All This Over a Dongle? - <AUTHOR> http://jerichoattrition.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/all-this-over-a-dongle/

<comment><USER2> I can't help but going on a rant here. Honestly, people can't face themselves. I understand that her past wasn't exactly a glorious one and I'm grateful for her that she has made it through. However, her heart is still fragile, she lies to herself constantly. This rant isn't to her in specific, it's to people. In general, people just aren't willing to face deep down how their heart truly thinks. No matter how disgusting, weird, noble, or sensitive your heart will be, let that thought out and if you understand it's not socially acceptable or just it will invade into other people's comfort zone, then think about how to combat it with your rational mind. Don't just glorify yourself and cover up your inner thoughts with other seemingly heroic reasons attributes to yourself. If you like money, then just tell yourself that you like money and don't say you have to make money to sustain girlfriend's lifestyle. If you hate talking to people then just tell yourself that you hate talking to people and that you may be considered to be 'socially awkward' in the society instead of saying you are just tired. Once you can bring your true heart to yourself, you can find ways to combat it and bring yourself to true happiness. Be sincere and talk to others about them. However, hiding all your true emotions and fragile self just isn't recipe for achieving ultimate happiness in life.

<comment><USER3> What happens if you have two emotions that conflict:

1\. You like money. 2\. You want to sustain your girlfriend's lifestyle.

But, 1 conflicts with 2 because 2 will cause a drain in your financial resources.

Instead of saying "you have to make money to sustain girlfriend's lifestyle" (which is a way to bridge two conflicting emotions together), what would you say instead? "I can't do both. :("?

<comment><USER4> I need to find a girlfriend whose desired lifestyle is within my means to support.

<comment><USER3> What if rather than "girlfriend" its your parents? And, the "life style" is merely avoiding sending them to the nursing home?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> oh god, i didn't know that the vaunted pycon code of conduct is based on the example policy from the ada project.

the ada project was behind another recent sexism scandal involving a harm reduction presentation meant to be given by violet blue [1].

[1] [http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/44107008572/what- happened-...](http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/44107008572/what-happened- with-my-security-bsides-talk)

<comment><USER6> Val Aurora (and Matthew Garrett) are also involved in some kind of Shun Project against Ted T'so, as best as I can tell it's because of the savage crime on his part of saying that it's possible that some forms of sexual assault and rape are worse than others (e.g. being touched while drunk vs. being violently gang-raped in a bus). One of Ted's actual examples was that of two extremely drunk individuals, where he asked that if a drunk female does not have the mental ability to knowingly consent, does the drunk male have the mental ability to knowingly rape the female? And how do we know who raped who? [1]. He goes further into territory I don't personally agree with (talking about shifting some responsibility onto a party that has been drinking) but even there that's at least consistent with the treatment of other situations involving consumption of alcohol.

While it's probably insensitive to talk about like that, I'm even more scared of those who try to turn policy and ethics debates like that into "my way or the highway" topics by turning every opposing viewpoint into thoughtcrime.

Certainly sexual assault of any type should not be tolerated, but should a conference organizer report all types of sexual assault that occur at a conference _only_ as a flat "rape", or is it OK to split into further categories? And how can you sanely debate policy at all when you will simply be silenced if your opinion does not conform?

More details:

[http://adainitiative.org/2012/10/open-source-software- open-t...](http://adainitiative.org/2012/10/open-source-software-open-to-all/) [http://blog.valerieaurora.org/2012/10/29/the-linux- community...](http://blog.valerieaurora.org/2012/10/29/the-linux-community- cant-remain-silent-while-leaders-make-anti-woman-comments/)

[1] [http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Rape_apology_on_LCA_maili...](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Rape_apology_on_LCA_mailing_list/Email_2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My eyes =.=</comment>


Free API to Test SSL/TLS Security for PCI DSS Requirements and NIST Guidelines - <AUTHOR> https://www.htbridge.com/ssl/#api <comment><USER2> APIs are free by definition (except maybe in US, where Oracle claimed IP rights over Java interface). The thing that is free in an _important way_ is the _service_ behind API.</comment>


This Man's $600K Facebook Disaster Is a Warning For All Small Businesses - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/This-Man-s-600-000-Facebook-Ad-Disaster-Is-A-5258472.php <comment><USER2> It amazes me that Facebook don't get sued more often, if our experience with their ad management is at all representative. The UI is terrible, and plenty of the statistics it shows appear to be broken in unfathomable ways.

Estimated audience sizes? Nonsense.

Suggested ranges for bids? Sometimes change by almost an order of magnitude between submitting the ad details and checking the dashboard a few minutes later.

Preview your ad as viewers will actually see it to make sure you've got the image size right? ::hilarious laughter::

Figures for click-through rates? I don't know why you'd only want to pay for actual clicks to your site and not other things like people clicking like on your ad or your page. After all, someone liking an ad that will be gone tomorrow is surely worth as much to you as someone actually visiting your site.

What times will your ad run? We'll assume you're in the US even though you explicitly told us you're in the UK. And then we'll also price everything in dollars, so you pay a conversion fee on every bill. And no, you can't change this once your account is set up.

Just set it up the same way as last time, we were satisfied with that? Sorry, the system has changed again and you have to start over.

Maybe we could use a third party ad manager to try to overcome some of these difficulties? Sure, but they're all going to work a bit differently, and the options they present won't match what you see on Facebook's own ad management pages.

All of this is based on various experiences as a small business advertiser, and in most of the cases I'm thinking of the real numbers still worked out favourable despite all the problems and the frustration of trying to get everything working so the campaigns went ahead. But if Facebook treats larger customers spending serious money the same way, it's not hard at all to see why we hear stories like this from time to time and why legal action can result.

<comment><USER3> Here is my company's Facebook Ads horror story:

18 months ago my company decided to run an ad campaign on various platforms: FB, Twitter, Google search and direct buys of banner ads.

On all platforms, the campaign was targeted to most EU countries + Switzerland. For business reasons we were not interested in promoting this outside these countries.

On Facebook, out of all options, we decided to promote a post, targeted to EU countries, this post included a custom bitly link to our campaign's website, etc. A few hours after launching the campaign, we checked on the post: likes/engagement, CTR, bitly link, etc. We were shock to see that almost 90% of all likes to the post and clicks where made from Brazil. Facebook had been promoting our post in Brazil and not (marginally) in the countries we specified – I clicked on a long list of Facebook profiles who had liked our promoted post and these were primarily from the Sao Paulo region. I double checked bitly's stats with the our analytics to check who landed on our site via the campaign link. Again, c. 90% from Brazil.

