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8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

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Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#81

Post by sarah180 »

RandomTisk wrote: post #28
jredwards wrote: post #16

Earlier 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…

I think we have pretty good evidence in recent years that this is not how things really work. Those filters and algorithmic steering just provides a way to keep people in their bubble. What you’re describing is basically what YouTube was: allow anything legal but use sophisticated software to show people what they’ll respond to positively. The radicalization this led to is well documented at this point.

I’m not really in favor of what CloudFlare’s done here, but it’s really a fact of basic statistics that exposing the mainstream to well-made propaganda is far more dangerous than exposing radicals to the mainstream.

Imagine 1% of non-radicalized people exposed to radicalism become dangerous and 50% of radicalized people are de-radicalized by exposure to the mainstream (laughably optimistic). If you start with 100 million non-radicals and 500 thousand radicals, you have a 125% increase in radicalization.

This is how we now have so many flat earthers. When you have massive reach, it’s easy to grow your numbers.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#82

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #23
nilkn wrote: post #4

I've generally been on the free speech side of this debate, as some of my previous comments on HN will show. With 8chan, I legitimately don't know what my opinion is. I've read it before, and I spent a few hours reading it this weekend, and it's beyond clear to me that it absolutely had the potential to radicalize shooters and terrorists. I'm not referring to the simple use of racial or ethnic slurs -- of course this…

You could simply say that threat actors that are allowed to post in the open are much more accessible and predictable than ones who do not.

You could say that. But you'd be wrong.

There is absolutely no evidence that the 8chan circle-hate happening out in the open has had any mitigating effect. It only made it accessible to even the technically illiterate among the potential audience.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#83

Post by Meekro »

commanderjroc wrote: post #6

I 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…

Little known fact about the phrase "fire in a crowded theater": it was coined in a criminal case against a man who was distributing leaflets criticizing the draft during World War 1. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction by comparing those leaflets to "shouting fire in a crowded theater" -- even though most readers here would agree that those two things are nothing alike.

I think there's a lesson in that: when we tolerate any censorship, it will inevitably be used by the powerful to oppress the powerless. If the powerful need to compare the targeted speech to "fire in a crowded theater" or "Nazism" or whatever, they'll do it whether it makes sense or not.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#84

Post by diminoten »

atonse wrote: post #49
Alex3917 wrote: post #30

IMHO 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.

A tale as old as the Internet (older!) is people arguing about how we represent our morality through legal code.

The First Amendment is a law, but it's an imperfect representation of an idea, and that idea is that everyone has a right to (among other things) express ideas free from organized oppression. A lot of people see "organized oppression" to be exclusively possible by a governing body, but some others see that to mean the platforms themselves.

"The First Amendment" is oftentimes used as a conversational shortcut to talk about the moral right of expression. Is it entirely accurate? No, and accuracy matters. However, the conversation doesn't die when the correction is made. Here, it's true that CloudFlare isn't in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, however the argument being made is that they have a moral obligation to stay a "dumb pipe", to prevent the oppression of a minority voice.

I'm not making that argument, I just wanted to point out the nuance of invoking "The First Amendment" here, that it's often not literally a reference to the legal authority of the private entity in question.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#85

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

craze3 wrote: post #53
RandomTisk wrote: post #8

I'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: find a better outlet for your potential.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#87

Post by 1000units »

commanderjroc wrote: post #6

I 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…

If 8Chan was a breeding ground for Islamic Extremists would people be okay with still existing?

Strangely enough, most people who find censorship ideologically palatable consider Jihadists a more sympathetic group than Incels. Note that ISIS beheadings have been subject to far less censorship than the Christchurch shooter's propaganda, for example.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#88

Post by bena »

Alex3917 wrote: post #30

IMHO 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…

Wow. You're both all over the place and wrong.

DDoSing doesn't "violate the first amendment" anymore than a loud bar violates my first amendment rights.

The concept of free speech and the first amendment aren't the same thing. The first amendment, in part, attempts to stop the government from violating its citizens' free speech.

Yelling over you does not violate your rights. Not giving you something does not violate your rights.

Another right the first amendment guarantees is the right to assemble. That means I can associate with whomever I want. That means Cloudflare can associate with whomever they want. They choose not to associate with 8chan. That is their choice and their right. We cannot force Cloudfare to associate with 8chan.

Also, what does Charlottesville have to do with anything here? Are you trying to say the guy running over others is guilty of violating the "shouters" first amendment rights? And that they should have predicted that "shouting at white nationalists" means they would get run over? And how does that remind you of Cloudflare not hosting 8chan? Did they run a car through the server?

Everything is covered by the first amendment.

So. It's a real good look for CloudFlare because they're no longer the company that associates with white nationalists.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#89

Post by Alex3917 »

aqme28 wrote: post #64
Alex3917 wrote: post #30

IMHO 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.

> Furthermore, you're really blaming the victim in your analysis of Charlottesville.

Well they're both the victims and the perpetrators. It's not legal to drive over them, but it's also not legal for them to try to prevent the people from organizing the rally from speaking.

Stuff like this has been happening for hundreds of years, there's actually a reason why the laws are the way they are.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#90

Post by rory096 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #76

We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society. What 8chan is doing is exactly the same, minus the Islamist part, yet there's hypocrisy in how they're treated vs e.g. the social media wing of ISIS. These people are trying to kill as many of us as possible. In no way should society accept it. It's simple societal self-defense. Ro…

Cloudflare provides services to a number of Islamist terror organizations: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cloudflare-cybersecurity-terr...
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