Hacker News Reader

Comment by lavabiopsy | Hacker News Reader

As usual with these posts, I don't really find this convincing, that joke is not obvious to someone who doesn't know this person. The tweet can very easily be misinterpreted by someone who does not get the joke. Please keep in mind that this is not just a Twitter thing, many decentralized communities may also not want to host jokes about self-harm or suicide.

View on HN

I think it’s obvious to an everyday English speaking person, this is a take on a regular saying, like “costing an arm and a leg” or “sell my firstborn” or something. Though if I were this Twitter person, I would definitely avoid any metaphors involving things like this if they’ve been banned or whatever so many times.

Still, as an average person, it isn’t taken as anything but a riff on a saying.

Yes, the thing is that Twitter is also accessible to people who are not everyday English speakers.

Interesting - so from the perspective of a non-english speaker, would you say that a phrase like 'that cost an arm and a leg!' is likely to offend you?

I can't answer that question because I am a native English speaker, but I can say, I would probably not use that phrase around non-native English speakers. It's confusing and could be misinterpreted. Generally one would want to avoid using idioms like that when trying to cross a language barrier.

The problem with that is that the person's intent isn't to cross the language barrier.

Many languages have idioms involving body parts like this. In French it's couter les yeux de la tete, similar in Italian where it's costare un occhio della testa. One in Mandarin that means something different is 削足适履, about cutting your feet to fit your shoes.

I get that idioms don't always translate well (some actually do, especially literal ones that are less referential like cost an arm and a leg) but I'd be careful before invoking misunderstanding with theoretical groups of non-english speakers.

And yet, all of those could be misinterpreted by someone who is not familiar with that.

>I'd be careful before invoking misunderstanding with theoretical groups of non-english speakers.

If you're being cautious (as is common for a large website to do) then this is totally backwards -- you would actually need to be careful with invoking understanding when it comes to theoretical groups of non-english speakers. You can't start by assuming that everything that is said is going to be understood perfectly (Though I really wish that was possible, it would make it a lot easier to teach math, physics, history, etc).

Yes, because in other languages things costs less body parts. In Spanish, for example things just costs an eye or a kidney.

Spanish -> literal translation

Me costó un ojo -> it costs me an eye

Me costó un riñón -> it costs me a kidney

(Edited for format)

let's stay on track here.

that expression is an idiom. other languages have idioms that native english speakers would find weird.

as far as the tweet that started all this, it sounded too serious in my opinion.

kanye west (not sure if it was him who said it first) was correct with this one: adding an emoji would have sent a clearer message. blink blink smiley face or something.

Do native English speakers need to renounce their idioms to accommodate people who barely speak English then?

Sure. Have you learned a new language recently? If you haven't, it's an illuminating experience -- usually you don't start with the idioms until you have a really strong grasp of the basics and of some other advanced forms.

I am not a native English speaker. In fact, I learned English very late in life. And I don't think you have to pretend you are talking to the whole world all the time and restrict yourself to simple English.

I don't understand, there's no pretending -- On Twitter, you are effectively talking to the whole world. Anyone in the world can click on your tweets and see what you're saying. If you want to have a broad reach, then minimizing the use of complicated words and language can absolutely help. That doesn't mean you can't discuss complex things, it just means being more deliberate in the way it's discussed.

So first, let's get the ad hominem out of the way. I speak 2 languages fluently in addition to my native language after living in 4 countries throughout my life, so don't patronize me.

Then, your argument is so silly that I wonder if you're just being contrarian for the sake of it. By your logic, anyone speaking language A should make sure to dumb it down as much as possible, make it extremely basic to make sure that anyone in the world who doesn't have a good grasp on language A can understand it unambiguously.

First of all, I don't owe you anything. If I decide to type a tweet in Italian, or Russian or whatever I don't have to accommodate you. If you don't understand the language, you're clearly not my target audience. Even though you can click on my tweet to read it doesn't mean that I need to make sure someone who doesn't understand the language can read it.

Second, this is a total disservice to people learning the language to not use idiom and common constructs. These are expressions people use in real life, if they are serious about wanting to learn a language they want to be exposed to them.

The joke is completely understandable to anybody that speaks Spanish too. In fact, many languages have idioms about exchanging body parts for something.

I don't see the solution, should we self-censor all humor to the point of the lowest common denominator?

> that joke is not obvious to someone who doesn't know this person

The internet must be a scary place for these hypothetical persons you pretend to know.

The internet IS a scary place. Statistically, most of the content viewed on the internet is written by outlier individuals.

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

Please avoid making these type of snarky comments with (incorrect) assumptions about me. A better way to phrase it would be to ask which persons I know like this, to which I could give a pretty universal response: children. You wouldn't expect a child to understand an adult joke. Sure, some do, but many don't -- they have to learn just like you and I did about what people's attitudes are and when they are joking or not.

Children are not supposed to be on twitter, though.

I believe children ages 13-17 are able to use twitter.

That's a special subset that are generally seen as competent enough to see and hear more adult material in order to better prepare for adult life. So actually, there's a real argument to let them see a twitter joke like this. They have less overall protections than a child under 13 for a reason.