The first thing after that finding was to check that the campaign was correctly setup, and it was. We immediately stopped the campaign and reached out to FB via a form (they have no email nor telephone) telling them about the issue, we included screenshots and other relevant information. We never heard from Facebook. We spent around €2,000 on a useless campaign targeted to an audience which wasn't our target market. We have never used FB again.

<comment><USER4> > We immediately stopped the campaign and reached out to FB via a form (they > have no email nor telephone) telling them about the issue, we included > screenshots and other relevant information. We never heard from Facebook.

How is that even legal?

<comment><USER5> Bad customer service is usually not illegal. However, credit card companies are legally bound to issue a chargeback and refund the money if you inform them that you did not get what you paid for and the company refused to work out a mutually acceptable compromise. In this case, he should have disputed the €2,000 charge.

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, I'm sure that FB has something in the terms or customer agreement saying that the locations are recommendations and that the ads may be shown anywhere, even if you only request a certain region.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a good (but long) video that goes in depth into why they believe this happens [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag)

The theory is pay-for-likes click farms click everything they see, including legitimate "like" ads to avoid detection. This increases the number of fake profiles liking your page, which decreases the percentage of users liking your posts, which decreases the number of users posts are shown to (unless you also pay to promote your post...)

<comment><USER8> Yes, this is a much better description of the problem.

FB is a really bad ad platform. Yes, you can use it & get good results, but that takes more luck & skill than other platforms.

From the article: "FB estimates that ~1% of their users are fake generating fake likes". But, if those accounts have 10-100 times more likes than real accounts, you can see that the polluting effect can dominate the overall activity.

<comment><USER9> It should be possible to determine fake from real accounts using various statistics like number of likes per account average number of time between likes etc etc, with all the brainpower at Facebook I am surprised they haven't significantly mitigated this problem. This is not a problem that can ever be completely solved as its a typical arms race between good and evil but i am surprised at how badly Facebook appears to be doing as others have noted perhaps its because it in there best interest or maybe its just more visible on Facebook then it would be on google addwords or similar.

<comment><USER10> Yes, we wrote about this at [http://fbk.io/stopfakelikestoday](http://fbk.io/stopfakelikestoday). In short Facebook could compare behaviour as you suggested (they've got a whole bunch of data scientists). An even more robust way would be making their phone number verification more thorough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I find interesting is that apparently YouTube can differentiate between fake and real views. But Facebook can not differentiate between fake and real likes. Difference, YouTube pays you, but you have to pay Facebook. Hmm...

<comment><USER12> My understanding is that Google has made it pretty difficult to generate bogus Youtube accounts.

<comment><USER13> Bogus YouTube accounts aren't necessary to generate fake views.

<comment><USER14> Fun fact: 83% of visitors to YouTube are not signed into a google account.

Lots of those ads are based primarily the video content or other instantly detectable things like geography, language, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reading this story honestly I would summarize it like this: "User don't know anything about Facebook Ads. Decide to test them. Test with $400k in 4 days. Totally waste his money".

Facebook is not perfect ... and click fraud is a huge problem. This does not means that Fb Ads does not work or return a negative ROI. You simply need to know the medium you are advertising on and use it wisely.

Thanks god we live in 2014 ... we can track everything ... real things like sales, leads, subscriptions. WHY people keep advertising to go after vanity metrics such as Number of likes or clicks. Who cares about the clicks.

Part of them are fake? Sure! Facebook should do more? Sure! Can you still earn money tracking you Facebook Ads overall Cost per sale instead of the cpc? Damn sure!

<comment><USER16> I'd agree right up until the point where he went to Facebook HQ in Toronto for training on the ads. If it were someone wasting a few grand, I'd understand. Once someone is actually trained in a certain product by the company selling it, wastes half a million, and sees this kind of result, it crosses over to the realm of fraudulent.

<comment><USER15> I agree on this point that with Facebook training you should have at least some experience but I guess he didn't learn that much :)

$6/400k is like a medium sized agency monthly budget. It's not something you learn to manage in 1 or 2 days training.

You never scale a campaign to that level until you've done weeks if not months of testing and fine tuning with every possible ad's creatives and demographic audience. Starting at $100k/days means whatever goes wrong it's already too late to fix it ... you don't have the time to do any serious testing and optimization.

Moreove it's not that easy to spend $100k/day in canada ... I deal with many Startups and Brands that get Facebook Ads right and their usual problem is they've found the right mix ads/audience to have a very good ROI but they cannot scale it to spend those amounts.

Spending $100k per days probably means that he was targeting the whole canada. Whitout any specific targeting on interests, demographic informations etc. If that's the case and he was getting 150k clicks per day out of a $100k budget he should be pretty happy :)

<comment><USER17> That's what sounds odd about this whole issue. They don't say what the company's marketing budget was, how big a portion of that budget this campaign was, and exactly what their goals are from their campaigns, but I think it would be hard to arrange those numbers in such a way that it would make sense for them to run a ~$500k ad campaign in a medium nobody there had any experience in. Come on guys, run a couple of dozen hundred dollar campaigns to get a feel for how to target them and what returns you can reasonably expect from them. I would expect that nobody spends that kind of money on any kind of ad campaign without knowing a lot more about what the returns from it will be and whether that justifies the expense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Other metrics reporting ~100-150k vs Facebook reporting 600k+ clicks seems well beyond the level of error that would be produced by not tracking things in the exact same way.

Coincidentally, FB metrics reporting 2-5x what the target site's metrics show would be very easily explained by bots generating traffic to FB's servers without actually redirecting over to the target site...

<comment><USER19> Exactly. Facebook probably sends 302 Temporary Redirect, counts it as a click, and the bot simply does not follow the Location header.

Are there any ways to avoid this?

<comment><USER20> They should put a web bug on the target page to confirm the redirect was completed.

<comment><USER21> Except that the contract prohibits doing this sort of "third party audit".

<comment><USER20> I mean _Facebook_ should put a web bug on the target page.

<comment><USER21> But Facebook is benefiting from the problem! At least in the short term, until it harms their reputation in the advertising market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Clearly, the vast majority of businesses that use Facebook for marketing are pleased with the experience. Facebook's growing revenues, up 63% last quarter, indicate it is only getting more successful at selling advertising, not less."

Clearly? Just because they're getting better at selling doesn't mean the people are actually pleased with the experience. And as this article points out, "selling" is the same as "collecting payment".

<comment><USER23> I guess I wouldn't go all the way to "clearly," but if a line of business in a highly visible market is growing, that _often_ indicates that the product it is selling is useful. The buyers are motivated and have the capability to test the product's efficacy. It would be quite a thing if Facebook ads generally did not work and somehow Facebook was successfully growing the ad business anyway.

