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The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

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Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#41

Post by gameswithgo »

jmnicolas wrote: post #15
happytoexplain wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is not to convince conspiracy theorists that they are wrong, the goal is to prevent them from hurting people or society and, to that end, keep the dangerous ones from organizing anonymously online in large numbers (I honestly don't know if that's possible).

If I'm not mistaken the NZ killer was on 8chan? It's the same argument with serial killer movies (at the risk of showing my age there was a strong controversy with "Natural Born Killers" at the time): you don't kill people because you chatted on the internet or watched a movie. You kill people because you had it in you. The things you were exposed before might color your act but that's it.

> you don't kill people because you chatted on the internet or watched a movie.

There is this pervasive idea lately a crazy youtube video or text can't actually be harmful, which just isn't true. Ideas can inspire wars, murder, revolution, they can warp minds. People previously productive can end up obsessed with crazy junk. It is important to protect each other and ourselves from bad ideas. The question is how, of course. Some people violently oppose any form of curation, whether it be censorship by government, or choices made by companies like facebook. Others insist the solution to bad speech is good speech, but I've been seeing that fail on the internet for 30 years. Perhaps higher quality education can help, perhaps improving economic inequity can help. Other ideas are welcome!

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#42

Post by ianai »

jmnicolas wrote: post #3

Of course everybody knows the right way to convince conspiracy theorists that they're wrong is to go after them. I don't see what's wrong with having internet trash bins. At least the trash is in a know location, it doesn't spill everywhere. I'm not from the US, the only mentions of those sites I have ever encountered was journalists making a few articles about them.

You may not be able to fully understand the scope of the problem precisely because you’re not in the US. You’re not seeing the affect and effects it’s having in day to day life.

I’m a white guy. Last week I went through a grocery store after forgetting my mask in my car. I needed to use the restroom badly and didn’t realize I had forgotten the mask until I was mid-stream. That’s when I understood why people were looking at me like a potential threat with fear in their eyes. They probably assumed I was “yet another” anti-masker there to threaten and attack them verbally or worse. (I quickly left to the car and got my mask.)

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#43

Post by [deleted] »

api wrote: post #29
jmnicolas wrote: post #3

Of course everybody knows the right way to convince conspiracy theorists that they're wrong is to go after them. I don't see what's wrong with having internet trash bins. At least the trash is in a know location, it doesn't spill everywhere. I'm not from the US, the only mentions of those sites I have ever encountered was journalists making a few articles about them.

I sympathize with this view, but visit Reddit /r/qanoncasualties for a counterpoint. On one hand I am pretty close to a free speech maximalist. On the other hand, I do believe in the “fire in a crowded theater test.” I am starting to think that certain forms of public speech, namely that which harms large numbers of mentally ill people or has the potential to create a huge outburst of stochastic terrorism, may fail t…

[deleted]

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#44

Post by leftyted »

motohagiography wrote: post #31

It's an interesting find. The difference between these sites and spam sites is that they are mostly self-contained comment boards. You have to actually go do them to interact with them, where spammers were breaking the internet. What clicked for me in this article is asking why I ever thought the internet was about ideas, what it might have meant pre-internet for people to be free of a "mainstream" in the old music a…

> Internet trolls use the higher bar for entry of tech focused platforms to harass people who are competing in the desperate political struggle for approval that is mainstream social media. Conversely, this mainstream culture is also the source of the visceral disgust some people have for lawyers, journalists, activists, and other people who affect being underdogs so they aren't held to the standards of honest people, and then antagonize others using those dominant rules as a cover. The same can be said for trolls. What it comes down to is this calculus of self permission to act like a piece of shit because you identify as the underdog.

> It's not the platforms, it's the single idea that identifying as an outsider, resister, pariah, defender, or challenger, justifies cruelty because being "good," is defined by your chosen bugbear. The reality is the mainstream is not "good," the public sphere is an open sewer, and the only things that float in it are turds. It's not a right/left thing, it's a conflict between people competing for mainstream power and people trying to find freedom from that mainstream's domain, with some of each self-identifying as beneath decency.

What a great insight.

My opinion is that this comes down to the fact that we cannot be good in public. The more "in public" we are, the more dishonest we are.

The private sphere -- family, close friends, personal intimacy, etc -- is where people are at their best. We can be honest there. We can show weakness, we can apologize, we can compromise and we can forgive.

The internet has made lots of things public that used to be private. It is also taking things that were public and making them more public. This is making the world worse.

Since I know you've read Hannah Arendt, this matches up well with her assertion that "in politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy" and "hatred and love belong together, and they are both destructive; you can afford them only in the private". She insisted on glory -- not goodness or justice or love -- as the sole criterion for political action.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#45

Post by Broken_Hippo »

0xy wrote: post #17

The best antidote for bad ideas and conspiracy theories is transparency and public debate. This move will serve to push these movements underground to Tor or other uncensorable networks where they're even harder to monitor. It also sends a message to them that they're on to something (because if the QAnon conspiracy was real, the "deep state" would indeed try to snuff it out). I feel like this is such a bad precedent…

The best antidote for bad ideas and conspiracy theories is transparency and public debate.

Folks have tried this - multiple times - with anti-vaxxers. And flat earthers. And other anti-science folks. Yet, it has spread. THe other party has to be willing to actually accept the facts: Unfortunately, the very nature of a conspiracy is that they don't accept the facts that others have.

This move will serve to push these movements underground to Tor or other uncensorable networks where they're even harder to monitor. It also sends a message to them that they're on to something (because if the QAnon conspiracy was real, the "deep state" would indeed try to snuff it out).

