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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

#591

Post by autoexec »

gmerc wrote: post #413
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…

We learned the hard way what happens if you don’t oppress Nazis. Paradox of tolerance.

The Paradox of tolerance doesn't mean what you think it does. It talks about "unlimited tolerance" which already doesn't exist under law or the first amendment. We have many restrictions on freedom of speech, such as incitements to violence.

The author also states explicitly that his words shouldn't be used to "suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument" and that such extreme action should be reserved for situations where all else has failed and we're up against "fists or pistols"

Violence, not words, is the problem. Thankfully we're not tolerating their violence.

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

#592

Post by mrweasel »

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…

So not knowing either company, is IncogNet and CrunchBits related companies in some way? I ask because the article just talks about Crunchbits, which I didn't know about. I tried to look looking up CrunchBits, but that's not really possible on Bing based search engines.

There are a few links to reviews, but the Crunchbits website seems to have scrubbed from Bing.

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

#593

Post by mftrhu »

aydyn wrote: post #551
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " 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.

Only at a very superficial level.

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

#594

Post by indigo945 »

autoexec wrote: post #210
plagiarist wrote: post #150

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 I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis There are always going to be people who are fearful and ignorant and looking for a convenient external something to blame their problems on. There are also the people who are raised with those views and others who feel excluded and find a place to belong with a group of "outsiders". I don't think we can ever get rid of racist ideologies. We've evolved…

    > To their credit they've also relaxed a bit over the years. For example, they 
    > lifted the ban on Mein Kampf and it flew off the shelves (https://www.bbc.com
    > /news/world-europe-38495456) not because the country was full of secret Nazis 
    > this whole time just waiting for it, but because the German people strongly 
    > desire freedom.
Factually wrong take. Mein Kampf was never "banned", in fact, there is no such thing as book bans under German law, as there is no censorship - article 5 of the Basic Law explicitly says so. The state can make it illegal to sell and advertise media to minors if it is considered dangerous, and Mein Kampf is and always was on that list.

The reason Mein Kampf could not be distributed until a few years ago is because after Hitler's death, the copyright on Mein Kampf fell to the state of Bavaria (for convoluted reasons), and Bavaria just never reprinted it, nor gave license to reprint it. Therefore, any copying of the book was piracy and was prosecuted under piracy laws. Because German copyright ends 70 years after the death of the author, this no longer applies, and the book can be printed and distributed again.

Note that public distribution of the book for nazi propaganda purposes is still banned under German hate speech laws ("Volksverhetzung") - not because it is this particular book, but because all nazi propaganda in public is blanket banned. This is why the now-released official Bavarian-government-approved copy of Mein Kampf contains additional commentary by historians to situate Hitler's remarks in historic context.

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

#595

Post by IncogNET »

chonkerz wrote: post #408
IncogNET wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely false. We are in no way a 'bulletproof' hoster. You're free to review our IP subnets in use and compare them to actual bulletproof hosting providers. We actively and swiftly remove users engaging in ILLEGAL activity, such as malware, warez, etc. We're an American based business, registered in Wyoming, and abide by American law. No 'bulletproof hoster' is going to setup shop in America. Archiving what other…

You host death threats and leaked PII, and the forum owner explicitly encourages his followers to harass specific people he has a personal grudge against. He names entire sections of his forums after his victims and encourages people to post about his victims. You're lying. He's not running a neutral operation and neither are you. The forum doxes employees of their hosting providers. Even Russian hosters terminated k…

Except, we don't host them? Didn't you hear, Hurricane Electric didn't allow us to host Kiwifarms.

I haven't followed up with our customer to see who their new hosting provider is.

If you believe we're hosting something illegal, I do encourage you to message our abuse department so we can review it and take appropriate action if deemed necessary. I understand you feel strongly about the issue but we run an honest business and have no hesitation to boot people from our network doing things that are unlawful.

