Quora Bans Me for Saying the Earth Isn’t Flat

https://medium.com/@brothke/quora-banned-me-for-saying-the-earth-isnt-flat-9bd98010c09d

by ErichVaughnn • 6 years ago

38 83 6 years ago

celdon25• 6 years ago

Normally I'd say there is more to the story, but this seems consistent with my experiences on Quora. I've never been banned from there, but the stupid comments and answers are so prevalent there, that I can only assume that the platform has gone far out of their way to cater to that crowd as a safe space provider.

jeroenhd2• 6 years ago

He didn't get banned for saying the earth was not flat, he was banned for calling people morons and idiots.

I'm as much opposed to flat earthers as any person here, but calling people with questionable beliefs idiots and morons only serves to make you feel better about yourself.

You can explain the ridiculousness of flat earth conspiracy without resorting to insults and you won't get banned as easily.

TulliusCicero2• 6 years ago

He didn't get banned for saying the earth was flat, he was banned for calling people morons and idiots.

No he didn't?

Long story short, I called a few people idiots and a few others morons. I got a warning about that, acknowledged it, and stopped referring to the people who believe the earth is flat as idiots and morons.
After my warning, I was an excellent Quora user. I was courteous, even to people who completely disregard science, and I watched my language. Don’t get me wrong — I still interacted with flat earthers and I still told them they were wrong. I just sought not to violate the Quora Policies and Guidelines as I did it.
But it seems as if my answers angered the flat earthers, no matter how courteous I was.

Sounds like the banning came long after he ceased insulting people.

CJefferson2• 6 years ago

The thing he was banned for was linking to an article he wrote which claimed "... Team Flat Earth will be shown to be the moronic fools they indeed are".

I mean, I agree that Team Flat Earth are moronic fools, but if you've agreed to be polite that isn't it.

dang• 6 years ago

I can tell you from years of experience that people make up all kinds of stories about why they were banned. Often the stories are very convincing to third parties. That's not surprising, because they're designed to be.

The thing to check is whether there are links to the original posts, which would allow readers to make up their own minds. If the "$site banned me for $outrageous-can-you-believe-it-reason" story is linkless, odds are that salient details have been omitted.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

CJefferson2• 6 years ago

In particular, he admits he was originally insulting, but then was "polite".

Turns out his definition of politeness (from his own blog post he linked to) is saying "... Team Flat Earth will be shown to be the moronic fools they indeed are".

I personally agree Team Flat Earth are moronic fools, but I haven't promised to be polite to them.

giantDinosaur2• 6 years ago

Politeness doesn't mean you aren't insulting them. 'Moronic fools' is a fairly polite insult.

jbob20002• 6 years ago

We're in strange times if you can't call a flat-earther an idiot and a moron. What's next, I can't call a Nazi a piece of shit?

There are objectively correct times to use insults, this is definitely one of them.

chrisseaton4• 6 years ago

I disagree I think personal abuse is always wrong.

You can deal with even the most extreme situations and even the worst people while still being respectful.

krapp2• 6 years ago

We're in strange times if you can't call a flat-earther an idiot and a moron. What's next, I can't call a Nazi a piece of shit?

The context here is someone being banned from a platform for violating their requirement that posters be polite on their platform. This isn't a "sign of the times," nor does it conflate to some greater societal or cultural shift, or have any implications on mores, values or free speech. No one is saying you can't call flat earthers idiots or Nazis pieces of shit in general.

If Quora requires you to be polite when giving answers to questions, they're well within their rights to boot you if you aren't, regardless of how justified it might be.

raverbashing2• 6 years ago

I disagree

Being too sensitive with morons is what's causing the most trouble in this pandemic.

Because apparently some snowflakes can't put on a mask without fainting and help stop the spread of the disease. Because they can't do anything to help and act mostly in ways that are completely self-centered.

So no, let's start calling things for what they are and act accordingly.

People know the Earth is not flat since 2000BC, period.

asdfasgasdgasdg2• 6 years ago

I don't think that calling mask skeptics morons or any other forms of ungentleness are likely to help. I can't think of any instances where large minorities have been convinced of their wrongs by mean talk from the majority.

What would actually help is a commencement of sensible policy at the top. Another thing that would help is an enforcement scheme with teeth. It is incorrect to pass laws about important topics then decline to enforce them rigorously. But I think insults are not on the list of helpful things.

castlecrasher2• 6 years ago

When were you ever convinced you were wrong because you were called an idiot by someone who disagreed with you? It simply breeds resentment.

scarface742• 6 years ago

They are idiots. Why tip toe around and try to spare someone’s feelings who express statements that are provably false and should be known by someone who has enough of an education to read?

