Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#321

Post by Izkata » Thu, May 16, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

stallmanite wrote: post #314

avereveard wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and in the 80s too. anarchist &Nazi&friends in Italy were engaging in an actual bomb marathon with huge loss of innocent life, and I'd argue that if being mean on internet is action enough today for these groups so that they disregard their traditional methods, like literally bombing places, then we are all better off with that

I can never wrap my head around the thought process. Kill innocents and somebody else will be impressed with Anarchism somehow?

Think of it as hostage-taking at mass scale, intending for fear of continued bombings leading to capitulation.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#322

Post by tathougies » Thu, May 16, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

TheTrueTDF wrote: post #184

CodiePetersen wrote: post #143

This just sounds like a giant can of worms that is going to blow up in people's faces. Remove for a moment any potential future government alignments, just so we aren't talking about hypothetical fictitious governments. Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it. Indonesia has harsh religious laws, crack downs on illegal reporting, and literally raids on LGBTQ gatherings. The Senegal government arbitra…

That's a strawman, plus nazis/white nationalists are groups that actually spread anti-LGBTQ propaganda

Really? A lot of the alt-right seems pro-LGBTQ to me.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#323

Post by tathougies » Thu, May 16, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

roca wrote: post #296

eadmund wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not some authoritarian ploy. Regardless of whether you think it's a good idea or not, restricting access to guns and free speech is an authoritarian play: it's using the authority of the State to restrict certain liberties in the intent of doing good.

All laws "use the authority of the State to restrict certain liberties in the intent of doing good".

Sure, all law is an exercise of authority, and hence authoritarianism. The commenter was merely calling out that... no matter how you dice it... a new law is always authoritarian, whether you acknowledge it or not.

Saying 'this law is not authoritarian' is always a contradiction.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#324

Post by tathougies » Thu, May 16, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #33

ausbah wrote: post #21

Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try and stop extremism online.

Okay, I'll bite. Here is an alternative. Make it illegal for any "news" agency to publicly name the group or individual that commits any "terrorist" act. Make it a multi-million dollar fine per instance. We need to stop giving these people their 15 minutes of fame or infamy. All coverage must be about the victims only. We also need to collectively care about stopping extremism with other approaches. One thing that is…

That is unconstitutional in most countries, because you have a right to a public trial. In the United States, it's especially illegal, since the press has a right to free reporting, including public trial.

The danger here is the government starting to weaponize this 'freedom', by designating mundane crimes as 'terrorism' and then holding secret trials. Given that this is precedented, and leads to significantly worse outcomes (including full-on genocide), it seems that it's probably better to just accept that there will be mass shootings. After all, even adding up all the mass shootings in the world, you will still not come close to the slaughter's perpetrated by governments holding secret trials of dissidents

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#325

Post by tathougies » Thu, May 16, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

ploika wrote: post #46

basetop wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rather live with the remote threat of extremism rather than live in a censored world. Would you rather live in North Korea with no extremism? You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism and yet you'd give up your right to free speech for some remote threat? That kind of thinking is the cause of north korea and nazi germany. Authoritarians always use remote threats to justify t…

That's a pretty silly example. North Korea is North Korea precisely because of the extremism.

Extremism to a Westerner perhaps. Certainly, the ideology behind North Korea would be censored in most of the proposals on this thread, but given that the government of north korea would not and it is the only government with any control over the country of North Korea, I don't understand by what metric you could possibly say it's extremism. Unless you're appealing to divine justice or something, which would be great, but I sincerely doubt it.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#326

Post by tathougies » Thu, May 16, 2019, 6:41 PM UTC

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #161

Barrin92 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they are. Fox News as slanted as it is, doesn't endorse terrorism or anything along these lines the way some internet communities or message boards do. There's really no comparison between even the worst tabloid newspaper and some of the stuff that festers on the internet.

> doesn't endorse terrorism The use propaganda to make people support the war effort against the Middle East. Ask people in the Middle East who the terrorists are.

> The use propaganda to make people support the war effort against the Middle East.

Didn't realize Democratic congressmen/women were taking orders from Fox News.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#327

Post by tathougies » Thu, May 16, 2019, 6:42 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #179

It'd be great if people who want to explore this as a free speech issue would engage with the question of what happens to the free speech (and other) rights of people who are killed by extremists, and whether they are more or less important than the rights of people who advocate such killings.

