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

751–760 of 1001 posts

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

#751

Post by gorwell »

phpisthebest wrote: post #708
gorwell wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 violenc…

There's a few things happening

Preference falsification from engineers, which was normalized after James Damore had his character publicly assassinated. Throwing rotten tomatoes at him and screaming "shame shame" before chopping off his head was a warning to everyone else to keep quiet or echo the correct opinions.

There's a lot of tribal signaling and "don't hurt me I'm one of you".

Then there's a new brand of engineer, and some old gen converts, who are true believers in the new religion and programming is just a lucrative way to participate in late stage capitalism as a wage slave. Many among them are aggressive bullies and codify their beliefs into CoCs and concern themselves with purity testing.

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

#752

Post by cmh89 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #90
cmh89 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Child pornography, where real children are involved in any way, is/should be illegal because of the crime that has to occur to produce it. Any CSAM which is fully divorced from real children (or any sort of crime in general) in all ways should be legal, as gross as it is.

You aren't OP but that's my poin. OP made the absolutist statement that:

"Censorship has always been on the wrong side of history and it still is."

which is obviously absurd because there are very obvious situations where censorship is clearly a good idea, like in banning not just the creation of child pornography but the possession.

When the feds strengthen laws against child porn in the 70s and 80s, that same free speech argument played out. Free speech advocates argued that having recorded evidence of a crime shouldn't be a crime in of itself. You can have pictures of murder victims after all, and there are plenty of recordings of illegal activity on the internet that are totally legal.

Obviously the right side won and the feds passed laws censoring child pornography because the ends, punishing child porn consumers and creators, outweighed the cost, which was a small reduction in freedom of speech.

Every society needs some limits on speech and free speech absolutism is just ideological weakness in thinking about how a society should actually work because in the real world, unlimited speech leads to a lot of people getting hurt.

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

#753

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

logicchains wrote: post #596
MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was looking for something like that, but didn't find it at a glance. Not surprising, I suppose.

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

#754

Post by karaterobot »

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.

I don't even mentally file the ACLU as "the good guys" anymore. Rationally, I know they continue to do a lot of good work today, but that bit has been flipped, and it's hard to go back. When you're an organization like that, you kind of have to be absolute in your stance, and write things like "history requires us to look at the bigger picture, and sound the alarm about the risks even when the facts are horrific".

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

#755

Post by Dan_Sylveste »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #734
phpisthebest wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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 violenc…

> I 100% disagree with this, the engineering level of silicon valley left the old "libertarian" hacker ethos behind a long time ago And thank fuck for that. > 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. Peo…

> people who want to exterminate people

This is the oddly standard wording used in defense of these newly-fashionable 'everything you've ever done ever can be used against you' contributor codes of conduct and I have to find it very disingenuous.

By and large nobody wants to exterminate anybody. People have legitimate differences of opinion and when they attempt to express them they're being told that even _thinking_ that opinion is tantamount to violence.

If you can't see it as anything other than a transparent attempt to restrict discourse I don't know what to tell you. It isn't like this is the first time this strategy has been used.

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

#756

Post by leetcrew »

hnbad wrote: post #567
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.

I think you misunderstand the EFF's position here if you think this is some kind of enlightened centrist "I may not agree with what you say but I will fight to death for your right to say it": the EFF is opposed to ISPs filtering content because that is not the job of an ISP and not a level of analysis an ISP should be allowed (much less required) to do. The EFF very much promotes progressive values, more consistentl…

the "nazi bar" concept does accurately describe the problem with sites like parlor today, but I'd argue it's only true now because heavy moderation has become the default.

most of the internet was not like this 10-15 years ago. forums and even large social media platforms were moderated lightly, if at all. you would commonly see edgelords dropping slurs, but it did not dominate the discussion. I don't think the entire internet would turn into kiwifarms if everyone just decided to relax a bit.

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

#757

Post by gorwell »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #734
phpisthebest wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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 violenc…

> I 100% disagree with this, the engineering level of silicon valley left the old "libertarian" hacker ethos behind a long time ago And thank fuck for that. > 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. Peo…

That's all projection and appeal to emotion to justify censoring and bullying people into submission. How many people have had their characters assassinated, ostracized and fired, sometimes commiting suicide as a result, just because they said the wrong thing now or in the past according to the current moral fashion police. How many are self censoring and falsifying preferences to appease the authoritarians. They say it's about kindness and respect, inbetween destroying the next individual's life. Authoritarian bullies cloaking themselves in a veneer of kindness and moral fashion is not new.

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

#759

Post by hellojesus »

ddingus wrote: post #699
momirlan wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think it's rather the political establishment has allowed big tech to set the agenda for what it considers to be "the truth"

Big Tech was told they can either see regulation they don't like, or get with the program and ignore corruption like old media has done for decades.

They should have taken the regulation. At least that forces it into the public eye and allows for accountability via voting. This way only generates a shadow government.

Apart from the obvious 1a violation.

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

#760

Post by autoexec »

indigo945 wrote: post #605
autoexec wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ( Bavaria used copyright to enforce an "unofficial" ban on the book. It's ridiculous to try to paint the situation as one where Bavaria just never got around to reprinting it.

This was of course intentional, but you incorrectly claimed that > To their credit they've also relaxed a bit over the years. For example, > they lifted the ban on Mein Kampf This just never happened. No ban was ever lifted. This does not show some change in the German mindset towards being more tolerant of Nazi speech, as you insinuate. The copyright expired - that is all.

If you'd like another example where German citizens are being subjected to less censorship, the restrictions on Nazi images in video games have been somewhat lightened. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45142651
Post reply on HN