ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by michaelmrose » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 1:44 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #219

TylerE wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Even a literal Nazi should have access to utilities. Though I would say cloudflare isn't quite up to that level. Edit: Seeing this downvoted is disappointing. Access to utilities needs to be treated as a right . Only the courts should be able to take it away.

The Germans who died in the 30s and 40s would be alive if the Nazis had been denied access to oxygen. As some of their heirs openly talk about murdering us I don't think in the long run we'll still be mutually protecting each others rights.

It in fact might be kinder to deny them rights now than life later.

People who openly advocate for mass violence even if vague and theoretical belong in prison.

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

#252

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 1:44 AM UTC

menacingly wrote: post #202

shadowgovt wrote: post #186

Counterpoint: the Internet is a network of peers, and if KF can't become a peer and can't find a private company to serve their needs, then forget them. No support for the activity of abusers.

the majority of the overhead of civilization for the last few thousand years or so is scalable mechanisms to arrive at shared definitions for words like "evil", "wrong", "abuse" it's a really hard problem, and every time someone comes in and treats it as a simple issue they do dangerous and naive stuff.

I don't disagree. But I'll point out that "ISPs should just be dumb pipes" and "In the meantime, Tier 1 ISPs like Hurricane should resist the temptation to step in where law enforcement and legislators have failed" are treating it as a simple issue, only in the other direction.

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

#253

Post by hattmall » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

plagiarist wrote: post #150

What I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis despite readily-available facts that Naziism is racist delusions? And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay despite making it illegal to do Nazi stuff? Isn't it a slippery slope directly from banning Naziism direct to North Korean-style authoritarianism?

For one thing the "Nazis" in the US aren't actual Nazis no matter how much they desire to be. German has banned things that deal with the ACTUAL, real Nazis which were a part of Germany. Germany hasn't banned racism and the reality is that Germany is quite racist. If judging by US standards Germany would be off the charts racist. Even Berlin, Germany's most diverse city is still > 80% white.

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

#254

Post by teslashill » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 1:49 AM UTC

pseudo0 wrote: post #148

boppo1 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The three-letter agencies just placed dozens and dozens of people (who decided to quit the CIA, NSA, and FBI in their 30s for some reason and change careers) in the executive suites of every social network. Where can I find more about this?

There was some good reporting on this issue in the Twitter Files. For example, Jim Baker, the general counsel at Twitter, used to work for the FBI. Musk fired Baker for his role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story. https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/04/six-degrees-from-james...

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

#255

Post by hattmall » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 1:50 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #119

pfisch wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When in all of US history were private companies not controlling the public discourse and "censoring free speech"?

Never. In fact, the reason the First Amendment limits the government, exclusively, is that the ability to abridge free speech (to choose which forms of speech you support, spread, or disassociate from) is implicitly a part of individual liberty, held by the people. Free speech has never guaranteed anyone a platform. That's not a bug, it's a feature. Yes, it can be messy. Yes, it can be abused. Yes, it means social me…

Focus on speech though. Can the Phone company cut you off because of the content of your communication? Assuming you aren't breaking any other law like harassment?

The deciding factor is if your business revolves around facilitating speech. The law has some way to go to catch up with the current state of affairs, but right now the government is enjoying the power of censoring that speech so it may not be an easy path.

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

#256

Post by autoexec » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 1:51 AM UTC

afavour wrote: post #230

autoexec wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's where problems arise. Most of us are comfortable oppressing people we disagree with. The reality is that you can't silence voices you don't like without making yourself vulnerable to the same treatment. We either value the freedom to express ourselves within the limits of the law or we don't. As soon as there are more people who think like you do, none of us are safe and it just becomes a system that silen…

> Most of us are comfortable oppressing people we disagree with. The reality is that you can't silence voices you don't like without making yourself vulnerable to the same treatment. I’m deeply ambivalent about a site like Cloudflare censoring anything but the logic here… absolutely not. You can classify speech. It’s not terribly difficult to classify when something is an outright call for racial warfare. If I were a…

> You can classify speech. It’s not terribly difficult to classify when something is an outright call for racial warfare.

We already have laws against speech that incites violence and you might be surprised how contested the lines themselves are. There are a lot of people these days who outright state that speech itself == violence and should carry the same consequences.

I'm not a free speech absolutist. When pressed, I don't think very many people are. I just think we need to be extremely careful when it comes to expanding those boundaries and that we're better off to err on the side of freedom because of the importance of what we stand to lose.

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

#257

Post by _lvbh » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 1:52 AM UTC

amiga386 wrote: post #75

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.

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

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

#258

Post by bb88 » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

richbell wrote: post #161

bb88 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might also be a meeting place for conspirators to plan crimes.

> It might also be a meeting place for conspirators to plan crimes. That might is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Do you have any evidence that this occurs?

So you do realize that cyberstalking is a crime in US code: 47 U.S.C. § 223, right?

It seems pretty clear they're doing that, no?

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

#259

Post by aaomidi » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

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…

When I was at let’s encrypt, there were so many people outside that expected us to be the morality police of the internet.

Like, no. Certificate Authorities exist because the web fucking sucks. Not because they want to be gate keepers.

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

#260

Post by pseudo0 » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 1:56 AM UTC

puglr wrote: post #245

autoexec wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That covers twitter, now what about every other social media network. The claim was that this was happening for all of them.

Oh sorry, you're right. Here's an article[1] about Facebook, from the same outlet. With some cursory searching I couldn't find anything about other social networks hiring former three letter agency employees. [1] https://www.mintpressnews.com/meet-ex-cia-agents-deciding-fa...

The same outlet also covered Google: https://www.mintpressnews.com/national-security-search-engin...

Here's another good source about Google's revolving door with government during the Obama administration: https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-rev...