<comment><USER24> It all depends whether their customers are repeat advertisers or not. If they're able to continue growing their first-time advertisers, but few of these businesses are satisfied, repeat advertisers - then I wouldn't say "clearly" is appropriate.

<comment><USER25> AKA: The Groupon Effect

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One key here - eCPC dramatically ramps as a campaign goes on, given the same target demographic.

If he was targeting a demographic like women in SE Asia, 18-35, then his test campaign would have first seen cheap clicks. Facebook's algorithms would find the cheapest users within that demographic, who are the least in demand by other advertisers, for whatever reason. CPC's would be low right off the bat, with a $200-300/day campaign.

Then, when he just suddenly increased to $100,000/day, he would have absolutely tore through the cheap available impressions within a matter of minutes, leaving only the more expensive users, with much higher CPC's.

As soon as the CPC skyrocketed, he should have pulled the plug on the campaign. But, it sounds like, there was a bad mix of both him being inexperienced with online advertising (needing training in their office) and FB sales reps encouraging him to let it ride.

If he had slowly increased budgets, from $300/day to $500/day to $1,000/day, he probably would have started to see a spike in CPC as soon as he moved it up to $1,000/day, and a vertical "holy crap KILL THIS CAMPAIGN" spike in CPC when he hit $1,500/day - $2,000/day.

It's really hard to manage campaigns at that volume - and there's entire teams of people needed to manage a campaign at the level of $100,000/day.

This reminds me of those Groupon horror stories. The small businesses were wrong to not running the numbers on deals that would clearly absolutely destroy them. But, the sales people at Groupon were even more in the wrong by taking advantage of those small businesses to turn a quick profit.

<comment><USER5> But you specify the maximum that you are willing to pay per click. Presumably he knew what he could pay per click for average users while maintaining profitability, and set the maximum accordingly. He doesn't seem to have a problem with his cost per click.

The point of the post is that the "users" became increasingly less valuable as the volume of clicks he purchased rose. It shows that you cannot obtain large numbers of legitimate clicks/likes through FB ads. As the reach of the campaign grows, the _percentage_ of authentic users clicking on ads appears to rise dramatically. That is a huge problem. My personal belief is that the percentage of fake accounts and bot activity is far in excess of Facebook's estimates, and there is little that they can do about it.

<comment><USER26> Agreed with that - I know that in my campaigns, I prefer having a bunch of smaller campaigns, which I can track the performance on at a very incremental level.

One twist is also that a lot of advertisers don't do CPC bids with FB. I know for Mobile Installs, the default is optimized CPM, without a specific CPM bid. Just throwing it to the FB algorithm wolves, and seeing where it lands.

I've found that has better results than CPC, CPM, or CPI bids, but, because it's entirely in the hands of Facebook, I have to watch it like a hawk. If I look away for a few days, the costs can get out of control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Seems odd that Facebook didn't pursue the huge bill he wouldn't pay. Is it too much to assume they wouldn't want the details to come out in court?

<comment><USER28> This is a key point. I'm sure Facebook carries a trade credit insurance policy and those policies require collections and court if a person/entity doesn't pay. So in other words they certainly ate the bill if they didn't make him pay.

The only logical reason to do this is fear of the truth coming out in court and the ensuing press coverage to damage their stock value.

Anyone have an idea about FB's liability if they were subpoenaed for fraud and the investigators found internal emails discussing the fake click problem and their decision to ignore it. Seems criminal to me.

<comment><USER29> Even if FB thinks that they have a total legit case, they can fear the exposure of the misinformation and FUD in the discussions in the court and press coverage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What doesn't ring true about this article is that the advertiser would spend $100K/day without building up to it with a whole lot of testing first.

Facebook may have declined requests for comment, but we are still only getting one side of the story, and I cannot completely believe this one side. There's more to it.

<comment><USER31> >There's more to it.

That is alluded to in the 5th from last paragraph: "Facebook's terms of service forbid third-party verification of its clicks". What reason, other than fraud, would they have for such a clause?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why the hell would you ramp from virtually zero spend on FB to spending $100K/day, especially if you're a "small business"? Quite frankly, this guy seems like a bit of an idiot - ramp slowly! That is an absolutely insane budget for FB ads.

</comment><comment><USER33> Summary: Man runs online magazines, revenue from ads. Advertises himself on facebook, hopes to make more ad revenue than he has to pay. Spends $100k/day for a few days. Notice that google analytics says he hasn't got as many hits as facebook says they referred. He stopped the campaign. Disputed bill.

</comment><comment><USER16> After seeing a few stories like this, it seems facebook advertising makes sense for one thing: buying likes. When one of us sees a site with 11.2K likes, we would know better. But the average user might not.

Fake it until you make it.

<comment><USER34> I know of a developer that did this. They purchased the cheapest possible Facebook ads and targeted them towards the largest audience. They received hundreds of thousands of "likes" for a relatively small investment ($1000 or so). Most of the people who liked their page had profiles from developing countries.

They then used the number of likes they had amassed (~200k) to get funding for their new product. It worked. Everyone took them much more seriously when they mentioned how many fans they had on Facebook. They were even able to attract licensing deals from some fairly big brands because their Facebook page looked so impressive.

<comment><USER35> This is a scam. He's using scammers to scam other people. Maybe that's obvious to everyone here, but I think it's worth stating explicitly that while this behavior is being enabled by the state of advertising on Facebook, it's still unethical and dishonest.

<comment><USER36> An interesting aspect is that someone could be essentially perpetrating this scam while legitimately being innocent of malevolent intent. I don't know if that's the case in the story recounted above (I suspect not), but I have met a small business that ran a "successful" Facebook ad campaign to get more likes, and who are happy with the result, where I strongly suspect the quality of the likes is really low. They genuinely think they ran a successful ad campaign with good ROI, and I don't think the intent was to puff up their profile. Afaict they haven't used the number for anything either, but it could well lead to unintentionally misrepresenting their popularity to future potential investors/clients/etc.

Of course, this starts to some extent from Facebook: the small businesses reporting their "successful ad campaign" are more or less passing on the low- quality metrics that Facebook gives to them. Some businesses are aware that these metrics are crap, but then Facebook itself is also aware...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The click discrepancy is what always has bugged me about Facebook ads (well, aside from the poor CTR). I've tried small FB ad campaigns since they've had the service and they ALWAYS report significantly higher clicks than what GA reports as coming from Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER38> From the article "Facebook works hard to get rid of fake accounts. In its annual report, the company said that only about 0.4% - 1.2% of all active users are abusive accounts that create fake likes."

