Quote Originally Posted by Semirhage View Post
Ah, the Motte and Bailey switch I knew was coming next.

So where's the problem? Rules exist for a reason. In theory, at least. Good rules should be written with attention paid to their foundational reasoning. Why are parsers against the TOS? I've heard over and over and over and over and over and over again that it's the harassment potential.

And the moment we point at a prominent example where the *stated reason* behind that rule wasn't in play at all, said rule was enforced anyway. So what is the takeaway from this? It's certainly not "harassment is bad". It's "third party tools are punishable if 5chan gets mad about it".

Claiming it's about harassment potential, then when confronted with the fact that public, visible enforcement has nothing whatsoever to do with harassment fleeing to the Motte of "who cares it's against the rules either way SO THERE" is a boring trick. Save it for the tourists. Your beef isn't with harassment, it's with the existence of facts. Stats. Math.
The classic it's bad because it's against the rules and it's against the rules because it's bad circle. If you get someone to break out of that, let me know. People like that would be upset about freeing slaves because it was technically against the law.