I don't understand why you are saying that or what that has to do with the conversation. Please imagine a schoolteacher going into a classroom on the first day of school and saying with a straight face to students "I am going to show you a video on how to cut off your leg" or something like that and then not explaining that it's a joke. My original point is not if any given child is competent enough to see the joke or not, but that it could be misinterpreted.

There is no reason for random Twitter users to comport themselves as school teachers. All your comments are assuming some strict level of etiquette that most people don’t care about. Nor should those that care to present themselves that way relate to ban-able offenses.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I don't think Twitter users need to comport themselves as school teachers. Twitter (and also Hacker News) requires you to conduct yourself to a certain level of etiquette in order to use the service, and some of that may be similar to the way a school teacher would behave -- in either case, you may be in the presence of 13 year olds that could be upset by your comments. I don't get why you are saying some people don't care about that etiquette -- that doesn't matter, agreeing to the etiquette is required to use the service, if you are using the service then it's agreed upon that you care about it.

> Please imagine a schoolteacher going into a classroom on the first day of school and saying with a straight face to students "I am going to show you a video on how to cut off your leg" or something like that and then not explaining that it's a joke.

You seem to be confused. Where does "a video on how to cut off your leg" come into this? The tweet was about willingness to give up a leg to be able to access the tutorials. A more appropriate equivalent would be imagining a schoolteacher going into a classroom on the first day of school and saying with a straight face to students "I am going to show you a video you would gladly give up your right leg to see."

> I believe children ages 13-17 are able to use twitter.

Based on all research available so far Social networks make the life of teenagers worse. So your belief is not supported by anything.

Just from my own experiences on the net as a teen where jokes about self-harm and suicide were extremely common -- One of those reasons could be because social media is not doing enough to protect children from this type of toxic content. Obviously the deleted tweet here is on the "could be harmless" end of the spectrum of that though.

Luckily children under 13 are not allowed to use twitter

Saying you'd exchange a body part that you can technically live without for something is a pretty common metaphor to the point where I'd say it's not glorifying self harm.

The tweet that got the account locked was a reply to the first one presented: "@craigmod There may be a video on how to cut off your leg"

That is obvious sarcasm. I really think that Twitter is trusting too much on NLP for automating those checks and not humans. Because machines are particularly bad at grasping sarcasm.

Its funny, because if you report obvious self harm or violence content in Spanish Twitter does nothing (like vaccines don't work, inject chlorine yourself, kill the president, organize a coup).

(Edited: typos)

It may be obvious to you, but for someone not familiar with this person's type of humor, it might not be so obvious. Please consider that if you find yourself making sarcastic jokes in the presence of strangers and they are giving you funny looks. (It's happened to me more than once)

I'm sorry that happens on Spanish Twitter, that's really unfortunate and it sounds like not a fun place to discuss things.

Now, we should invent a new way to speak. Each of us needs something that removes ambiguity and includes only short, easy to pronounce words. We will find it easy not to accidently say the wrong thing. Such that the right things will flow almost unconciously. People will be more free knowing communication can happen without having to overthink it. Eutopia would be soon to follow. Anyway, just a thought. K

I understand what joke you are trying to make, but I would say the real problem here is the exact opposite: a lot of tweets that I see end up being more ambiguous because of the brevity and lack of context. So it seems what you describe is actually already happening and is one of the main problems with microblogging, and is probably what caused this person's tweet to get flagged.

Yes, I agree. Trying to fit meaningful, full thoughts into 1xx characters is part of the problem.

Btw I worked (too) hard on that one, even encoding a message :)

> that joke is not obvious to someone who doesn't know this person.

It's more like observational humor - it may very well be true. Some people might not find it funny, but it's not advocating for anything.

It's a very obvious joke, but can only be understood if you read both tweets, the original and the reply.

Person 1: 15 year old me would have cut a leg off for access to youtube. Person 2: there's probably a video on how to cut your leg off!

Person 2 gets banned, Person 1 was the first to mention cutting his leg off.

I can't see how this isnt an obvious joke, no matter what language you speak.

> The tweet can very easily be misinterpreted by someone who does not get the joke. [...] [M]any decentralized communities may also not want to host jokes about self-harm or suicide.

The end effect of this is that it reduces speech to the lowest common denominator.

Software and mods who are given 5 seconds to pass judgement on something don't have the capacity to properly assess things so it's easier to just default to banning.

If Jonathan Swift were alive today, he's be permabanned from Twitter for promoting eating Irish babies.

The very fact that they don't know what the speech means, is exactly why they have no business trying to control it.

Believe it or not, there are reasons to perform amputations other than suicide and self-harm

Sure, but that is not made clear from the joke.

When there's a range of possibilities I don't think it makes sense to automatically assume ill-intent. Especially if you're going to willfully ignore context that proves otherwise. That's like one step away from Twitter banning knife companies because their advertisements promote self-amputation

I think there is some confusion here, it's not that there is assumption of ill-intent. It's just the possibility that it could be interpreted that way. From the perspective of a moderator being on the safe side, I could see how they have to always assume that a reader will ignore context, not willfully but by accident.

Edit: Imagine you owned a knife company, would you use the contents of this tweet in an ad? I personally would not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com