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

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

#211
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if you claim to support unrestricted free speech then of course this is hypocrisy. how could you possibly argue otherwise? "seeking to suppress" is still a form of speech. you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

if you don't support unrestricted free speech that's fine, but don't pretend you do. i personally don't either.

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

#212
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This isn't "people I disagree with". Stromfront, and the groups it enables, are literal nazis. "Stormfront began in 1990 as an online bulletin board supporting white nationalist David Duke's campaign for United States senator for Louisiana. The name "Stormfront" was chosen for its connotations of a political or military front (such as the German Nazi Sturmabteilung (also known as storm troopers or SA)) and an analogy…

Nobody argues with this. But LITERAL NAZIS have free speech rights in the USA same as anyone else. Once upon a time the ACLU defended a similar group’s right to march loudly through Skokie, Illinois:

https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-history-taking-stand-fre...

If Cloudflare or anyone else wants to have a different standard, that’s their right, too. But the First Amendment line is neon bright, which is a nice feature.

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

#213
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[flagged]

What constitutes a "Nazi"? I remember when people were up in arms claiming that Jordan Peterson (who I do not support) a Nazi and trying to get him deplatformed; there are countless other examples of people being branded as Nazis for being unpopular and distasteful.

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

#214
post #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.

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

Inconvenient fact: Layer 3 routers use IP addresses for each of their network interfaces. This is actually how they provide transit.

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

#215
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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...

Suppressing people whose goal is to suppress is neither dangerous, nor hypocritical.

It’s not “because they’re not politically aligned with me”. It is that they desire the genociding and enslavement of entire groups of people.

You painting me being against that as “just a disagreement” is bordering on sympathizing, if not just outright sympathizing with weasel words.

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

#216
post #119
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When in all of US history were private companies not controlling the public discourse and "censoring free speech"?

Never. In fact, the reason the First Amendment limits the government, exclusively, is that the ability to abridge free speech (to choose which forms of speech you support, spread, or disassociate from) is implicitly a part of individual liberty, held by the people. Free speech has never guaranteed anyone a platform. That's not a bug, it's a feature. Yes, it can be messy. Yes, it can be abused. Yes, it means social me…

[deleted]

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

#217
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never. In fact, the reason the First Amendment limits the government, exclusively, is that the ability to abridge free speech (to choose which forms of speech you support, spread, or disassociate from) is implicitly a part of individual liberty, held by the people. Free speech has never guaranteed anyone a platform. That's not a bug, it's a feature. Yes, it can be messy. Yes, it can be abused. Yes, it means social me…

You're not free to not associate with people in the U.S. Businesses are not allowed to discriminate against protected classes. This is because businesses are foundational to modern life, so being excluded from them greatly hurts a person. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that we should look to expand such protections to all people for certain services, especially those which are more like infrastructure for m…

> You're not free to not associate with people in the U.S.

I'm not? There are certain exceptions, such as certain police interactions, or a court order, or protected classes when I'm doing business stuff, but I don't think that's correct in general.

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

#218
post #119
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When in all of US history were private companies not controlling the public discourse and "censoring free speech"?

Never. In fact, the reason the First Amendment limits the government, exclusively, is that the ability to abridge free speech (to choose which forms of speech you support, spread, or disassociate from) is implicitly a part of individual liberty, held by the people. Free speech has never guaranteed anyone a platform. That's not a bug, it's a feature. Yes, it can be messy. Yes, it can be abused. Yes, it means social me…

>it means social media companies are allowed to ban you for any reason they like

Can they ban someone for being black or gay? Do you think they should have this right, since they are private corporations?

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

#219
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[flagged]

Even a literal Nazi should have access to utilities.

Though I would say cloudflare isn't quite up to that level.

Edit: Seeing this downvoted is disappointing. Access to utilities needs to be treated as a right. Only the courts should be able to take it away.

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