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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

#441

Post by wvenable »

rhelz wrote: post #287
CM30 wrote: post #46

I 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…

// private companies a re de facto writing the laws // We can certainly discuss whether these services should be publicly or privately owned. I'm a pretty liberal guy, and wouldn't mind seeing publically-owned versions of Twitter, ChatGPT, or Google, as a guard against corporations dominating the information age. But calling for more government regulation of privately-owned services? Forcing private companies to do w…

> But calling for more government regulation of privately-owned services? Forcing private companies to do what you want them to do, even when they would prefer not to?

Yes! That's what it's going to take. If you want checks and balances, this is how you get them. Ultimately capitalism is supposed to benefit society as a whole and when it doesn't it needs a kick in the ass.

> The whole point of private property is that it carves out a space of freedom for you, the owner of the private property, to use it as you wish!!!

That's correct but as soon as you're "open to the public" the rules, necessarily, change.

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

#443

Post by habinero »

yanderekko wrote: post #237
TylerE wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The line isn't drawn at "literal Nazis", because for all the criticisms one can lob at KF it is clearly not dedicated to Naziism. It platforms Nazis, for sure, but if the argument is either that a large blast radius that hits a lot of non-Nazi content is acceptable or the old "well if you platform literal Nazis you are a literal Nazi, sorry" fallacy, it's not good.

They aren't a Nazi site, sure, but it's dedicated to finding victims to torture because they think it's funny to do so.

That's behavior.

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

#444

Post by drak0n1c »

dee-bee wrote: post #385
autoexec wrote: post #173

Once again the EFF is proving that they'll stand behind their principles and defend freedom even for those they disagree with. They are one of the few remaining organizations that I feel I can support without reservation. Taking this difficult position isn't easy, but it is the right thing to do and I'm so glad to see that the EFF has the strength to do it in the face of growing opposition to free speech ideals.

> Once again the EFF is proving that they'll stand behind their principles and defend freedom even for those they disagree with. They are one of the few remaining organizations that I feel I can support without reservation. I find this attitude very odd. Surely some disagreements indicate a violation of their principles. What would the principles be worth otherwise? Surely this is the paradox of tolerance in a differ…

> What would the principles be worth otherwise? Surely this is the paradox of tolerance in a different package. Why not instead model communication as a bilateral contract?

If it was justifiable for speech infrastructure to ban the speech of any ideology based on if its implementation societally would probabilistically/historically lead to mass speech suppression and/or other atrocities, then a massive array of political and religious speech would technically qualify for a ban. Including Marxist-Leninist writing, or religious proselytizing to name a few.

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

#445

Post by CogitoCogito »

IncogNET wrote: post #383
throwaway2037 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We filed a complaint with the Washington state AG over their actions. When? Did anything happen? I don't expect this would be a priority for the attorney general.

It was later in July. To be clear, filing a complaint is simply an online form. This does not involve or require lawyers or any expense. The TLDR version is: We filed it as a violation of HB2282, Washignton State's Net Neutrality / Open Internet laws, the AG thought it was an appropriate complaint and forwarded it to HE. This gives them 21 days to respond. They (HE) responded relatively quickly, basically saying, "Na…

If HE is lying in response to a complaint forwarded to them by the AG, that seems like something the AG really should investigate.

Edit: It's odd to see this downvoted. I don't care about Kiwifarms or all the other random crazy crap being discussed in this comment thread. But I do feel that companies should be honest in their communications. I'm surprised people here disagree.

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

#446

Post by habinero »

pseudo0 wrote: post #39

Too bad they didn't touch on the net neutrality issues at play here. Washington passed a state level net neutrality law, and KF might end up being the test case. They have filed a complaint with the AG and are waiting for a response. https://archive.is/Je241

Yeah, that's not going to happen. KF is not a Washington state LLC.

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

#447

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

itsnotabtmoney wrote: post #300
IncogNET wrote: post #92

Glad to see this. Hurricane Electric has behaved in such an incredibly unprofessional manner regarding this entire ordeal. It began here: https://twitter.com/IncogNetLLC/status/1685359845505957888 We filed a complaint with the Washington state AG over their actions. HE's response was more or less technically obtuse garbage and, "You're not our direct customer" (paraphrasing, of course). So what they did, was take it…

> The safest business decision would be to remain neutral, respond to law enforcement requests if presented with one, and otherwise do the job you're paid to do. Have you considered that it might not be about money? What if the decision-makers and operators of Hurricane Electric just have certain people they just want to censor, and use their position to do it at the expense of money. Money is just a means to the end…

I want to propose a way it can be both money and ideology.

Let’s say you were the governor of a very large state. You have a ton of influence if not sold discredtion on how your state’s $500 billion pension fund is invested. You are an ideologue puppet put in place by people desperately trying to reset the world in their image.

Now… let’s the banks and companies don’t care about your cause - but you have disproportionate sway over them. It can be about money if that is your leverage.

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

#448

Post by chonkerz »

gorwell wrote: post #109
CM30 wrote: post #46

I 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…

That's right. Authoritarian censors found an exploit. They couldn't use the government to clamp down on civil liberties because of the pesky constitution, so they invaded the administrative layer of big tech. It's not the engineers who built the web and these companies with Silicon Valley ideals. They were never intended to be used this way and are secretly horrified. > play moral police at the moment Moral fashion p…

From the article, the EFF explicitly calls out the government for failing to enforce existing laws which would have shut down Kiwifarms

>That’s what must happen here. The cops and the courts should be working to protect the victims of KF and go after the perpetrators with every legal tool at their disposal. We should be giving them the resources and societal mandate to do so. Solid enforcement of existing laws is something that has been sorely lacking for harassment and abuse online, and it’s one of the reasons people turn to censorship strategies. Finally, we should enact strong data privacy laws that target, among others, the data brokers whose services help enable doxxing.

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

#449

Post by jquery »

vxNsr wrote: post #393
gmd63 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget the IRS, imagine if the President himself were to withhold American resources promised to foreign governments in exchange for dirt on his political opponents.

and then force the country to fire the top prosecutor who was investigating his son's illegal activities, truly imagine if such person would do something like that and then have the audacity to publicly brag about it knowing full well the media would cover for him due to his political party. truly sickening what politicians will do.

Cool narrative, unfortunately it isn't true. "Biden did want Shokin fired, but western leaders had widely criticized the prosecutor general as corrupt and ineffective. Biden was leading a widespread consensus in asking for removal. Secondly, a former Ukrainian official said the investigation into Burisma was dormant under Shokin."

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/oct/11/donald-tru...

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

#450

Post by CogitoCogito »

chonkerz wrote: post #437
Dylan16807 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You think hosting a website is a right?

Whether it is or is not certainly depends on the laws in the jurisdiction in question, but personally I'd say it should be.
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