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Covid-19’s impact on Tor

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Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#101

Post by notechback »

goodrubyist wrote: post #75
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACLU has largely transitioned away from civil rights absolutism towards progressive advocacy. They haven't entirely tossed it out the door, and still sometimes defend the civil rights of non-progressive groups, but the modern ACLU definitely feels it's important to contextualize liberties.

Woah, took me some time to digest this -- "contextualize liberties" must be the most Orwellian phrase in existence, only thing that might come close is another phrase you used, "civil rights absolutism."

In most countries all democratic parties are allowed, but parties that plan to abolish the democratic system are not. Is this a curb on civil liberties or just a reasonable stance?

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#102

Post by tchaffee »

nisuni wrote: post #91
modwest wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The famous “yelling fire in a crowded theory” test for free speech is an example of contextualizing liberties. There is nothing truly Orwellian about it. “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins” is another example. Society is a context where we exercise our liberties.

The yelling fire example is an extreme edge case, and it’s usually used by people who would like to limit freedom of speech much more than that. I’ve never heard it being used genuinely not even once. I find it irritating: you don’t want freedom of speech? State than openly and tell me why.

> It's usually used by people who would like to limit freedom of speech much more than that.

Source with stats? Here's my anecdotal counter evidence: I only ever hear it used by people who don't want to limit speech except when it will cause immediate physical harm.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#103

Post by andrepd »

soulofmischief wrote: post #88
yingw787 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that is interesting. I donate to the ACLU monthly and I haven't gotten anything related to the pandemic, just regular board of directors voting. ...are they working on the EARN IT act by any chance?

In Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone , he talks about how several independent studies have elucidated that in modern times, civil engagement is at an all-time high when one considers the average number of civil group memberships per American (It's greater than one!), however the average number of Americans holding leadership positions within a civil group has plummeted. We also attend far fewer in-person events. The r…

>Local canvasing could be far more effective than distributing online propaganda.

I tend to believe that, but are you aware of any studies that try to show that?

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#104

Post by andrepd »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #62
roenxi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just quickly glancing at Wikipedia [0] it looks like most of the major line items for the LGBTQ+ agenda have been part of US Federal law for about 5+ years. The LGBTQ+ community are basically ordinary people from all walks of life, including prominent names like Tim Cook and Pete Buttigieg. The community has I believe explicit public support from culture generating machines like Hollywood and political entities li…

There are still a few residual gay rights issues, but over the past few years, LGBTQ+ rights has come to primarily refer to trans rights. One of the ACLU's major recent campaigns is that trans girls should be allowed to play on girls' sports teams, for example - that's seen as an important right nowadays, but it's not on the checklist because it was never relevant for gay people.

>One of the ACLU's major recent campaigns is that trans girls should be allowed to play on girls' sports teams, for example - that's seen as an important right nowadays

Of course, that's very much a nontrivial issue even among progressive circles. Your view is far from consensual.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#105

Post by tchaffee »

mixologic wrote: post #97
nisuni wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The yelling fire example is an extreme edge case, and it’s usually used by people who would like to limit freedom of speech much more than that. I’ve never heard it being used genuinely not even once. I find it irritating: you don’t want freedom of speech? State than openly and tell me why.

Absolute freedom of speech is equally as detrimental to society as totalitarian government censorship. Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies can convincingly be passed off as truth. The vast majority of the populace neither has the time, nor the inclination to properly vet, research, and confirm the information that is presented to them. Humans rarely acknowledge their own confirmation biases, which makes it…

> Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies

Who would decide what is fake news? The federal government? Perhaps a free speech Czar appointed by the president of the US? The current president of the US certainly does talk about fake news a lot. But no thanks.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#106

Post by andrepd »

dmix wrote: post #50
geofft wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again - I disagree with the view that they "gave up" their values, and I don't want to live in a world where every political ideology needs its own non-profit, either. I think the ACLU can and should be an organization that defends the right to freedom of speech of everyone regardless of political affiliation. I'm arguing that their lawsuit in Charlottesville didn't actually serve the goals of protecting civil rights…

> Unite the Right wasn't primarily about speech, it was about violence This is easy to say with retrospect. How many other major protests in history would you have compromised had you known there would be violence? Any embedded provocateur could easily kill any protest. Any extremist portion of any political group, no matter how small, could kill the mainstream purpose of the wider legitimate group. I'd much rather w…

>This is easy to say with retrospect. How many other major protests in history would you have compromised had you known there would be violence?

>Any embedded provocateur could easily kill any protest.

But this wasn't a provocateur, promptly disavowed by the protestor leaders. It was concerted, intentional, premeditated violence. This was known, or at least expected, beforehand.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#107

Post by zozbot234 »

mc32 wrote: post #14
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their current efforts are focused on getting lots of people released from jails and prisons, since they might catch COVID-19 if they're in jail.

See I don’t get it. If one of these people who get early release so much as go fishing somewhere they can end up back in jail. That seems perverse to me.

That helps with social distancing. It's not a bad thing given the circumstances.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#108

Post by zozbot234 »

dmix wrote: post #64
geofft wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was clear in advance of Unite the Right that many of the groups actively invited by the organizer were interested in violence. This wasn't embedded provocateurs or out-of-control extremists. Furthermore, Charlottesville didn't deny Unite the Right a permit - they just offered them a permit at a different location than what they wanted. Obviously the organizer didn't go to court and say, "I would like the r…

> This wasn't embedded provocateurs or out-of-control extremists. I never said it was. And that completely misses the point on why it's important. (surprise: you don't have to defend Charlottesville to defend the ACLU) You're basically providing anyone an easy tool to kill any protest before it gets off the ground. Any protest where antifa plays a role would be DOA (and having attending my fair share that's at least…

> do you think all the human rights, union, indigenous, etc groups control which protests Antifa shows up at? Should they have to self-regulate their protests so no one shows up wearing all-black is allowed to participate?

Of course they should self-regulate - or at least make it very clear when the presence of violently-inclined groups isn't welcome to the organizers. Because the alternative is that the government will regulate those protests instead, which would be a lot worse.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#109

Post by rentnorove »

LyalinDotCom wrote: post #26

For a project that is about freedom of information they sure kept this vague. Why not share more details of why you had to fire people, what funding sources dried up, etc?

Comparing a recent web archive, the difference in the sponspors page seens to be:

  - Mozilla  
  - Digital Impact Alliance  
  - Google Season of Docs    
  + RIPE NCC
https://web.archive.org/web/20191103152656/https://www.torpr...

https://web.archive.org/web/20200404101205/https://www.torpr...

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#110

Post by Quanttek »

Renaud wrote: post #19

They are too dependent on government sponsorship. 80% of their funding comes from the US government in some shape. I would imagine that a project of that importance deserves to be able to be self-sufficient. A US$2M budget/year is not that much, (m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project. Better yet, having grass-root sponsorship is even more important. Maybe they need mark…

> (m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project.

The thing is: When you're the kind of person that is able to amass m-/billions, you're unlikely to be very altruistic. Most of these people had to, excuse my language, fuck over people (workers, customers, investors, the larger public) along the way in various ways. You simply can't be a billionaire without some kind of severe exploitation and it is unlikely that, when you have no qualms doing so in one area, it is unlikely you care about people's livelihoods etc. in other areas (there are some exceptions ofc, Bill Gates comes to mind). Jeff Bezos is a perfect example: The richest person on earth has donated what amounts to a few cents for an ordinary person but with great public fanfare. Not even during the COVID-19 pandemic, he views it as necessary (cf. with Jack Dorsey, donating 1/3 of his wealth).

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