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

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121–130 of 1001 posts

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

#121

> Cloudflare is an often brought up example And Cloudflare are nearly as well behaved as they could possibly be. The simple fact of them being everywhere makes them a major target of government pressure to censor. This is purely an end run around the constitution, not the desire of companies to control speech. > It feels like private companies are de facto writing the laws about what's allowed online and in society r…

> The three-letter agencies just placed dozens and dozens of people (who decided to quit the CIA, NSA, and FBI in their 30s for some reason and change careers) in the executive suites of every social network.

Where can I find more about this?

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

#122

> Cloudflare is an often brought up example And Cloudflare are nearly as well behaved as they could possibly be. The simple fact of them being everywhere makes them a major target of government pressure to censor. This is purely an end run around the constitution, not the desire of companies to control speech. > It feels like private companies are de facto writing the laws about what's allowed online and in society r…

> And Cloudflare are nearly as well behaved as they could possibly be.

This is not true. There has been at least two high profile cases where Cloudflare dropped their commitment to free speech when under no real legal pressure(kiwifarms and stormfromt). Maybe you think they did the right thing, but it's clear that they are not a neutral party.

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

#123

Maybe Hurricane needs to police it's own network first. My web server constantly receives malicious probes and invalid requests from Hurricane owned IPs. How does a malicious actor get direct access to a Tier 1 address? The only way I can see is by being inside their facilities.

Hurricane Electric operates tunnelbroker.net, a free SIT tunnel to provide IPv6 connectivity. All those clients (like me) will be using a HE-owned IPv6 address.

They also offer dedicated servers and colocation services: http://he.net/colocation.html

They are not only a transit provider, in fact they wouldn't need to own IPs at all if they were.

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

#125

I'd argue that there are legitimate safety concerns that trump speech in this particular case. But I think EFF would have a stronger case if we had common carriers following net neutrality laws. Content decisions are in the hands of upstream ISPs because we don't have the right regulations in place. EFF has clearly tried here. The case is strong. But it's the edge cases where we need the net neutrality regulations mo…

>I'd argue that there are legitimate safety concerns that trump speech in this particular case. What makes HE well-positioned to be able to determine what constitutes a "legitimate safety concern"? What happens when a pro-life organization or a corrupt politician starts leaning on ISPs to enforce their own views of what constitutes a "legitimate safety concern"? Cloudflare denied service to KF on an imminent threat t…

I don’t think HE should be making that decision, especially in an upstream role—and the fact that they’re in that position points at a need for regulation.

However, I would argue that KF is a long-term threat whose imminent dangers were honestly a very narrow lens that barely appeased a company that shouldn’t have been making the call in the first place. Their position in last year’s debate created a very volatile atmosphere for a solid month—a situation which would be volatile once again if brought back.

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

#126
post #3

> 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 EFF's response is not a good one, either. The previous sentence is: "We fully support criminal and civil liability for those who abuse and harass others." That's not sufficient. These are extremely slow mechanisms, when they work at all. The harassed individual can suffer for years, and the EFF isn't rushing out to aid them. As their post says, "law enforcement and legislators have failed". The Internet is differ…

Even if you are not a believer in liberalism as a philosophy, you should at least understand that the instant we agree let infrastructure businesses start pruning speech they don't like without any accountability is also the instant that the wealthy and powerful start thinking about how to gain influence over or outright control those businesses. One would have to be absolutely bonkers to think that's going to have a good outcome in the long run.

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

#128

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…

> how bad actors will abuse systems

I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum - I remember Usenet, that had no moderation at all, and having to wade through a sea of spam, wishing somebody would get rid of it. But then I saw what reddit moderation turned into… I’ll take the spam, thanks. The spammers are bad actors, but moderators actually become evil actors.

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

#129
surely, the attacks from KF against public persons serves to restrict those persons’ freedom of speech.

> The so-called “dark web” has plenty of deserved ill repute, however, so although it is resistant to censorship by Tier 1 ISPs, it is not a meaningful option for many, much less an accessible one.

that’s a way too casual dismissal. consider the type of person who posts on KF for just a minute (go there yourself if you haven’t), and think if they might be way more likely than your average person to know how to use tor, a VPN, or something to obfuscate their traffic before posting to a forum where they themselves might be harassed.

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

#130
post #105

> Cloudflare is an often brought up example And Cloudflare are nearly as well behaved as they could possibly be. The simple fact of them being everywhere makes them a major target of government pressure to censor. This is purely an end run around the constitution, not the desire of companies to control speech. > It feels like private companies are de facto writing the laws about what's allowed online and in society r…

>This is purely an end run around the constitution, not the desire of companies to control speech. Want an example of this type of end run being used in practice? Nearly a decade ago? Obama used banking access to do a similar end run around businesses deemed political enemies. Some to the good, weapons/ammunition sellers with uncertain scruples, payday lenders...[0] but for some reason I'm not super confident about i…

Your link goes to a 404, unfortunately.
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