Vivaldi: Violating CoC on forum may close your email account

Edit: to me (and I suspect most of us) pictures of women breastfeeding infants are not "pornography", but you still hear about such images being banned all the time.

The issue with humans, is that whatever policy you come up with, there's going to be someone who reads the policy and skirts just around the edges. For example, they could say "no unsolicited marketing" and "no impersonation", which seems like a reasonable enough policy. But then you can imagine a user who habitually responds to support question on the forum with: "Great question, I can figure that out for you, email me at paid.consulting@vivaldi.com for a quote." It's not unsolicited per se, and not impersonation per se, but I can see why Vivaldi would want the discretion to ban this hypothetical user and disable his email address.

This isn't the same as the sheer ignorance it takes to assume that countries Nigeria, Montenegro, and Niger are connected to the US's issues with race and are therefore offensive. A US diplomat isn't going to sanction you for recognising Nigeria as a country. I'm also unaware of what such a person would call these countries instead.

Enraged white Americans had a fit over this because in some (not all!) parts of America this is (or used to be) a racial slur. Many other Americans on the mailing list never even heard it used as a racial slur.

The guy was forced to rename the library.

Do you want to bet that whatever you say, or whatever you call yourself won't be a reason to get you banned? Do you want to tie an email address to the likelihood of this happening?

Another, better example: Normally, where you work is not a secret. It is something that most people would tell strangers if asked about.

Now, say you are testing your "market value" by sending out job applications. Now suddenly you may not want to disclose where you work.

This is actually not a contrived example, a friend of mine was let go because the HR guys handling one of his applications knew somebody from his current company, word got around and his current management deemed the risk of him "stealing work secrets" too high. So they put him on paid leave and he never entered that facility again.

How would this scenario be any different.

My point is that you don’t have an obligation to maintain a relationship with someone. If they are being consistently annoying (even without breaking some consistent rule obviously!) it’s totally normal to just decide they don’t belong.

And you don’t have to listen to reasons. You don’t have to entertain the explanation if you don’t want to. You can of course! But there are enough sociopaths wanting to play the system that there’s a lot of pain in trying to be super open to certain kinds of behavior

Now, even moderated outlets have safe harbor protections under the DMCA and similar protections under Section 230 and Section 509 of the CDA which determined that internet services were not (automatically) publishers. Courts have held that outlets are in the clear if they make a reasonable effort to identify illegal content and also take action when something is brought to their attention.

It's private. It's more like a nightclub, bar, or whatever. You have rules to enter and stay. Thousands go there (you may say it's "public"?) but it's private.

Are you wearing the wrong shoes? If so, you may not enter.

Do you belong to the wrong social class? You may not enter.

Do you like starting fights? If so, you'll be shown the door.

You don't like those rules... The solution? Don't go to those bars or forums.

The people that work there? No. As an organization? Absolutely: In any democracy it is essentially an organization that is owned by everyone. It cannot (well, should not) make laws that are exclusionary to anyone because everyone owns a piece of it, and everyone contributes in some small way to making the rules.

With private property/companies the group of owners is much smaller, but once again they make the rules. If owners of private property don't get to make their own rules (within the constraints of the law) then it's really now private property.

If I owned a large building and turned it into a conference center and invited people to come discuss things then it seems obvious that I should have the right to decide to kick someone out if they are making trouble, turning meetings into shouting matches, and generally making it harder for my building to fill the purpose I want it to fill.

This seems to map pretty cleanly onto internet forums owned, operated, and paid for by a private group. They're paying for things, they have their own goals for doing so, and people that disrupt those goals have no right to make the owners waste their resources on something being ruined by disruptions under the odd claim that anyone from the public has the privilege of doing whatever they want there.

Preventing a private organization from removing disruptions to its purpose is inimicable to the idea of private property itself.

Typically, you'll find such waivers on playgrounds, theme parks, public venues and such where the venue can be exempt from liability in case of injury through negligence. Just because you signed a waiver doesn't mean you don't have a case. The court might find that the waiver is trumped by violations in public policy, or it ends up being entered with the intention of effecting an illegal or amoral agreement.

