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Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

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Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#151

Post by [deleted] »

citizenpaul wrote: post #82
unclebucknasty wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the answer is anything less than “infinite money”, you’re anti-free-speech. Pointing this out is not the most popular thing on HN, but that doesn't make it less true. I made a similar case a week or two ago in response to someone who did a Show HN on their new "free speech" platform. I essentially challenged the creator to advocate for his new platform by supporting the speech rights of child abusers to promote…

Its interesting that you mention this infinite money problem. Have you ever noticed that the second a fully free speech site opens it is almost instantly crippled with CP? Do you really think that is just happening naaturally? How can something universally loathed also be so prolific that it needs to constanly infect venues to propogate? Its almost like its a tactic to suppress free speech but im just a nut.

[deleted]

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#152

Post by dragonwriter »

mountainb wrote: post #136
citizenpaul wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its interesting that you mention this infinite money problem. Have you ever noticed that the second a fully free speech site opens it is almost instantly crippled with CP? Do you really think that is just happening naaturally? How can something universally loathed also be so prolific that it needs to constanly infect venues to propogate? Its almost like its a tactic to suppress free speech but im just a nut.

This is a problem with the post-'60s post-Chatterly trial conception of free speech. Since then, amidst other developments, the concept of free speech has been conflated with a rabid opposition to any obscenity laws. The US and Great Britain have had a much longer history in which free speech had a meaning separate from the absence of prohibition against obscene material (with some small exceptions we have today like…

> There is actually no contradiction between moderating to remove obscene and other illegal content and supporting the principle of free speech.

Yes, there is. There is, in fact, a fundamental contradiction between the idea that the State can declare content “illegal” and “free speech”.

The obscenity exception turns free speech from “the government cannot ban content” to “the government cannot ban content unless both the judge [0] and a sufficiently large portion of the public sufficiently dislikes it [1] and it has to do with sex and/or excretion.”

That's not to say the founders wouldn't have agreed with it; the founders agreed that hereditary slavery had no conflict with the right of persona not to have life or liberty deprived without due process of law, so as a whole thet had pretty big blind spots in their conception of rights.

[0] the official prong being that the work lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value

[1] that the average member of the community would find it appeals to a prurient interest.

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#153

Post by [deleted] »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #28
newbie789 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having rules on a private website is against the concept of free speech? How much of your own money are you willing to spend on hosting and serving an unlimited amount of user-uploaded hentai tentacle porn on your privately-owned domain? If the answer is anything less than “infinite money”, you’re anti-free-speech.

> If the answer is anything less than “infinite money”, you’re anti-free-speech. Pointing this out is not the most popular thing on HN, but that doesn't make it less true. I made a similar case a week or two ago in response to someone who did a Show HN on their new "free speech" platform. I essentially challenged the creator to advocate for his new platform by supporting the speech rights of child abusers to promote…

[deleted]

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#154

Post by unclebucknasty »

dragonwriter wrote: post #152
mountainb wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem with the post-'60s post-Chatterly trial conception of free speech. Since then, amidst other developments, the concept of free speech has been conflated with a rabid opposition to any obscenity laws. The US and Great Britain have had a much longer history in which free speech had a meaning separate from the absence of prohibition against obscene material (with some small exceptions we have today like…

> There is actually no contradiction between moderating to remove obscene and other illegal content and supporting the principle of free speech. Yes, there is. There is, in fact, a fundamental contradiction between the idea that the State can declare content “illegal” and “free speech”. The obscenity exception turns free speech from “the government cannot ban content” to “the government cannot ban content unless both…

These arguments take a form which implies that each right operates in a vacuum.

But, of course, if we were to allow any right without exception, then we would soon find that we have no rights. Not only would the limitless interpretation of one right eventually decimate other rights but, apart from that, it would also undermine society's solvency; hence its ability to enforce even the expanded right.

Rights, as ideas, have no utility. They must be layered onto the substrate of a functioning society. Hence, there has always been work towards achieving balance, as every right must be circumscribed to some degree.

This is why we have courts, reasonableness standards, etc.

So, sure, we could interpret these as "contradictions", but that becomes a meaningless characterization in any practical sense.

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#155

Post by david_allison »

lazyfuture wrote: post #101
mattlondon wrote: post #97

Perhaps someone can enlighten me: So what was the impact on the internet then? Beyond a few meme templates or abbreviations or whatever, what has the actual lasting impact been? People say this about 4chan as well, but beyond passing meme fads I have yet to see anything convincing?

