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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

#701

Post by thenewnewguy »

dcolkitt wrote: post #521
hacknat wrote: post #251

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 t…

Imagine an alternate scenario. Say the major tech companies get fed up with Elizabeth Warren's calls to regulate them. Facebook removes all her groups. Cloudflare shuts down her websites. Youtube removes her videos. Google only leaves anti-Elizabeth Warren search results up, etc. Basically a major presidential candidate is completely locked out of having any presence on the Internet whatsoever. Would your reaction be…

This is false equivalence. Imagine if I could support a company when they help take down websites breeding hate speech and terrorists - and not support that same company if they interfered with an election.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#702

Post by trax »

onion2k wrote: post #678
tomohawk wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

8chan being shut down because their server supplied stopped doing business with them isn't an issue of free speech. You're really arguing that the 1st amendment means businesses can't refuse a customer, and that's just silly.

What is the customer is gay and the business doesn't want to serve homosexuals? Is the business allowed to do that?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#703

Post by ip26 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #506
api wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't censorship though. It's private companies refusing to host something. Nobody has been arrested for speech and there are no laws prohibiting speech that isn't overtly and specifically threatening or otherwise violates the "fire in a crowded theater" test.

Imagine an alternate scenario. Say the major tech companies get fed up with Elizabeth Warren's calls to regulate them. Facebook removes all her groups. Cloudflare shuts down her websites. Youtube removes her videos. Google only leaves anti-Elizabeth Warren search results up, etc. Basically a major presidential candidate is completely locked out of having any pretense on the Internet whatsoever. How many people who ho…

I doubt people would say it was fine. But it would not be a violation of the First. Let's review the text:

Congress shall make no law...

Although I suppose you could argue that once you have a handful of congressmen in your pocket, the First should apply to you too?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#704

Post by agar »

throwaway156503 wrote: post #625
Maarten88 wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This refers to a joke made by Stephen Colbert (while portraying his satirical persona of right-wing host Stephen Colbert) that "reality has a well-known liberal bias"[1].

It is generally used to point out that many of the stories pointed to by conservative media as exhibiting liberal bias are often simply reporting on facts that are incompatible with conservative talking points.

Examples include: relative sizes of inauguration crowds, whether China or US importers pay for tariffs, the contents of the Mueller report, crime statistics on undocumented immigrants, crime statistics on Muslim communities, merits of single-payer healthcare in other first-world countries, various statistics on gun crime, impact of republican vs. democratic presidents on government deficits, benefits (or lack thereof) of trickle-down economics/cutting corporate taxes, and the causes and mitigations of the US Great Recession that began in 2007/2008.

[1] https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4530018/colbert-quote

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#705

Post by grawprog »

malvosenior wrote: post #428
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…

There are other ways to deal with this than censorship. Why are there not FBI agents in /pol/ on 8chan actively chasing up leads on people who are threatening violence? It seems actually useful that these people are willing to make these kind of plans in the public eye. Force them underground and behind encryption and it will be harder to monitor. Does anyone know how law enforcement engages with places like 8chan? I…

Because they're busy spreading Russian interference propaganda.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20201868 https://ceinquiry.wordpress.com/2019/06/17/fbi-8chan/

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#706

Post by rexpop »

slg wrote: post #311
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…

>The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged. Forums like 8chan and 4chan effectively incubate hate speech by providing a safe space for anonymized, like-minded individuals to congregate, espouse their basest thoughts and feelings and receive gratification for it -all without challenge. Moderate people are repulse…

It's not a question of merely "allowing" hatred to grow, as though it were so much yeast on the wind, but of propagating the deliberate inculcation of white supremacism and misogyny, a campaign orchestrated by long-standing institutions of social control.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#707

Post by hestipod »

sneak wrote: post #651
danharaj wrote: post #15

"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the deaths of others your right to say it." How many free speech absolutists have "skin in the game", or whatever? Every alternative to censorship suggested always puts the burden on the victimized. Like, "if you debate it in public you will defeat these bad ideas". Few who are free speech absolutists roll up their sleeves and volunteer to take the action they presc…

”8channers” is no more a defining term than “CNN watchers”. A website is not an identity. Many of the people who read HN also read the n-chans. Be extremely careful about drawing conclusions about people based on the books they read or the websites they visit. This wasn’t a blow against 8chan or 8channers, this was a blow against everyone who reads things on the internet .

I've heard the same said about r/the_donald etc. That argument falls flat when an overarching theme is a reality. Terrible people always try and lump themselves in with the truly innocent who are oppressed to engender sympathy as victims. There are increasingly common intersections where a duck is a duck.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#709

Post by themagician »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #628
hrktb wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you imagine if, every time you wanted to drop a client you had to sue them and go to court to show why you didn't want to work with them?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#710

Post by afiori »

DrDimension wrote: post #92
danharaj wrote: post #15

"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the deaths of others your right to say it." How many free speech absolutists have "skin in the game", or whatever? Every alternative to censorship suggested always puts the burden on the victimized. Like, "if you debate it in public you will defeat these bad ideas". Few who are free speech absolutists roll up their sleeves and volunteer to take the action they presc…

The truth is that information does not radicalize people - censorship does. That's why the channers are as radicalized as they are - they've been censored everywhere else. Censor their last remaining outlets and you will increase violence by orders of magnitude. If ethno-nationalists are not allowed to make their political case with speech, what alternative would they have but violence? You obviously can't change the…

I partly agree with you, with some caveats. I would say that censorship increases the ability of information to radicalize.

It is sadly true that some people are capable to manipulate others without the need for censorship to isolate them first.

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