While I definitely don't support the people they're booting off I do have to agree with the EFF here. For example, "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism." Now these services have put it out there as policy someone has to define what's violent, hateful or racist in music. Racism? Ok nobody's really going to bat an e…
Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
161–170 of 398 posts
Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, in that it sucks that it's a literal handful, but on the flip side it's nice to know the government is set up in such a way that it isn't by default the most powerful entity in every imaginable way. The people themselves, private companies, etc have a chance to be more powerful than the government in a variety of ways. I'm a pro-government liberal who is extremely wary of the power of global corporations, bu…
Show me examples of corporations mass murdering people, though? Your faith in big government is completely misplaced. The truth is, you can't trust any entity with consolidated power to be forthright and favor humanity over all other considerations.
A democracy is structured to be open and conflict is embedded to force decision-making by consensus and compromise.
Corporations are structured to be closed, authoritarian structures.
We're lucky there isn't much history of corporations having state-like scale + monopoly on legitimate violence. Super lucky.
Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, like all those conservatives fighting for Hobby Lobby to not provide contraception support for it's employees because "first amendment" and all those mom and pop shops that don't want to serve gay people in the South because of first amendment rights. Seriously, conservatives in America want to have their cake and eat it too. "We meant freedom for corporations-as-people but only when it helps us".
Which is not good either. IMO, any business shall serve any customer regardless. Unless said customer is breaking a (sane) law. For the record, I'm not American. I grew up in ex-USSR country that was just recovering from total censorship. What is going on today in the world is sickening me. A lot of rhetoric in the West is too similar to USSR craziness. I'll be happy to be offended and keep my right to offend you. Th…
Amazon blacklists people who abuse their service, like return policy. They are not breaking the laws, but blocking these bad customers is not only a moral choice but also a rational one, since it protects the sellers and other customers. Likewise, if you are making a scene in a private space, if it disturbs the usual operation, the owner should have the right to kick you out, because you are damaging their business.
So I say otherwise, any private business owner should have the right to refuse offering their service to people who they consider harmful to their interests.
Google could argue, hosting those hateful content draw negative attention from the media which tarnish their image thus hurt their business interests.
The one and only problem is, Google is too big and too powerful, their decision carries significant impact which should not be taken lightly.
Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
#164I find it odd that websites seem to either harbor a slowly growing extreme right wing, or choose to seek and destroy it. It seems like the extreme rights' method of gaining control is to be provocative while the extreme left lobbies admins to remove the provocateurs (see: reddit, youtube). This ends with the tech companies complying with the left. Why isnt it the other way around? Edit: apparently today okcupid banne…
Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
#165While I definitely don't support the people they're booting off I do have to agree with the EFF here. For example, "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism." Now these services have put it out there as policy someone has to define what's violent, hateful or racist in music. Racism? Ok nobody's really going to bat an e…
> Racism? Ok nobody's really going to bat an eye at that disappearing. Violence and hatred though? You've got this all backwards. We should be most concerned about censorship of political beliefs, however wrongheaded they are.
Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's nothing stopping these maniacs from starting their own intermediaries to host the content(trash) they want to peddle. Why couldn't you say the same about net neutrality?
Without ISP-level neutrality, the opposite would be true. Here's the scenario in that case: 1) Google, Facebook, Twitter, CloudFlare, GoDaddy, and a few other actors ban a certain flavor of hate speech. 2) The pro-hate-speech crowd tries to start their own "Facebook for white nationalism" but can't, because they don't have "premium" peering arrangements with all the eyeball ISPs. 3) There is no step 3, it's game over…
Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
#167One of my favorite examples from the book is the story about Hollywood and the Production Code in the 1930s. This was a voluntary code that the major studios obeyed for their own commercial interests (they wanted to avoid boycotts by groups like the National Legion of Decency). Because the film industry was centralized (with a small number of companies controlling all film production and distribution and most of the national theaters), this private decision by a handful of companies led to effective censorship in nearly all film in the US for ~20-30 years, all without any government action whatsoever.
I think we're in the same boat here with Google and other major internet infrastructure providers. Because a huge amount of power over the internet is concentrated in the hands of a few companies, those companies need to be very careful about the way they handle censorship.
"In an information industry the cost of monopoly must not be measured in dollars alone, but also in its effect on the economy of ideas and images, the restraint of which can ultimately amount to censorship."
"The story of Daniel Lord and the Legion of Decency goes to a central contention of this book: in the United States, it is industrial structure that determines the limits of free speech."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code
Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> While I definitely don't support the people they're booting off... A bit off topic but how many bytes are spent on prefaces like this on responses to this topic? I assume that the vast majority of people on the planet don't support Nazis or anything related. I find it interesting that any discussion of them has to include that line lest the speaker/writer be labeled as one (which happens quite a bit anyway but that…
So true. I had to create a separate Reddit account to have these discussions about internet freedom and refusing service because people assume I'm a white supremacist / Nazi. I'm not, I just think it opens up some interesting discussion as to what we can or can't discriminate against.
I'm glad there's a place like Hacker News where people who disagree can still speak to one another civilly.
Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, in that it sucks that it's a literal handful, but on the flip side it's nice to know the government is set up in such a way that it isn't by default the most powerful entity in every imaginable way. The people themselves, private companies, etc have a chance to be more powerful than the government in a variety of ways. I'm a pro-government liberal who is extremely wary of the power of global corporations, bu…
Show me examples of corporations mass murdering people, though? Your faith in big government is completely misplaced. The truth is, you can't trust any entity with consolidated power to be forthright and favor humanity over all other considerations.
The East India Company, Pinkerton Investigations...
Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, I expected more of a backlash and I'm not good with words under mob pressure. I prefaced it to avoid the "oh so YOU'RE a racist too huh??" potential retort.
Well, when we're at a place where asking where someone is from is considered an example of white supremacy, then it seems we need to couch everything we say with strained deference to social justice. Those are the times we're in, and I blame the left for its obsessive dismantling of our language.
Now imagine if it was filled with accusations of being a racist, I'd probably just be curled up in a ball under my desk waiting for the fallout to end.