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A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

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Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#191

Post by tptacek »

mattsfrey wrote: post #188

It seems like many people are caught up in the details here and missing the wider principles.. What kind of internet do you want? I grew up with an internet that was entirely open and free, there have always been the hate dens and their garbage. I view domain services as essentially infrastructure, not arbitrators of content. If sites/services are being shut down at the infrastructure level, we've entered a new age o…

Stormfront is still up and running. They had a hard time getting access to the same QOS and pricing as do sites that companies actively want to host, but at some point we're complaining that white nationalists don't get FRAND terms, and it's a little hard to get worked up about that.

Gab ran Twitter for White Nationalists off Digital Ocean, Azure, and who knows where else. Gab's users have a disconcerting tendency to blow up synagogues. Gab itself has a disconcerting tendency to recruit people who cheerlead anti-Semitism. Are we surprised they aren't getting the $15,000 startup promo credit from AWS?

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#192

Post by mattsfrey »

tptacek wrote: post #191
mattsfrey wrote: post #188

It seems like many people are caught up in the details here and missing the wider principles.. What kind of internet do you want? I grew up with an internet that was entirely open and free, there have always been the hate dens and their garbage. I view domain services as essentially infrastructure, not arbitrators of content. If sites/services are being shut down at the infrastructure level, we've entered a new age o…

Stormfront is still up and running. They had a hard time getting access to the same QOS and pricing as do sites that companies actively want to host, but at some point we're complaining that white nationalists don't get FRAND terms, and it's a little hard to get worked up about that. Gab ran Twitter for White Nationalists off Digital Ocean, Azure, and who knows where else. Gab's users have a disconcerting tendency to…

Again, details.. What if every single domain company decides to blackball them? What do they do then? Nothing, they are off the internet.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#193

Post by Natsu »

charlesism wrote: post #36
travisoneill1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a platform that let's you say anything uncensored intolerant? If your definition of "tolerance" is forced censorship, then I don't think you would do so well in Karl Popper's proposed society.

How is a platform that let's you say anything uncensored intolerant? That's another way to say "a platform that tolerates the intolerant" which could hardly be a better example of what Popper is talking about. That said, the OP is also not right to suggest that intolerance is simple to identify. Like the other comments here say, it's subjective. Then again, most things in life are subjective. Society has to be pragma…

When Popper described intolerance, he spoke of people using 'fists or pistols' to shut down the tolerant and he predicated the very idea on the right to self defense.

The right of self defense is and long has been defense against immanent physical harm, for the one who does not start the fight.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#194

Post by arto »

wuliwong wrote: post #76
dleslie wrote: post #6

> The tech giants today are by their own actions cultivating the motivation and the will to necessitate the creation of their own challengers and everybody is watching closely what works and what doesn’t. And this is why I find the trend towards deplatforming to be altogether _exciting_. I haven't been this _excited_ about potential changes in how we communicate since I first installed Skype; when it was still P2P. T…

I am right there with you! I am oddly excited by the recent waves of de-platforming. I think they are hastening the next step of development.

Indeed, sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#195

Post by archagon »

toasterlovin wrote: post #190
archagon wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are surprisingly easy to reprogram. You can read countless stories of once-liberal parents turning into hateful conspiracy nuts in their old age out of prolonged exposure to right-wing media. If you see people around you saying “white males are undergoing a genocide” or “brown people are criminals” every day, chances are you’ll eventually start to internalize some of those talking points. Without tremendous ef…

> People are surprisingly easy to reprogram. You can read countless stories of once-liberal parents turning into hateful conspiracy nuts in their old age out of prolonged exposure to right-wing media. You should be more skeptical of your intuitions about which way the arrow of causality points.

These are people who now believe that Jewish cabals run the world and that the dead kids at our schools are crisis actors. Don’t you bullshit me.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#197

Post by stcredzero »

dragonwriter wrote: post #171
stcredzero wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehovah's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that town and distribute her pamphlets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc Originally, it was widely recognized by US jurisprudence, though property rights and freedom of association are important, the Fi…

> There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks And when a single company has similar control over the internet, even for a particular group of people such that they are otherwise unreachable (as AT&T once did nationalky over telephone communications), Marsh v. Alabama might be relevant (It might not, since active relaying is not the same of not denying ac…

The distinction between "actively relaying" and allowing through in 2018 is now as empty and outdated as the idea that property rights extended up into the sky, so farmers could charge airplanes for passage.

The purpose of such a distinction is simply for people with power to regulate discourse.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#198

Post by stcredzero »

tptacek wrote: post #164
stcredzero wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise, almost no one cares what a Jehovah's witness has to say. The US government coming in and telling a private entity, no you must tolerate free speech on your property is historical fact and precedent. There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehovah's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that…

It sounds suspiciously as if you're drawing a direct comparison between the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War 2 and Gab getting kicked off GoDaddy. That can't possibly be an argument you really want to make.

It sounds suspiciously as if you're drawing a direct comparison between the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War 2 and Gab getting kicked off GoDaddy. That can't possibly be an argument you really want to make.

You know better than that, and you should know full well I'd expect better of you.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#199

Post by wpietri »

mattsfrey wrote: post #192
tptacek wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stormfront is still up and running. They had a hard time getting access to the same QOS and pricing as do sites that companies actively want to host, but at some point we're complaining that white nationalists don't get FRAND terms, and it's a little hard to get worked up about that. Gab ran Twitter for White Nationalists off Digital Ocean, Azure, and who knows where else. Gab's users have a disconcerting tendency to…

Again, details.. What if every single domain company decides to blackball them? What do they do then? Nothing, they are off the internet.

I guess they'll have to return to sharing their desire to kill black people the old fashioned way, in person.

Something you aren't grappling with here is the way the Internet has enabled previously-scattered terrible people to connect and self-radicalize. David Neiwart, who tracked various "patriot", white supremacist, and other fringe groups since the 90s, wrote a very readable book about how things have changed since then: https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/...

I definitely appreciate the early ethos of the Internet. It's a good founding myth, and I would like to work to keep things open by default. But if the worse 0.1% of humankind ends up not being able to host anything because otherwise they will work together to murder people, I am 100% ok with bending my "anything goes" bias a bit.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#200

Post by stcredzero »

dragonwriter wrote: post #166
stcredzero wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deplatforming is simply the a natural consequence of the operation of the marketplace of ideas That's just as silly as if someone had said, "Certain people losing their 1st Amendment rights is simply the natural consequence of the operation of the marketplace of ideas." It's nonsense, because once you let people start silencing others, there is no more free marketplace of ideas. That's pretty much like some Victorian…

> That's just as silly as if someone had said, "Certain people losing their 1st Amendment rights is simply the natural consequence of the operation of the marketplace of ideas." Only if you equate exercise of first amendment rights with loss of first amendment rights. Choosing to relay content or not is a first amendment right, compelling other people to do so on your behalf is not. While there might be a legitimate…

Only if you equate exercise of first amendment rights with loss of first amendment rights. Choosing to relay content or not is a first amendment right, compelling other people to do so on your behalf is not.

The "not relaying" gambit is irrelevant and dishonest in 2018. It's as irrelevant as farmers claiming they had the right to charge tolls to airplanes overflying their land, because originally, land deeds extended upwards indefinitely. YouTube "not relaying" is indeed a lot like a company town not wanting someone to walk their streets.

But no one entity is positioned the way Gulf Shipbuilding was in Marsh v. Alabama, so as to exercise the power to control the expressive rights of an entire community

In 2018, this is also dishonest. There are plenty of things which call themselves "communities" which indeed have the substrate of the lion's share of their discourse controlled by one entity.

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