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

#596

Post by logicchains »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #351
_lvbh wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile in the rest of the world, we don’t even have free speech. If only America could export their constitution like they do their weapons

Here's part of an English translation of the Russian constitution: http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-03.htm and the Chinese constitution: http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Constitution/2007-11/... It's not about the constitution.

The Chinese constitution explicitly says all rights exists only where they don't conflict with what the party wants.

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

#597

Post by autoexec »

andrepd wrote: post #401
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…

No, you're drawing a false equivalence. Advocating for genocide of entire ethnic groups is not "an opinion I disagree with", in fact: the crucial point is that it is an opinion that if taken up would mean the end of freedom for other people. It's the old paradox of tolerance/freedom/etc. If you would like to preserve e.g. free speech and rule of law then you must resist, by force if necessary, people who would abolis…

The paradox of tolerance is about "unlimited tolerance" which already isn't a thing. We have exemptions to the first amendment for words that rise to the level of incitement of violence.

The author of that paradox 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".

I have yet to hear an argument for genocide that can't be countered by rational argument. When hate groups commit acts of violence (not just acts of speech), the US is certainly not sitting around tolerating that. We don't need to fear words. In fact, I much prefer it when racists make themselves known by their words rather than their actions.

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

#598

Post by watwut »

autoexec wrote: post #210
plagiarist wrote: post #150

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 I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis There are always going to be people who are fearful and ignorant and looking for a convenient external something to blame their problems on. There are also the people who are raised with those views and others who feel excluded and find a place to belong with a group of "outsiders". I don't think we can ever get rid of racist ideologies. We've evolved…

Mein Kampf was not banned, it was an intellectual property like any other. It became public domain, because copyright expired.

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

#599

Post by mftrhu »

hexage1814 wrote: post #564
chonkerz wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kiwifarms is breaking a lot of harassment and stalking laws.

Good, then it should be easy for the police to shutdown the website if that's the case. Tell the authorities and let the justice system to deal with it.

> 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.

But the authorities and the justice system seem unwilling to do so, and - in the face of their refusal to act - you can't expect people to just give up and not defend themselves, not when they can exert other forms of pressure.

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

#600

Post by kredd »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #545
yashap wrote: post #353

I agree, and I’m extremely far from a free speech absolutist - to a level that I’m sure most at HN would disagree with. I completely believe in limits to free speech on a case by case basis, online and otherwise. For example, I think HN would be a worse place without moderation, same with Reddit, I think my home country Canada would be a worse place without hate speech laws, etc. Not against limits to free speech onl…

HN is moderated, but I cannot imagine many opinions that really would be outright banned or suppressed. It has strong requirements to the form, but not necessarily the content of the message itself. That is in essence not the topic people complain about, otherwise they probably wouldn't post. I am a free speech absolutist though, I tend to like the term too because I believe its intended derisiveness is mostly impote…

Quite a lot of opinions get suppressed over here, and rightly so. You can see a lot of flagged comments in hot threads.

I grew up with unrestricted access to internet as a child, browsed a lot of forums, and most of them were always heavily moderated as well. The thing is, the majority of audience (read-only people) don’t want to see extremely stupid content (subjective). Thus the mods, host and etc. have to play the balancing game. HN is one of those places, and they’re doing a terrific job, in my opinion.

I’m not sure how to put it into words, but Internet is not the same as public free speech. Anonymity, physical distance, not seeing others’ faces contribute to the way people talk. I completely support the former kind, but not the latter. It just becomes a breeding ground for a lot of naive people who start thinking that’s tolerable to act that way in real world too (can’t cite any sources, just observations from my nephews and others kids I know). We like to tout how everyone forms their own opinions, but I’m a heavy believer of the “nurture” side of the debate. If you get sucked into one corner of the Internet, you will start hating the other corner, and that’s basically your nurturing. I guess, the major question is, should we keep fostering this behaviour or not? And I don’t know the answer, as there isn’t “one right corner” most of the time. The best I can do is to support the crackdown on extremely obvious shitty behaviour knowing that’s against the free speech ethos.

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