        Another issue is it renders determining context impossible. E.g. A joke made at someone’s expense when viewed in total isolation could be seen as bad-faith in every single case... but with a user history available the context of that joke could be determined, perhaps coming to realize the users know each other.

        I have said impossible a lot because that’s what total privacy does in regards to accountability, renders it impossible. And if you want to see what total privacy, zero accountability and 0 ability to determine context does to community culture... just take a look at 4chan.

        11 votes
      2. Tergeron
        Link Parent
        I had written up a few paragraphs to respond to this and right as I was proof reading it my power went out, so I'm just going to go with the highlights of the points I wanted to make. (And now...

        I had written up a few paragraphs to respond to this and right as I was proof reading it my power went out, so I'm just going to go with the highlights of the points I wanted to make. (And now ironically I seem to have rewritten them although maybe not as nuanced)

        For your first example, if someone decides to denounce your opinion because of where you post, that is something actionable by the community and yourself inside of the discussion. They can be called out on their logical fallacies and if they continue to do it people can look at their history and realize that this person may not be arguing in good-faith.

        Having a post history attached to your identity helps give that identity credibility which you can either build or destroy over time, backed up by evidence instead of hearsay. Not having that post history presents issues with this credibility, and does nothing to prevent people from not making assumptions about your beliefs and the accusations. You solve "Oh you post in X sub" by discussing it and hopefully having a good-faith community that calls it out.

        As for not wanting information you state publicly to be found... well, you cant expect privacy of information when you say it on what is effectively the new public square for discussion. You are responsible for what information people can glean from you in your public statements and nothing can change that, especially when you cant demand other people forget what they read when your comments ARE public and not hidden.

        2 votes
      3. ZaphodBeebblebrox
        Link Parent
        Perhaps some compromise between the two of you would be ideal? If there was an option that was hiding all but the last month or two of someones post history, it would allow people to check if...

        Perhaps some compromise between the two of you would be ideal?

        If there was an option that was hiding all but the last month or two of someones post history, it would allow people to check if someone was a troll or should be ignored for some other obvious reason without giving an easily accessible source of all the information that has ever been posted to the account.

      4. Awoo
        Link Parent
        I feel like that refrain would simply be a one way ticket to getting your posts moderated here. This kind of behaviour should be stopped through good moderation.

        "Oh, you post in X sub so your argument is invalid" ...?

        I feel like that refrain would simply be a one way ticket to getting your posts moderated here.

        This kind of behaviour should be stopped through good moderation.

  3. [2]
    sunblasts
    Link
    This sounds like it would just make it a lot harder for the admins/mods to hold users accountable. You'd be enabling trolls and bad-faith users. If, on the other hand, you allow mods to read the...

    This sounds like it would just make it a lot harder for the admins/mods to hold users accountable. You'd be enabling trolls and bad-faith users.

    If, on the other hand, you allow mods to read the comment histories of users who have chosen to go private, then those users won't actually be "private" at all (especially because it looks like mod access will eventually be given automatically to high-trust users?). This just gives people a false sense of security regarding their own privacy.

    8 votes
    1. [2]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. sunblasts
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        If you've reevaluated your opinion, you could explain that up to the person who is trying to use your former opinion like a cudgel. Keep the conversation going and everyone can learn from the...

        If you've reevaluated your opinion, you could explain that up to the person who is trying to use your former opinion like a cudgel. Keep the conversation going and everyone can learn from the experience. I think this would be a good thing.

        Don't get me wrong, I do understand the concerns of the privacy-minded. But I've never understood the assumption of (or uh, desired entitlement to?) the privacy of one's comments on a public site. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I grew up on an internet where you only posted things if you were committed to them being copied and shared among strangers forever. The level of tracking that modern sites do is obviously several degrees beyond that, but I still maintain that if you are uncomfortable with your comments being seen, then perhaps you should reconsider posting them at all.

        You mentioned the admins alone. Do you think moderators/high-trust users should be disallowed access to these hypothetical privacy-minded users' comment histories? How then would they be able to effectively moderate their communities?

        3 votes
  4. xiretza
    Link
    This has been discussed before, and a valid point was that this gives a false sense of security. It's still trivial to simply go the other way around, scrape all threads and remember which user...

