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

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#621

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

khawkins wrote: post #436

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…

And yet, we let Islam continue to be preached in this nation. When will we recognize that extremist ideologies like these can not be allowed to fester? Freedom of speech needs its limits.

First they came for the ragh'ds, but that was ok cuz I didn't like em and who wears a carpet anyway. Then..

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#622

Post by DocTomoe » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

pickle-wizard wrote: post #277

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…

Relavent XKCD https://xkcd.com/1357/

Not really relevant, though. If a private platform becomes a systemically important entity that can effectively shut down legitimate public discourse, that is a very dangerous situation. Once a platform is big enough, it essentially becomes government-like in it's ability to surpress speech, and the same rules should apply to it.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#623

Post by irvwash » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

kaolti wrote: post #583

irvwash wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deciding to commit mass murder rarely happens in a vacuum. It typically happens when you surround yourself all day by people who tell you that mass murder is a good idea. Radicalization is a social phenomenon. I'm critical of censorship, but not because I think it's ineffective.

You've made a case for how radicalisation happens, you've not proved that banning words is effective against it.

Radicalization happens through words. You can ban radicalization by banning words.

That won't completely get rid of it, but it can make it a lot less accessible, which reduces the amount of radicalization that occurs. I don't think people start out with the intent to get radicalized. They stumble upon a place like /pol/ and see that it's interesting and so they stick around and gradually get convinced. It's much harder to stumble upon a Tor hidden service or a private chatroom than a publicly accessible webpage.

China's great firewall is not terribly hard to get around, but it's very effective regardless. Inconvenience is powerful.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#624

Post by djsumdog » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #468

ddebernardy wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm in agreement with Popper's view that societies should tolerate everything except intolerance. It draws a fine line between what's acceptable speech and what is not. And going by it, things like 8chan should get shut down. The line of thought you put forward, by contrast, rubs me in a very wrong way. It was used to justify, depending on the period and country, not allowing people to vote on the basis th…

>Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut What is that criteria? Because I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant. Would you agree that saying that a baker in Colorado must make a cake for a gay wedding is intolerant of the baker's belief? Because I'm certain a sizeable proportion of the US population would agree that it is intolerant.

The baker case is very very specific, because it came down to the question: Is the cake art? If it is, and your business is to make are, can you be compelled to make art against your beliefs? If I recall, the bake got rid of all custom cakes and got in further trouble for refusing to tell cupcakes to homosexual couples.

But going back to the above post: at one time homosexuality was considered this abhorred plague, just has bad as modern day Neo-Nazism and white supremacy. So who decides what is and isn't acceptable speech?

When you start closing down those roads, you easily squeeze out any descent or ability to form new moral ideas.

In the case of 8chan, you're spreading these people to even more constrained services that amplify their view. You don't get less hate; you just bury it underground and give them they feeling like they're being persecuted. It will make the situation worse, not better.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#625

Post by throwaway156503 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

Maarten88 wrote: post #593

psbmt wrote: post #503

>Personally I'm in agreement with Popper's view that societies should tolerate everything except intolerance. That invariably forces the political landscape to move to the left. Which, I guess, is the intended result of holding that point of view.

Because the truth has a liberal bias? What is the argument you are making against the seemingly neutral argument that defends tolerance? Why is the right at odds with tolerance?

What do people mean when they say, "truth has a liberal bias"? I don't understand this.

Edit: My intent is not to be facetious. I don't understand what this phrase means.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#626

Post by cookiecaper » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #294

tombert wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm on the same boat as you on this one; I tend to have a pretty libertarian view on free speech, but lately the bizarre rise of hyper-radical idiots on places like 8chan (and even YouTube to a lesser extent) has really made me question these things. It's very easy to shout the mantra of "Free speech!!! OMG!!!" but we gain nothing by acting like there aren't natural consequences to it. By having a liberal fre…

"Free speech" protections DO NOT APPLY to a private company deciding whether to provide internet services to something like 8chan. Period. I continue to be surprised at the level to which people misunderstand this.

Most people understand that fine. It's about freedom of speech as a social principle and value, not strictly a matter of law.

It's granted that people are within their rights to throw out speech they dislike and that there's a world of difference between severing a voluntary business relationship and the deployment of state force, but the implications of an anxious, PR-sensitive set of internet infrastructure providers is certainly fair game for discussion.

If we get into the habit of shutting down every site that attracts a spate of negative attention, it still has the aggregate effect of chilling free discourse. If a shooter came onto HN and posted a manifesto here, would it withstand the mainstream media onslaught?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#627

Post by stale2002 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #472

jolmg wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really that well informed of 8chan, but bringing it down, while practical, doesn't seem like the ideal solution. Isn't it just like covering your eyes and pretending the problem isn't there? The problem doesn't sound like it's 8chan, but rather these people and their ideologies. If 8chan was brought down, they'll just find another hub to congregate, but now we don't know where to reach them to talk. I thought…

8chan never got brought down. They just got dumped by their ISP and CDN. They are free to start their own CDN and ISP to host their content. And if they cannot find a private business willing to peer with them, they are free to offer alternative access methods (dialup?). They can even go set up a booth downtown and hand out flyers with access numbers. No free speech rights were trampled on, and no censorship took pla…

Hey, if you want to know the definition of censorship, it is right here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government,[5] private institutions, and corporations."

This is the wikipedia definition of censorship, so that makes your definition wrong.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#628

Post by Ajedi32 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #353

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, m…

If what 8Chan was doing was not legal, then perhaps they should have been shut down through an actual legal process, not an arbitrary decision by a cloud infrastructure provider.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#629

Post by kaolti » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

khawkins wrote: post #565

kaolti wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea. I find it quite ironic that HN of all places is generally speaking supportive of this. I do think though that the internet is kind of a different game though. I don't think anything can be banned altogether. People will always find a way. Ultimately we'll just end up creating new anonymous and distributed services where we can talk freely and corporations (lol) and governments can't dictate what is acceptable.

It's fascinating to compare it to the desperate fight for Net Neutrality. HN was hysterical when faced with a hypothetical threat, but when we see real examples of censorship the response is filled with apologist arguments and hand-wringing. The only difference seems to be who is doing the censoring. When it's Silicon Valley tech corporations with a well established left-wing bias, well then they're private businesse…

Haha good point. Sometimes it feels so ironic I wonder if there's actually a handful of us talking to mostly bots who are indistinguishable from actual people.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#630

Post by djsumdog » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #499

irrational wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut What is that criteria? Because I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant. Would you agree that saying that a baker in Colorado must make a cake for a gay wedding is intolerant of the baker's belief? Because I'm certain a sizeable proportion of the US population would agree that it is intolerant.

> I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant Not in the subject at hand. I think pretty much everyone reasonable agrees that "kill the {jews,muslims,hispanics}" (once more, folks, this was the THIRD ethnic massacre advertised on 8chan!) is intolerant, no? Can't we start there?

That isn't protected speech. Violence against specific people, and in some cases certain people groups (calls for direct violence) is not protected even in America. Saying you hope a whole group dies off or gets killed somehow is often protected though; or gets on gray lines. In most jurisdictions in the US, police will often move on credible threats of violence.