I find it incredibly hard to believe that only 1.2% of FB accounts are creating fake likes. Go to Fiverr.com and get 5,000 likes for $5.

</comment><comment><USER39> this type of story seems to appear over and over again, i don't know much about facebook advertising, but with so many stories of fake account clicks i would expect facebook to comment at least once on the subject

</comment><comment><USER40> They should fire their own media buyer rather than blame Facebook. When buying any type of advertising you first have to buy a small campaign and measure the ROI (ie. new customers gained, not likes and followers and other social metrics bullshit, but customers) from that campaign before investing more in that same channel. They threw big money at a bad channel without testing it, that's their fault.

If their goal was just to buy likes and followers then that's just twice as idiotic: the goal should always be to gain customers. That's the only ROI metric you should be looking at. So if you buy small test campaign on Facebook and you didn't gain any customers then don't spend any more money on Facebook. It's that simple.

</comment><comment><USER41> It sounds like the all too common case of a business owner who has no idea what they're doing.

</comment><comment><USER42> For starters, if you really have to go to Facebook's office to be trained on how to spend money on their ad system, I'm not sure you are knowledgeable enough to be spending $100,000 a day on those ads. I doubt Facebook was going to teach you how to optimize your campaign in order to spend less money than you would.

As stories like these continue to pop up, it is important that FB take action to protect their brand. How about simply refine the target audience for ads? for instance, in order for a user to be served ad; you must have a minimum number of friends, say 50, you must have a minimum number of say 3 pictures of yourself, you must have a reasonable level of activity on the site for over the last X period whether 3, 4 or 5 month period.

A combination of such measures in some ways will clearly weed out most of the fake account and honestly even if there is a genuine account who doesn't match any of these criteria, then it's obvious they aren't even engaged on the site, so why ruin the experience further for them with ads?

Ultimately, FB's objective is to please advertisers and the natural flow is that they will end up pleasing shareholders. But focusing of the hard accounting numbers in the short term at the expense of goodwill of the marketers paying your bills is simply suicide. Once a significant number of advertisers distrust the platform and stop spending on it, its' 1.2 billion users will mean nothing and that is where the shareholders will start dumping them for the next company.

<comment><USER43> > For starters, if you really have to go to Facebook's office to be trained on > how to spend money on their ad system, I'm not sure you are knowledgeable > enough to be spending $100,000 a day on those ads. I doubt Facebook was > going to teach you how to optimize your campaign in order to spend less > money than you would.

Facebook has been aggressively trying to ramp up revenues, a personal touch is a good way to do that. It sounds like he had a number of highly popular Facebook pages and was likely contacted to come in for some in person training to get to his pages to the next level. If anything that offer is just a testament to his pre-existing success on Facebook, they would lose a lot of money if they invited everyone to the office.

I've been with Google AdSense for a long time and from time to time I get pitches about going to training or having phone conferences to help optimize more, I have to imagine this is similar. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it's not.

<comment><USER42> well he might have been successful running those pages but when it comes to spending half a million dollar, I think that comparison becomes apples and oranges sort of. There was nothing really stopping him from spending those amount in piecemeal.

What about limit the budget to $10,000 per day, check and analyze the results then see where you can fine-tune it then probably improve it? I bet by the time he spend the first $100,000 he would have come to the realization that something is wrong.

The claim is that he's already successful so why the rush to spend such significant amounts on generating likes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I do not have data to back this up, from my observation, most people do not know what is or is not an advertisement unless it is flashing. Even then, there is a not-negligible percentage that does not know. People just click to find out what things are, not because they are interested in the message. Perhaps a simple way would be to ensure that user does not come back to the page within x seconds, otherwise you should not pay.

</comment><comment><USER45> Reading that last sentence gave me an idea for a SaaS company that (for a small monthly fee) marks and lets you purge suspicious fans of your page. Too bad it's impossible to get a list of your page's fans: [https://developers.facebook.com/x/bugs/147185208750426/](https://developers.facebook.com/x/bugs/147185208750426/)

</comment><comment><USER46> Terrible title. Better one: "This Man's $600k FB Disaster Is a Warning For All Morons Who Try Arbitraging Ad Networks"

</comment><comment><USER47> The article does mention, rather inconspicuously, that most of the advertisers seem happy with Facebook. I am no fan of facebook or their advertising model, but to me the title seems a bit editorialized.

</comment><comment><USER48> There could be three explanations for fake FB likes:

1\. As mentioned in the story, click farms trying to cover their tracks by clicking FB ads.

2\. Competitors creating fake profiles and fake likes. It seems like a cheap way to drain out the advertisers budget.

3\. FB itself creating the fake accounts / likes. I know it is implausible, but there is a profit motive, so I guess the possibility should be considered.

</comment><comment><USER49> Even if Facebook was a scam... You don't put $600k in before you know what you get out of every dollar you put in.

This is why you outsource your SEO/SEM/ Social Marketing. (To someone reputable who is results driven/incentivized )

He needed someone to say, "hey look you put $5 in you got 10 cents out. Time to move on" before he got to $600k in spend.

</comment><comment><USER50> There's one part of this I still don't get, though. Where's the motive in running Facebook "like" farms?

<comment><USER51> The motive for running the farm is because some people will pay for the likes.

The motive for someone running a farm to also send likes to non-customer pages is to make it harder for Facebook to detect the fraudulent likes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > "At one point, data from Facebook indicated his ads had delivered 606,000 > clicks, but the site itself registered only 160,000 incoming clicks"

My initial reaction is that this guy is confusing "clicks" with "visits" or possibly "unique visitors." Counting things is hard.

</comment><comment><USER53> Facebook needs to charge different click prices depending on the quality of the profile. clicks from 10-friend profiles that are only a year old and like every page they hit, aren't as valuable as clicks from profiles that are more organic and have been around for years.

</comment><comment><USER54> Only an idiot would spend $600k in a few days without testing. That's just painful to read.

</comment><comment><USER55> As highlighted before in the top topic on reddit of the past weeks (VIDEO) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag)

</comment><comment><USER56> I hope this gets traction, I really do want the facebook stock to drop.

</comment><comment><USER57> I don't understand why someone would put resources to make fake likes/clicks.

What's the deal ? A concurrent who wants to discredit Facebook' Ad service ?

