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

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#351

Post by ttul » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

bonestamp2 wrote: post #106

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…

> I guess you could say that free speech has limits that are acceptable. There are already limits to free speech that most people don't complain about. The most frequent example is defamation. I do like how Canada handles hate speed -- like defamation, it is illegal. There's really no benefit to protecting hate speech. If you argue it is a slippery slope, we're already on a slope with defamation so the benefits of ad…

Hate speech is illegal in Canada because it infringes on the right to security of the person - a Charter right. Freedom of speech is also protected, but the expression of one right cannot diminish the protection of another.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#352

Post by bilbo0s » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #319

_bxg1 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pretty much. It's a problem anyone doing privacy conscious software is going to run into, if it works it will be used by people generally agreed to be morally detestable (eg: child abusers or human traffickers). In a similar vein I think people will need to in general get comfortable with the fact that some technology will be used by bad groups and it will make it harder for law enforcement to catch and stop people b…

>In a similar vein I think people will need to in general get comfortable with the fact that some technology will be used by bad groups and it will make it harder for law enforcement to catch and stop people but the benefits for everyone else out weighs the downside...

Good luck with that.

I think we, as a society, may have been taken a bridge too far with the mass shootings. People are no longer interested in hearing about the "down side" of taking these guys out.

This should probably have been expected though, you swing the pendulum too far in one direction, it's naturally going to swing back in the other. Just kind of the nature of these things.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#353

Post by hrktb » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

Smithalicious wrote: post #215

This once again goes to show that you can do nothing illegal and still be virtually locked out of the internet. The viewpoint that "it's okay to kick 8chan off the internet" is not consistent with the viewpoint that "the internet should be neutral infrastructure". Take from that what you will. People are doing the "yada yada not entitled to a platform" thing, but the distinction between free speech and having a platf…

Inciting violence is not legal though.

It’s reasonable to cut support to players that relentlessly fail to comply with the rules.

The platforms are not turning against them, they are constantly abusing the ToS of these platforms .

Now some people disagree with the ToS in the first place, but it’s another discussion to be done at another plane. There has always been a filtering of what goes to a super wide audience, movies airing on public broadcast have always been filtered, the same logic applies to platforms as wide as reddit.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#354

Post by amyjess » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #298

idlewords wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who runs a public site with the discretion to ban accounts, no thanks. Due process means people will game your policies. We've had arbitrary internet censorship by site operators since day 1 and it works pretty well.

> Due process means people will game your policies. And? If your policies are liable to being "gamed", then either your policies or your enforcement is insufficient. And I say this with a pretty good deal of forum moderation experience. When you find something that your objectively defined rules miss, you update your rules appropriately and continue on. Life as a mod is about a million times easier, for both you and…

> Life as a mod is about a million times easier, for both you and your users, when you minimize the amount of judgment calls on edge cases that have to be made.

No, life is much easier when rule 0 is "don't piss off the people running the show", and anyone who complains about mod actions gets instantly permabanned.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#355

Post by huduyeue » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

hN commenters are basically proven themselves to be fascists who want to control all speech everywhere to ensure it contains enough of the progressive agenda otherwise they'll contort themselves to redefine free speech to not actually be free or even speech.

Bigots.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#356

Post by byuu » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:08 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…

Several of these extremist sites even forbid and censor attempts at calm, level-headed rebuttals to such hatred. They exist solely to propagate bigotry.

The dog and pony show from Google and Cloudflare of only stepping in after multiple mass shootings and tons of press coverage tells you all you really need to know about these companies' ethics. They react to sufficiently bad PR, not out of any set of principles, be they either freedom of speech (keeping these sites online) or reducing harm (deplatforming.)

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#357

Post by reshie » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #319

_bxg1 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pretty much. It's a problem anyone doing privacy conscious software is going to run into, if it works it will be used by people generally agreed to be morally detestable (eg: child abusers or human traffickers). In a similar vein I think people will need to in general get comfortable with the fact that some technology will be used by bad groups and it will make it harder for law enforcement to catch and stop people b…

yep. this is the whole concept of a double edged sword.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#358

Post by rebuilder » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

rnernento wrote: post #337

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 t…

Have you tried to engage in that kind of discussion? These people use troll tactics. The first rule for them is to attack any attempt to ask for civil discussion.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#359

Post by PhasmaFelis » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

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…

I've never figured out a good way to express this without sounding like a raving censor, but here goes: I feel like freedom of speech is a means to an end (the end being general freedom and liberty) more than an end in itself. When speech leads directly to mass fear or violence engendering mass fear, which leads to people willingly sacrificing their own and others' rights just for the promise of safety, then bitter realpolitik says that we may need to limit certain kinds of speech to maintain vital freedoms.

Of course that's dangerous thinking in itself, because there's always potential for abuse when you let someone decide what people aren't allowed to say. But there has to be a balance somewhere. I hope we can find it.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#360

Post by _trampeltier » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

boramalper wrote: post #182

What people (seemingly) fail to realise is that neither Cloudflare is the Internet nor Voxility is a public infrastructure. They are private enterprises which are free to act in however they want with regards to the service they provide as laid out in their contract. That is the danger of centralisation; when they remove their service, it feels as if your rights has been violated because (a) you have been so used to…

Yes they are private, and of course, they are free to choose there own customer.

On the other side, as long 8chan did nothing illegal, they shouldn't shutdown 8chan. If 8chan did something illegal, then for this we have the whole justice system.

If people think 8chan does something bad, but is not illegal .. then people should vote to change the law.

If private company's start to play the police .. it does end in a disaster. Special since today's web is a winner takes it all model. If you felt out of Youtube .. yeah, just bad for you. Apple credit card .. yeah, you can buy just almost everything .. yeah, bright future ..