    This has been discussed before, and a valid point was that this gives a false sense of security. It's still trivial to simply go the other way around, scrape all threads and remember which user commented what. Especially while the site is this small.

    5 votes
  5. [4]
    starchturrets
    Link
    What about the admins/mods? Say you make a trollish comment somewhere. Should Deimos be able to look through your comments to determine if you're a troll?

    What about the admins/mods? Say you make a trollish comment somewhere. Should Deimos be able to look through your comments to determine if you're a troll?

    3 votes
    1. [4]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. [3]
        cfabbro
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        Once ~ gets bigger, especially once the hierarchy niches gets fleshed out more that is an unreasonable expectations for admins to be the only ones capable of holding people accountable. Imagine if...

        Once ~ gets bigger, especially once the hierarchy niches gets fleshed out more that is an unreasonable expectations for admins to be the only ones capable of holding people accountable. Imagine if all of Usenet had only a handful of people able to monitor for abuse, harassment, historic bad behavior, etc.

        My issue in general with full focus on absolute privacy and privacy alone is that ~ is going to built on trust and empowering trusted users with powerful tools to help manage their communities. A completely blank slate user history renders most of those tools pointless since with that, each group will be in complete and total isolation in terms of ability to judge whether someone is acting in good faith or not.

        Privacy and security is important... but so is accountability for actions. Finding the balance between the three is the key, IMO. Which is why I have suggested limiting user history to 3-6 months, a long enough period someone’s actions won’t be judged in total isolation, but not long enough for a complete deep dive on someone in order to dox them. I have even suggested perhaps setting the minimum history to 3-6 months and then allowing users to opt-in to allowing more to be kept/revealed. E.g. I like having access to my entire user history stretching back forever and would prefer if ~ gives me the option to revisit my own comments and posts no matter how old they are.

        6 votes
        1. [3]
          Comment deleted by author
          Link Parent
          1. [2]
            cfabbro
            Link Parent
            Well if that is the case, then I am sorry for misunderstanding you... however your self-text and all the comments of yours I have seen so far seem to imply you meant all users having the inability...

            Well if that is the case, then I am sorry for misunderstanding you... however your self-text and all the comments of yours I have seen so far seem to imply you meant all users having the inability to see your history except for admins and nowhere have I seen you mention mods except in the edit you made 3 minutes ago to your self-text and your replies to me.

            But I think if you have no problem with mods seeing your history then you might be operating under an incorrect assumption about ~ in regards to the trust system. The idea of the trust system is to basically make every active member of a group a "mod" with varying degrees of power/authority based on their trust within that group. So ultimately, the vast majority of people who are active somewhere on the site would then be given (by necessity so they can do their job) access to your history, rendering your idea kind of pointless. I can see the argument for not allowing absolutely 0 trust anywhere users from diving into account history though and that's a good suggestion, IMO.

            Incidentally, what did you think about my idea of the compromise of defaulting to only 3-6 months of history being visible so trusted users can still do their jobs, but then also giving the users the opt-in ability to retain/show more than that 3-6 months?

            3 votes
            1. [2]
              Comment deleted by author
              Link Parent
              1. cfabbro
                Link Parent
                Well if it makes you feel any more comfortable, there has been talk of perhaps gating user history and many other "mod-like" abilities behind various tiers of trust so new users and even users...

                Well if it makes you feel any more comfortable, there has been talk of perhaps gating user history and many other "mod-like" abilities behind various tiers of trust so new users and even users with low to mid trust would not have access to all the tools nor the ability to abuse them.

                And also keep in mind that, as with most things on ~, nothing is set in stone yet and user feedback will be solicited on the ideas before they are implemented so you can voice your concerns about the chilling effect general public exposed user history will have... helping the system find the right balance between accountability and privacy.

                1 vote
  6. ruspaceni
    Link
    Once ~ is at scale you'll not be able to avoid people being able to find the information you post. But reading through this thread I can agree with both sides so this is a tricky one for me. What...

    Once ~ is at scale you'll not be able to avoid people being able to find the information you post. But reading through this thread I can agree with both sides so this is a tricky one for me.