In the U.S., such waivers aren't necessary since digital services are well protected by Section 230 providing immunity from liability for providers of an "interactive computer service" who publishes information provided by a third party. The majority of the cases in that Verge article was lost by the plaintiffs over Section 230.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

A typical argument used by opponents of these services is "freedom of speech" and "censorship". Legally speaking, these only apply in the relationship between the state and members of the public. It means being prosecuted and getting convicted for something you said. A landmark case here is "New York Times Co. v. United States" in which SCOTUS allowed newspapers to publish the then-classified pentagon papers under First Amendment right without censorship or punishment by the government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_S...

These do NOT apply when it comes to civil lawsuits between private citizens and private legal entities. When you get banned from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vivaldi's e-mail service, none of your constitutional rights where violated. You weren't thrown in prison or convicted by a judge. All that happened was a private service cutting you off. It's the exact equivalent of a host of a private party having security escort you to the exit. Property laws and constitutional laws give the host legal backing to do exactly that. Banning people from digital services is merely an extension here.

Lawmakers in Florida and Texas, though, are currently trying passed laws which would which makes banning people from digital services "based on their viewpoints" illegal. The idea is to undermine the fundamental laws and rights you have.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22661626/texas-social-medi...

In Florida, that law has already been blocked by a judge pointing out inherent inequalities through exemptions, and the fact that it directly challenges federal law - Section 230 - as well as the First Amendment.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22661626/texas-social-medi...

Complex as all of this may sound, it's really simple though. You are a private individual engaging in the market place between competing e-mail providers. You are not forced by a governement or the state to use a particular service. If you disagree with the terms of service from a particular provider: don't use that provider. You are even entirely free to start your own e-mail service if you wish to do so.

That's what you have. So, what's the problem then?

Well, what about markets where consolidation has led to a monopoly of a handful of players? What about social media markets where you're compelled to use Facebook or Twitter because your entire social network exclusively communicates through the infrastructure of these private entities? Getting banned from those has a severe impact on a private citizens life, right?

Here things become hairy. There's a difference between your legal freedoms and rights you have, and the de facto affordances provided by the marketplace or the commons to actually enforce them as a private citizen e.g. consumer choice, fair pricing, etc. It's very hard to prove that the existence of a monopoly is violating your legal or constitutional rights as a private individual. (Again, all of this pertains to the relationship between private persons and private legal entities. Not a public government!)

Private monopolies tend to thrive where there are gaps in a legal framework which ensures that private citizens don't end up at a disadvantage in the marketplace. That's where the legislative branch of government ought to come in to assert that the marketplace isn't behaving in a way which benefits the citizen represented by that government, and take affirmative action through new legislation.

That's why Big Tech was brought before several Congressional hearings earlier this year.

Personally, I feel that the freedom to ban people from a community is a fundamental necessity to keep that community healthy. On a basic human level, there's no point in having people who can't go through the same door confront each other over and over again.

However, I do feel there's a major public issue when a ban ends up in de facto ostracizing of members of the public because the entirety of society - millions of people - have become secluded in digital walled gardens. Even though I fundamentally disagree with the views others may harbor, this level of centralization, well, that's not the kind of Internet I'm okay with.

> Don't attribute causation to what just could easily be the null effect.

Alienation existed before capitalism.

Also, "empty slogan" is kind of ironic in the same breath blaming capitalism for all our ills.

Please, let's not switch metaphors. It's not a megaphone, it's a house.

> Demanding that the government enforce your right

The government is the one who makes the "house" into private property in the first place.

Democracy and freedom of speech doesn't mean anything if there's nowhere to speak. If you don't have an actual power to speak _including_ all material prerequisites of communication, then how are you a citizen? Why should you accept liberal democracy?

In a situation where the only thing anyone has is speculation, and speculation on top of speculation. This gaslighting is disgusting and needs to stop.

