[flagged]
Could you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? Especially not ideological flamebait.
8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
61–70 of 1001 posts
Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
#62IMHO this reflects poorly on CloudFlare. The supreme court has ruled time and time again that the right to free speech implies the right to be heard. While CloudFlare obviously isn't legally required to serve 8chan, the only service they are really providing is making it so that 8chan can't be DDOS'd. And DDOS'ing is very clearly a tactic that violates the first amendment. So really by no longer serving 8chan, the on…
The First Amendment is completely irrelevant to this situation. No relation whatsoever. CloudFlare is a private company.
When Facebook and Twitter started de-platforming right-wing types like Alex Jones and Milo Yannopoulis, the actions-of-a-private-company-are-beyond-criticism types immediately defended them with “it’s not like they’re being thrown off the internet entirely - they can always create their own websites!” Well now, they are being thrown off the internet entirely. And a disturbingly large number of people think this is a positive thing.
Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are not fringe will tend to abandon sites that embrace people who are, even tacitly. Sites that create havens for them will naturally tend to become sites that consist almost solely of them.
That's been the status quo up until now, but it doesn't have to be. We're moving towards orwellian style censorship at a breakneck pace with SV leading the charge. Any violent thug can go spread their message in the town streets as long as they're not causing a disturbance. It doesn't happen very much, because it requires effort and it's sure to attract opposition. That opposition is necessary, like anti-bodies attac…
> That's been the status quo up until now, but it doesn't have to be. We're moving towards orwellian style censorship at a breakneck pace with SV leading the charge.
Very few people actually want such a site arrangement. Believe it or not, I have no interest in interfacing with people who want to kill me unless they are open to honest and rational debate, which few are. One of the reasons I enjoy Hacker News is because I know won't have to deal with the type of people that will frequent the fringe elements of the style of site you are advocating for.
Also, I'd hardly call a business led moratorium on speech advocating terrorism and genocide "moving towards Orwellian style censorship". Absolutely nothing is stopping these individuals from standing up their own server and hosting this content themselves. They aren't banned by an ISP. Moreover, business owners should be allowed to express their opinions too, including who to do business with.
Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
#64IMHO this reflects poorly on CloudFlare. The supreme court has ruled time and time again that the right to free speech implies the right to be heard. While CloudFlare obviously isn't legally required to serve 8chan, the only service they are really providing is making it so that 8chan can't be DDOS'd. And DDOS'ing is very clearly a tactic that violates the first amendment. So really by no longer serving 8chan, the on…
I agreed with you up to here.
> And DDOS'ing is very clearly a tactic that violates the first amendment.
I don't follow this, much less find it "very clear." DDOSing is a crime and the prevention of it is a service provided by a third party. It's not a free speech issue.
Furthermore, you're really blaming the victim in your analysis of Charlottesville.
Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
#65I guess you could say that free speech has limits that are acceptable. You know you can't yell fire in a crowded room and not get litigation and charges brought against you. So, maybe 8chan just ran past the fine line of hate speech vs encouraging acts of hate. I.e you can be racist but you cannot encourage acts of extremism. If 8Chan was a breeding ground for Islamic Extremists would people be okay with still existi…
Did you know that the "fire in a crowded room" metaphor comes from Schenck v. United States in which Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr used the metaphor to defend the criminality of protesting the military draft?
I'm not sure if that's the kind of history you want to align yourself with.
Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
#66I'm still waiting for a new platform to take the world by storm: The freedom of Gab, with sane content filtering options to make it look as tame as reddit so by default users don't see all the fringe crap, but lets them if they really want, right to the legal edge.
I've been working on something like this for awhile. Any ideas on other killer features that are necessary for it to succeed? (no pun intended)
Sane defaults. Option to not see filtered content, but see a note saying "these many comments were hidden" (and a way to see them). Both AI-based filtering (e.g. for porn & gore), and user-moderated lists (e.g. a left-moderated list of "hateful neo-Nazis" and a right-moderated list of "crazy leftists").
I hope you make it!
Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm of the opinion that if we suppress it, it doesn't go away. When it comes back, it's much harder to control. The available evidence says the opposite is true. http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf The way to deal with the "bad guys" is for private businesses to not give them a platform to spew their hate from. And it's up to us to pressure these private businesses to do that.
The "bad guys" just went somewhere else. This doesn't fix the problem it just pushed the problem away from reddit. > And it's up to us to pressure these private businesses to do that. No it isn't. I am fed up of something I like being ruined by moral busy bodies such as yourself. My friend and I like the "edgy" jokes because we work in environments where you have to be political correct and I need to let off some ste…
> Censorship and harassing companies that run image board won't fix the problem. All you will do it hide it.
And it will come back much worse, and you won't know how to recognize it or fight it.
> My friend and I like the "edgy" jokes
Liberals like to make off-color jokes too, they're just in denial about it.
Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
#68I'm still waiting for a new platform to take the world by storm: The freedom of Gab, with sane content filtering options to make it look as tame as reddit so by default users don't see all the fringe crap, but lets them if they really want, right to the legal edge.
I've been working on something like this for awhile. Any ideas on other killer features that are necessary for it to succeed? (no pun intended)
Yes, a couple:
1. Make users tag their content if it touches on certain topics and use harsh punishment if they fail to. If it's fringe content for example, make them tag it as such so default users will not see it unless they really want to. If someone doesn't know their ramblings are racist, they should be banned on incompetence grounds and not due to censorship.
2. Rethink real time posting. It's nice, but a 1 minute delay would be very beneficial. You could even conscript volunteer users, perhaps give them "free premium" accounts that act as sentinels for all new content so they can see all new content in real time, like a mod of sorts, and can flag inappropriately tagged content as such so it's kicked back to the poster as "You forgot to add a violence tag".
Essentially the only people who should be de-platformed are those who are either banned for legal reasons or because they're simply too incompetent or unwilling to tag their content with appropriate fringe tags.
Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
#69IMHO this reflects poorly on CloudFlare. The supreme court has ruled time and time again that the right to free speech implies the right to be heard. While CloudFlare obviously isn't legally required to serve 8chan, the only service they are really providing is making it so that 8chan can't be DDOS'd. And DDOS'ing is very clearly a tactic that violates the first amendment. So really by no longer serving 8chan, the on…
> It reminds me a lot of Charlottesville, where people showed up to try to shout over the white nationalists and it just ended up with a bunch of people getting run over by a car. As if something like that happening wasn't entirely predictable.
Wait, what are you trying to say here? That these people deserved to get run over because they dared to shout at white nationalists??
Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The First Amendment is completely irrelevant to this situation. No relation whatsoever. CloudFlare is a private company.
When Facebook and Twitter started de-platforming right-wing types like Alex Jones and Milo Yannopoulis, the actions-of-a-private-company-are-beyond-criticism types immediately defended them with “it’s not like they’re being thrown off the internet entirely - they can always create their own websites!” Well now, they are being thrown off the internet entirely. And a disturbingly large number of people think this is a…
But they're not being thrown off the internet entirely! There are other services they can create or use (voat, gab). The internet itself is still open for them to use.