[HN Gopher] MathB.in Is Shutting Down
___________________________________________________________________
MathB.in Is Shutting Down
Author : susam
Score : 54 points
Date : 2025-02-23 21:20 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (susam.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (susam.net)
| RandomDistort wrote:
| I know the law is often behind the trend because of the rate tech
| develops, but surely the old analogy for all technology is postal
| mail.
|
| Last time I checked, the postal service had no responsibility or
| requirement that they don't distribute certain messages or ideas?
| In some cases the government can ask to intercept them, but
| there's no regulation requiring them to scan letters for banned
| content.
|
| Why don't these same rules apply to online technology?
| LocalH wrote:
| Because there are far more places to apply leverage, and they
| know they can get away with it precisely because online is
| "different". Why? Because they said so.
| coliveira wrote:
| I think the results would be similar if anyone was allowed to
| create their own mail delivery service. The politicians would
| create regulations so most people would not be allowed to run
| his mail delivery, and finally only a few regulated services
| like the postal service would remain.
| macintux wrote:
| I'm not going to discuss the merits of the rules, but postal
| mail seems a terrible comparison to the web. Global visibility,
| instant transmission of ideas, effectively free (as in beer)
| distribution.
| croissants wrote:
| Yeah, I think this is one of those domains where frictions
| (or lack thereof) matter. It is much faster, cheaper, and
| easier to send out a significant volume of material on the
| Internet than through the mail. In theory, somebody could
| send a bunch of obscene trolling letters, but having to lick
| all those envelopes seems to deter most of the people who'd
| be otherwise tempted.
| tdeck wrote:
| > Last time I checked, the postal service had no responsibility
| or requirement that they don't distribute certain messages or
| ideas?
|
| Technically the Comstock Act hasn't been repealed in the US,
| and Republicans have been talking about enforcing it again.
| Democrats heard this and did nothing about it, because of
| course they did.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Act_of_1873
| perihelions wrote:
| It's even the opposite: the US Postal Service is *positively
| obligated* by the 1st Amendment to deliver content without
| discrimination. E.g. _Lamont v. Postmaster General_ (1965) (US
| post can 't create friction for US citizens subscribing to
| Soviet propaganda newspapers by mail).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamont_v._Postmaster_General
|
| (It's also prohibited from opening mail without a warrant, but
| that's an orthogonal question).
| DistractionRect wrote:
| An ISP is closer to the post office than a pastebin site. A
| pastebin site is closer to a factory that produces and ships
| content to all that order it, and thus responsible for what
| they ship.
|
| It's unfortunate that things are the way they are, but I'm not
| sure there's a better option. If you give an inch, abusers will
| take a mile.
|
| I think AI is well suited to this role, especially with new
| models being cable of learning and updating their weights as
| they go without needing retraining/finetuning.
| triceratops wrote:
| Please read this article
| https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
| then re-consider your comment.
| Discordian93 wrote:
| Safety concerns are, as predicted by cypherpunks,being used to
| censor the internet and crack down on all independent platforms
| that dare operate outside big tech.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I think the bigger issues for independent platforms are 1) bad
| actors and 2) people staying on big platforms.
|
| Bad content is more than a legal issue. If you have a public
| forum, you don't want people publicly posting hate and gore,
| being creepy, and DM-ing others threats. Your viewers will see
| hate/gore/creeps/threats, leave your site, tell others not to
| visit, and if the content is bad enough be scarred. _You_ will
| be scarred. Your site will become filled with awful people.
| Then there 's the issue of spam, which you must block simply
| because it will use up all your site's resources.
|
| But even with those issues, there are many, many independent
| platforms that exist today. The problem is that most of them
| are quiet. Why would someone post on a tiny forum, since almost
| nobody would read it? Most people don't, they either write in
| their journal, or post in a big forum where they're more likely
| to get attention.
|
| I think reachability specifically is the biggest issue, because
| you can make a forum invite-only, and this effectively reduces
| the amount of bad content to whatever you can manage (too
| overwhelmed? Invite less people). But people are even less
| likely to get an invitation to a forum, even if it's as simple
| as sending an email.
|
| When I think of creating a forum, I worry about strongly-worded
| emails from the law-enforcement and/or my hosting-provider. But
| I don't worry about prosecution, I worry about the emotional
| toll of just seeing those letters, the emotional toll of seeing
| the content, the effort of finding and removing it, and the
| effort of blocking (mundane) spam. Even then I'd still host a
| forum if I expected it to become popular, but I expect it to
| become deserted.
| omnibrain wrote:
| > If you have any important posts that you would like to keep,
| now is the time to copy and save them for yourself.
|
| Have you considered putting the site into "readonly-mode"? Or are
| you afraid of skeletons in then closet?
