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ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

eff.org

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Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#11

> But just because there’s a serious problem doesn’t mean that every response is a good one. This is a fantastic line, one that I'm tucking away for future use.

The contrary belief was once mocked on "Yes, Prime Minister" as:

"1. We must do something.

2. This is something.

3. Therefore, we must do this."

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#12
I hit CTRL+F to find the word 'neutral' in this article, but no such word appeared. But it did appear in another EFF article titled 'We Need to Talk About Infrastructure'[0], which is the crux of the issue here. My only question is; what is regarded 'internet infrastructure' these days? Is Cloudflare really just an ISP? Is VPN infra considered an ISP? Are mixer nets like Tor/Hyphanet an ISP?

'Essential internet infrastructure should be content-neutral':

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/we-need-talk-about-inf...

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#14
The ACLU will absolutely oppose this. If not for the reason they stand to make a lot of money suing ISPs for "not doing enough" to stop the big-ole-meanies online.

I see ISPs blocking "mean speech" to "protect people" as another symptom of the enshittification of the internet. I legitimately cannot understand problems in this arena because you can just...walk away from your computer. Or turn off the website. Or hey, maybe don't TIE YOUR ENTIRE LIFE AND REAL IDENTITY TO THE INTERNET. I suspect the prominent use of pseudonyms 30 years ago prevented most forms of ongoing harassment. Narcissists need the validation and so now big brother needs to step in to protect them.

I think society is getting a little too comfortable with the idea of big brother and it's making me really, really uncomfortable. As an old man yelling at a cloud the internet really was better 20 or 30 years ago.

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#17
EFF is on the wrong side of this, just as they were on the wrong side of the debates about what to do about spam email back in the day. They're committed to the view that the only acceptable place to block any flow of information (which they define very broadly) is at the receiving user's end and that the end user must personally opt-in. This is completely at odds with the last 30 years of experience on the internet and shows that they've learned very little about how bad actors will abuse systems of that sort and degrade the experience for everyone else.

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#18
post #14

The ACLU will absolutely oppose this. If not for the reason they stand to make a lot of money suing ISPs for "not doing enough" to stop the big-ole-meanies online. I see ISPs blocking "mean speech" to "protect people" as another symptom of the enshittification of the internet. I legitimately cannot understand problems in this arena because you can just...walk away from your computer. Or turn off the website. Or hey,…

The ACLU are pretty useless these days

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#20
It is not just ISPs. It is crowdfunding and payment processing companies. See for example this apparent seizure of funding to independent journalists happening right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314499

If you care about there being genuinely independent news media then funding these guys is something you can do right now.

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