I think the Benghazi attacks happened live on the forums. One of the people killed at the embassy was a gamer and posted often because he had a space guild or something. Notch released beta versions of Minecraft there for people to "check out what I'm working on" A LOT of stuff happened on the forums. It was nuts. The Franz Ferdinand meme everyone is going off of (which makes a TON of sense if you witnessed it and ev…

> I think the Benghazi attacks happened live on the forums. One of the people killed at the embassy was a gamer and posted often because he had a space guild or something.

Yep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Smith_(diplomat)

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#156

Post by newbie789 »

bagels wrote: post #93
unclebucknasty wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the answer is anything less than “infinite money”, you’re anti-free-speech. Pointing this out is not the most popular thing on HN, but that doesn't make it less true. I made a similar case a week or two ago in response to someone who did a Show HN on their new "free speech" platform. I essentially challenged the creator to advocate for his new platform by supporting the speech rights of child abusers to promote…

I don't think providing a place where other people can say what they want is equivalent to being compelled to promote someone elses' speech.

So, how do I upload my collection of tentacle porn to your personal website? A true advocate for free speech would post their SFTP credentials in the open on this website.

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#157

Post by newbie789 »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #146
newbie789 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I essentially challenged the creator to advocate for his new platform by supporting the speech rights of child abusers to promote their ideas I wouldn’t do that. I’m not sure why anybody would.

Well, feel free to substitute something legal or more abstract, like tentacle porn. But, I did it exactly because it's a real-world example of near-universally abhorrent speech that I don't think they would support on their own platform. But, the deplatformed and other types who are recently lamenting "the great fall of free speech" always offer the argument "who gets to decide what speech is acceptable?", which is a…

Yeah, these “free speech at all costs!!” folks really don’t think that individuals and private organizations should have the right to curate what appears on the platforms they own and pay for. Their version of “free speech” necessarily requires taking away others’ rights to property, which seems kind of odd because that same crowd is often going on about ~liberty~.

Every time I see people shaking their fists and yelling “MODS!!!!” at the sky it gives me a laugh because that person almost certainly has never actually tried to provide an open forum or image hosting service. They’re usually actually fully averse to the idea of doing so, hence why nobody has offered to host my collection of tentacle porn for free and in perpetuity.

It’s not an issue of what these people believe is morally right like is often claimed, it’s an issue of how they feel entitled to be treated as an individual regardless of how that impacts the freedom of others. There’s no ideological consistency of “freedom”, just a tantrum about not getting enough free services.

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#158

Post by genewitch »

bluedino wrote: post #127
devonkim wrote: post #33

What’s been interesting through the years on the forums that I’ve found to be strange is that as the Internet social media landscape became “free” services that have terrible, low effort, low quality content and users as a rule, SA’s model of having users pay to post is becoming more of a better model to help avoid the poor incentives of most companies to demand more of users’ attention. The posting quality for users…

Internet brands bought up a bunch of v bulletin boards a few years ago. You could pay to be a "premium member" but you still had to deal with the free members and didn't get many benefits other than skipping ands and perhaps access to PM's

They also bought vbulletin itself, and then developed future versions in house.

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#159

Post by 93po »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #50
ethbr0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best put. I'm not sure if younger people these days can imagine just how anonymous the internet was then. It had its advantages and disadvantages. Although I'd still rather live in the future of that world than our current identity-everywhere one.

> can imagine just how anonymous the internet was then. It wasn't that anonymous on SA though. Once you paid your :tenbux: then the site admins (incl. Lowtax) had your PII, assuming you used your own credit-card, ofc. I don't recall Lowtax et al. ever doxxed any of their own forum patrons, at least not any in good-standing, but I assume fear from the possibility of being doxxed for being an asshat on the forums kept…

They did respond to plenty of warrants asking for information on users, including from the secret service

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#160

Post by dang »

newbie789 wrote: post #81
Dylan16807 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're harassing someone for basically saying "your mention of 'unfettered free speech' is off topic". While acting like the person that said that is the one that brought up 'unfettered free speech'. You are wrong to do that.

What Are You Talking About

You posted a bunch of flamewar comments in this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Would you please review the site guidelines and use this site in the intended spirit going forward? I'm not going to ban you right now, but you've been doing this repeatedly, unfortunately:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29022715

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28970746

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969532

Posting like that will definitely get you banned if you keep it up, so please fix this. Btw, I suppose I should mention in a thread about SA that this isn't some sort of ethical or moral requirement. We just have those rules because we're trying to be a particular kind of website, and we need to do something about the sorts of posts that impede that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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