8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now • Hacker News Board

Re: 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now

#301

Post by irvwash » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #288

irvwash wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm guessing/assuming that 8chan is an anything goes censorship free community (like 4chan was/is?). And maybe it's not explicitly in support of racist ideals but instead refuses to condemn any ideologies or discussion More or less. More so than 4chan. 8chan is like Reddit (and unlike 4chan) in that it allows anyone to set up a subcommunity that they can moderate however they like. Only illegal content (and nude/se…

Think about that for a min. Racism is allowed, but not Spam. They will allow Racism, but actively moderate out Spam. What type of joke is this? There is no hiding behind it, they intentionally and actively allow it to become a breeding ground for violent racists. It's like what in the world did you guys imagining Al Qaeda recruiting msg boards l look like. "No Al Qaeda msg boards have people claiming for death to Ame…

> They will allow Racism, but actively moderate out Spam.

Reddit used to be like that as far as I know, and though there's plenty to criticize I don't think Reddit was intentionally set up to become a breeding ground for violent racists.

8chan's policy about spam is very different from how a policy against racism would look. What it in practice means is that if someone posts the same suspicious link on a hundred boards they may be hit by a global ban instead of leaving the mess for individual board owners to clean up. Even very principled proponents of free speech usually don't mind that.

There's no guarantee that spam will be cleaned up, it just doesn't get the protection of it being up to the board owner. For a long time 8chan didn't even have a functional anti-spam system. It's a practical matter foremost.

A rule against racism would be much more thornier. It would have more edge cases, and it would have to be enforced more consistently. It would be a lot more work and it would be more arbitrary. And it would go against the sensibilities of the original founder, who's a libertarian (I don't know if he's racist).

8chan wasn't created to be a breeding ground for violent racists. It was created to be a make-your-own-forum website with minimalist rules. For the first year, before gamergate drove more people to it, it was just that. In July 2014 an innocent roleplaying board was the most popular: http://web.archive.org/web/20140701141242/https://8chan.co/b...

Re: 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now

#302

Post by faissaloo » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

panpanna wrote: post #165

s9w wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is there no connection between pro-gamergate and threats, it's literally the other way round. And Charlottesville has absolutely nothing to do with this whatsoever

Literally the first item on a DGG search: "How Charlottesville and Gamergate are Completely Related" Second item: "Matthew Robert Warner: From GamerGate to Identity Evropa"

By this logic Zoe Quinn is the reason for the rise of 21st century nazism.

Re: 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now

#303

Post by mikelyons » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

inawarminister wrote: post #237

fapjacks wrote: post #129

People seemed to have invented writing to keep track of grain inventories, and to record for all eternity the great moral decline of the world caused by the doings of the author's political enemies, and if only they had the tools to stop the Bad Ideas from spreading, why, we could all live a utopian existence of pure harmony.

The first dictatorship to crack the secret of the mind will be the first eternal regime, in all likelihood. For a certain definition of eternity, at any rate.

What do you think Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, and 1 or 2 others have done?

Re: 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now

#304

Post by throwaway5d097 » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

irvwash wrote: post #301

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about that for a min. Racism is allowed, but not Spam. They will allow Racism, but actively moderate out Spam. What type of joke is this? There is no hiding behind it, they intentionally and actively allow it to become a breeding ground for violent racists. It's like what in the world did you guys imagining Al Qaeda recruiting msg boards l look like. "No Al Qaeda msg boards have people claiming for death to Ame…

> They will allow Racism, but actively moderate out Spam. Reddit used to be like that as far as I know, and though there's plenty to criticize I don't think Reddit was intentionally set up to become a breeding ground for violent racists. 8chan's policy about spam is very different from how a policy against racism would look. What it in practice means is that if someone posts the same suspicious link on a hundred boar…

A global ban for promoting genocide or murder doesn't seem too complicated

Re: 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now

#305

Post by finnthehuman » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #241

davesmith1983 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It's right to learn, even from the enemy.” - Ovid. If you do not learn what motivates an extremist you will not be able to prevent other extremists from committing similar acts.

I think we are all well aware of what motivates these killers by now. Giving them more of a platform and audience won’t reduce their murders - it will bring them more followers.

>we are all well aware of what motivates these killers by now

The memes we tell eachother about who they are and their motivations are do not match what people who actually try to study it have found.

Re: 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now

#306

Post by matt-attack » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

codysan wrote: post #254

matt-attack wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that a google search for "8chan" doesn't return a link to it anywhere on the first page of results (for me).

It's been, along with some other *chans, scrubbed from Google search results for quite some time now.

Interesting. Didn’t know Google censored like that. I guess it was a bit naive of me. Any list of known sites censored by Google? I’d be interested in visiting them...

Re: 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now

#307

Post by darawk » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #136

darawk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem though is that numbers aren't really the salient characteristic here. If some gang kills 5 members of another gang, that's not really a "mass killing" in the sense that this El Paso thing was.

Not ideologically, but very much in the sense that the state has lost control of ensuring the safety of its citizens, which is what it boils down to at the end of the day. There are very straight-forward steps to be taken to reduce both gang violence and the fanatic mass shootings, and they're not being pursued.

Ya sorry. They are definitely in certain senses the same thing. But in others they're not. I think when thinking about causes the random killings are important to consider as a group though.

Re: 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now

#308

Post by irvwash » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

throwaway5d097 wrote: post #304

irvwash wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will allow Racism, but actively moderate out Spam. Reddit used to be like that as far as I know, and though there's plenty to criticize I don't think Reddit was intentionally set up to become a breeding ground for violent racists. 8chan's policy about spam is very different from how a policy against racism would look. What it in practice means is that if someone posts the same suspicious link on a hundred boar…

A global ban for promoting genocide or murder doesn't seem too complicated

It's still more work, because some people will get upset that they're not allowed to promote genocide. It still has edge cases (I've seen some hairy examples from Facebook moderation guidelines). It's also still more of a free speech issue than deleting spam is.

That doesn't mean such a ban would be bad, but it is complicated, and someone who doesn't like genocide might still not want it.

Re: 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now

#309

Post by r721 » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

chvid wrote: post #15

Does anyone have an idea of how big 8chan and 4chan is in terms of users? Just from the visible activity in there I can see they must be massive. I think Slate is incorrect in describing them as expression of traditional neo-nazism. To me they are quite their own thing. Born out of Anime culture and gaming-culture becoming a playground for role playing, trash talking, trolling, real-life pranks degenerating into what…

>Does anyone have an idea of how big 8chan and 4chan is in terms of users?

SimilarWeb (Alexa competitor) estimates that 4chan has 73M monthly visits (not visitors!), and 8chan has 16M monthly visits:

Re: 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now

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Post by erik_seaberg » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

spaced-out wrote: post #293

davesmith1983 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we? Because articles such as this seem to blame 8chan and 4chan (they never mention the rest of the site which has stuff from /g which is GNU stuff and the transexual and gay communities on there). Back in the 90s they blamed Doom, Heavy metal and Rap music. In the 1950s and 60s they blamed horror / slasher comics. As for giving them a platform and an audience bringing more followers, firstly this is terminology…

>Almost every-time one of these racists are actually spoken to the vast majority of the population reject their message. Deplatforming is the population rejecting their message.

Deplatforming looks a lot like an authoritarian quarantine of a message that is on the verge of spreading. It lends credibility that isn't deserved.