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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

#851
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…

I can't find anything in your comment that alludes to what being a terrible horrible utter piece of shit consists of. Do you mind elaborating?

Note that this is a sincere question, since I haven't had exposure to 4chan since before the Internet went mainstream, and even then it was fairly limited. I've heard horrible things about what it's become since, but I don't know much about it.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#853

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…

Mob rule and mob justice is a powerful strong drug. The more it is shown to work, the more that these errant acts of violence will be exploited to obtain a desired political outcome.

Of course people look for something to blame, and there’s nothing quite a satisfying as shooting the messenger.

It’s also convenient when a site is small enough, there’s not quite such a backlash when companies fall into PR ass-covering mode and terminate their service.

Now, there’s no forcing CloudFlare to keep hosting any particular site, and there’s no convincing the mob that bowing to their demands is a really piss poor long term strategy for everyone involved.

It takes very strong leadership to stand up against the mob and say “that’s no how we do things” and these days most people would rather just pile on, than risk the guilt by association.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#855

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…

[flagged]

These are bizarre and simplistic analogies to make. Are you really attributing >100 million people's deaths to a lack of free speech?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main issue with discussions on topics like this is a sort of fundamentalism. It's very easy to take a particular right (e.g., speech, property) and defend it absolutely. But rights are inherently social, and must be balanced against other people's rights. For example, I don't think my freedom of speech should trump Cloudflare's or Voxility's right to freedom of association. They should generally be able to decide…

> But rights are inherently social No, the founding fathers specifically said that freedom of speech is a God given right and not something which the government gives to a person, instead the government simply recognizes that right. They specifically said freedom of speech is a "Natural" right. Right to clean water is not a right, right to education is not a natural right in their terms. Right to speech, right to sel…

You seem to be arguing with some point I don't make. I'm saying rights only matter in a social context. If Elon Musk launches himself to Mars and lives alone there forever as a hermit, the concept of "rights" isn't useful there.

That said, I think rooting rights in somebody's mythological figures isn't a good idea. And "natural" in this case isn't much more meaningful. It's fine rhetoric, but it's not a very strong conceptual model.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#857
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use capitalization to emphisize your points in the future.

That’s the main and only thing you wanted to respond to from what I wrote?

Your thoughts on E2E are ridiculous, everyone needs E2E for many things they do every day. Isn't it a bit absurd to claim to be in favor of free speech in public, but against private speech?

Or is this copy pasta and I've missed the joke?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8chan incubated hate speech because no one challenged hate speech on 8chan. 8chan welcomed everyone, but everyone ignored 8chan. >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…

I've called out hate speech on 4chan and 8chan many times before. I've gotten called an "SJW cuck" a lot, and others doubled-down in posting shit gleefully when they saw their shit "triggered the libs". That was the fun part to them. To someone like me who isn't there just to challenge people, it's exasperating. I gave up and they didn't. I think certain site structures encourage different kinds of discussion. Imagin…

Do you have a blog with more insight?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#859
post #327

Didn’t know 8chan hosted their stuff at Voxility, it’s a small world. I’m saying this because Voxility is a Romanian company, I am Romanian, and my company used to also host our stuff at their premises until 3 or 4 years ago. I remember that on one of my visits there (there was always a hard-drive that needed to be handed in person or something like that) I’m 100% sure that I had bumped into what looked to be an FBI…

This wild speculation of yours is based on how the "agent's" pants matched their "snickers" ?

Business people wearing sneakers is more common in the US than elsewhere. When I came to the US I was like 'wow, so many of these people are planning on going for a jog during their lunch breaks!' Nope, people just wear running shoes with their slacks.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#860
post #578

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 problem with extremists is that they drive people who disagree with them away. I've been a fairly heavy user of 4chan for well over a decade now, and I even spent some time on 8chan. I like the anarchic, less ego-driven nature of anonymous image boards. You avoid most of the empty posturing from other social networks. I even think that 8chan was a great idea on paper. It's basically 4chan with Reddit's ability to…

>that they drive people who disagree with them away.

/leftypol/ was more or less just active on 8ch as /pol/, you'd be hard pressed to find any groups more diametrically opposed than that. people also often fail to take into account that the userbase was at varying points self reported to be upwards of 60% lgbtq and presumptively far more neurodivergent than more mainstream platforms. also worth noting that practically every mass shooter that has been newsworthy had an abundance of typical social media accounts, so the dangerous subset of fascists you're so worried about are already present on all the so-called moderate platforms. so who is actually dissuaded by this course of action? certainly someone motivated enough to plan and inflict mass-death upon a group of innocent people isn't gonna be kept away from extremist content simply because they have to take 15 minutes to set up tor browser.

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