How assholes on Yahoo chat used to "moderate" from the bottom of the deck

[WritersPanic]

During the time between leaving AOL's Marijuana Debate chat room (after a decade there) and finally getting a chat room on hippy.com/hipforums (it was a subset that didn't require membership to chat), I was into dozens of chat rooms on Yahoo, a digital sewer basically.

But it had a peculiar Ignore system. And ignore was necessary because of spam bots, porn links etc. So Yahoo ignore allowed you to drop in a text list of everyone you wanted to ignore at once. Seemed like genius, at first. After all, a chat room could have 80 people in it. Even more if it was a prime subject.

Chat rooms being what they are people started compiling lists since spammers were 24/7. The lists were shared on member yahoo sites, which they handed out like candy. Then the lists had more than spammers on them. They became blacklists for people with bad ideas. Like hippies.

One day I pulled a list from what I thought was a trusted site. When I tried to load it, it failed, because I was not allowed to ignore myself! The lists became the opposite of popularity contests, evolving into a fraternity-style pig party.

As I look back on it, I can see how it came about. It wasn't a conscious effort on the part of Yahoo to code it this way. But they did seem to know a large list would be needed. Whomever realized the dark side of this feature was very clever. The people who employed it played all kinds of games with people. On one day, off the next and the like. The lists were serialized and uploaded all through the day.

Yahoo moderators were as worthless as the driven slush. This flew under their radar entirely.

[Guest]

Interesting. I recall black lists on search engines
for a time and was based on political views. It is probably
still in effect, we simply don’t know. In news groups it happened
a lot. Control of information.

[Amerijuanican]

Interesting. I recall black lists on search engines
for a time and was based on political views. It is probably
still in effect, we simply don’t know. In news groups it happened
a lot. Control of information.

Pretty sure I found a rigged post on youtube yesterday. It was political, and I noticed whenever I tried to "like" certain posts on it, it didn't work. The site before, and all afterward all worked just fine. That was strange. Not sure if that's what you're referring to, first I've heard of it. But after that site last night, something was amiss. It was a bit creepy.

[WritersPanic]

Pretty sure I found a rigged post on youtube yesterday. It was political, and I noticed whenever I tried to "like" certain posts on it, it didn't work. The site before, and all afterward all worked just fine. That was strange. Not sure if that's what you're referring to, first I've heard of it. But after that site last night, something was amiss. It was a bit creepy.

What I was speaking about was users figuring out a way to "cancel" people by putting their username on a list, then sending it out to everyone as a list of spammers to avoid. It was a deception, and Yahoo provided the means via software back-dooring. But I don't think it was actually sanctioned by Yahoo.

I've noticed I can't up or down vote on The Hill anymore. But I can still reply to a posting. So maybe we're seeing changes get rolled out without any announcements. If I go to Breitbart, I have to read some articles in code view because the text is on top of other text. Code for today's online software is a massive collection of work-arounds, patches and experimental snippets. It's hard to tell what's just a glitch and what is a sinister plot.

I find I'm losing interest in it. Perhaps that's the goal overall.