Earlier quoted context omitted.
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So censorship is okay as long as it's politically aligned with the powers that be? I'm not a nazi, but that seems dangerous...
Neo-nazis are domestic terrorists and should be treated as such.
ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
201–210 of 1001 posts
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#202Counterpoint: the Internet is a network of peers, and if KF can't become a peer and can't find a private company to serve their needs, then forget them. No support for the activity of abusers.
the majority of the overhead of civilization for the last few thousand years or so is scalable mechanisms to arrive at shared definitions for words like "evil", "wrong", "abuse"
it's a really hard problem, and every time someone comes in and treats it as a simple issue they do dangerous and naive stuff.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#203Shameless plug, I wrote an essay on this topic years ago:
https://wannabewonk.com/gab-and-free-speech-on-the-internet/
The crux being what EFF is saying now. ISPs and DNS and CAs are too fundamental to free speech for blockage at that layer to occur without legal cause.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#204Few things are more inhumane, abhorrent, vile, digusting, and sickening as war. Yet every ISP permits news businesses to spread content about, and even promote, wars. Clearly they do not actually object to "offensive" content, but are cherry-picking to suit their own ideology.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#205It 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.
There is a new internet payments technology that is 100% effective against abuses like this, even when the state decides it shouldn't be possible. Censorship-resistant payments are an essential prerequisite to a free society, something I have been asserting in public for a dozen+ years. Unfortunately as of late they have been vilified. If I were a paranoid man, I might point out that this happened right around the ti…
It turns out that censorship-resistant payments also attract the worst type of people along with scammers first. If you had paid attention then you would have realized that is exactly what was going to happen long before it did. There is no need for paranoia here, people tend to dislike and go after hives of scum and villainy (unless they are wrapped in pretty corporate words).
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#206I agree, we've got far too many entities that should just be 'dumb pipes' trying to play moral police at the moment, and it's a very worrying situation when it comes to free speech on the internet. Cloudflare is an often brought up example, as are payment processors like Visa and Mastercard and app stores like the iOS and Play Stores, but ISPs trying to block traffic for a site that's not actually illegal feels like…
Amen to that.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
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And that's where problems arise. Most of us are comfortable oppressing people we disagree with. The reality is that you can't silence voices you don't like without making yourself vulnerable to the same treatment. We either value the freedom to express ourselves within the limits of the law or we don't. As soon as there are more people who think like you do, none of us are safe and it just becomes a system that silen…
I strongly disagree with people who seek to suppress freedom of speech.
This is not the hypocrisy that you’re painting it as.
I question the motives of anyone sympathizing with Nazis as “just a different opinion”
Suppressing nazism is not “suppressing freedom of speech”. It is suppressing people who seek to suppress.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#208What I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis despite readily-available facts that Naziism is racist delusions? And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay despite making it illegal to do Nazi stuff? Isn't it a slippery slope directly from banning Naziism direct to North Korean-style authoritarianism?
I recall reading the other day about Germany making deadnaming a crime..
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
We didn't used to let private companies control the public discourse. The mail is government-run and there are mail privacy protections as deep as the constitution. In the age of radio and TV we at least had the equal time rule and some level of public oversight.
And an FCC that could yank your broadcast license for transmitting obscenity.
Sure, but there's at least some democratic accountability to that.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#210What I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis despite readily-available facts that Naziism is racist delusions? And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay despite making it illegal to do Nazi stuff? Isn't it a slippery slope directly from banning Naziism direct to North Korean-style authoritarianism?
> What I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis
There are always going to be people who are fearful and ignorant and looking for a convenient external something to blame their problems on. There are also the people who are raised with those views and others who feel excluded and find a place to belong with a group of "outsiders". I don't think we can ever get rid of racist ideologies. We've evolved to be tribal and distrustful of outsiders and some will struggle with those feelings more than others. We're always going to struggle with racism and that's going to include Nazis. That doesn't mean we're powerless against them, but censorship and oppression certainly isn't the solution.
> And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay
Germany is not okay. Personally, I think Germany takes things way too far and that state censorship really is dangerous, but I also recognize that they've been in a very difficult position since the end of the war. I can't really fault them for over-correcting, but I do feel for the German people who have to live under unjust laws.
To their credit they've also relaxed a bit over the years. For example, they lifted the ban on Mein Kampf and it flew off the shelves (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38495456) not because the country was full of secret Nazis this whole time just waiting for it, but because the German people strongly desire freedom.
It's worth noting that even in Germany and other EU counties that gave up basic freedoms in an effort to oppose racism there are still racists. Innocent people get hurt by oppressive laws and racists gain a talking point for recruiting that resonates with a lot of people. It's a lot easier to feed into a person's victim complex when they're actually being oppressed.