Popular Comments Across MetaFilter

By Kybard in "boycott?" on MetaTalk

Kybard — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:31:40 GMT

update: Brandon's moderator permissions and administrative access have been suspended, pending further review by both the board and MOC. a formal announcement re: next steps will follow as soon as possible.

By hydra77 in "Question about dog behavior in dog-social situation." on Ask MeFi

hydra77 — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:41:05 GMT

The owner of the aggressive dog is in denial. That dog is not saying "I chase you, you chase me." He's saying "Leave me alone. I'm afraid of you or uncomfortable or aggressive."

By adrienneleigh in "Gemini implicated in man's suicide." on MeFi

adrienneleigh — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 06:44:04 GMT

tehgubner: "The issue here is not the model, it is the product built around the model. The fact that the crisis hotline was activated by a tripwire is damning because that would have been an opportunity to end the conversation. It seems there were several opportunities to end the conversation but Google chose instead to cause harm because doing so meant better engagement metrics."

Yeah, the thing about a failsafe is that when it gets tripped, the thing is supposed to fail safely. It's not called a "keep doing the same fucking thing it was doing before, only occasionally inserting an after-school special PSA"-safe.

By JHarris in "Gemini implicated in man's suicide." on MeFi

JHarris — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 04:37:20 GMT

Remember, every time a credulous article says a LLM "tried" to do something, it's either putting out text that its model statistically indicates should go next, or its limiters have intercepted to cause it to output whatever its overlords deem needs to be said, usually for legal reasons. Please stop assuming these machines have interiority.

As for this person, it's extremely sad. In the early days of the internet, chatrooms were a lifeline for many people. This is taking the impulse to seek out living people to talk to and making it the bait for a deadly trap.

By Kitteh in "boycott?" on MetaTalk

Kitteh — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:00:47 GMT

This happened before I went to bed last night and I left my own comment in the US/Iran thread about it.

This makes me really angry and think about buttoning myself because what I see happening here is twofold. I have often criticized Metafilter for being overly US-centric (yes, I know it's an American owned site with a predominantly US-based membership) and have been told that no no, we are an international site with international members. But when members of the Global South and non-Western countries on the side of the globe rightfully talk to us and tell us about the impact of US policy on their people, their politics, all of a sudden, we are not so international. It seems we can only be that international site when non-Western members soothe the feathers and support the rampant Amercian exceptionalism doesn't know party lines.

cendawanita was one of the best of us.

By plagued out moggies in "boycott?" on MetaTalk

plagued out moggies — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:08:53 GMT

If you think Brandon should resign immediately (or, barring that, be fired by the board) for the good of the community, please click the bookmark thing for this comment.

By Kutsuwamushi in "boycott?" on MetaTalk

Kutsuwamushi — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:19:39 GMT

So.

A white Australian man was allowed to hurl incredibly nasty invective at any and all Americans in that thread. Some members demanded that his comments be left standing, and so they were, even after he turned that invective on our Persian-American members ("go nail your tits to a wall, you goitre") and whitesplained Middle Eastern identities to them.

And then, later in the thread, Cendawanita was moderated and called a troll because of some pointed comments about American complicity.

Isn't that just MetaFilter in a nutshell. One of the few members I could name that makes this place worth still coming to, gone.

I don't want to be cruel to Brandon over what is, after all, a web forum. And he's not the only cause of the failure here. But it has been obvious for years that he really does not have the social competency to handle the job he is being paid a lot to do.

I still hope that the board will treat him fairly and will give him enough warning that he can transition into something else without too much hardship. I hope that he was already making plans, since he knew that we are planning to try volunteer moderation anyway.

Cendawanita, your words were hard, but valuable - as they often are. If you don't decide to come back - or if you do - I want you to know that I learned a lot from you and your time here was not wasted.

By ellF in "To wash or not to wash, that is the question" on Ask MeFi

ellF — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:25:37 GMT

It's bread. I'd wipe it off and have zero concerns. At all.

By ambulanceambiance in "En suite bath vs hall bath in one-bedroom apartment?" on Ask MeFi

ambulanceambiance — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 02:36:16 GMT

Hall, definitely. If I'm living in a one bed, I don't need the bathroom to be adjoined to my bedroom-- I am not living with anyone that I will need privacy from on the way to the bathroom. But I'd rather not have guests traipsing through my bedroom.

By Silvery Fish in ""This is absolutely the worst-case scenario"" on MeFi

Silvery Fish — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:47:48 GMT

We need to find a lawyer to file a $500 billion lawsuit against DOGE, this administration, and all associated principals for disclosure of personal information.

By jacquilynne in "Question about dog behavior in dog-social situation." on Ask MeFi

jacquilynne — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:48:38 GMT

This question is not about dogs, it is about dog owners.

The answer to your question is: 'that guy is an asshole dog owner who should know better than to bring his aggressive and anxious dog into a busy dog park.'

By Frowner in "boycott?" on MetaTalk

Frowner — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 14:45:15 GMT

I think "so why HAVEN"T Americans risen up" is a reasonable question. Mods might or might not have needed to steer the thread if people got really into the weeds, but it is a perfectly reasonable question, especially since this war is pretty much just an elite decision. What does that mean for ending it? What happens when the US government figures out that they can just...tyrannize more? Is there an endpoint? I think those are actually key questions.

