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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

#251

Post by hacknat »

What does free speech have to do with this? Cloudflare and other companies have 1st amendment rights as well. One of them is that they can serve customers as they like, as long as they are not violating the rights of a protected class. Political ideology or party affiliation is not a protected class, nor should it be. Twitter could ban every Republican on its platform tomorrow and it if the government tried to stop them the Supreme Court would likely side with Twitter.

Companies are allowed to discriminate against political ideology as much as they like. It’s their 1st amendment right to do so. So 1st amendment advocates should be on the side of company censorship, not the other way around.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#252

Post by 1000units »

1000units wrote: post #87
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.

And a note to the simpleton downvoters, so that they may possibly grow: my profile has contained an Arabic adoration of the Islamic God since before I posted the above comment. I am Roman Catholic and deeply oppose censorship of any kind.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#253

Post by jtx22 »

chachachoney wrote: post #161
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…

>> 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. People showed up to exercise their own first amendment rights, which is how the whole free speech thing works. Those with opposing points of view also showed up to demonstrat…

I guess we need to stand up to antifa then.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#254

Post by DuskStar »

magicalist wrote: post #130
rory096 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Cloudflare provides services to a number of Islamist terror organizations yes, and that entire article is about people trying to get them to take them down and the criminal statute they're using to force the issue, which is part of the GP's point. Not a lot of folks in the federal government hand wringing about deplatforming on that one.

And yet, Cloudflare didn't take them down proactively like they did with The Daily Stormer and now 8chan. Under what standards are sites like 8chan worse than the Taliban?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#255

Post by mrlala »

LargeWu wrote: post #120

Can any free speech absolutists explain to me the legitimate public interest that is served by allowing terrorist breeding grounds like 8chan to continue to operate?

The theoretical argument is simple- if you ban one kind of speech, where does it end? The line can keep getting moved closer until what's not allowed is in a gray area and that's not where we want to be.

However, the practical side of this is pretty clear.. hate speech is hate speech. It's not a debate. The people who are for being racist/bigots are wrong- plain and simple. So removing their forum of speech is OK in my book.

Still even after saying that- it's never that simple.. I think collectively the US does not want to turn into what parts of even europe has in which you can literally get in trouble just for saying things. And trying to "ban" even the clearest of wrong views is one step closer to getting somewhere we don't want to be.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#256

Post by nik736 »

yhamv wrote: post #7

Voxility GmbH? Did they really move 8chan to Germany, a country with very restricted speech?

How would you even come to the conclusion that it would be a german company? They are HQd in Romania and only have a virtual office address in Frankfurt, for their GmbH.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#257

Post by _bxg1 »

tepidandroid wrote: post #139

My opinion is that freedom of speech is a fine ideal to strive for, but it relies on having a stable society with some minimum level of education (moral and philosophical too, not just the technical kind). It requires people who are able to fully parse the implications of what they are hearing to make sound and rational judgements on the rejection of an idea or the embrace of it. It creates a moral duty for the peopl…

Put differently: this is why we can't have nice things

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#258

Post by corodra »

A bit out of the loop. The hell is 8chan? Similar to 4chan? Are the by the same people? I always knew 4chan was a cesspool, just like youtube comment sections. So, never ventured.

Next question, is there any actual evidence or proof that they're "apart of it"?

Literally, out of the loop and I trust a random person on HN a bit more than CNN. I saw the thing about Cloudflare here... was it yesterday? Day before? I figured, whatever, a private company can think what they want and do what the want as long as they're honoring the terms of the contract (as in there's a warning that service can be cut because of "our reasons").

Just curious about this 8chan thing and where the hell it came from.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#259

Post by Spellman »

spaginal wrote: post #179
eridius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's beyond clear to me that it absolutely had the potential to radicalize shooters and terrorists I mean, it literally radicalized white supremacist terrorists . There's no "had the potential" anymore, it's a fact. It also sounds like it held plenty of child porn, so I don't understand why it took until now for anyone to do anything about the site.

Are you of the belief that hatred and radicalization doesn’t exist in environments that lack free speech? Lot’s of places on this planet have hyper radicalized portions of their populations that commit aggregious acts of violence, and they lack free speech. Yet free speech is being used as the red herring to blame. Unequivocally, your assessment of these forums causing the radicalization is wrong. Plain wrong. These…

They may already exist, but that doesn't mean we should amplify their voices and give them the ability to recruit more to their cause and ideology.

Now, that's not to say disruptions of communication systems (e.g. censorship) is the right answer. But existence doesn't mean we shrug our shoulders and do nothing. At the very least you can stop encouraging and normalizing them.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#260

Post by Thaxll »

romaaeterna wrote: post #174

If we're going to have internet censorship, I don't want it to be a backroom thing. It needs to be transparent, auditable, appealable, with bright line rules and due process guarantees. It's unfortunate if we need to live with some level of censorship. But I don't accept it being carried out in back rooms by unaccountable companies operating hand-in-hand with illegal DDoS attacks. Put it out there in the open, and le…

You know private company do whatever they want if you're not happy just host your stuff elsewhere they're not accountable.
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