It’s not like a difference of opinion between supply side and demand side economics.

jeroenhd2• 6 years ago

Nobody will listen to you if you call people morons, no matter how dumb they act. If you want to convince people not to believe these conspiracy theories, you need to come across as intelligent.

You can call their theories moronic and idiotic (with some proper scientific backup), but when you call people that, you only reduce your credibility.

stareatgoats• 6 years ago

They are idiots.

No they are not. They are cleverly triggering people who have chips on their shoulders into behaving like assholes. That's how they thrive. If it wasn't a flat earth it would be something else. It is a special kind of psychology related to trolling (but don't tell them that).

leetrout2• 6 years ago

Quora is pretty much trash anyway. A lot of setup by stooges for business consultants to answer things.

You _will_ find useful info there and it is much easier to see it as the first response compared to a few years ago but I don't engage with any content beyond what I can see without logging in. Generally the quality of answers is pretty low unless it is in a popular subject or a "big name" answers.

None of the moderation systems are perfect. There are entire mod cabals in every community and that is sometimes worse than automated moderation.

projektfu• 6 years ago

Aviation questions often have great answers.

I used to answer a lot of veterinary questions. But these days when I click onto a link to Quora, that’s the end of the line, because you have to log in to see anything else. StackExchange is just a better site now.

Rochus• 6 years ago

because you have to log in to see anything else

No, you can still read the answers to a question when you e.g. have a link to it from Google. But when you go to the frontpage there is indeed a login prompt.

nerdponx• 6 years ago

But these days when I click onto a link to Quora, that’s the end of the line, because you have to log in to see anything else.

Just like Medium...

dmart• 6 years ago

You _will_ find useful info there

Debatable, I think. It's been literally years since I found any useful information on Quora. It's mostly spam now, even worse than Answers.com was back in the day, with the added bonus of a sign-in wall.

atoav• 6 years ago

Note: if any person will find only one useful answer there, what the parent said will be true.

Of course this is pedantic and while I don't like Quota at all, I don't think it is up to us to judge what people may find useful (this depends very much on things like circumstances, age, mental capacity etc). What you might find trivial or even silly, might be an eye opener to someone else.

Quota is certainly not the best environment to get good qualified answers, but that doesn't mean you won't find one once in a while.

matthewmcg• 6 years ago

Reminder that you can append “ ?share=1” to the url to see all of the responses without logging in

ffpip• 6 years ago

Or enable the filter list uBlock Annoyances in Ubo

chrisseaton4• 6 years ago

What was the trespass that got me banned? I said that the earth is not flat.

If you keep reading you find it looks more likely he was banned for being abusive.

I called a few people idiots and a few others morons

So, good riddance.

biscotti• 6 years ago

Would you say the same if jack went on a banning spree against those that carelessly roll out the buzzwords racist, fascist & islamophobe?

When these are used without justification and against entire groups I consider it a much worse offence than being firm vs those who should know better.

torben-friis• 6 years ago

combined with the fact that there’s money to be made on the topic — especially on YouTube, where flat earth channels tend to have a lot of subscribers. As YouTube (like Quora) monetizes content, the more viewers, the more money flat earthers make.

Is it really that much of a widespread belief ? I really have trouble understanding the current phenomenon with some anti science conspiracies.

chrisseaton4• 6 years ago

Is it really that much of a widespread belief ?

I am fairly sure that like a lot of the current fever around conspiracy theories, the vast majority of people are doing it simply to wind people up - and it seems to be super effective. It's a new counter-culture.

sjroot• 6 years ago

I can’t fathom how people actually use Quora when answers are often (thinly-veiled) advertisements.

tgb2• 6 years ago

Questions too! I kinda love the ones that are like "Is compassion the key to an expanded conscience?" with the top answer being "Yes, as I explain in my book Compassion: The Key to an Expanded Conscience".

fthssht• 6 years ago

Too rude for Quora? There will always be a place for you here. Welcome home.

maxlybbert3• 6 years ago

It’s been years, so I know I’ll get the details wrong, but I vaguely remember a dating website that had an entry survey to help match people to whoever had the best compatibility score. But, for whatever reason, they got far more women applicants than men, and started turning particular women away. And some other dating site tried to advertise to those women (not good enough for ___? Try us instead!).

IgorPartola3• 6 years ago

What dating website managed to get more women than men? Isn’t that like the unachievable holy grail of dating websites?

gus_massa3• 6 years ago

In that case, you will get a reply by dang like

fake dang> Please don't call other users moronic fools here. We ban accounts for doing that.

And after a few warnings, your account will get banned.

fny• 6 years ago

I had this happen on Twitter recently. I was trying to have level-headed conversations about wearing a mask with different people, and after about a week, my account got knocked out.

tgb2• 6 years ago

The author states they were banned for linking to their article [1] challenging Flat Earther's to take the "flat Earth route" from Johannes Burg to Sydney and beat the commercial great-circle flight. But what exactly would the "flat Earth" route be? Do they have a consistent claim about what the layout of the Earth is? It should depend on the Flat Earth model someone is using. (Though I suspect they'd all agree that the flight should be shorter than the great-circle path.)