</comment><comment><USER58> Well, if you your whole business model depends on "Facebook likes" 100%, you are asking for it…

</comment><comment><USER59> fake</comment>


Ask HN: How do you block email spy pixels? - <AUTHOR> Perhaps the most attractive feature of hey.com is that they block spy pixels hidden in HTML emails from everyone (MailChimp, Superhuman, SendGrid, you name it). As recipients we have no way to give consent to being tracked if we opened an email, where we were when we opened it, etc. However, the approach with hey.com isn't without downsides, mainly the fact that it reads all our emails in the proxy server and modifies them (removes the spyware).<p>How do you do this today? Chrome extension? Blocking all images? Do nothing and let it slide? <comment><USER2> I retrieve the email and open it in an editor. I don't render the html ... if someone sends me an email that's html only then I queue it for another day.

Then I batch process the html-only emails, using lynx locally to display the text. At no point do any of my processes download anything except the email itself, and it does that via a raw SMTP connection.

People call me paranoid ... they're probably right ... but I just do all this as a matter of course, and it barely affects my flow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most email clients can do this for you already. They either do it by default, or it's a setting that you can turn on. Either way, they just don't load any remote resources, which solves the problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Last time I've tried this, it was more of a crude "don't load remote images", which isn't very visually nice (I'm OK with real images, but not with 1x1 spy pixels). Any example of an email client that does this?

<comment><USER3> All remote images have the same spying capability. Any request to a remote server is just as bad as requesting a 1×1 image.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe the solution is SSR + fuzzying then :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linodes backup restoring failed with no way of restoring data - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1wz86r/linodes_backup_restoring_failed_and_cost_a_whole/

<comment><USER2> If you don't have a copy of it in your own possession (an external service doesn't count), it isn't your data.

Unfortunately for them, they've just learned that multiple backups are to a single backup as a backup is to none.</comment>


On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta - <AUTHOR> https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334900/official-faq-on-gender-pronouns-and-code-of-conduct-changes?cb=1 <comment><USER3> [Off Topic]

I was very late to the whole StackOverflow Saga, and didn't spend much time reading through all of its causes and comments at the time it happen.

And when I did, the thing that struck me most and has been in many other places including HN ( Sometimes ) is the use of English presumes others are Americans, especially in technology sector. This completely ignores people all over the world using English to communicates. And this is not about cultures or values, but what is a pronoun? How do we use the correct "pronoun", how do we tell which one to use. I suspect many native English user will have cognitive load and may decide it is not worth the hassle and walk away.

What about those that uses English as 2nd or even 3rd language.

I remember a story my British Colleague once told me, our German Colleague is so good with his English, so precise that sometimes it is borderline rude if you didn't know he was German. i.e The tone is wrong, but Germany tends to be very explicit about things in their culture, not the same could be said about the Brits.

It is important to understand the meaning, and messages that is trying to come across behind its written or verbal form, and often not _literally_ what it meant.

If we have to nitpick every single word, phase or grammatical mistake as well as whatever political issues it is with the usage of the word, we will very quickly end up with people not communicating to you ( or in this case Stack overflow ) in the fear of constantly being bashed and disrupted.

<comment><USER4> I didn't assume, but I can tell right away when someone has English as a second language like you do.

I pick up grammatical oddities as I read, and if I had to guess i'd say your first language is of Asian origin, possibly Filipino.

Of course that doesn't mean you aren't American, but I assume you are not vs are in this kind of situation.

It probably depends on how "American" the forum for discussion is vs global, I see HN more American then say, Reddit.

<comment><USER3> >I pick up grammatical oddities as I read

Mind sharing? So I can improve on it, it is funny as this is not the first time someone said I am Filipino, which I am not XD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the blowback is really just about cognitive load. There's only so much you can expend on social mores before the actual subject you're discussing gets eclipsed. Everyone deserves equal respect, but I understand that when I'm not in the majority in a situation that my perspectives/language may be alien to some of those in the majority- I don't hold it against them unless there is explicit hostility.

I find myself starting to subconsciously just use "you" or "them" and avoid any specific gendering altogether- in this day and age it just seems the least tiring route to go.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely "They". They they they they they. English already has a perfectly good gender-neutral pronoun. I explicitly list my pronouns as "He/his or they/their" because I think the neopronouns are ultimately a way to gatekeep inclusivity, which is ironic.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't fix everything.

My kid's best friend is now a they. After knowing a 'her' for three years, it's been hard to switch. I have a hard enough time some days stringing the right adjectives into sentences without also worrying about pronouns too. It's easier for me to do when typing, but I can't speak for everyone.

Since their first name is a single syllable, I've found myself avoiding pronouns entirely when talking about them. Because accidentally saying 'she' more than once in a while causes stress for everyone. It's a big deal, their father is not okay with this, and we are frequently the safest house for this group of kids to hang out at.

Our kid has always gone by a nickname. When she got older she decided she wanted a change. I was the first one in the house to use her new first name reliably. I'm not sure why I'm the one having trouble with pronouns.

<comment><USER8> You mean that you say "do they want some chocolate" when directly asking that single person if that single person wants chocolate?

I thought that "they" is too ne used instead of he or she (3rd person) - <USER2> I find useful to avoud he/she or (s)he

EDIT: I had an epiphany under the shower, sorry I misunderstood you and you probably meant that you now have to say "ask your friend Jane if they want chocolate"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's particularly obnoxious about this type of political thought is the idea that "If you don't support forced or compelled speech in favor of X then you must be against X". The problems with this type of thinking are too obvious to list off.

<comment><USER10> After visiting a friend of mine who was attending UC Berkeley in the 90s, I made the comment that "if you don't have an open mind, then get the fuck out of here." This current movement feels very much like an extension of what I felt there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's really strange to me that a trans (or whatever) person would be offended at being called a standard pronoun. Seems like an easy mistake to make.

I feel like the idea of choosing your own pronoun is fine and happy within an insular LGBTQ+ forum or venue. When it tries to take over the language everyone else uses, it's gonna do more harm than good. People that push it just seem to be selfish to me.

<comment><USER12> Some people do deliberately (misgender) to antagonize a person. Particularly people who feel their culture is being redefined without them.

By the way, EVERY trans person I know has been EXCEEDINGLY kind and understanding when I've made a mistake with their gender. Now, if I don't know it already, I ask what they prefer to be called the same way I would ask how to properly pronounce someone's name. "Pardon me, what are your pronouns?"

If they've stated what their pronouns are then use them with the same respect you would muster to call someone by their proper name and pronunciation and spelling. The value here is no different, just more broadly applied then you're perhaps used to.

If you deliberately misgender someone (show me a nerd hasn't had this or some similar slur used against them) then you're just a jerk and should be reprimanded.