Good. You know what happens when the information isn't easy to access? They have less reach. It gets harder to radicalize and convince others. It gets harder to stumble across the content. It isn't like we can avoid them thinking they are onto something: Everything against them is a sign to that.

It isn't like we really monitor them well enough to prevent all attacks, anyway.

I feel like this is such a bad precedent and will not end well. It will embolden the crazies. It's also not clear where this is supposed to end? Flat earthers? 9/11 truthers? Who's next?

Folks whose conspiracies harm others. Most flat earthers aren't going to cause harm to you unless you work in the right field. Some folks might just need watched from time to time. However, anti-vaxxers hurt others. Not only do they convince others not to vaccinate, but they put folks that can't be vaccinated or the immunocompromised at risk.

In any case, it will end somewhere, like things always do.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#46

Post by 3np »

dragontamer wrote: post #21
0xy wrote: post #17

The best antidote for bad ideas and conspiracy theories is transparency and public debate. This move will serve to push these movements underground to Tor or other uncensorable networks where they're even harder to monitor. It also sends a message to them that they're on to something (because if the QAnon conspiracy was real, the "deep state" would indeed try to snuff it out). I feel like this is such a bad precedent…

> The best antidote for bad ideas and conspiracy theories is transparency and public debate. I've been on the internet for decades. I fully disagree with this. EDIT: Mass bannings, aka an "Exodus Event", was the solution to almost all major conspiracies I've witnessed. 1. When GameFAQs LUEsers gained conspiracy theories against the website and other reckless behavior, to the point of harming the website, the solution…

There's a very significant difference between website operators moderating content and banning users, versus coercing ISPs to block access to those sites or revoking ownership of IP numbers or DNS names.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#47

Post by fallingfrog »

fallingfrog wrote: post #36

I’m pretty sure that anyone who is willing to swallow massively implausible theories like qanon is not the kind of person who will be amenable to logical arguments and fact checking. You can’t just argue those people out if their positions because it’s not about truth for them, it’s about feeling like one is a member of the elect. Denying reality is not a bug, it’s a feature of every millenarian belief system. Facts…

Downvoted! Look: we here on hacker news are used to thinking about the world in a logical way. We test our ideas against reality and reject what doesn’t fit. We have rational enlightenment ideals about democracy and reason. Well some people don’t! They really don’t. They have a prescientific, premodern understanding of the world. I know this is hard to accept but it’s clearly true. And every time they turn on the tv and see gay people and atheists, they get furious and they want all those people to shut up and be silent, so the world can go back to being the comfortable, familiar place that they think it is without all the complexity and uncertainty that the real world contains. So if you don’t understand the world, and it’s scary, you’re going to latch on to some belief system that says that some cabal of devil worshippers is responsible for everything you don’t like. Logic has nothing to do with it.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#48

Post by pwinnski »

jmnicolas wrote: post #3

Of course everybody knows the right way to convince conspiracy theorists that they're wrong is to go after them. I don't see what's wrong with having internet trash bins. At least the trash is in a know location, it doesn't spill everywhere. I'm not from the US, the only mentions of those sites I have ever encountered was journalists making a few articles about them.

I think this line of thinking is absolutely correct when conspiracy theories are fringe or harmless. You don't believe we landed on the moon? Okay, buddy, have a nice day.

Occasionally, though, conspiracy theorists escape the harmless fringe and become actively harmful to society, which is what many of us believe is happening in the USA today. A racist conspiracy theory that posited, contrary to all evidence, that our previous president was born in another country, combined with some conspiracy theories popular among "the Tea Party movement" as they were known, propelled our current president into office, where the theories have snowballed and escalated into shots fired in a pizza parlor, protesters murdered by car, protestors murdered by gun, illegal voter intimidation, and a significant chunk of the population not quite ruling out the possibility that a huge chunk of elected officials and others are part of a cabal of devil-worshipping pederasts who drink the blood of children.

Faked moon landings this ain't. Crazy Uncle Roger this ain't.

I do live in the US, and I encounter the results of this weekly, sometimes more often. It doesn't take visiting 8kun to be affected by this here.

Update: There are people on this page, right here at HN, stating misleading nonsense tangentially related to QAnon. The spread of this stuff is pervasive already.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#49

Post by briefcomment »

ianai wrote: post #42
jmnicolas wrote: post #3

Of course everybody knows the right way to convince conspiracy theorists that they're wrong is to go after them. I don't see what's wrong with having internet trash bins. At least the trash is in a know location, it doesn't spill everywhere. I'm not from the US, the only mentions of those sites I have ever encountered was journalists making a few articles about them.

You may not be able to fully understand the scope of the problem precisely because you’re not in the US. You’re not seeing the affect and effects it’s having in day to day life. I’m a white guy. Last week I went through a grocery store after forgetting my mask in my car. I needed to use the restroom badly and didn’t realize I had forgotten the mask until I was mid-stream. That’s when I understood why people were look…

Lol, I highly doubt people are giving you weird looks because they think you're a Q acolyte. They're much more likely to think you're inconsiderate for voluntarily increasing their risk of catching covid. I follow Q for fun, and I barely think about it day to day. The average person probably thinks about Q less than once per week, when someone brings it up in the news.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#50

Post by mathgorges »

s9w wrote: post #2

> hate-filled anonymous message board 8chan not as hate-filled as Twitter. I don't think people like him have actually been on these sites.

As someone who spent a decent amount of time on 8chan and boards like it in high school, this comment legitimately confuses me.

Can you expand please?

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