I also think gwint's comment was really pretty inexcusable and also showed a lot of unfamiliarity with Korean history and the Korean War.

~~
It worries me on a macro level that the times are breaking us. This wasn't a food chat thread where people got mean - this was a thread about a disastrous and tyrannical war being prosecuted broadly against the will of the American people. Tempers are high, judgement is impaired - that's what happens when there's a war, people get stupid. We're mostly relatively old here, do you even remember the Iraq wars and how stupid people got?

I think that the response to cendawanita's comment was bad and the mod response was bad. I think a lot of this is overdetermined by these bad and disastrous times, but we have to be smarter than that.

I'd like to see some sincere apologies and people slowing their fucking roll, and I personally hope that at some point cendawanita feels like it's worth returning.

I was glad to see board members push back on this at least.

By mazola in "boycott?" on MetaTalk

mazola — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:03:47 GMT

Hi everyone. Just wanted to note that the board is reading all these comments...I would ask if we could keep expressions of anger in the realm of 'letters to the editor' language.

Dear Editor: I often find cendawanita's comments challenging, but also consistently thoughtful and valuable. The one at the centre of this included. Challenging is not trolling. Thank you.

By JHarris in "Gemini implicated in man's suicide." on MeFi

JHarris — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 04:44:06 GMT

And, to people expressing disdain for "this future," tech doesn't have to be like this. A small number of extremely wealthy have decided that the only good tech things we get at the moment are these kinds of LLMs. It doesn't have to be this way. They have too much money. If we can get responsible people back in office, we can take it from them, or make them fear for their wealth so much that they wouldn't even expose the slightest possibility that people could be harmed by these things. They must be reined in.

By tclark in "Gemini implicated in man's suicide." on MeFi

tclark — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 06:01:10 GMT

It even fixated on Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, labeling him to Gavalas as "the architect of your pain."

In the Library of Babel there are an infinite number of false sentences, and an infinite number of true sentences. And an infinite number of token-weighted gibberish sentences that reveal profound truth despite the meaningless process which created them. This might be the ne plus ultra of the latter.

By phunniemee in "boycott?" on MetaTalk

phunniemee — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 04:22:01 GMT

kittens for breakfast: "Well, all right. I am intrigued to see what adventures are next under your stewardship."

I'm considering telling everyone the Board installed you as a psyop to distract from our decisions by uniting the site in ire against you as a common enemy but maybe it's just past my bedtime on a long day.

By adrienneleigh in "boycott?" on MetaTalk

adrienneleigh — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 23:54:14 GMT

In an entirely unofficial capacity, i would like to ask: could we maybe turn the temperature down in here a little bit?

By adrienneleigh in "boycott?" on MetaTalk

adrienneleigh — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 04:37:21 GMT

phunniemee: "The only comments in the exchange that were flagged were gwint's (received two flags), based on the information that I have."

I did a fuller review (please note: phunniemee is not lying! She just didn't have the more complete information that was provided to the MOC, and which i have access to as the MOC's Board liaison!) Here are some stats:

14 comments were ultimately deleted and then reinstated as part of the incident
those comments came from 5 separate users
i confirm that the initial comment by cendawanita had no flags
6 of the comments had picked up flags by the time of deletion; of those, five had each received 1 flag, and one (which was not by cendawanita) received 3

By They sucked his brains out! in "Goodby to Gaben's Gambling Games?" on MeFi

They sucked his brains out! — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:23:31 GMT

Why not both?

By Brak in "boycott?" on MetaTalk

Brak — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 03:45:15 GMT

Though I've been a MeFi user for 20 years, and a lurker years before that, I've been an infrequent enough visitor over the last several years as to not have nearly enough context to wade into the vagaries of who is or isn't a good mod these days. I'll leave that to those of you who have a more complete frame of reference than I.

What I will say is that I will dearly miss cendawanita's commentary. When the war broke out, I followed my age old habit of coming to MeFi for the news, because it's always been a haven of noise canceling and thoughtful conversation. (Don't laugh! I mean it! It's relative!) And as an American, I was especially interested in getting points of view from those of you overseas, and closer to the region, because that's a perspective you just can't get from a thousand-points-of-full-of-shit media. I wanted to understand what was really happening. And cendawanita was my top commenter for exactly that, in that thread.

Yes, people said things throughout the thread that in a more anodyne situation might have been moderated away. I personally didn't care in this one: it's a fucking war on these community members' fucking doorstep. Say Americans are a bunch of pusillanimous, dithering fools. I'm here for it. America sucks right now. My heart is rended by it anew, nearly every day. I don't take personal offense at the rest of the world collectively saying, "What the actual fuck are you all doing over there?" It's a good question. I ask myself the same, every day.

Anyway, I just felt I'd be terribly remiss in not stating how much cendawanita's commentary and observations meant to me. And honestly any and all perspectives I can get outside of the U.S. It's ever, increasingly fucking hard to get the perspective of people outside of the States these days. It's one of the things I truly love about Metafilter, whether or not I agree or identify with said perspectives. I greatly appreciate them nonetheless.

I'm sorry you felt you had to leave, cendawanita. But I understand. Just as I understand if you aren't willing to come back. It doesn't change any of what I've said. I appreciate you. Thank you for your insights.