As an aside, to all the people complaining about non-English speakers doing enough work already participating in our idiom: 1) proper use of pronouns is essential to speaking English with or without neopronouns. 2) Many languages and cultures require VERY refined and strict understanding of a persons A) Age, B) Marital status, C) Gender and especially D) Social status before even beginning to address them.

<comment><USER13> > Some people do deliberately (misgender) to antagonize a person.

There's a difference between childish behavior in real life, versus an internet forum where someone's name and profile picture don't really say much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One issue that a lot of trans supporters don't realize is that similarly to how trans people could be offended when they are referred to by a gender not of their choice, so to could some speakers be offended if they are forced to refer to a person as a gender not of their (the speaker) choice.

This may be easier to understand by using a comparison. When I talk about the Muslim prophet I say Muhammad. However, many Muslims would say Muhammad pbuh (peace be upon him). This isn't that problematic, but let's say they the term was Muhammad ttp (the true prophet). Now I as a non Muslim believer would never use ttp because that would be insulting for whoever I believe in. If SE required that whenever I mention Muhammad that I append ttp, I would refuse as it would be extremely offensive to me.

Similarly by referring to a person with XX chromosomes as she, is offensive to people who believe that genders cannot change. A reasonable compromise would be to let whoever is righting chose what they want, or even allow gender neutral pronouns. But what SE chose to do was to say that people who believe that XY is a guy are wrong and deserve no respect for their beliefs.

<comment><USER15> > Similarly by referring to a person with XX chromosomes as she

It is worth pointing out that there are non-transgender XX males [1]. They are very rare, but it can happen. If the part of the Y chromosome which contains the SRY (testis-determining factor) gene is translocated to the X chromosome, an individual can be an infertile XX male. I don't think anyone would try to argue that such a person is not actually male (assuming they in fact identify as such), in spite of their XX chromosomes, since their external appearance from birth can be completely male. (XX male individuals vary: some appear anatomically completely male, albeit sterile; others show incomplete masculinisation.)

Biological sex cannot be reduced to chromosomes, although chromosomes can be used as a rule of thumb valid 99.99% of the time. In fact, I don't think there is any one single factor to which biological sex can be reduced; both maleness and femaleness are composites of collections of traits which usually occur together, but none of those traits is absolutely necessary to being of that biological sex. People who talk about biological sex as if it was completely determined by chromosomes are ignorant of the whole story.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know if I've ever written a single pronoun on stack overflow.

I write a question referring only to myself "How do I..." Or I write an answer with "you", or I reference another poster by name.

I don't quite understand why the admins thought this was a good use of energy, but I am also all for inclusivity. If I find the need for a pronoun, I will use "they" and not be bothered by it.

<comment><USER17> > If I find the need for a pronoun, I will use "they" and not be bothered by > it.

That will possibly get you a warning and, if you keep doing it, a ban. _If_ you're using any pronouns _and_ the person has written their preferred pronouns on their profile, you _must_ use those.

I believe that the whole issue is virtue signalling. It has none to very little actual practical value but is highly contentious (especially with draconian punishments for minor infractions), it's great as a signal and useless as a policy.

<comment><USER16> It absolutely says the opposite of that.

> Q15: Is it expected that people go to "About me" to check whether someone > has pronouns there when interacting in Q&A?

No. That would be good practice, but it is not required.

<comment><USER17> Oh, thanks for pointing that out. I had read the whole shebang yesterday and that Q&A has been added since then. Before the CoC was made public, the (unofficially) communicated approach was that checking the profile was to be mandatory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Q9: Do I have to use pronouns I'm unfamiliar or uncomfortable with (e.g., neopronouns like xe, zir, ne... )?

Yes, if those are stated by the individual."

Therefore if someone says their pronouns are all Apache Attack Helicopter (and someone will), and you are aware of it, you are obligated to say things like "I think Apache Attack Helicopter made a good point". If I'm familiar with it, yet choose to say "I think they made a good point", I would have violated the code of conduct.

That leads me to assume that I am unwelcome on this site and to look down the FAQ for the answer to the question, how do I delete my account?

P.S. It's not in this FAQ, but [https://stackoverflow.com/help/deleting- account](https://stackoverflow.com/help/deleting-account).

<comment><USER19> >> _" Therefore if someone says their pronouns are all Apache Attack Helicopter (and someone will), and you are aware of it, you are obligated to say things like "I think Apache Attack Helicopter made a good point". If I'm familiar with it, yet choose to say "I think they made a good point", I would have violated the code of conduct."_

This would be obvious trolling. No one sincerely identifies as an Apache Attack Helicopter. No one doing this is making a worthwhile contribution, so there would be nothing worth engaging with. Report and move on.

<comment><USER20> Here's a better example that's not as obvious: if I am not aware that ze was an accepted pronoun and someone told me to use it, how do I know its real and not them jokingly using "the" with a French accent? Should I report it as someone fooling around?

<comment><USER19> Is the post otherwise good? If so, Google/quack/whatever for _ze pronoun_ and see what comes up. Search engines are better at surfacing explanations for them these days.

In practice, you won't encounter them often, and it should be obvious if they're a troll. Those should be reported and otherwise ignored. You can worry yourself sick with these hypotheticals. You are more dynamic than you give yourself credit for.

<comment><USER21> >If so, Google/quack/whatever for ze pronoun and see what comes up.

No, I don't think I will waste my time Googling every little thing to avoid manufactured outrage.

<comment><USER19> Do you typically refuse to learn new things because some people who know those things are toxic assholes? I never would have learned anything about computers, writing, or music with a policy like that.

You do you. I'll be over here learning new ways to expand on the human experience.

<comment><USER20> It's not about refusing to learn new things. You're missing the point. It's about having to think about (and having to apologize for it if you don't think about) something that's completely irrelevant to the conversation.

Others have rightly pointed out that there are some StackExchange networks where your pronoun matters. And I'm sure in those, it's worth putting in the effort. But for StackOverflow, MathOverflow, Electronics, these things are absolutely, positively irrelevant to the subject. It neither adds nor takes away a sense of inclusivity because _it's not relevant_. It's a neutral thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If it's that much of a concern just put a validation filter on the comment submission box that has you "gender neutralize" your submission/answers if they find "he/her" type language in there.

I mean - it's a clear-enough defined problem to solve with software and I've found that if you mess up a gender pronoun on accident people sometimes get _deeply_ offended. I've gone 100% to the "they/them/you/their user name/etc." route because I just don't want to step on toes.

I miss the days when everyone was just a silly textual username that didn't have a gender, age, religion, race, etc. I've gone years communicating with people without actually knowing their gender.

