Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 1001 posts

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

#551

Post by aydyn »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #342
rhelz wrote: 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…

Why would you not take horseshoe theory seriously? There are countless examples of opposing extremists converging on similar beliefs.

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

#552

Post by aydyn »

chonkerz wrote: post #455
nonethewiser wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree, we've got far too many entities that should just be 'dumb pipes' trying to play moral police at the moment This is one of the positives of capitalism. The only color that matters is green. More competition please.

It's because the police have really failed to enforce existing laws that people have to resort to leaning on ISPs and payment processors to do it.

Why dont you talk concretely? what is a specific case involving an individual where specific laws have been broken?

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

#553

Post by KSteffensen »

refurb wrote: post #543
peterashford wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an outsider's perspective (NZ) Germany's democracy looks a lot healthier than the US's.

I think the problem is that people think “a lack of political debate and extreme views” is a healthy sign of democracy. It’s actually the opposite. Plenty of authoritarian regimes look awfully peaceful because the only acceptable views are the government approved ones. Id take political strife any day over forced “political harmony”. Far better to “air the dirty laundry” than pretend it doesn’t exist.

Depends.

Political harmony is a problem if forced, but a common vision shared by much of society is a strength if arrived at through healthy, intellectually honest debate.

Political debate is fine and healthy, but it should not be possible to end a debate by being louder, more obnoxious and more ready to do violence than the other debaters.

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

#554

Post by refurb »

lr4444lr wrote: post #164
bb88 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> despite readily-available facts that Naziism is racist delusions? A lot of people on the right are talking about the US having a mental health crises when it comes to mass shootings. If that's really true, then yeah, that's how we get natsies. > Isn't it a slippery slope directly from banning Naziism direct to North Korean-style authoritarianism? Well I mean if there's a mental health crisis then yeah, people are g…

> I personally don't think the founding fathers of the US understood the future gullibility of their citizens. They absolutely did. When only white, male, decently educated property owners could vote, they had decent reassurance that a constitutional republic with state-specific voter management could work. I think they'd be horrified to see that today we don't even demand a basic proof of civics education. And I hat…

Are you saying white male educated property owners can’t be gullible? Have you been to Marin county?

The founding fathers certainly did assume there were gullible voters even among the select few who could vote.

Protections such as the Constitution itself (that old archaic document!), the Senate, supermajorities, an independent legislative, executive and judicial, etc, etc.

I laugh when people say “Congress is deadlocked! It needs to be fixed!”. No, it’s working exactly as intended.

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

#555

Post by b215826 »

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.

Lol. EFF are now a bunch of virtue signalling hacks pretending to care about Internet free speech. They outed themselves as total hypocrites when they joined the "RMS is an ist" bandwagon and removed Gilmore from their board.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-...

http://techrights.org/2021/11/05/not-the-frontier-anymore/

https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/25/john_gilmore_removed_...

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

#556

Post by concordDance »

catiopatio wrote: post #531
chonkerz wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's not the ridiculous bit, the ridiculous bit is the advocating that the government crack down on people saying mean things about third parties to each other on the Internet.

And make no mistake, that's 99% of what KiwiFarms does, the last time this came up on hackernews I browsed through hundreds of posts in a bunch of threads to see if there was anything other than that going on, so if its there it's in the DMs (and policing person-to-person communication is utterly insane) or very rare.

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

#557

Post by Akronymus »

MiguelX413 wrote: post #67
marcosdumay wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Being on the border of the precipice, they decided to act and step ahead." "We must do something; this is something; therefore we must do this." I've seen that thing rephrased so many ways, it's not even funny anymore. People always fall for that bias. I'm sure if you make some loud proclamations that "Global Warming will destroy everything, we must go and kill the wales", you will get followers.

*“…we must go and kill Wales”

It seems that people really dislike that place in particular.

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

#558

Post by ocdtrekkie »

chonkerz wrote: post #462
mortenjorck wrote: post #8

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.

Yeah the EFF has gotten ridiculously radical into pro-corporate and pro-free speech positions. Generally anything that protects a company's ability to willfully harm society for money is worth protecting for the EFF.

The EFF is so detached from humanity it doesn't mind innocent people dying for it's radical free speech cause. And that's really pretty sad.

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

#559

Post by didntcheck »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #342
rhelz wrote: 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…

Unfortunately progressives have been acting like ancaps on these issues for a while. I've long since stopped being surprised to see someone with "socialist" in their bio saying it's a good thing that unelected corporations have de facto control over online political expression, or that employers should be able to threaten people's livelihoods for supporting the wrong party, and acting like it's anathema to suggest regulating a private company in any way. Very short sighted, both forwards and backwards

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

#560

Post by bluescrn »

nonethewiser wrote: post #298
rhelz wrote: 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…

Freedom of speech is a pretty fundamental value. It's not surprising to expect it beyond where it's legally required.

Freedom of speech was a pretty fundamental value. A couple of generations ago.
Post reply on HN