But yes, in retrospect I should have added an IMHO. On every HN comment anyone's ever written, probably.

> What they said and what kind of person they are are 2 different discussions.[1]

That's an interesting and potentially useful youtube video, so thanks for that. However it presupposes a couple of things that I don't think hold true here.

One of the most important is that you cannot know intent. The person spouting racist crap could be misinformed or miseducated or just didn't realise that what they said is commonly used to cause hurt - but just as equally, they might be a fundamentally hateful person spouting hatred. In that case, it is sensible to treat the comments based on the likely harms achieved, and not the intent, up to a point. (Even then, it's helpful to have people who will choose respectful education rather than abrasive condemnation)

In this case, pretty sure everyone agreed that the intent wasn't malicious, but that it wasn't appropriate or helpful or necessary in that forum, and the confused delivery didn't help either. (I would also accept arguments that his "at least it wasn't a blond joke" comments indicated a level of culturally normalized misogyny, but that's a far cry from malice)

But there's another issue, which brings us back to the origin of this thread: What kind of discourse do we want in our communities? It seems we have a choice - to either assume benign intent, or to assume malice.

In the first quote of this comment, I assumed malice - that you're trying to be dismissive and gaslight me. I'm pretty sure you're not. Not that your statement wasn't dismissive, but I don't think that's your intention - you were simply explaining how you read my comment. And hopefully, when you read that, it seemed out of place - because I try to be respectful and balanced, and I highly value a well-reasoned discussion.

But discourse where we treat people with respect and assume best intentions leads to better outcomes. If, in the absence of any certainty, we assume good intent and push people - with kindness - towards behaviours that are helpful instead of problematic, then we make the world a better place and make each other better people.

The only other option* is to choose the worst possible interpretation of a person's words. More so, this form of discourse almost guarantees that you will be alienating people based on language and culture, and is more painful for people on the autism spectrum and other neurodivergences.

* (you could argue there's a middle ground, but in terms of how you legislate community values, humans usually spin off towards any available edges, especially when in pain)

And actually, in this case I don't find fault in the way most of the mailing list started by calling out the behaviour. The person making the problematic comment doubled down, tried to explain themselves, failed to do so and made the problem worse. Again, maybe if it had been off-list, a better approach could have been found, and the situation was not helped by people feigning injury on someone else's behalf.

The problem that I was addressing was the after-effects - trying to change the CoC to flip the discourse from being explicitly expecting good intentions to expecting everyone to assume malice.

And that's not to say there aren't some hard questions in this. In trying to be quick and brief (and in some cases angry), nobody managed to articulate to the poster in a way they understood what their statement could be misconstrued as saying. Whose job is that? In the case where people are genuinely hurt, there is an absolutely valid principle that it's not the hurting party's job to educate their abuser. There is a widely accepted principle that being an Ally is a good thing because it fortifies the hurting party's morale. There was a vaguely understandable principle mentioned that a person does not have to be the target of a hurt to feel the hurt of a target that may or may not exist.

But that should not encompass the whole community. We need people who recognise that the person who causes hurt unintentionally will themselves be hurt in the backlash and the mob justice. And this is where the concept of "Ally" becomes wholly problematic. Those people should not defend the problematic behaviour, or dismiss the reaction as baseless, or invoke cancel culture or witch burning or hypocrisy etc, but instead work towards reconciliation. It's hard to say "These ally behaviours are fine, those ally behaviours are evil" because in each case, both parties are just being who they are.

"assuming good intentions [means] ignoring anything unintentionally objectionable" is a false dichotomy, a lazy one at that, and needs to be called out as such. I agree we should propose a different standard, and I agree that trolling is a poor substitute for reasoned advocacy.

It seems society increasingly favours "trauma-response ping-pong", and it seems the tech sphere is one of the few places on the internet where you can advocate against that without getting your head bitten off. It makes me sad, but maybe I should just shut my emotionally-stunted mouth and get with the times.