| Wdorf wrote:
| In case anyone is looking for an alternative - I've launched
| https://latex.to here on HN last year. Since then I've added the
| option to save formulas in your browser via IndexedDB.
| begueradj wrote:
| > After coding all through the night, as the sun rose on Sunday,
| 25 March 2012, the website was ready.
|
| Every now and then I hear people having developed a fully fledged
| software overnight, or on the weekend only... So far, I did not
| succeed to do that.
| veltas wrote:
| Almost to a weird extent, this is the only software that most
| of us will ever be able to write, code that we could write the
| MVP for in a day. Because anything else is too hard to see to
| completion. There's something to be said about going for that
| MVP and then iterating.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Having done some weekend projects, you get it done in a weekend
| with usually two approaches:
|
| 1. Use "do it all for you tools" that do all the hard parts
| (e.g. Ruby on Rails+lots of gems, Django+lots of libraries,
| Drupal/Joomla + plugins, etc)
|
| 2. Cut scope to a huge degree (don't have any of those things,
| no users, just "if you make this request then X data is stored
| and you get redirected to a view").
|
| This math-oriented pastebin was probably the second.
| coliveira wrote:
| You need to focus on a single feature and relegate other issues
| either to existing services or for the next iteration.
| nine_k wrote:
| Not "fully fledged" but "enough to be useful". After that you
| start having feedback that can guide gradual improvements.
| perihelions wrote:
| This is the kind of outcome Section 230 (of US' Communications
| Decency Act of 1996) was intended to prevent.
|
| It's an unpopular opinion in tech circles, but this right here is
| why I support the very maligned Section 230--in fact, I wish it'd
| go much farther. I think it's a core human right to talk on the
| internet and to create websites: a right that should be
| protected, _in practice_ , by granting powerful immunities to
| third-parties, like forum administrators. Else you end up with
| chilling effects like this one, chilling things no reasonable
| free society would want to chill.
| Kerrick wrote:
| With containerization and cheap cloud instances, people can
| much more easily deploy their own instance of a service like
| this such that only they (and maybe their trusted friends) can
| log in. My wife has a private paste bin that she runs on her
| own subdomain. There are no concerns about content moderation
| because all of the content is hers, and traffic is so minimal
| that one VPS can run a bunch of these little services.
| lovich wrote:
| I think reverting to only talking to your small social circle
| instead of the public at large might be one of those chilling
| effects the OP mentioned
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| maybe? but they also feel like completely different use-
| cases. It would be nice if we could solve the service
| discoverability problem and the service utilization problem
| independently. Just like the vast majority of businesses
| shouldn't be high-growth startups, most resources &
| communities should be intimate and relatively private.
| Kerrick wrote:
| The paste bin contents are visible to the public at large.
| The visibility of the content is no different than if she'd
| picked a public paste bin service--it just means nobody has
| to moderate anything because the uploader is the service
| owner.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| If it is right to have a website how far do you want to go?
|
| * You are forbidden from turning off a shared server * You are
| forbidden from removing a colocated server * You are forbidden
| from disconnecting an ISP customer * You are forbidden from
| closing a bank account * You are forbidden from refusing
| payments from this bank
|
| People who want to censor you just go further up the chain if
| they don't like what you're saying.
| perihelions wrote:
| Huh? You're really confused. Nothing in the 1st Amendment or
| Section 230 obligates *private parties* from hosting content
| they don't like! (Actually, they have an affirmative 1st
| Amendment right not to!) Section 230 immunizes them from
| certain legal liabilities from the consequences of hosting
| other people's content; but it obligates nothing.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Yes. If you are immune due to that the censors lean on your
| host, your isp, and your bank.
| crusty wrote:
| The original post does not clearly specify the source of
| the infringement judgments. Was it a regulatory body
| contacting a housing provider? Was it the housing
| provider proactively policing content on their servers?
| Not clear to me.
|
| Commenting on 230 seems reasonable, although I didn't
| catch what jurisdiction this hoster or site I owner are
| in.
|
| Commenting on censorship power by signature l strong-
| arming the connoisseur that facilitate access to the
| internet seems reasonable too. But why reply to the 230
| post with it, like you're refuting their issue. This
| could just be a different thread.
| croes wrote:
| Third party immunity creates a strangers-on-train-loophole.
| kittikitti wrote:
| The intention and the application of the law are very far
| apart. If you strengthen the intention, you're not actually
| reinforcing it, you're reinforcing the application. It would
| mainly help further consolidate the power of Big Tech because
| they're the only ones who can afford to legally apply the law.
|
| Section 230 needs to go because people get banned or shadow
| banned for all types of reasons. What's the point if it doesn't
| protect MathB.in and freedom of speech? Shouldn't we just start
| over?