Those killed by extremists have a right more fundamental than free speech violated -- their liberty. However, free speech did not cause their lives to be ended -- another individual's choices did. We have a system to deal with this. It's called courts, the justice system, and prison. It's worked for thousands of years to produce reasonable societies.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#328

Post by Rapzid » Thu, May 16, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

roca wrote: post #286

Rapzid wrote: post #234

It's amazing to me how political this is and how oblivious to that fact a large portion of the NZ population is. This horrible act happened on the current governments watch. I've seen more outrage and effort from the government on the spreading of the video and manifesto than introspection into how this slipped through in the first place. I suppose in a country where carrying a weapon for the purpose of self defense…

NZers have observed the USA's experiment with reducing violent crime by flooding the nation with guns, and there is very strong support across the political spectrum for trying something else: restricting access to the most dangerous guns, and deplatforming murder advocates. It is not some authoritarian ploy.

Most of the conversation here is around free speech and censorship. I don't believe in government, in general, limiting the flow of information through censorship and 14 year prison sentences.

As to the USA.. Well, I think it's important to consider that the USA is about 68 times the population of NZ. 68 New Zealands, think about that. Some of those New Zealands are quite safe even relative to other countries, and others are not. Firearm homicide rates, along with other crime rates, fluctuate wildly by region. And yet all those regions have the 1st and 2nd amendment.

IMHO, as a NZ resident, NZ is definitely safer and nicer than the bad parts of the US. However, I do not believe it has too much to do with its loose free speech protections and firearm restrictions. New Zealand is probably sturdy enough to have stronger free speech and personal liberty protections while being as safe or safer as the safest regions in the USA..

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#329

Post by danans » Thu, May 16, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #271

danans wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the Internet came around, it was actively happening "here". You couldn't shop your violent extremist video around to pre-Internet mass media outlets, or if you did, you would probably be referred to law enforcement. Not all forms of this look like China, some look like the USA circa 1990.

Pre 1990 extremists would maintain mailing lists and send each other communications and videos. You have no right to mass media outlets. Just as I have no right to barge into your home and force you to listen to my speech... you have no right to force the owner of a tv or radio station to broadcast your message. Your right to free speech is not a right to violently force others to deliver your message against their w…

> You have no right to mass media outlets. Just as I have no right to barge into your home and force you to listen to my speech... you have no right to force the owner of a tv or radio station to broadcast your message. Your right to free speech is not a right to violently force others to deliver your message against their will... those other people have the right to free speech and liberty too.

I agree. I'm just saying that suppression of violent extremist propaganda in mass commercial media isn't some kind of violation of some centuries-old tradition, or a slippery slope toward Chinese style information control, as some people frame it, because it was literally the state of affairs in the US prior to the Internet.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#330

Post by kragen » Thu, May 16, 2019, 11:39 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #320

kragen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What leads you to believe that I presuppose the undesirability of people supposedly inevitably having access to Martin Luther King? Perhaps you aren't from the US, so you don't understand the cultural context of my example of extremism? Or did you mean that I am claiming that the formation of a censorship cartel is supposedly inevitable? I wasn't claiming that; I was claiming that in the absence of a censorship carte…

I presuppose the undesirability of people supposedly inevitably having access to Martin Luther King? I'm tiring of your willful redirection of referents, which I think is the point of your construction. Your "logic" (that basically amounts to censorship is necessary because it's inevitable that bad people will win) smacks of the same mental gymnastics people used to "prove" the existence of god. people will tend to m…

Again, I am not arguing that censorship is "necessary", nor am I saying anything about bad people. I am saying that individual websites are not in a position to impose censorship unilaterally in a very effective way, and those who attempt it will lose users to those that do not, but that a cartel of a sufficiently large group of popular websites is in a position to impose censorship. This is true entirely independent of whether censorship is good, bad, or mixed. Furthermore, it doesn't imply that censorship is either inevitable or impossible, since the formation and continuation of such a cartel is an uncertain contingency upon which effective censorship is conditioned.

As to whether MLK's positions now being "centrist", I suspect you're one of those people who haven't read anything he wrote other than "I Have a Dream", and haven't even read more than excerpts from that, but all of that is irrelevant to the argument, because in my original post, I was talking about today's equivalent to MLK, who is by definition not centrist.

Your accusations of dishonesty — "You[]…attempt a pretty transparent sleight of hand" — are false and unfounded, and you need to withdraw them immediately.