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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

#651

Post by cyanydeez »

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…

The lack of government regulations will make businesses "regulate" themselves

What you're seeing is how government is born. Corporatoctacy is just another form of authoritarianism and the more government pulls up stakes, they get replaced.

The global strain of far right ethno isolationist politics is creating the public void these corporations are filling.

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

#652

Post by metalspot »

_lvbh wrote: post #257
amiga386 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the ACLU have lost their way. https://web.archive.org/web/20210608004853/https://www.nytim... > the organization finds itself riven with internal tensions over whether it has stepped away from a founding principle — unwavering devotion to the First Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union... > Beginning in 2017, some individuals claimed the ACLU was reducing its support of unpop…

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

Many countries have recognized free speech as a right through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is much broader than the 1st amendment.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...

But just because governments have recognized the right does not mean that they are complying with this recognition.

This is par for the course though. The 1st amendment was ratified in 1791 and the Alien and Sedition Acts which violated the constitution in the most blatant way were passed 8 years later.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/alien-and-sedit...

Governments never give freedom. People take it.

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

#653

Post by cf141q5325 »

vintermann wrote: post #645
cf141q5325 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here the Glenn Greenwald post from the time of the Kiwifarms debacle is worth referencing. https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1567292900312064000 >But the worst is watching people whose job title in corporate HR Departments is "journalist" take the lead in agitating for censorship. They exploit the platforms of corporate giants to pioneer increasingly dangerous means of banning dissenters. These are the authoritar…

Linking to Twitter doesn't work very well these days. Users who aren't logged in don't see the thread, only the single tweet you link to.

I put it as a quote in the post. Would be great if you could recommend a better alternative though, especially as even watching a tweet was disabled for a time.

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

#654

Post by oblio »

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…

> It has strong requirements to the form, but not necessarily the content of the message itself.

This is provably false.

If I write a very formal and polite message asking for some horrible thing to be done to group X, the message will be removed as soon as HN mods see it.

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

#655

Post by richbell »

stephenr wrote: post #422
richbell wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The site is literally about stalking people and documenting their personal lives for the sake of mockery. You're half right, though I'd disagree with literally stalking — at the very least, there's variety and nuance. There's such a large variety of people discussed on the forum that I don't think you can make a blanket statement like that. Is watching every video or stream from a content creator and posting in a f…

> Is watching every video or stream from a content creator and posting in a forum mocking them "stalking"? Is digging through someone's old Twitter posts stalking? Is noticing that a person used the same username on multiple websites (some potentially embarrassing) stalking? You cannot be seriously asking this. From https://www.merriam-webster.com/legal/stalking : > broadly : a crime of engaging in a course of conduc…

> You cannot be seriously asking this.

I am. The fact you refused to answer any of the questions and threw generic definitions at me kinda proves my point.

Is any unwanted attention stalking? Is a journalist stalking someone if they go through their trash? What about when the paparazzi do it? Did that kid stalk Elon Musk?

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

#656

Post by sebzim4500 »

chonkerz wrote: post #465
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.

The EFF is arguing that companies should lose their right to withdraw service due to TOS violation, unless the government says it's ok. This is as anti-freedom as it gets. What is wrong with them

Do you think your phone company should be able to deny you service if they don't like the things you say on the phone?

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

#657

Post by birracerveza »

I would extend this to include everyone that isn't actual law enforcement agencies.

While it's perfectly reasonable for websites to decide what content is shown, it should also be possible to decide to show ALL content, except very obviously illegal content like CSAM and actual threats (which can be notified by LE and even automated).

I am aware that this line gets blurry very quickly, but we're leaning way too much on the side of censorship. We are just sweeping the ugly under the rug and hoping it goes away, while instead it festers, until it goes viral.

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

#658

Post by metalspot »

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.

I don't have to imagine.

Instead on censoring speech why not provide tools that lead to better speech? This is perfectly possible from a tech stand point but companies would rather have the power that comes from censorship.

1. Get rid of anonymity/pseudonymity. Free speech is a right. Anonymity is not. If people had to post everything in their real name you would get rid of all of the fake b.s. and people would be much more civilized in their speech.

2. Provide content filtering tools based on user voting with a public record of user votes and the option for people to turn off the filters so that they can see what is filtered.

With these 2 mechanisms you can create a public square with absolute free speech where hate speech is filtered and suppressed, if people choose that, but the records are clear and people who want to audit the filtering can do so as they please.

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

#659

Post by vintermann »

r721 wrote: post #318
frabbit wrote: post #20

It is not just ISPs. It is crowdfunding and payment processing companies. See for example this apparent seizure of funding to independent journalists happening right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314499 If you care about there being genuinely independent news media then funding these guys is something you can do right now.

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By that standard, how is say Bellingcat not a pro-NATO propaganda outlet, when the founder was even invited to be a senior fellow of Atlantic Council, a think tank whose members have included luminaries such as David Petraeus, Colin Powell and Henry Kissinger?

The Gray Zone is not a quality outlet, IMO. They're certainly too light on Russia, and worse, bad at distinguishing genuinely damning stuff and spun fluff.

But they should still be able to take the public's funding, if the public wants to fund them.

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

#660

Post by torstenvl »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #561
torstenvl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essential internet infrastructure should not be content-neutral. Content neutrality is a higher bar than you think it is. Content-neutral means the rules cannot take content into account at all . If the content is millions of ssh login requests on thousands of servers with ec2-user and the top 10000 most used passwords, the infrastructure should be able to block that. Content-neutrality would probably make it illegal…

This seems a very poor argument. Your examples are people forcing packets to a network node, content neutrality is about receiving what you wish from a server whose operator has chosen to serve that content. Stopping people who are actively committing crimes is not preventing free movement on a right of way. Or rather, it is in layman's terms, but free movement does not include the commission of crimes. In the same w…

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