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4chan, 8chan blocked by Australian and NZ ISPs for hosting shooting video

arstechnica.com

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Re: 4chan, 8chan blocked by Australian and NZ ISPs for hosting shooting video

#31

I think 4chan has gone too far on this one. They should ban neonazi propaganda. There is a big difference between allowing non-PC talk and allowing outright neonazi/terrorist propaganda. Besides, it is ruining the experience on all boards for all people.

You're either for free speech or you're not, and as much as I would like to have some absolute reference of good and bad, it's all culturally defined.

I mean, I think it's horrible, but I can envision lots of functional and useful societies that are horrible based on my principles (how would you like to to be part of a hize mind?), but that doesn't make them bad in an absolute sense.

Scaled down, freedom of speech is to protect us from changing cultural and mob rule running roughshod over what we consider good and bad to the detriment of all. The law would basically just lag internet outrage by a few months or years.

Edit: This is meant to be interpreted in context, where a platform has taken a stance that it doesn't censor, and a government blocking that platform. I'm also not making a stance that anything goes, as speech inciting direct action against the law (or meant to cause a situation which is immediately and obviously unsafe) is problematic, and under what I take free speech to embody, which is freedom of thought and to express those thoughts. As absolutist as the first words sound, it's not really meant to be interpreted that way, but more as a call to acknowledge that good and bad are relative to the farthest degree, which is about as far from absolutist as you can get.

Edit 2: From closer reading, it wasn't actually a government request. The article notes that the government often issues these through the courts, but the ISPs acted on their own in this case.

Re: 4chan, 8chan blocked by Australian and NZ ISPs for hosting shooting video

#32

I think 4chan has gone too far on this one. They should ban neonazi propaganda. There is a big difference between allowing non-PC talk and allowing outright neonazi/terrorist propaganda. Besides, it is ruining the experience on all boards for all people.

>>I think 4chan has gone too far

I don't believe 4chan will ever share this sentiment with you.

Re: 4chan, 8chan blocked by Australian and NZ ISPs for hosting shooting video

#34
post #9

I’m honestly wondering what will happen when that kind of content starts spreading on less centralized networks, such as scuttlebutt, or on IPFS, via Mastodon instances, or others. Things can become bad for decentralization advocates if 4chan trolls start to use those networks to share and protect such content from being blocked by governments.

That is not as big of a problem. The problem is primarily recruitment, not the content itself. Recruitment happens on centralized platforms where susceptible people can be reached and brainwashed.

Maybe not yet. I would argue that’s just a question of time before decentralized platforms become good enough to attract more users.

Re: 4chan, 8chan blocked by Australian and NZ ISPs for hosting shooting video

#35

Just a thought experiment: so it's after 9/11. Nobody will show a video of the planes flying into the towers. The only place you can watch the video is ISISchan.org, and there are news articles about how many countries banning ISISchan.org & how problematic ISISchan.org is (don't go to ISISchan.org, kids!). Now instead of watching a clip on CNN you've got people absorbing all the extremist propaganda on ISISchan.

I think this is really a different situation. The NZ video was made by the perpetrator as a vehicle to disseminate his views. 9/11 videos were made by bystanders as they watched their city being attacked.

A better comparison would be videos produced by terrorist organizations which use 9/11 footage to promote their own views: that would be something I could see being argued for a ban.

Re: 4chan, 8chan blocked by Australian and NZ ISPs for hosting shooting video

#37

Just a thought experiment: so it's after 9/11. Nobody will show a video of the planes flying into the towers. The only place you can watch the video is ISISchan.org, and there are news articles about how many countries banning ISISchan.org & how problematic ISISchan.org is (don't go to ISISchan.org, kids!). Now instead of watching a clip on CNN you've got people absorbing all the extremist propaganda on ISISchan.

I'd argue that the shooting video is much worse - psychologically, graphically, and in terms of inspiring others, since the act was so much easier than the extravagant plane attacks. For God's sake, it was a first person video of the murder of individual people, one by one, played for jokes by the murderer ("remove kebab").

I'm not saying it's right or wrong to ban host sites under certain conditions - I just think the analogy is just way too disparate to be viable.

Re: 4chan, 8chan blocked by Australian and NZ ISPs for hosting shooting video

#38

I think 4chan has gone too far on this one. They should ban neonazi propaganda. There is a big difference between allowing non-PC talk and allowing outright neonazi/terrorist propaganda. Besides, it is ruining the experience on all boards for all people.

Isn't their policy basically "anything goes"? Locking things down seems counter to their goals. I know they have "some" moderation in "some" parts of their site, but moderating too much will just drive people away since many are there for "free speech" reasons. I think they'd be happier with the policy of, "if you don't like it, leave" than trying to appease others.

No, they specifically censor content like child pornography, torrent links (AFAIK), and some other material. There are situations where the expression of certain speech, like the generation and propagation of child pornography, harms others and should not be allowed. Even the original FS philosophers mostly agreed on this type of censorship.

Re: 4chan, 8chan blocked by Australian and NZ ISPs for hosting shooting video

#39
It makes me sad how 4chan has largely been reduced to a place where racists and bigots and sexists hang out. When I was a teenager, it felt like the racists in /b/ were doing it ironically (maybe I was wrong?), but now it seems like a place to spout off white-nationalist nonsense, and whenever its called out the people fall back on "it's just a joke bro!"

Re: 4chan, 8chan blocked by Australian and NZ ISPs for hosting shooting video

#40
post #31

I think 4chan has gone too far on this one. They should ban neonazi propaganda. There is a big difference between allowing non-PC talk and allowing outright neonazi/terrorist propaganda. Besides, it is ruining the experience on all boards for all people.

You're either for free speech or you're not, and as much as I would like to have some absolute reference of good and bad, it's all culturally defined. I mean, I think it's horrible, but I can envision lots of functional and useful societies that are horrible based on my principles (how would you like to to be part of a hize mind?), but that doesn't make them bad in an absolute sense. Scaled down, freedom of speech is…

>You're either for free speech or you're not

Absolutism is poison.

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