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Section 230 needs to go because people get banned or
| shadow banned for all types of reasons._
|
| What does people getting banned or shadow-banned have to do
| with this?
|
| Section 230 is about protecting the host of 3rd-party content
| from liability. Beyond that, the host still has _their_
| rights to choose what they want to host, enforce what rules
| they want to enforce, and ban /shadow-ban whoever they want.
|
| With or without Section 230, private companies can still ban
| you whenever they please, for whatever reason they please. As
| is their right to do so.
|
| If anything, adding additional liability to hosts (via
| repealing Section 230) will likely make them even more
| zealous in who they decide to ban.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > Section 230 needs to go because people get banned or shadow
| banned for all types of reasons. What's the point if it
| doesn't protect MathB.in and freedom of speech?
|
| You are yet another person who needs to read the "You Are
| Wrong About Section 230" TD article, because you're badly
| misinformed about what it does. Section 230 has nothing
| whatsoever to do with operators banning users: they can ban
| or not ban, with or without Section 230. It has basically
| nothing to do with freedom of speech either.
|
| All Section 230 does-- and it's making me crazy that so many
| millions of people willfully misunderstand this very simple
| point-- is ensure that admins who choose to moderate face no
| _additional_ liability compared to those who don 't.
| ziddoap wrote:
| "You Are Wrong About Section 230":
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-
| referre...
| triceratops wrote:
| I'm very sorry to say this but you don't understand Section
| 230.
|
| > It would mainly help further consolidate the power of Big
| Tech because they're the only ones who can afford to legally
| apply the law.
|
| This is what would happen if Section 230 were repealed.
| tzs wrote:
| > This is the kind of outcome Section 230 (of US'
| Communications Decency Act of 1996) was intended to prevent.
|
| I'm not so sure about that. Section 230 makes it so that if a
| user posts something that is illegal or tortious it is the user
| who is the one that faces charges or a lawsuit, not the forum
| owner.
|
| But that doesn't mean that if you become aware of illegal
| material on your forum that was posted by a user you can just
| ignore it. You still have to remove it.
|
| It sounds like it is the latter that is taking up too much of
| their resources.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Anyone know in what jurisdiction these regulators are sending
| shut-down threats from?
| 42lux wrote:
| UK
| tempodox wrote:
| No surprise, sadly.
| artursapek wrote:
| the UK is probably the most dystopian western country now
| heavensteeth wrote:
| > Another alternative would be to encode the content of a
| MathB.in post and embed it into the URL, which could then be
| distributed with others. Upon visiting the URL, the application
| would read the encoded content from the URL, decode it, and
| render it.
|
| I made something like this a couple of years ago; it was only
| 60-something lines long. Very simple and a bit of fun to play
| with: https://github.com/ea935/maths
| WhyOhWhyQ wrote:
| That link brings me to a 404 page.
| rsync wrote:
| Everything about this post makes sense until I reach the part
| where they are closing the site completely.
|
| Why not just leave a read only, static, site up and running so
| that these links and paste don't disappear?
|
| The moderation was the hard part, and for already moderated posts
| this cost has already been sunk.
|
| Further: if the site is just a time capsule, the operating cost
| would be near zero.
|
| Why not just leave the history in place?
| nine_k wrote:
| That would likely require reviewing every item in the "time
| capsule", even in the parts that have passed moderation.
| Moderation is not perfect, and there is likely a _risk_ that
| something crops up that has been missed, with more legal
| troubles down the line.
|
| Hence they offer to make copies of whatever material you might
| consider worth keeping, before the shutdown. Likely you can
| copy the entire site and keep it as a time capsule, public or
| not.
| lovich wrote:
| You've made a fatal assumption that what is "acceptable"
| content is immutable and can't be retroactively changed so that
| safe content is now unsafe content.
|
| They'll never be free of the costs of content curation
| armchairhacker wrote:
| The odds of that applying to a _math_ site are extremely low.
| lovich wrote:
| But not zero
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill
| nkrisc wrote:
| That still requires ongoing non-zero effort and time, with no
| guarantees of zero problems for them.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Why not ask for a volunteer to transfer site ownership to? It's
| not ideal: the volunteers have to be vetted, and the selected one
| may still end up malicious, or nobody may be selected. But it's
| better than shutting down the site without trying.
| mixedmath wrote:
| I made a partial replacement that doesn't allow user-submitted
| content at https://davidlowryduda.com/static/MathShare/. It just
| stores the content in the URL, and is limited by URL size limits.
| In practice this means you have approximately one page of text.
|
| I wrote about making this at
| https://davidlowryduda.com/mathshare/. I was trying out the LLM
| interaction that made it near the top of HN recently, and it
| worked very well.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-27 23:01 UTC)