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Comment by MiddleEndian | Hacker News Reader

I got my twitter account MyfirstnameMylastname somewhere early in the site's existence, probably around 2009. But never really got the appeal of Twitter so I never used it for anything, I'd check it once every six months or so.

I eventually learned I share a name with a tech journalist who is very active on Twitter, and occasionally I would get tagged instead instead of him. Every time, I would respond with the Navy Seal Copypasta, broken into eight twitter sized parts. Eventually they banned me for this.

And thus ended my Twitter adventure for good.

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>Navy Seal Copypasta, broken into eight twitter sized parts. Eventually they banned me for this

Fucking killjoys.

If twitter is moderating for people who can't even figure out not to take that copypasta seriously[1], then they're showing their hand. There's no end state. No goal. There is no cultural equilibrium point that even perfect moderation could ever achieve.

Therefore, visible attrition is the end state. Twitter has to satisfy the normies who want to be on the internet but don't understand the internet. The moderation is a con because it can't be anything else. Lying "we're working on it, see?" to the monied/powerful normies who's continued use keep Twitter's stock price out of the dumpster.

[1]: It's not that people should recognize copypasta, it's that people should recognize the words of an idiot. This meme became a meme because how well everyone recognized the earnest original author of that post couldn't be taken seriously.

IMO it’s not unreasonable to ban users who are outliers in terms of complaints from other users.

It isn't workable. If you ban the 2% most complained about users there will still be a 2% most complained about users.

There should be something as close as possible to an objective standard of what is and isn't allowed.

Do you have any evidence they are doing this? I rather think they are using a threshold like > 10 complaints in a certain time period.

Supposing they do use a threshold based on an absolute value, by what measure would they have chosen this value in the first place? How, when, and why would they review this value? In the end, if their decision process is based purely on a number, it will eventually become a popularity contest or an excluder of outliers. It's turtles all the way down.

If you don't delete historic data when calculating outliers, you can avoid that problem. Or using a dozen other methods. You're describing an extreme strawman of an algorithm.

everything is to be taken seriously (ie at face value) bc anything more than that would require agreement between those who disagree. (considered to be somewhat of a hard problem.)

>everything is to be taken seriously (ie at face value) bc anything more than that would require agreement between those who disagree.

That's backwards.

Everything should be seen as profoundly not-serious, for precisely the same reason.

> Every time, I would respond with the Navy Seal Copypasta, broken into eight twitter sized parts. Eventually they banned me for this.

yeah, people like you should be banned

Is this sarcasm? If not, I'd love to hear the rationale behind this, as to me this seems far less objectionable than lots of things which happen on mainstream Twitter.

I suppose the charitable argument for banning would be: it pollutes Twitter without extending any conversations or bringing anybody joy per se. Basically it's spam.

Certainly on HN that person would/should be banned right away (which is part of the reason HN is the best place on the internet).

But Twitter is a different animal. So are Reddit and 4Chan. Sarcastic copypasta is par for the course.

> it pollutes Twitter without extending any conversations or bringing anybody joy per se. Basically it's spam.

Looking from the outside, this is an accurate description of 99,99% of all messages ever written on twitter. Arguably, the copy pasted text can at least bring a bit of joy which other tweets also fail at.

Consider that so many people do not care to preserve the environments of online public spaces. While the pollution of digital environments with semiotic trash is less tangible and persistent than the beer cans, cigarette butts, and used needles on the streets of our cities, can you really defend its production? What kinds of cultures, mindsets, and personalities would this breed?

Yes, there are far worse things. But let us hold ourselves to our own high standards and be proud.

One man's semiotic trash is another man's humorous treasure.

Note that I'm not saying that I'm a fan of low-quality posts like this, just that I feel that the lion's share of Twitter is low-quality posts, so it seems odd to single out a copy-pasta meme as being unworthy while allowing... well, the rest of Twitter.

Should have pulled a KenM and just replied with extremely geriatric answers and explanations to everything

On the topic of geriatric twittering, the one time I did not respond with the navy seal copypasta was when some older high school sports coach tagged me instead of his student athlete with the same name (whose twitter handle was completely different). I felt like that would have been too confusing an experience for him.

I'd never heard of "navy seal copypasta", so I googled it, and to my read, its very hard to see any >wink< >wink< in the text, which ends after a long screed, with threats of violence against the poster. So I think its reasonable to believe that maybe on of the people on the twitter abuse team didn't get the joke and instead saw what on its surface looks like a threat. I don't know twitter's ToS, but I'm guessing that if taken literally that text could violate them.

The part about "gorilla warfare" wasn't a hint?

