Terminating Service for 8Chan • Hacker News Board

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#301

Post by agildehaus » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 3:20 AM UTC

airforce1 wrote: post #276

dghughes wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. News reports what happened. These days people seem to see news organizations as the enemy or at least the news organizations they don't like. Although one thing I have noticed about news these days is it tends to voice personal opinion openly much more than years ago. Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings wouldn't spout their own opinion they'd tell you what happened, and that's it. Show the bodies,…

> News reports what happened. selectively reports what happened, and only if it tells the right narrative and/or generates clicks, yes. Mass shooting where 3 innocents die = clicks and correct narrative and will therefore be reported. DUI crash where 5 innocents die = boring, wrong narrative; no report Civilian kills police officer = boring, wrong narrative; no report Police officer kills civilian (esp. with differen…

Maybe you should subscribe to a newspaper or two because otherwise this is what you get -- news that people click on.

I wish people would stop blaming the news and blame themselves.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#302

Post by ebg13 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 3:21 AM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #242

sytelus wrote: post #205

This is the same argument cake shops make against taking order from gay people. I do believe that so-called manifesto is mind-numbingly dumb, fact-free and it is dangerous in the sense it will inspire more violence against innocent people. But that precisely what makes it a good test case for asking some fundamental questions. Can commercial businesses with deep reach, pricing power and critical function deny service…

> Can commercial businesses with deep reach, pricing power and critical function deny services based on their ideology and beliefs? The legal answer is yes and that only looks troublesome when you think of how tables could turn in future. The people cheering this are also forgetting which political party in the US has the closest ties with big business. Needless to say, this will eventually come back to haunt them.

> forgetting which political party in the US has the closest ties with big business

Which one are you thinking of?

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#303

Post by shiado » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 3:21 AM UTC

As bad as the content on 8chan is, it is deeply distressing how Cloudflare has attached itself to the internet as what amounts to a mafia organization collecting protection money. Almost all the non-deep web tools to abuse sites are behind Cloudflare. They really are playing both sides to create a necessary business. I have other theories about them being the most efficient NSA collection site to exist due to TLS MITM and their horrifically insecure 'flexible SSL' but those theories remain unsubstantiated until the next Snowden.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#304

Post by xfitm3 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 3:21 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #283

word-reader wrote: post #199

This post repeatedly refers to 8chan as "lawless" and "unmoderated" but it is neither. As a whole, it is a public website subject to US law, complete with DMCA and search warrant contact forms. The sitewide rule is that all content must comply with US law. The media also keeps saying 8chan, 8chan, 8chan over and over, when it is really just the one most popular board ("pol") that is being discussed. But there are hun…

Isn’t the concern about the gradual radicalization that occurs in these online communities, and not about specific posts that threaten violence or announce impending mass shootings?

Isn't banning/silencing communities like these the real radicalization?

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#305

Post by simula67 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 3:22 AM UTC

Free speech is a cultural value. It sometimes manifests itself in the form of codified laws like the first amendment to the US Constitution. However, free speech is not limited to the USA.

The idea behind free speech is that people are allowed to put forward new ideas ( especially ideas about how to organize society, what is good and moral etc ) so that people can consider and accept or reject them. The idea is that no entity has a monopoly on truth and if you want to propagate your ideas, make your arguments persuasive and refute your opponents' arguments.

Free speech is ultimately a bet on human capacity for reason and goodness. The idea is that good ideas should win adherents and bubble to the top while bad ideas sink to the bottom as they lose followers.

Sometimes, governments are the most powerful enemy of free speech while sometimes other entities can be.

I am not saying free speech is a good thing, but there is no "exclusive to government" limiting principle to free speech.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#306

Post by tomatotomato37 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 3:22 AM UTC

word-reader wrote: post #199

This post repeatedly refers to 8chan as "lawless" and "unmoderated" but it is neither. As a whole, it is a public website subject to US law, complete with DMCA and search warrant contact forms. The sitewide rule is that all content must comply with US law. The media also keeps saying 8chan, 8chan, 8chan over and over, when it is really just the one most popular board ("pol") that is being discussed. But there are hun…

I think a point of contention over the unmoderated aspect is that compared to it's sister site 4chan which will actively coordinate with authorities and temporarily take the site down whenever evidence is being collected, 8chan appears to treat the authorities with contempt to the point of needing a search warrant. It's creator Fredrick calling for the site's shutdown was the killing strike in my opinion, though the site had /g/ establish a full Tor infrastructure years ago so it's not going to really truly die anytime soon

