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

eff.org

531–540 of 1001 posts

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

#531

It's heartening to see the EFF come out sticking to principles on this in a time when other organizations of their stature have not. I hate to say it, but I could easily imagine something like the ACLU opposing the EFF on this.

The EFF is arguing here that companies should not take anything down and instead rely on the government to dictate what shouldn't be allowed. This is absolutely ridiculous. Imagine being such a free speech advocate that you say something like this.

I am such a free speech advocate.

Why is a belief in the common carrier model ridiculous?

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

#533

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…

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

#534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd say KiwiFarms is about as "dedicated to torture" as say the tabloid industry (producers and consumers) is. Seems like a real stretch of language, really.

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

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If you sleep tight in a censored echo chamber you might be in for a rude awakening once you realize what atrocities that enables. But luckily you will only find out once you are at the receiving end of it?

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

#536
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one thing the "Nazis" in the US aren't actual Nazis no matter how much they desire to be. German has banned things that deal with the ACTUAL, real Nazis which were a part of Germany. Germany hasn't banned racism and the reality is that Germany is quite racist. If judging by US standards Germany would be off the charts racist. Even Berlin, Germany's most diverse city is still > 80% white.

Are you saying that a city having a large majority of one ethnicity is racism?

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

#537
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

// 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…

> " Forcing private companies to do what you want them to do, even when they would prefer not to? " That's exactly the argument that bigots who owned businesses used to refuse service to PoC and oppressed people before the civil rights legislations of the '50s and '60s were passed. Funny to hear old discredited arguments used by far-right conservatives decades ago coming out of the mouths of the left these days. It's…

Sure, pretty much everyone except extreme libertarians agrees that there are limits to private property rights that can be overriden in certain circumstances. However, if we (rightly) force businesses not to discriminate on the grounds of race, then it seems logically consistent to also allow businesses to refuse to associate with racists. I am not sure how someone could be ok with government intervention to prevent "whites only" restaurants and yet not ok with the government merely refraining from interfering with businesses that voluntarily choose not to associate with racists.

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

#538

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…

[flagged]

The question remains, despite the actor. Knowing what you know, what are your thoughts on the subject?

I know nothing of Kiwifarms, except it seems an unsavory place with questionable actors, and a tiny bit about LowEndTalk.

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

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Constitution would not provide a carveout for the long-term censorship of a forum like KF based on some rationale like "creating a volatile atmosphere", so I don't know what you expect regulation to accomplish here. And of course activists would scream if such regulation were applied in a viewpoint-neutral fashion (eg. platforms being mandated to delete content that advocates for crime / violence - imagine how Tr…

I can't find anything in the Constitution about the Internet.

Yes, well, that's the beautiful thing about common law - we still have a pretty clear understanding of what constitutes free speech, and it's largely invariant to whether the means of communication is through the internet or a medium that was more-familiar to the founders.

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

#540

What 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 do you mean “do Nazi stuff”?

Germany treads very lightly when it comes to limiting speech, even for Nazi things.

They have plenty of far-right racist groups that model themselves after the Nazis.

As long as you don’t display the swastika gratuitously (there is no blanket ban), you’re quite free to organize a racist political party and takes seats in the government.

Hell, there are still SS alumni groups in Germany. They arent banned.

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