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

arstechnica.com

111–120 of 184 posts

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

#111
post #29

I watched this "illegal" video. And not only do I think it should not be illegal, I think watching it should be almost mandatory ! Package it with a safety curriculum, and people should watch it to know what to do. In particular: For the most part, those people in the video who ran, lived, those who tried to drop low, or froze up, died. (There were a couple of exceptions.) Additionally, one guy tried to attack the sh…

The chances of being in such a situation are so incredibly small, that training to deal with it is a wasted effort compared to a host of other stuff — e.g., learning CPR, taking a course in safely driving in wintery conditions, employing elementary fire safety precautions in the house, etc. Even stimulating people to learn to swim if they haven't already saves way more lives! If you normalize an attack like this to t…

I think the fact these attacks are happening regularly all over the world normalizes this already. The odds of you being the victim of a terror attack are low but honestly you don’t need a 15 minute course on tips. Make news distributors run a 2 minute clip on how to effectively maximize your odds of survival during every broadcast coverage of a mass shooting. I think it also changes the narrative in a would be perpetrators mind: if this is about power over others, to some extent others are now prepared to either flee or effectively attack a terrorist en masse.

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

#112
post #84
post #63

I hate 4chan so much, its a diseased cesspool of morons. However, I hate the idea blocking them. Its such a slippery slope from censorship of bad websites to moving to censorship of good websites that the government does not like. Edit: Also, facebook pro-actively took down the video as soon as they became aware.

>Its such a slippery slope from censorship of bad websites to moving to censorship of good websites that the government does not like. Is it really, though, or do people just like the slippery slope fallacy a bit too much? Does everyone really think that if a government bans 4chan, no one and nothing is going to stop them from banning everything else because there's precedent now and nothing can be done? That's not h…

> Does everyone really think that if a government bans 4chan, no one and nothing is going to stop them from banning everything else because there's precedent now and nothing can be done?

Is it really, though, or do people just like the strawman fallacy a bit too much?

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

#113
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define "swiftly?" I haven't been able to follow this as closely as I like, but what I read early on was that it was streaming on Facebook for 17 minutes, and then available as reposts for days afterward. If this is incorrect, help me out by providing the actual numbers.

17 minutes to remove an offending stream, when literally millions of streams which are legitimate, sounds reasonable.

> available as reposts for days afterward

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

#114
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Its such a slippery slope from censorship of bad websites to moving to censorship of good websites that the government does not like. Is it really, though, or do people just like the slippery slope fallacy a bit too much? Does everyone really think that if a government bans 4chan, no one and nothing is going to stop them from banning everything else because there's precedent now and nothing can be done? That's not h…

> Does everyone really think that if a government bans 4chan, no one and nothing is going to stop them from banning everything else because there's precedent now and nothing can be done? Is it really, though, or do people just like the strawman fallacy a bit too much?

>or do people just like the strawman fallacy a bit too much?

Well, strawmen are often involved in the invocation of slippery slope arguments, so yes, probably.

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

#115
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17 minutes to remove an offending stream, when literally millions of streams which are legitimate, sounds reasonable.

> available as reposts for days afterward

Gonna need a source on that. It’s impressive how fast they handled it when probably tens of thousands of people are reposting the content with the express intent to get around spam filters and avoid manual review.

Should Aus block sms, WhatsApp, and iMessage because the content gets re-shared there too? Should they block Google because you can find links to the content there?

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

#116
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're arresting people for sharing the video along with encouraging comments. They aren't arresting journalists for showing clips. Shouting "FIRE" in a crowded theatre has always been illegal.

As I mentioned further up the thread, it was illegal for about 50 years in the US as a hypothetical but it’s no longer a legitimate legal standard. Shouting fire in a crowded theater isn’t illegal (at least, it isn’t not free speech). See Brandenburg v. Ohio and how it overruled the prior Schenk standard.

Today's illegal speech must incite "imminent lawless action." It could be argued that sharing the video fails that standard. Probably wouldn't fly in the US, but we're not talking about the US.

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

#117
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morality is relative but it isn't subjective. Slaughtering innocents for political purposes is a universally evil act.

It feels good to say stuff like that, and it's the kind of reality I want to live in, but my whole point is: - Define innocent - Define political - Define evil In way that is independent of the culture in which it takes place. It might even be possible to do so, or come close, when limited to current cultures and Humans. That's a far cry from proved as universal though. It's been quite a while since I read it, but I…

> It feels good to say stuff like that, and it's the kind of reality I want to live in, but my whole point is:

I think the opposite is true. It is gratifying to the logical mind to process this event through the lens of pedantic philosophical analysis, but in real life most things aren't so ambiguous and they definitely aren't ambiguous in this case.

> Define innocent

In this context I define innocent as "undeserving of abrupt and violent execution".

> Define political

In this context I define political as "of or with regard to government or government policy".

> Define evil

In this context I define evil as "a profoundly immoral act".

Seems pretty straightforward.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to read the story you linked (though it does seem interesting even though I am generally not a fan of yudkowsky's writings), but if you want to summarize it I don't mind addressing that summary.

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

#118

Scary how an ISP can just up and decide to block a website for hosting what they think is offensive. I guess it's the norm for China and Russia. What's scarier are the people cheering this as if it's a win.

> what they think is offensive. This is not a a daily instance of "he says", "she says" offensiveness. This is an act of terror, and these platform served as a propaganda media which ought to stopped.

So who determines that I can't see this video? Who determines what ISIS videos I should watch from live leak, twitter, etc? Should I be able to see the atrocities that are happening in Brazil? Who watches the watchmen?

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

#119
post #109
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Its such a slippery slope from censorship of bad websites to moving to censorship of good websites that the government does not like. Is it really, though, or do people just like the slippery slope fallacy a bit too much? Does everyone really think that if a government bans 4chan, no one and nothing is going to stop them from banning everything else because there's precedent now and nothing can be done? That's not h…

If Trump had the power to censor bad websites, think about how much effort he would currently be putting into censoring any website that talked about him badly. We should be glad he has no such power.

Needs to be noted, because a lot of people are very confused about this as you seem to be:

The government cannot direct the rating and censoring of material in NZ. It’s an independent commission operating under the strict legislation that establishes it and checked by the judicial system. If NZ had a Trump he could not order anything to be censored. That’s not how it works.

Like a lot of parliamentary systems, NZ agencies and commissions operate independently under the laws that establish them. In the US it’s very different, each new President comes in an appoints a huge number of positions that direct these agencies and those positions have tremendous political influence of them. Hence you can have a new EPA director appointed by someone like Trump who comes in expressly to cut down the EPA and who answers to Trump for his marching orders. This may be where some of this confusion comes from.

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

#120
post #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!"

You're right, it used to be very non-political, irreverent, and highly offensive, as in offensive humor. Now there's a whole lot of very sincere religious/political/racial hatred.

I also visited 4chan regularly in my teenage years, and this is the thing that jumps out at me. In the past, 4chan was a place where nothing was sacred and people who sincerely believed in anything were ruthlessly mocked. There were always the white nationalist types, but there were enough people making fun of them that it balanced out.

That former group has disappeared, and 4chan has become the biggest echo chamber on the Internet. There are stretches of hours and thousands of posts where there isn't a single dissenting political opinion.

The irreverence of 4chan was always the appeal. It has morphed into a lockstep belief system in a hero figure. What's the point of a website with anonymous posts and no rules if everyone is carefully agreeing with each other?

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