The ACLU has changed to only defend speech they agree with. Will the EFF take over the role that ACLU had?
ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
701–710 of 1001 posts
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#702Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mu…
Did you somehow miss the last five million years of history? People have no problem advocating for evil under their own name.
and if you have any hope for humanity at all you have to believe that the majority will continue to reject that evil. pretending evil people dont exist doesnt make them go away.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#703Earlier quoted context omitted.
> private companies are de facto writing the laws about what's allowed online It's hard when it's your line people are using to put their brand of ugliness "online". Cloudflare comes up so regularly because so many legally problematic websites use their free service to evade even judicial blocks that ISPs are ordered to implement at national level. CF are used as a free proxy that's very hard to block unless Cloudfla…
>When they don't take a stand, when they try to stay impartial, they're attacked for enabling terrorism, child abuse, human trafficking, etc, etc, etc. Imo the problem lies here. On the idea that servicing someone implies support for their actions or ideology. For all the talk about acceptance and tolerance it would seem a good deal of society is ok with the idea that those doing reprehensible stuff ought to be compl…
Yeah, this is where things are so immature. Where language has been twisted into “silence is violence”. People that think this way either have an intense moral agenda and they’re intolerant of real diversity, or they can’t actually mentally separate the concept of basic human respect (as in servicing someone you disagree with because they’re human) and political support a la providing internet to Kiwi farms perpetuates violence you’re part of the problem.
If you let authoritarians kafka trap you or you peers into thought terminating cliches left and right, and you don’t call the BS, this is the society you end up in.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#704Earlier quoted context omitted.
From an outsider's perspective (NZ) Germany's democracy looks a lot healthier than the US's.
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…
> 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)
this is based on the idea of streitbare demokratie[0]. Which basically states that the foundation of the state (bundestag, bundesregerung and courts) has the right AND duty to defend itself against parties/elements who wish to abolish the "freiheitlich-demokratische Grundordnung" (freedom/democratic foundation/order).
This concept actually is worked out in various different laws in the Grundgesetz.
It solves the problem of the paradox of intolerance quiet well in my opinion, and considering germany's history it is a very, very good system to have.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#705I see ye ol’ “but HE is a private company they can do what they want” argument surfacing again. Something that is easily missed: internet providers benefit from government protected monopolies because you can’t just dig up cities and lay cable wherever you want. They’re seen as privately run public infrastructure. Therefore there’s an expectation that they indiscriminately carry traffic, because their position as an ISP is too powerful to allow them to be short circuiting the courts and making value judgements. This isn’t just a hypothetical concern, it’s real.
I don’t know HE’s specific situation with regards to being a common carrier, but I’m surprised there isn’t a conversation about the expectations we have of utility providers who receive privileged operational power over necessary public services.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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?
The fact cyberbullies exist doesn't obligate anybody to support the site the cyberbullies organize on.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#707Earlier 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…
I see no problems with banning Nazi and Communist parties after what they did to my country.
What if the billionaires behind those parties, who funded those "nazi" or "communist" parties, funded a party and gave it a different name. Would it be ok then?
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#708I 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…
That's right. Authoritarian censors found an exploit. They couldn't use the government to clamp down on civil liberties because of the pesky constitution, so they invaded the administrative layer of big tech. It's not the engineers who built the web and these companies with Silicon Valley ideals. They were never intended to be used this way and are secretly horrified. > play moral police at the moment Moral fashion p…
>>It's not the engineers who built the web and these companies
I 100% disagree with this, the engineering level of silicon valley left the old "libertarian" hacker ethos behind a long time ago, at the engineering layer there is idea about using technology to build a "better society" where "better society" is ensuring people with "wrong opinions" isolated so they can not "harm" others with their "violence" and violence is now words on the internet.
In fact recent activism coming from the engineer levels at Big Tech (google, Amazon, FB, etc) has me believe that that administrative layer is not really in control, and the policy changes are a reflection coming from the activism in the engineering layer
We also see this through out Open Source with the raise of the CoC to implement systemic changes with in open source to ensure only those with "correct opinions" are allowed to contribute moving from just caring about code, to then caring about code and conduct with in a project and project related events, to now even more expansive monitoring of developers entire lives, and activities completely removed and unrelated to any development activities.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#709> That’s why EFF has long argued that we must “protect the stack” by saying no to infrastructure providers policing internet content. I agree with this, but you need to understand what you agree to. It's not just the content you want to see - it's also the content you don't want to see. It's the freedom of the most extreme content imaginable - CP, snuff, murder, doxxing, drugs, etc, etc. People will experience severe…
"If you receive government assistance (money/drugs) for a mental disability, a filtered version of the internet should be available to you." Not every mental disability makes people stupid enough to make them need a filtered internet. As someone in that category, but still able to think, if people like you nerf my internet, the amount of rage and anger that I will unleash upon society is going to be endless.
> Not every mental disability makes people stupid enough to make them need a filtered internet.
It's not about being stupid, it's about being vulnerable. Also it may not be appropriate in every case. I am also weary of removing the ability to access the internet from otherwise functioning adults. I've not quite happy to have a solid stance on it just yet.
As I said: "[..] a filtered version of the internet should be available to you." - That's to say that they can choose to use it. It's not ideal, but it would be opt-in at least for example on a doctor's recommendation.
> [..] people like you [..]
I'm making the case for an unfiltered internet, and I want as many people as reasonable to be able to access it. My suggestion was a compromise.
> As someone in that category, but still able to think, if people like you nerf my internet, the amount of rage and anger that I will unleash upon society is going to be endless.
I don't know your your specific scenario, but despite your fundamental rights, it may for example be prudent not to give you access to a gun, despite your want for one, or claims of rage and anger unleashed upon society.
Also we haven't really discussed (for good reason) what such filtering would look like, or who would control it. That's a difficult situation in itself. There's not really a person or group I would trust with such power.
Edit: Spelling/grammar.
Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is
#710Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue there is that as best I can tell, kiwifarms the site doesn't break any laws. It officially discourages actual harassment of the people it insults. Individual users may harass people but as far as I could tell from my previous skim they do not organize this harassment in the open. And requiring service providers to monitor private communications for organisation of harassment seems Orwellian to me. (Intuitio…
If you read up on the Kiwifarms Wikipedia page [0] it sounds like someone needs to go to jail. Until this moment I'd never believed that sending someone a pizza would qualify as an act of violence - but now I can see it. If the site doesn't break laws then there is no reason to ban it. But there are criminals using that site and they should be caught. Banning the site is just dodging the real problem. [0] https://en.…
Your mistake is expecting Wikipedia to be a reliable source on issues that concern the terminally online.