[1] https://medium.com/@brothke/a-simple-experiment-that-can-pro...

gus_massa3• 6 years ago

That's a nice mathematical questions. My guess is that there are a few models that make minimal sense, and this experiment can refute them. (Ignoring wind currents, that are important and probably make the return flight a few hours longer/shorter.)

In an unrestricted case, you can always select a map where that any real geodesic is a line in your flat map. I guess to prove that the surface is not flat, you need to measure the more distances, like measuring the four sides of a quadrilateral and then the two diagonal. (I think it is not possible using geodesics, without measuring one distance or an angle or a surface.)

The nice part of Gaussian curvature is that you can measure it in the surface, without a model of the 3D word that is "around" it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_curvature

bookmarkable• 6 years ago

Quora, like any social media, has an inverse scale problem. It works better before “everyone” is a user. With a few thousand intellectuals, it was a fine site. Flooded with the crazy and willfully ignorant, it loses value.

Priem19• 6 years ago

This sole sentence could be a HN post on its own.

tifadg1• 6 years ago

having filtered the following results on google (google search filter), I'm finding the content to be bearable again:

experts-exchange.com

medium.com

steemit.com

quora.com

dutchoven• 6 years ago

Adding my experience on Quora. In general quality of the questions and answers are pretty bad. In my feed most of the popular answers start with some provocative/eye-grabbing pictures (exotic animals, landscapes, outrageously good looking people).

Sometimes I feel like I'm reading ads about spammy media sites, who use the same tactics.

m11172• 6 years ago

Please show respect to the 'moronic fools', they have a right to have their opinion that the earth is flat and that they're not 'moronic fools'.

bmn__• 6 years ago

Tolerance must have its bounds, or the intransigent minority will eventually trample over the reasonable majority.

Applied to this situation – I will only show respect to people who earn the respect by being willing to engage on equal terms: admitting the possibility that one's opinion could be wrong, following scientific best practice, to actually change one's mind when swayed by evidence.

tzs• 6 years ago

they have a right to have their opinion that the earth is flat

"Is the Earth flat?" is not the kind of question you can really have an opinion on. It has a definite correct answer ("no") which has been established by numerous independent methods by numerous people acting independently repeatedly over thousands of years.

For that answer to be wrong and the truth of Earth's flatness to have been kept suppressed for so long would require a vast conspiracy operating over centuries or millennia involving almost all political leaders, educators, and scientists, and a near total control on information flow.

That level of conspiracy could almost certainly only be carried out in some kind of Matrix-like simulation, but if we are in one of those then the question of whether or not the Earth is flat is superseded by the question of whether the Earth even exists.

What word(s) would you suggest to describe such people? The OED defines "stupid" as "Having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense", which applies here so "stupid" seems accurate. It defines "moron" as "a stupid person", so "moron" seems applicable.

It defines "fool" as "A person who acts unwisely or imprudently; a silly person". "unwise" is "not wise or sensible; foolish".

Putting that all together, "moronic fools" may be impolite, but it is accurate.

yesplorer• 6 years ago

"Man invents fictional scenario and gets angry about it".

You got banned for been rude and uncouth, which clearly against their TOS.

bborud• 6 years ago

Whether or not the earth is flat, and a host of other discussions, mostly exist to satisfy people's need for conflict and attention. Ask yourself how many times you have seen someone change their view in these confrontations. Then ask yourself how many times you have seen people admit that they are trolling for the sport of it, or for the attention.

It isn't worth the effort to take part in such discussions. It only legitimizes trolls.

JohnTHaller• 6 years ago

"[Moron] was once applied to people with an IQ of 51–70, being superior in one degree to "imbecile" (IQ of 26–50) and superior in two degrees to "idiot" (IQ of 0–25)."

Ironically, years ago, moron would be the correct technical term to refer to a flat-earther.

gverrilla• 6 years ago

quora was nice when it launched and for some time. now it's really bad. you have to sort between straight ad's and ads in desguise, and this is 90% of the experience, if not more lol.

tomhoward• 6 years ago

This guy needs to find a new hobby. Flat Earthers have zero cultural clout.

His Quora activity does nothing to change anyone's mind or make the world better, and certainly doesn't make him seem clever or good. The Medium post is a victimhood rant from someone who can't accept that sometimes people will say "enough" to you being a nuisance.

He seems like a mean, entitled person with nothing useful to do with his time and intellect.

Quora Bans Me for Saying the Earth Isn’t Flat

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