Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

ellsberg.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 1001 posts

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#671

Post by zajio1am »

eesmith wrote: post #277
const_cast wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancel Culture is actually just the free market, the invisible hand, at work. What is a boycott but cancel culture? The idea of the free market is that good behaviors and products emerge because consumers "vote" with their wallet. If a company has bad values I don't support then I don't shop there. Enough people do that and the company collapses. So, what remains is an economy where every company acts virtuously. The…

I point out to self-described "classic liberals" that what they call "cancel culture" was instead described by John Stuart Mill in "On Liberty" as an essential component of liberty: "We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoi…

This is ignoring difference between individual distancing from such person and cancel culture campaigns, whose characteristic pattern is transitivity (boycotting third persons just because they do not participate themselves in boycott). Amplifying effect of such transitivity creates a social coercion in the form that Mill warned against in chapter 1. That is why he mentioned "though not to parade the avoidance" - to not induce society-wide coordination leading to social coercion.

Mill distinguishes between natural penalties (which are just results of others distancing from the person) and artificial punishment:

"It makes a vast difference both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him, whether he displeases us in things in which we think we have a right to control him, or in things in which we know that we have not. If he displeases us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof from a person as well as from a thing that displeases us; but we shall not therefore feel called on to make his life uncomfortable."

I think it is clear that actions like urging an employer to fire such person are more on level "make his life uncomfortable" than "we may express our distaste and we distance".

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#672

Post by cloverich »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #287
alwa wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we could call this way… zero-knowledge proof! :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof I bet we could even get a major phone OS vendor to support such a thing… https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-id...

Yet then again how hard is it to just grab your parents' ids while they're not looking and add it to your phone wallet?

They can require a selfie to compare against, multiple documents, a video, etc. IMHO best bet is to consolidate the validation to a small set of reputable companies, delegate validation to them, then improve regulations around access. Eg non-reputable site needs to know you are 18 (etc) but not see your actual id if they can have a third party do it in a blind-to-them fashion.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#673

Post by Retric »

ndriscoll wrote: post #619
Retric wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to add Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, etc to that list to actually achieve what you set out to accomplish. Which then does more harm than what you’re trying to prevent. He’ll realistically the US doesn’t make the cut either.

Why? Concretely, what would I be trying to allow in Japan? Don't they mostly communicate in Japanese anyway? The US has things like local government, schools, businesses, clubs, organizations, etc. Because the US is where we live. That makes it inconvenient to default block the US. Australia has what that is relevant to us? I don't see any .au in my browser history. Or .jp. Or .ca. There is some ac.uk, granted, but t…

I assume you buy some non US products and many .com address are hosted outside the US by non US companies.

Gigabyte.com for example makes a great deal of computer parts like graphics cards and it’s hosted at 103.130.100.144 which geolocates to Taiwan, Province of China.

bmw.com 160.46.226.165 Germany

Now some of them will route US users to US servers to lower their ping, but that’s an added expense that not everyone pays for.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#674

Post by tomhow »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #592
tomhow wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TeH iNtErNeT Don't do this on HN. It's sneering and snark, and thus against the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Maybe but it was part of my point, that the internet gets a pass for a vague variety of reasons.

We’re just trying for something better here, and this is only a place where people want to participate because of the people who make the effort to make it better.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#676

Post by john01dav »

al_borland wrote: post #10

All these ID check laws are out of hand. Parents are expecting the government, and random websites, to raise their kids. Why would anyone trust some random blog with their ID? If these laws move forward (and I don’t think they should), there needs to be a way to authenticate as over 18 without sending picture of your ID off to random 3rd parties, or giving actual personal details. I don’t want to give this data, and…

I'm concerned that such validation would need to be proprietary and locked down with some sort of user hostile TPM-like-thing in order to be effective. If this wasn't the case, then anyone could fork the foss tool and create a bypass. The average child won't do this, but a few will and some adults probably will over anti DRM principles and then it's published and widely available.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#678

Post by ndiddy »

al_borland wrote: post #10

All these ID check laws are out of hand. Parents are expecting the government, and random websites, to raise their kids. Why would anyone trust some random blog with their ID? If these laws move forward (and I don’t think they should), there needs to be a way to authenticate as over 18 without sending picture of your ID off to random 3rd parties, or giving actual personal details. I don’t want to give this data, and…

The actual point of these laws isn't to stop minors from viewing the material, it's to stop sites from hosting the material entirely. They're using "protect the kids from obscene content" as a wedge to get popular support. Acting like some technical solution to make authenticating as an adult more user-friendly would make the politicians who want this implemented happy is disingenuous. Let's take a look at how Tennessee has legislated their ID check should be implemented:

- ID must be verified either by matching a photo of the user to their photo ID, or by processing private transactional data (i.e. a credit card transaction).

- The user must verify their ID at the start of the session, and every hour the session is active.

- Historical anonymized ID verification data must be retained for at least 7 years.

- Anyone running a site that's viewable in Tennessee without the above ID verification rules is committing a class C felony, regardless of what state they reside in or host their site in.

This is clearly an attempt to stop any content they label as "obscene" (using a very broad definition of "obscenity") from being viewable at all in Tennessee. It's a completely unreasonable set of hoops to jump through that solely exists as a fig leaf because they know that making a law banning the content entirely would be ruled unconstitutional.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#679

Post by watwut »

aaronmdjones wrote: post #167
watwut wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wont allow minors to take out porn. Simply, they wont and it would be illegal for them.

I think the point they were making is that a child can walk into a library, pick up any book, and open it. All without any adults being in the loop. They can do that today.

Yeah, and my point is that the "pick up any book" thing is hiding the fact that selection is in fact seriously limited.

And second, underaged kids can not checkout non kid material without adult in the loop. That part is simply not true, the librarian will say no to the child or ask for parents permission.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#680

Post by skybrian »

al_borland wrote: post #10

All these ID check laws are out of hand. Parents are expecting the government, and random websites, to raise their kids. Why would anyone trust some random blog with their ID? If these laws move forward (and I don’t think they should), there needs to be a way to authenticate as over 18 without sending picture of your ID off to random 3rd parties, or giving actual personal details. I don’t want to give this data, and…

By a similar argument, why should stores check id's when selling alcohol or cigarettes? Raising kids is not their job either.

The answer is because we live in a society. Society is about families, not just adults. Sure, raising kids is primarily the job of the parents, but everyone helps. Sometimes that results in a bit of inconvenience for businesses.

Excluding kids from businesses that are adult-only isn't very kid-friendly, but it's the bare minimum when there are children around.

Post reply on HN