8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service • Hacker News Board

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#331

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#332

Post by DuskStar » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

sagichmal wrote: post #165

Meekro wrote: post #153

When I was much younger, I remember being filled with wonder when I learned about the Skokie case[1], where the ACLU went to court to protect the rights of Nazis to hold a rally in a mostly-Jewish town. "Wait, they faced down criticism from every direction, and took a massive loss in donations, to stand up for the fundamental rights of people they despise? Is this what liberals do? I want to be a liberal! " Sadly, if…

Not sadly, but hopefully! Free speech absolutism is a maladaptive local optima. Free speech isn’t an end in itself, it’s a means, a tool, that every society must use to create just and ethical outcomes.

And the reason we had free speech absolutism was that no one should be able to dictate what the proper "just and ethical outcomes" should be. Is today's morality the end of all things? By locking down speech, what developments will we prevent?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#333

Post by penagwin » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

ulkesh wrote: post #248

piker wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What people (seemingly) fail to realise is that neither Cloudflare is the Internet nor Voxility is a public infrastructure. Everyone realizes that. We're past relying on the First Amendment argument.

> Everyone realizes that. Based on some of the posts in this thread, I disagree.

The arguments are generally over how private entities with relatively control of communications are regulated, not that the entities are private.

You can only pull the "They're a private entity - just choose not to do business with them" card until they're large enough to the point were you don't have an option (free market forces stop working), at which point regulators generally step in.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#334

Post by cortesoft » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #187

cortesoft wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech does not require that we give people a platform. Free speech also means that everyone can decide to turn their backs on people saying these sorts of things, and not let them use the things we have built to spread their message.

>Free speech does not require that we give people a platform. That's true! Unfortunately it gets a little more complicated than that. As providers enjoy PLATFORM protections that align with the ideas of free speech. Meaning they will enjoy legal immunity from content they host so long as they won't decide who gets a voice or why so long as the content is legally allowed. They aren't liable because they didn't have a…

I think it is ridiculous to hold the position that you aren't allowed to block ANY content if you don't want to be held liable for things people say on your platform.

We can't hold a platform liable for content because it is technically impossible to perfectly block infringing content, so we realize it is unfair to hold platforms accountable.

However, this doesn't mean a platform can't make ANY effort to control what content is on their system without losing this protection. YouTube doesn't lose safe harbor protection just because they have contentid...

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#335

Post by s9w » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

So the campaigns against free speech show results. The wheels are in motion, the dominoes are falling. Funny how here on HN the use of the term "free speech absolutists"/"free speech absolutism" has absolutely skyrocketed for example. So are these the last days of the internet? 4chan is still there, voat too (although barely) - but I don't know how much longer. 100% legal sites are taken offline for absolutely no reason at all besides being on the "wrong side". And the internet is cheering. What a sad time

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#336

Post by sergiotapia » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

We need a truly distributed way to host content and communicate. We shouldn't need cloudflare, aws, stripe or any other monopoly to police free speech.

Think of our children and what we're going to leave them. Is this the internet we had as kids? It wasn't.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#337

Post by rnernento » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

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…

What makes you say it's unchecked though? These are anonymous imageboards where ANYONE can say ANYTHING, there isn't anything stopping you from challenging them?

Part of me wonders if we should be taking better advantage of this opportunity to reach out the people posting. Mental illness is clearly in play, but can't we as a society do better? We should be reaching out to these people and at least trying to wrestle them back to sanity.

I think if anyone really believes shutting down a bunch of open forums will reduce the number of mass shootings they are delusional. This is a mental health issue AND a gun control issue and that's where we should focus efforts.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#338

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

fyrabanks wrote: post #297

mieseratte wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society. I certainly would tolerate those sites. Free speech arguments aside, you can't kill the hydra, but you can severely degrade intelligence operations watching that hydra. Best case the bad guys all end up on sites already being surveilled, worst case they slip under the radar. We h…

Exactly this. These sort of folk started congregating on 8chan when they got pushed out of 4chan. I certainly don't condone mass shootings, white supremacists, etc., but if you think denying 8chan hosting is going to solve this problem, you are sorely mistaken. All it does is force these people into more concentrated forums where there is less push back and opposing views to their radical ideas. Ultimately, it forces…

On the other hand making them harder to access also makes the ideas spread slower because if you get all of say white supremacist sites off Google you massively cut down on the number of random 'normies' that will fall in and get swept up in the group. Same thing applies but is probably even more effective for getting groups off the regular internet all together because then you have to convince someone to install TOR (or whatever the new flavor of the month is) to get them into the funnel.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#339

Post by gamblor956 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

1000units wrote: post #252

1000units wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So that you may grow:

The Islamic God and the Catholic God are one and the same.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#340

Post by eridius » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

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…

This isn't a free speech issue. We have free speech in most parts of our country without radicalization. This is an issue of a specific environment that actively celebrates hatred and awful behavior. "Free Speech" is a red herring. Just because it's legal to say this stuff doesn't make it okay to say it, and it's society's job to stamp out this kind of thing.