<comment><USER23> For what it's worth, I've only ever encountered people getting "deeply offended" over intentional misrepresentation of gender. I hear far more people complaining about people being upset about being misgendered than people actually upset about being misgendered. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just saying that in my experience the counter-"outrage culture" in many cases blows things way more out of proportion than the "outrage culture" they rail against.

<comment><USER24> The introduction of this policy rather contradicts your claim.

<comment><USER23> In what way? I think it only supports my claims. How much visible outrage was there from people being misgendered? Yet there is a thread full of people complaining about having to adjust their language. It seems to me there is way more people upset about changing language than were upset about being misgendered. Unless there is some meta thread you can point me to which is full of people complaining about being misgendered?

<comment><USER24> The visible outrage is not from people "complaining about people being upset about being misgendered", it is from people complaining about an actual policy change introducing compelled speech. If people complaining about being misgendered is as rare as you suggest then why does stack exchange feel the need to push through such a controversial policy change?

<comment><USER12> The policy is about recommending polite speech in a public forum where rules to this effect have been enforced for a long time. And it's articulating what that means to people who don't understand what pronouns are for.

That some people may use a pronoun other than the one on their birth certificate is the way things are going in the modern world, so polite use of the language must take this into consideration.

I have living aunts and uncles and grandparents who still think it's okay to refer to dark skinned persons, and with all politeness, as "Negro." I take it on to school them and, yes, compel them to use polite and accepted speech.

By the way, there is no society or culture without compelled and enforced norms, which by the way are what's under debate underneath all this.

<comment><USER24> > The policy is about recommending polite speech

The policy is not about "recommending" anything, it's about "requiring". That's the essence of most of the negative reaction. There are plenty of things that I will usually be happy to do voluntarily but will strongly oppose being _required_ to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the first 8 points are all totally acceptable and makes sense. But it goes downhill from there... I'm totally not comfortable calling someone by a strange-looking "neopronoun" that I'm unfamiliar with - I would rather avoid interacting with them than use those words.

</comment><comment><USER26> This comment made me think:

> Is using someone's personal pronoun really "showing respect" if you get > banned otherwise?

</comment><comment><USER27> I could get behind a real fix to English pronouns that takes gender completely out of it and fixes the problem of ambiguity when you have more than one pronoun in a sentence.

My proposal would be:

1\. "he" becomes gender neutral, and always refers to the first person in the sentence.

2\. "she" becomes gender neutral, and always refers to the second person in the sentence. You can think if it as standing for "second he".

3\. "tehe" is a gender neutral pronoun that always refers to the third person in the sentence. Think of it is standing for "tertiary he".

4\. "quhe", "pehe", "hehe" are the 4th, 5th, and 6th persons ("quad he", "penta he" and "hex he"). If your sentence has more than six persons, rewrite the damn thing.

For example, in the sentence "Alice, Bob, and Carol took his car, she drove, and tehe paid for the gas", they took Alice's car, Bob drove, and Carol paid for the gas.

If they took Bob's car, Carol drove, and Alice paid, that would be "Alice, Bob, and Carol took her car, tehe drove, and he paid for the gas".

<comment><USER14> that's actually really interesting, I never thought of that. do you know if any languages have something like that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how a non-native English speaker would handle this, especially if they came from a country that is still hostile to LGBTQ issues?

</comment><comment><USER19> This one has me torn. Neopronouns are _hard_. I spend a lot of time in and around communities where these are used, and people who use them tend to be accepting of people using they/them. It's a compromise for the reality that most people aren't going to remember something they rarely use even if they want to. I rarely see people who use these pronouns, so I forget usage between encounters.

Even most of the people screaming bloody murder in here say they're okay with they/them. I'm not sure who SE consulted on Q9, but xey are not representative of any neopronoun user I've met. They recognize it's a lot of extra mental load beyond the much more common they/they/their and make a small accommodation for people who struggle with it.

I don't see any other issues on a skim, but that seems to be what's setting people off anyway so maybe that _is_ it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've been answering questions in Stack Overflow for over two years and I don't remember referring to anyone by anything other than the second person; I never saw SO as a platform that lended itself to talk about anyone in the third person.

Regardless, this policy means that I'll be contributing even less frequently than I already do and, if/when that happens, I'll just keep using the second person.

If I somehow slip, use the third person and someone ends up saying anything about "misgendering", I'll just delete the answer/comment and spend my time better doing something else.

</comment><comment><USER29> Just try and recognize you're not the only person on the internet. Do right by them, and if you fuck up, apologize and move on.

If you're getting angry that you (might) upset someone else you need to take a hard look in the mirror. Not only because you're immediately acting like their feelings don't matter because you didn't MEAN to offend them. But also, why don't you have a hobby? If you do, apologize to the person you upset and move on and reclaim that time to do something productive.

</comment><comment><USER30> I get that there is a much larger context to this (moderator losing her moderating bits over this issue, many other moderators stepping down in protest) that's almost certainly inflaming the discussion and driving a lot of the downvotes, but overall I don't really see much that's objectionable about this.

Essentially it boils down to: if you know someone's preferred pronouns, use them. If not, use gender-neutral pronouns. They even specifically point out that there's no requirement to actively seek out someone's pronouns if you don't know; just use something gender-neutral and move on.

I do see some issues, like: what if someone makes up a pronoun in bad faith, with the intention to troll people? There's some discussion around that in the comments, but the current policy seems to be "go along with it, but raise the issue with mods and they'll look into it", which is... not really a satisfying answer at all? And what if someone puts down a pronoun in good faith that you're simply unfamiliar with? Is it really reasonable to expect that answering a SE question will sometimes require googling someone's stated pronoun, followed by a value judgment to guess if they're trolling or not?

I come to SE (well, mostly SO) for answers to technical questions. For the vast majority of them, gender has nothing to do with the question or answer. Someone in the comments links to a question where someone put their pronoun preference at the bottom of their question, followed by an edit war removing and re-adding it[0], plus there's a meta discussion of the question[1]. Pronoun discussion in a technical question that doesn't even have to do with people is just _noise_ , plain and simple. But it seems the consensus among community managers is edging toward leaving the pronoun notification in there, even though their FAQ explicitly states that the right place for a pronoun preference is in the About Me section of the user profile. This is getting to be a bit much.

[0] [https://stackoverflow.com/posts/58336846/revisions](https://stackoverflow.com/posts/58336846/revisions)

[1] [https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/390301/would-a- note...](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/390301/would-a-note-about- preferred-pronouns-qualify-the-same-way-as-a-thank-you)

</comment><comment><USER13> (Joke)

Sometimes I wonder if we should all adopt thick accents so we can just use 'e (instead of he or she); hm (instead of her or him); and ha (instead of his or hers).

