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Comment by Timucin | Hacker News Reader

> Twitter just went the easy route and blocked all jsfiddle.net links instead of blocking spammer accounts on their platform.

This is a huge problem with all the tech giants that needs to be addressed. I don't expect them to be perfect but I expect them to be open to communications on any level.

I also think Twitter is the Twitter today just because of the bots and fake accounts they have since those accounts were creating so much content and movement on the platform. I know people whose spending days by reading those fake accounts while they have no idea what's fake and what's real. So maybe -just may be- they may not want to get rid of all those fake accounts and bots.

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I just don't agree with this sentiment. I don't work for twitter or any social media company, but it strikes me as their prerogative to ban content deemed unsafe if they don't have the means or wherewithal to properly police the content. From an engineering standpoint, how exactly do you propose to scan fiddles for objectionable content. With an image link, you could throw a neural net at it and at least tag it as nsfw (or scan a few images in a linked page).

And this isn't related at all to the bots and fake accounts (which I think is the bigger problem). But in the context of your argument, this is just non sequitur.

Ok, but they’re not blocking CodePen etc. And furthermore, you don’t even need a JSFiddle/CodePen whatever, you can run it on any website that you can edit code on! Is github.io next to be blocked? How about any unrecognized website? That JSFiddle has been targeted by this action is absurdity.

> their prerogative

Thus any business decision isn't a problem? Whether it's their prerogative, it still a problem in tech.

> to ban content deemed unsafe

Like any links? Or even text itself? The only thing that makes JSFiddle "worst" is how easy it is, but even then almost anything else is just as easy. If there's money to be made too, unless you block everything that cost less than the money to be made, what you do won't stop it.

Why not just put that warning over EVERY single links and not block anything? Do a white list instead.

> their prerogative

Thus any business decision isn't a problem?

Depends on your definition of "problem"... and thus your definition of who should care:

- legally (government): any business devising that comply with law are not a problem

- financially (investors): any decisions that increase profits are not a problem

- morally/ethically (users): any business decisions that you personally are okay with are not a problem.

Each of these has its own correction mechanism: persecution, lack of funding, customer outcry & abandonment.

In other words: there are ways to reverse bad decisions.

The only thing that makes JSFiddle "worst" is how easy it is

As pointed out in other comments, the problem is that anyone can anonymously create a malicious JSFiddle that runs undesired code. You could make a car that any website that similarly allows anonymous code execution should have that warning or be blocked. Most links, however, are better attributable. (Eg, require account creation).

> Most links, however, are better attributable.

I strongly disagree on that. The fact that you have an account behind it doesn't make it attributable at all. There's nearly no verification on 99% of the internet. Some studies consider that 9 to 15% of Twitter accounts are litteraly fake [1]. TwitterAudit believe that 40-60% of Twitter accounts are fakes.

They aren't attributable to anyone except a username, which is worthless.

> You could make a car that any website that similarly allows anonymous code execution should have that warning or be blocked.

It was never about code execution but what they call "wallet code" which is what I did in another comment [2].

> Most links

You can easily register a domain anonymously. Most links are fine sure, most possible domains, aren't, which is my point. Show a warning (which they do on URL Shortener) instead of blocking a domain altogether on ALL links and use a white list (which would include MOST used domains) instead.

[1] https://aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM17/paper/view/1558...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20124667

>> From an engineering standpoint, how exactly do you propose to scan fiddles for objectionable content.

But if this was about getting people to click more ads, Twitter would be throwing enormous amounts of resources at it.

I mean, let's not pretend that this is an engineering problem.

Engineering and cost to me are intricately intertwined, so yes it is an engineering problem. If they could solve it without affecting the bottom line (or even better improving the bottom line), I'm sure they would.

It is a problem. YouTube throwing off content makers. Facebook banning campaigns. playstore banning Dev accounts. iOS store banning apps. Google search removing search results. Twitter banning people. In a lot these cases the businesses and people behind these are victim without ever doing something wrong. Bad or no communication is something they have to deal with. Yes, in a lot of cases there is a justified reason. But the good should not suffer from the bad. And that is what's happening right now. Same with this Twitter link ban.

> I know people whose spending days by reading those fake accounts while they have no idea what's fake and what's real

That's not your point I think, but fake|bots accounts and subs are among the best things we got from twitter/reddit in my opinion.

Aside from the ones designed to be funny from the start, the nonsensical ones also blend perfectly with what we would call 'legit' users and serious posts/communities.

That's to a point where I find it really useful to purposefully inject fake and non sensical content in the timelines to get some daily critical training, but also an escape hatch for the mind when hitting some of the submissions that we think just can't be real.

You're right, I was aiming the spammers by fake/bot accounts. Not the ones that are useful or fun.

It doesn't even look like it's blocked, you just get a interstitial page warning. I think this was their best route. Shouldn't be up to tech companies to build logic for each site that can't get a handle on their users content. Twitter can barely do it themselves

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