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Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

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Re: Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

#41

Post by jjulius »

cybersnowflake wrote: post #37
jjulius wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Dissenter was created by Gab, a far/alt-right online platform. Such groups are known for fostering hostile environments online towards people of various religions, races, cultural/political views, etc.. It is by no means a stretch of the imagination for Mozilla to claim that users of the app were using it for such purposes. As such, it would be apropos for Mozilla to remove an app that provides a platform for…

There is no sign at Gab saying 'no commies allowed' At its core, Gab itself is apolitical or at least far more so than its rivals. The left are welcome to use it as much as the right. The main difference is that Gab allows more freedom in many respects, which apparently is a rightwing thing to some people.

It might position itself as apolitical, but in practice it is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)

Re: Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

#42

Post by Nasrudith »

deogeo wrote: post #17
Nasrudith wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have to create a special message board that is the only place where you can say what you want to, perhaps you should think about what you are saying. That only shows that reception to what is being said is overwhelmingly negative. Society has an unfortunate long history of doing that for arbitrary and stupid things. There are legitimate reasons for using something like this. Granted with the "alt-right" it i…

> They laughed at Einstein but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown Off topic, but I don't think they laughed at Einstein. Special and general relativity were well received by the scientific community, weren't they?

Sort of - he got it published easily enough and the revered Max Planck praised it highly within a year and lectured on it but he certainly faced resistance. He had some allies who were themselves great mathematicians and physicists but he didn't exactly get the red carpet rolled out for him. It took four years after publication to get an associate professor position sufficient to resign from the patent office.

Re: Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

#43

Post by 0815test »

peterhadlaw wrote: post #15

It's stuff like this that makes it a far cry to call Mozilla "open" and "free"

Dissenters is a commercial platform, Mozilla are simply under no obligation to promote it or give it a spotlight under addons.mozilla.org. Unless you can point to a similar addon from some alt-left site that they have approved, there's no reason to suspect that this was a political decision.

Re: Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

#44

Post by cybersnowflake »

jjulius wrote: post #39
cybersnowflake wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True freedom of speech ultimately comes from a society's culture and morality not a law. The 1st Amendment doesn't mean much if the powerful can harass and intimidate its opponents into silence while still remaining in the technical letter of the law. Just like you'd probably wouldn't like it if women were denied employment opportunities because only 'men were created equal' How is this such a hard concept for libera…

Here's what I posted elsewhere in this thread - twice now - and is what so many people seem to be missing. It's not the subjects they're discussing, it's likely the manner in which their users are discussing them. >Mozilla themselves has said that they didn't remove it for political reasons [or "ideological censorship" as you put it], rather it was the language and vitriol being used on the platform. As an example, i…

>Mozilla themselves has said that they didn't remove it for political reasons [or "ideological censorship" as you put it]

So basically you're saying you'd be okay if there's one place you could speak freely and be heard (the internet) owned by one guy (the tech monopolies) and he could shut it down for everybody if one person said a bad word on it?

Btw Dissenter does preemptively censors bad language, and they reached out to Mozilla who failed to provide them with specific examples. The same Mozilla shining champion of civility which funds Antifa, the group that does such nonvitriolic things like beat people with bike locks.

>I'm not going to pretend to know that stuff like that was posted to Dissenter, but you and I both know that language like that is commonplace on alt/far-right platforms. It's by no means a stretch to imagine that those kinds of posts are what got Dissenter banned.

>they have every legal right to choose not to host that app.

Serious question for you, how do you feel about net neutrality and bakers and photographers having to work for SSM weddings?

Re: Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

#45

Post by cybersnowflake »

jjulius wrote: post #41
cybersnowflake wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no sign at Gab saying 'no commies allowed' At its core, Gab itself is apolitical or at least far more so than its rivals. The left are welcome to use it as much as the right. The main difference is that Gab allows more freedom in many respects, which apparently is a rightwing thing to some people.

It might position itself as apolitical, but in practice it is not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)

The only thing Gab/Dissenter itself does is have less speech restrictions than their competitors. Are you saying thats political?

Re: Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

#46

Post by netsharc »

kayfox wrote: post #30
jressey wrote: post #7

If you have to create a special message board that is the only place where you can say what you want to, perhaps you should think about what you are saying. This is so obviously not an issue of "free speech." Free speech means the government cannot prosecute you for what you say. Any company can tell you to fuck off for any reason though, and that's the free market all the "free speech" advocates love so much.

> If you have to create a special message board that is the only place where you can say what you want to, perhaps you should think about what you are saying. Such was discussing LGBT issues before the 2000s.

[flagged]

Re: Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

#47

Post by writepub »

0815test wrote: post #43
peterhadlaw wrote: post #15

It's stuff like this that makes it a far cry to call Mozilla "open" and "free"

Dissenters is a commercial platform, Mozilla are simply under no obligation to promote it or give it a spotlight under addons.mozilla.org. Unless you can point to a similar addon from some alt-left site that they have approved, there's no reason to suspect that this was a political decision.

yes yes - this was completely apolitical. The conservative bent of the community banned was completely incidental, just like ALL other bans of conservative thought by San Francisco based companies. Firefox is just being an neutral arbiter - nothing to see here folks, go home and celebrate true freedom: the freedom of SV companies to systemically censor conservative speech with impunity

Re: Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

#48

Post by writepub »

netsharc wrote: post #46
kayfox wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have to create a special message board that is the only place where you can say what you want to, perhaps you should think about what you are saying. Such was discussing LGBT issues before the 2000s.

[flagged]

> Ah, gotta love Nazis screaming "you have to tolerate my intolerance!".

Wow! Just casually name-calling someone a Nazi, because of a difference of opinion is just so damn 2019.

Here's a quick thought experiment for you - name ONE conservative who you DO NOT consider a Nazi. Just one.

And then maybe you'll realize that the problem isn't that the opposing philosophy is actual Nazism, it's that you've been trained to open a debate with the accusation of "You are a Nazi because you disagree with my politics. Prove otherwise"

Re: Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

#49

Post by writepub »

Playbook of valley companies in 2019:

- Systemically ban and censor conservative speech. Never-mind that 50% of the country and about 70% of the world adheres to the EXACT same, fairly reasonable opinions.

- Launch a massive PR campaign (opening salvo of which is accusations of Nazi adherence) against those crying foul, or pointing out the clear ultra-left bias in censorship and actions

- Claim that private companies hold no MORAL responsibility to uphold constitutionally guaranteed free speech laws

- Claim that the internet be treated as a utility, with free access to everyone, but ignore the fact that massive monopolies controlling the REAL utilitarian aspects of the internet (search, email, payments, hosting, cloud, etc. ) are all in cahoots to kill conservative speech, with cognitive dissonance of how they've combined to de-platform entire philosophies from the internet that they control

- Behave with absolute impunity with political agendas, and claim to be neutral

Re: Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

#50

Post by writepub »

syshum wrote: post #18
identity_zero wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

For the HN Community yes... Far-left / Socialist is the only "acceptable" way of thinking anything Libertarian, (which is labeled "far-right" now) should be shut down, out, and banned

> anything Libertarian, (which is labeled "far-right" now)

Not just HN. Almost all tech companies are HQ-ed (at least for policy making purposes) in and around San Francisco. And they ALL behave the same way - impose their world view with impunity on the rest of the population, at a scale unheard of in human history. Just ponder for a moment that some overpaid Mozilla censorship committee employee, enjoying his/her/zi $20 soy latte in their $4000/month studio in San Francisco got to shut down an entire community's online presence with a single click, because they found the speech there disagreeable (not illegal)

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