(Please laugh)

</comment><comment><USER31> I use whatever pronoun I see fit and if I offend someone by using the wrong pronoun I will apology to that person and move on.

<comment><USER32> "I'll wave my fists wherever I see fit and if I end up hurting someone by punching them I'll apologise to that person and move on."

Maybe stop waving your fists about?

<comment><USER33> As a marginalized person who has both been physically assaulted for my identity as well as been subjected to hate & discrimination, let me be clear that equivocation between words and violence is not helpful.

<comment><USER32> I didn't mean for it to sound like an equivocation, and reading it back I see how it could be seen that way. I should have worded it better.

What I'm trying to say is that we should all be aware that our actions occur in a _context_ , and thinking about the possible implications of those actions is a good thing. This is true whether that action is a physical action, or speech, or even inaction etc. The attitude of the OP appeared to be more "I am free to do x and I'm not going to give any thought to what the possible consequences might be before I do x", which isn't particularly fun for everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Obligatory need to say: I strongly believe in a live-and-let-live idea so yes, everyone should be treated fairly and with decency. Everyone.

The odd thing here is that in most cases, rules regarding speech revolve around what _not_ to say. (cursing, hate speech, attacks, etc).

But in this case, these kinds of things feel like they belong more as a list of good manners. But in this case, you aren't being told "this is what we feel are good manners", but you're forced to say certain things, but those rules can be all over the place (physically, on different pages, and complexity- wise). So now are people supposed to check each profile before responding? What's wrong with just saying s/he, or OP, or the various internet-isms? Do they cause so much harm? They are totally harmless and neutral, and not offensive. Or are they offensive now?

Again, it's one thing if it was a guideline (like when we talk about manners), but this seems like users are being forced to say certain words (compelled speech), knowing which words to say requires them to do additional research, and that research usually has nothing to do with the content of the actual post.

<comment><USER34> > So now are people supposed to check each profile before responding?

That question is specifically asked—and answered—in the linked article; the answer is no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> ming the discussion and driving a lot of the downvotes, but overall I don't really see much that's objectionable about this. Essentially it boils down to: if you know someone's preferred pronouns, use them. If not, use gender-neutral pronouns. They even specifically point out that there's no requirement to actively seek

<comment><USER35> Nothing better to do

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This story cannot die fast enough. The simplest solution is to pay moderators.

</comment><comment><USER37> Now it seems StackOverflow knows how YouTube feels whenever they post a YouTube Rewind video. That one got absolutely downvoted to all hell, and for similar reasons to this post.

Hopefully they'll look at this, see the amount of dislikes it's getting and change course again/revert this mess to the way it was before.

<comment><USER38> This "mess" is an attempt to encourage/enforce basic decency in their community. Why do you think they should "change course"?

<comment><USER39> It's like making it illegal to not greet your neighbor each morning. The underlying premise is to make things nicer, but it's also just stupid. A good rule would be "try to be considerate of pronoun preferences".

The wants of the LGBTQA community are, in the eyes of the majority, probably not this. I like to be polite and respectful. I'll be honest though, I would guess that less than 0.1% of the English speaking population identifies as "Xir" and that a non trivial portion of those that do are comfortable with the understanding that random strangers are more comfortable using gender neutral language. I would further posit that the portion of those that are not ok with people having points of view favoring even gender neutral language and instead demand the usage of the term Xir have adopted it as a counter cultural stance to combat heteronormativity- which honestly is fine, but it's also a move made knowingly to make some people uncomfortable which by any metric must be ruder than someone who is just trying to avoid controversy at all by using gender neutral pronouns to begin with. I'm a left leaning adult, and I think it's pretty bullshit. Especially on the Internet where women have been assumed to be men by default for decades.

If I misgender someone, and they ask me to use any specific pronoun in the future, I probably will. If the responder instead gets angry and implies that I am rude because I made a common assumption, and instead asserts that I'm going to tell them to buzz off.

Rudeness is clearly a subjective concept based around intent. And it's frankly a waste of people's time.

Imagine if every post had pronouns at the end, and if every man then demanded a correction for a use of they instead of "he". That would be a waste of time and disrespectful to the ability of everyone else to be an adult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't care how downvoted I get, I'll never call someone a made up pronoun. There is no word as xir as xe or latinx and i'm not participating in what I'd consider alarming participation of a mental illness. If you want me to call you he, or she, or as pointed just they, I don't think that's asking much. And I'll probably make a mistake, just mention it and move on. But the second you force this crap onto me, I'm out, which I'm sure pleases both sides.

<comment><USER41> >mental illness

Do you actually believe this, or are you using it as an insult?

>I don't care how downvoted I get

This hurts your comment so badly, especially as a leading statement.

<comment><USER40> >Do you actually believe this, or are you using it as an insult?

I believe this, and mean it more as a matter of fact in a literal sense, and not as an insult.

>This hurts your comment so badly, especially as a leading statement.

To each their own. I know my audience. I lean conservative on a heavily west coast populated forum. I'm usually pretty easy going, but did draw a line in the sand on this. If every SE community trends this way, I'll pursue other interests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Wow, what a trainwreck in the comments. It's a shame that this is what happens whenever you remind developers to use common decency.

<comment><USER43> The majority of comments have no qualms with respecting one's mode of self- identification, but rather, with the method by which S.E. has chosen to approach it.

In other words, the commenters have an issue with the _poor execution of a noble idea_.

<comment><USER44> Genuinely, what's the poor execution? They seem to have basically codified "use someone's stated pronouns" with an awareness of the common ways people try to get around it.

It seems like anyone who respects how other people identify will have hard time running up against this policy.

<comment><USER30> The policy assumes that everyone will act in good faith, or will be explicit about acting in bad faith. That's a terrible assumption.

For example: if I put an unfamiliar pronoun in my profile, and someone sees it, are they obligated to refer to me that way? What if I'm just trolling? Should people be required to google my preferred pronoun and then make a value judgment on whether I'm acting in good or bad faith?

If they err on the side of assuming good faith, and I'm really just trolling, then we get an answer for all to see that includes someone falling for a troll, which reduces the value of that answer. It also normalizes trollish behavior, which is bad.

If they believe I'm acting in bad faith, and they're wrong, they could get banned from the site, which is an overreaction to what I'd expect will be a common, innocent mistake.

And that's just one example; there are plenty more in the comments.

<comment><USER19> I would hope a mod on SO/SE is better at detecting trolling than the average /r/TumblrInAction poster. People who do this are very obvious if you're not already poised to go off on a rage at the people they're pretending to be. Unchecked confirmation bias is a critical vulnerability.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>