Speaking of 4chan if I was Hiro right now I would be batting down the hatches and moving most of the moderation force to the problem boards to snipe any incoherent manifestos until this all blows over.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#307

Post by johnmarcus » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 3:23 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #240

umvi wrote: post #34

It would be better if cloudflare terminated service for all media outlets. Every time you turn a mass shooting into a national spectacle, it inspires copycats in rapid succession as we've just seen. Mass shootings (generally) don't kill that many people. They are scary, yes, but not that deadly (statistically). Keep it local news, don't publish the name of the killer, basically keep the story away from the front line…

In every other, let's say, G20 country, someone shooting up a shopping mall and killing 20 will absolutely make national news - they will talk about it for months and it will be ranked "top ten worst news for $country in 2019", if not the absolute worst. In some countries (let's say, Korea) reporters will probably dig into the shooter's elementary school transcripts and interview second cousins. In other words, if an…

or in this case...hours. :sigh:

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#308

Post by ajross » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 3:23 AM UTC

word-reader wrote: post #199

This post repeatedly refers to 8chan as "lawless" and "unmoderated" but it is neither. As a whole, it is a public website subject to US law, complete with DMCA and search warrant contact forms. The sitewide rule is that all content must comply with US law. The media also keeps saying 8chan, 8chan, 8chan over and over, when it is really just the one most popular board ("pol") that is being discussed. But there are hun…

> It seems like most of the outrageous incitement to violence people have posted on 8chan would be illegal under Brandenburg v. Ohio

And yet, no one wants to police that. So... Cloudflare did it themselves.

I mean, look, I get the principled point you're making, but it's on really shaky ground. Either the conduct on that site was garbage that should be removed or it wasn't. And if it was... well, good riddance.

After the third (third!) mass murder advertised on the site, I think the time for principled and careful consideration has passed. Shut the garbage down, then we'll figure out if there's a better way to police this stuff going forward.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#309

Post by ALittleLight » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 3:23 AM UTC

rand_r wrote: post #263

The best argument I’ve heard for being a free speech absolutist is that speech is the highest form of thought in Humans. We think via dialogue. We arrive at the truth via dialogue. Criminalizing free speech limits our ability to think and arrive at the truth, and that can’t be good for anyone long term. I haven’t heard of a good rebuttal to the above reasoning.

To extend your metaphor, imagine that part of humanity's brain is engaged in thinking about the abduction and exploitation of children. Another part is lionizing mass murderers and advocating for copy cats. A different part of the brain is contemplating the state of the art for financial and cyber crimes etc.

If you come to believe that the time humanity's brain spends occupied with these pursuits leads to negative real world consequences then I don't think the argument you've presented is very compelling. Put another way, if I were someone's therapist and my patient confided in me that, the more time he spends thinking about shooting up his school, the more he feels like actually doing it - I might advise him to spend less time thinking about shooting up the school. If I had the power, I might forbid him from thinking about it at all.

Really, what, but the amusement of edgy people, does humanity gain from entertaining these dark conversations? Perhaps such conversations play a role in the detection or prevention of bad outcomes. For example, police detectives are sometimes taught to identify with the criminal to understand their behavior, and so maybe having access to dark thoughts would help in that regard.

To me, the question of moderation hinges on whether you think permitting speech will be, on net, positive or negative. I don't have data or solid evidence - but I do have intuitions.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#310

Post by javagram » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 3:23 AM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #297

word-reader wrote: post #199

This post repeatedly refers to 8chan as "lawless" and "unmoderated" but it is neither. As a whole, it is a public website subject to US law, complete with DMCA and search warrant contact forms. The sitewide rule is that all content must comply with US law. The media also keeps saying 8chan, 8chan, 8chan over and over, when it is really just the one most popular board ("pol") that is being discussed. But there are hun…

Brandenburg v. Ohio is interesting. Technically doesn't it mean that any speech that calls for action against existing law loses protection from First Amendment? I'm sure SC judges will make sane decisions for now but doesn't this door wide open for this possibility? Given most speech needing First Amendment protection is against some law, this SC decision feels very troublesome to me. Especially now that SC judges a…

> Brandenburg v. Ohio is interesting. Technically doesn't it mean that any speech that calls for action against existing law loses protection from First Amendment?

No. From the Wikipedia description of the case, “The U.S. Supreme Court reversed Brandenburg's conviction, holding that government cannot constitutionally punish abstract advocacy of force or law violation.“

The entire point of the ruling was that the government cannot punish someone for merely advocating against the law. And even dangerous speech is okay if it’s not likely to be acted on. “free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”