    What would you think of having the comments on a users profile be akin to "user posted in X thread" but only having a link to the thread? This wouldn't stop people that have a hate boner for you, but IMO nothing will.

    Perhaps more trusted users will be able to get a quicklink to your comment so that if someone comes across something you've posted, they'll be able to flick through your past comments to get a feel for you (sarcasm is really hard with strangers).

    I've seen the "you post in X so idc" thing before on reddit a few times but it's only happened to me once and even then I just scoffed at it. I'm not sure that's something I'd give up post history for, so my suggestion doesn't exactly fix that. But I'm curious how you feel on it

    3 votes
  7. crius
    (edited )
    Link
    Making user comment history private isn't gonna fix. I proposed a solution some time ago but dunno the position about it of @Deimos. I can't go back in my history that much but in short it was...

    Making user comment history private isn't gonna fix. I proposed a solution some time ago but dunno the position about it of @Deimos.

    I can't go back in my history that much but in short it was that after a certain amount of time, comments are anonymised.

    To explain how that can work, there are two way:

    • Hard update: Every day a script run through the comments that still has a userId in the database and, if they're older than a certain amount of time, delete that reference. The topics structure will be preserved as every comment supposedly have a parentId.
      Pros: This solution make it so Tildes do not have any way to get to a user history. Even if hacked, the data is not there.
      Cons: also the user is not able to get an history of its own comments. When tildes will grow, this will become quite resource intensive.
    • Soft update: The backend that build the topic structure simply don't send the userId/username to the frontend if the creationDate of the comment/topic is older than a certain amount of time.
      Pros: Tildes can still have that full history but it's not available to the public. The user can still see all his own comment in his personal profile. Not resource intensive at all. Easily implemented even right now.
      Cons: In case of an hack, the data is still all there.

    Honestly I'm more for the soft update because things like "trust system" will become more accurate the more history they have access to. The same accuracy greatly increase in punishing a user. If the system can go backwards for quite some lenght it's easier that it will not ban accidentally users that maybe have had just a bad couple of weeks and were misbehaving on the website for some reason only recently.

    To clarify the pros:

    • You cannot attack anymore a user using its post history
    • You cannot identify and harass the user by scraping personal information out of its post history
    • Scrapers cannot build a user profile out of the frontend
    • The users can feel more easily open to tells personal anecdote to explain situations of point of views because in an active thread their username will be there to ease following a dicussion but after some time (2 weeks? 1 month?) his comment won't be linked to that user anymore.
    • A topic full of "A user" instead of @crius, @Deimos, @cfabbro, etc, is still a readable topic that can provide good information and a good reading and thoughtful experience as the main point of tildes is to provide meaningful exchange. Think about this: How many times you read the username before replying on reddit?
    2 votes
  8. Silbern
    Link
    I disagree with it for several reasons; #1, Tilde is ultimately a public forum. If you don't want anyone to see your comments, writing to a public forum, where anyone and everyone can see what you...

    I disagree with it for several reasons; #1, Tilde is ultimately a public forum. If you don't want anyone to see your comments, writing to a public forum, where anyone and everyone can see what you say, is not a smart thing to do to begin with. #2; it's rendered completely pointless since anyone can just search for your username in google across the site anyway, and if Google can't see your username, that would mean no one else could either (and we'd never have anyway of knowing who we're talking too). #3 it renders most of our moderation tools ineffective, and #4 Slashdot has shown us that anonymous users rarely contribute much of value. They have an anonymous feature there and it's used way more for trolling or harassment then it is for an insightful contribution. We're getting a feature like that eventually, albeit with the caveat our moderators and admins will monitor them for abuse, but the signal to noise ratio on anonymous accounts or users with no history is pretty bad #6 and finally, that user history often does have relavance. I've seen many cases where someone will claim for example "I've never said racist things" and one look shows a long and colorful history of it. That matters as part of the discussion, because hypocritical and conflicting statements and positions make it hard to see what you are truthfully contributing.

    1 vote
  9. m-w
    Link
    How about the option to have ones username hidden, once a certain time has passed. That would not break the informational value of old threads, but would prevent crawlers from fetching too much...

    How about the option to have ones username hidden, once a certain time has passed. That would not break the informational value of old threads, but would prevent crawlers from fetching too much information.