There’s also the part about “you’re dead”, which is a crime. The one time someone assumes this is a joke and then something bad happens…

No, it wasn’t. There are plenty of people online who both a) can’t spell, and b) are unhinged enough to make genuine threats against a stranger’s life.

User who is receiving unsolicited messages from strangers should be the one banned because he decides to respond with a little joke?

I think he spammed the same text every time. Definitely worthy of a ban for any community online or offline.

Yeah I mean realistically, if I did challenge the ban and get them to unban me, I'd just immediately do the same thing again the next time I mistakenly got tagged lol

Spam is unsolicited. You don't get to message someone and cry "spam" when he replies.

Don't get emotionally invested in this. His messages are unsolicited even if they tagged his account. They are also irrelevant which makes them spam.

> also irrelevant

It sounds like you're saying that even if the messages were relevant, such as "you tagged the wrong account", that would be unsolicited?

A single burst of tweets is very solidly solicited when you tag someone, even if it was by mistake.

> Don't get emotionally invested in this.

What in the world do you mean by "emotionally invested"? That reads like a weird way of being unwarrantedly dismissive.

You're not the person I replied to. It was intended to be dismissive in response to "You don't get to message someone and cry "spam" when he replies.".

As for the response, it would be unsolicited by the fact the original tweeter did not ask/want a response from the Meme-ster. They tagged the wrong account.

Take this example:

John says to the person he thinks is Brad: I can't believe the weather today!

Emily says to John: What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals.... etc....

John's reaction to Emily: WTF who the hell is this? Why is she saying these things to me?

Now imagine this happens to be a common mistake that multiple make and Emily responds in this way every time...

> Take this example

That's an example of a reply that is "unsolicited" and "also irrelevant", by your criteria.

I'm not trying to defend that combo here. You said such a screed is "also irrelevant", right?

That means even if a reply wasn't irrelevant, even if it was a useful response, it would still be unsolicited. Right?

Is that what you intended to say? Am I misreading something?

I think your understanding is affected by whatever definition of unsolicited is. Can you share your definition of solicited and unsolicited?

It's basically a synonym for invited. Or from a dictionary: "asked or invited to do, provide, or contribute to something". Unsolicited is the opposite.

If you send someone an invite to a discussion, they're invited, whether you meant to or not. At least long enough to send a single reply (which may be multiple tweets).

Whether their response is a polite "you tagged the wrong person" or some awful screed does not change whether a solicitation happened. Especially because tagging someone is not a request for any specific sort of reply.

Relatedly, if someone is eavesdropping in public and steps into a conversation to make the most wonderful helpful and loved comment in the world, doing that was still unsolicited.

I disagree completely. If you got a wedding invite to your address and name but you _knew_ it was intended for a person of the same name and similar address.. would you argue that you had a right to go to the wedding by the fact that you received an invite? Yes, it would be helpful for you to notify the sender that you got it by mistake but it doesn't mean you're invited and your message back to the sender wasn't requested because the whole thing happened by mistake.

Also tagging does not necessarily request a reply at all.

This is silly and will go in circles so I will finish by just saying.. What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? ....

I would say that you're not invited to the wedding, but you're definitely invited to a brief conversation.

And that's what twitter is, brief conversations.

I don't think so. Banning strikes me as a disproportionate response. People can individually mute him if they want.

A little joke that ends in a death threat.

LOL, similar for me (2008, @FirstnameLastname) but I got banned early 2020 despite not tweeting.[0] I followed lots of CS people that I now have lost.

At least you got banned for doing something to annoy The Twitter.

[0] I appealed and was told I had evaded a previous ban! Obviously…no, no I didn't.

I suppose I could have just been randomly banned as well lol. I just assumed that was the reason because I never used it for anything else. They never gave me a reason and I never bothered to challenge it.

Is there something else to learn from this story besides not insulting people?

Yeah, actually a fundamental rule of comedy: always get the audience on your side. If they don't know you, aren't rooting for you, or think you're on the "wrong side", they will misinterpret your joke as a real insult. Comedians directly insult people all the time and get laughs, but only because the audience believes they're on the same side as the comedian.

I didn’t expect such a constructive reply, thanks!

True, but that's assuming my audience is the people I'm replying to!

Did nobody read the entire copypasta? What comedian jokes using death threats?

To quote Achmed, the dead terrorist: "Silence, I kill you!"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xKlehf_4rRg

It's not only a death threat, it appears to be said by a committed terrorist. ;)

On a more serious note: humor, satire and sarcasm are typically super hard to categorize, especially at scale. It's an unsolved problem.

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