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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

#571

Post by kristjank »

I hate how Kiwi Farms has become the benchmark for so many important concepts relating to internet freedom. As much as I think the world would be a better place with them being forever banished to the onion realm, I can't really defend HE and other service providers drafting their own visions of internet code of ethics, then enforcing them on other people's traffic. A smaller ISP would probably start losing business over such concerns, but HE is so large, almost all of internet traffic touches them at some point, so their ability to moderate is not even impacted by their business decisions.

Defending a company's AUP/ToS is reasonable when the company is reasonably sized, but HE is clearly over that limit. When a company gets too big to fail (banking also comes to mind) due to providing crucial societal function, there should be very strict restrictions on what they're allowed to moderate. This also applies to big industry conglomerates (oil, pharmaceuticals).

Another part of the problem seem to be various lazy officials not prosecuting these sites on the basis of obvious crimes involved in their operation.

I really appreciate EFF defending the obviously neutral approach here.

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

#572

Post by didntcheck »

pfisch wrote: post #103
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…

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

Probably never, but the past being bad is hardly a justification for present inaction

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

#573

Post by hnbad »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #558
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.

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.

You're disagreeing with the comment you replied to. That comment said the EFF is bad because it actually wants the government to intervene, not ISPs. Your comment says the EFF is bad because it wants companies to be allowed to do what they want. Did you misread the comment or did I misread yours?

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

#574

Post by didntcheck »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #558
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.

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.

Having the ~~clergy~~ ~~nobility~~ bourgeoisie decide what is "harmful to society" and unilaterally censor it is far more harmful. The fact that "pro free-speech" is considered something to sneer at makes me want to facepalm. People will say unpleasant things, but it's far less unpleasant then being told what we're "allowed" to hear "for our safety". The idea that they're "detached from humanity" and killing people by this is ridiculous

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

#575

Post by hatefulmoron »

cycomanic wrote: post #319
yanderekko wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, right now there's a odd vogue to think that a healthy democracy does things like ban political parties (currently an active debate regarding the AfD in Germany), or embrace indigenous apartheid movements (NZ, Australia), or to cede sovereignty to unaccountable transnational elites that promise to protect you from the ravages of political misinformation (the EU as a whole.) I don't think these notions will stand…

For those of people who are wondering about the "indigenous apartheid", the poster is talking about co-governance, i.e. giving certain "typically local", economic and political powers to indigenous organizations. This has become recently become on-vogue to call "apartheid" in right circles. I guess the people opposing co-governance are not very fond of following contracts, because at least in NZ the founding document…

If many people believe that co-governance is undemocratic, what does "following contracts" have to do with anything? Frankly, why should New Zealand be forever bound by the treaty? Parliament is supreme, if they didn't want to follow the treaty they don't have to.

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

#576

Post by throwaway0984 »

chonkerz wrote: post #365
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…

[flagged]

"bulletproof hoster communities like LowEndTalk"

This is a joke, right? lmao

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

#578

Post by autoexec »

seanhunter wrote: post #488
autoexec wrote: post #187

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 is an argument that seems reasonable but lacks important nuance and addressing it forms the center of "The Open Society and its Enemies" by Karl Popper, which I would recommend reading. Popper's argument is essentially that tolerance is essential to open society and therefore to maintain openness, society must ironically be intolerant of those who are intolerant themselves or would spread intolerance. Nazis were…

Karl Popper discusses "unlimited tolerance" which literally no one is demanding. With very very few exceptions, we all accept limitations on speech. We have specific exemptions to free speech like incitements to violence for this reason.

Popper also states: "I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise." He only recommends such an extreme action when all else has failed and we're up against "fists and pistols". When hate groups are committing acts of violence (not just acts of speech), the US is certainly not sitting around tolerating that behavior.

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

#579

Post by cf141q5325 »

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #250
shadowgovt wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yeah, sheesh. KF is a website that gleefully reposts terrorist murder videos treated with the same legal penalties as CSAM in other countries, and during the reign of ISIS and the Taliban I don't recall people sitting around defending the need for that particular free speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Christchurch_mosque... edit: By the way, for all those people ripping on the ACLU and saying "they los…

It should be mentioned that some intelligence agencies have an involvement in extremist groups. Like the Soviet Union supported urban guerillas in the west or Russia dumping its Neonazis (who happened to kill Kremlin-critical journalists) into the Ukraine. With them then purposefully spreading stuff like Christchurch manifest translations through people involved with Azov to pump their "international far right" image.

Trying to solve that problem through attempts to quell public discourse and dictate limits of conversation are misguided and self destructive. Its a race to the bottom as a byproduct of short term power politics. Its not like western actors arent also doing it, strategy of tension in Italy for example. Having a bogey man can be quite beneficial.

There being a communication channel with reduced moderation is hardly the root cause. I would argue its quite the contrary, the heavier you get involved in controlling discourse, the easier it becomes to saw tension.

edit: As an example

>Russia dumping its Neonazis (who happened to kill Kremlin-critical journalists) into the Ukraine

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/02/15/def...

>In an interview published by Azov’s online podcast in May 2015, Korotkih fawned over the Islamic State, and compared the Azov Regiment to the group.

>“I can’t accept ISIS ideology but they’re awesome in what they do. I enjoy their movies very much. I drool over what’s going on in the territories they control”, Korotkih proclaimed during the interview (00:32:45 into the interview), in which he also characterized ISIS as “heroes of that time.”

You might know him as the head of paramilitary training of the NSO in Ross Kemps visit to Moscow. With the NSO likely being part of the same Vladislav Surkov project as BORN. https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/russian-neonazi-ilya-go...

Sergei Korotkikh and the NSO and FSB https://www.ft.com/content/21553438-fcda-11df-ae2d-00144feab...

Ross Kemp (introduction in the gym to the NSO in the first few minutes. In case you watch it, the badly faked videos they made were a cover for the police to not investigate attacks on migrant workers. Tesak grew a concision in prison and got tortured and executed through "suicide". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv1q3pCfed0

Before Tesak was famously used as a bogeyman for Russia's liberal opposition when he came to a book club where Navalny held a discussion.

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

#580

Post by voldacar »

cycomanic wrote: post #319
yanderekko wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, right now there's a odd vogue to think that a healthy democracy does things like ban political parties (currently an active debate regarding the AfD in Germany), or embrace indigenous apartheid movements (NZ, Australia), or to cede sovereignty to unaccountable transnational elites that promise to protect you from the ravages of political misinformation (the EU as a whole.) I don't think these notions will stand…

For those of people who are wondering about the "indigenous apartheid", the poster is talking about co-governance, i.e. giving certain "typically local", economic and political powers to indigenous organizations. This has become recently become on-vogue to call "apartheid" in right circles. I guess the people opposing co-governance are not very fond of following contracts, because at least in NZ the founding document…

You're just doing Russell conjugation.
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