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

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#381

Post by Smithalicious » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

allemagne wrote: post #362

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…

I get that you're trying to address a larger philosophical question, but what action are you actually suggesting in this particular instance? Should Cloudflare be forced to host 8chan? Even more than YouTube/Twitter, this seems like a clear case of business owners deciding that 8chan is too much of a liability to do business with.

This is a good point that I do not have a solution to. I do see that "I think the internet should be a neutral platform", "I think that the internet should be run by private companies" and "I think that private companies should be free to decide who to do business with" is also a set of incompatible beliefs (that I personally hold). Thankfully, I do not need to have all the answers to point out the issue :)

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#382

Post by adrr » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

rory096 wrote: post #90

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...

If 8chan or dailystormer never made the news, cloudflare would still be hosting them. It isn’t public opinion that is the big factor, enterprise client won’t use controversial services. Having a few large enterprise customers call up saying they can’t be hosted with a hate site is what made the CEO of cloudflare flip his decision.

I do think cloudflare will be forced to be more palatable to enterprise customers if they go public. One biggest factors why I don’t use them is who they provide access to.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#383

Post by malvosenior » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #239

nilkn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on the record here defending /r/The_Donald. I'm even on the record saying I didn't think it should be quarantined and that I don't think it should be banned in the future. It takes a lot for me to wonder if something actually should be censored. I certainly wouldn't have been on the side of censoring Howard Stern. Radicalizing terrorists to such an extent that they actually go through with it -- multiple times --…

/r/The_Donald is not very far from the kind of hatred and prejudice used on 8chan. White supremacists use places like /r/The_Donald to "normalize" ideologies and move the overton window far enough from normal that the extremer places like explicit calls to violence on 8chan are now palatable. It's all part of the same pipeline.

This is the slippery slope that people worry about and why they fight against banning things like 8chan. First it's banning 8chan, then it's /r/The_Donald. What's next?

Mass shooters are a problem that must be dealt with. Pretending that everything to the right of mainstream Democrats is a pipeline to mass shooters that must be silenced is the type of thing that radicalizes people. It's unduly oppressive and it dehumanizes people you may not happen to agree with.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#384

Post by ssully » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

Pigo wrote: post #242

anewguy9000 wrote: post #143

meanwhile, to us canadians, it's painfully obvious that the problem isn't websites, but guns. curbing free speech is not going to solve this problem for you.

That's an extremely narrow view of a nuanced issue. We have divisive cultural issues, a severe mental health problem, an opiate addiction problem, and problems with access to guns in some areas. We also have a huge country. We also have a huge country, taking away guns from people in Alaska will solve nothing. How's the knife banning in London going btw?

While I get your point about guns in Alaska (I am assuming you mean there aren't mass shootings happening there), I think your overall statement is misguided. Alaska has the highest suicide rate [1] and second highest murder rate per captia in the USA [2].

I didn't pull articles for this, but it's pretty widely accepted that easy access to firearms directly ties to increases in suicide and murder.

[1]: http://dhss.alaska.gov/SuicidePrevention/Documents/pdfs_sspc...

[2]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_homicid...

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#385

Post by mopsi » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #243

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…

It's fine, we can get rid of the bad. It's not impossible to tell good and bad apart, so we don't need to keep the bad if we also want the good. The slopes are not that slippery. Germany isn't a dystopian hell-hole because they banned Nazism.

> Germany isn't a dystopian hell-hole because they banned Nazism.

Despite several recent high-profile banning attempts, Germany still has a nazi party, established in 1964. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_G...

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#386

Post by api » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #261

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 lost good friends to 4chan/8chan. They were obsessed. At first it was cat pictures and memes, but it went way downhill from there. I've watched those sites cause the transition from normal, interesting, reasonable, open minded, intelligent, happy human beings, to horrible inexcusable pieces of shit who I never want to have anything to do with ever again. It's not just that they inspire a few shooters and mass mu…

The 'chans seem almost like a leaderless cult. I've also seen people get completely sucked into them in this really honestly creepy way. I suppose it's like a subculture but minus virtually everything positive like socializing with real human beings and having real experiences.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#387

Post by tdb7893 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

Meekro wrote: post #83

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 t…

Yeah but on the other hand you shouldn't be able to shout fire in a crowded theater so you need some censorship. As with like 99% of political arguments is about finding the line because the absolutist arguments generally end up kinda silly.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#388

Post by manigandham » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

byuu wrote: post #356

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…

Censorship rarely, if ever, solves anything. These companies are not crime-fighting services and will have no impact on criminal activity.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#389

Post by alanr » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

g00s3_caLL_x2 wrote: post #204

anewguy9000 wrote: post #143

meanwhile, to us canadians, it's painfully obvious that the problem isn't websites, but guns. curbing free speech is not going to solve this problem for you.

https://dailycaller.com/2015/10/12/remember-the-2007-harvard... It's interesting that the link that was @ Harvard with a pdf of the results (that Harvard published...) is now a broken link. Here is a working copy: https://www.garymauser.net/pdf/KatesMauserHJPP.pdf Gary Mauser who is also a Candadian criminologist. Interesting indeed. https://www.sfu.ca/~mauser/

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/harvard-flaw-review/

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#390

Post by DangerousPie » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

_trampeltier wrote: post #360

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 d…

Nobody is shutting them down. Cloudflare (a private company) is just choosing to no longer work with them. 8chan is completely free to operate their own servers.