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8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

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Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#321

Post by mieseratte »

fyrabanks wrote: post #297
mieseratte wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society. I certainly would tolerate those sites. Free speech arguments aside, you can't kill the hydra, but you can severely degrade intelligence operations watching that hydra. Best case the bad guys all end up on sites already being surveilled, worst case they slip under the radar. We h…

Exactly this. These sort of folk started congregating on 8chan when they got pushed out of 4chan. I certainly don't condone mass shootings, white supremacists, etc., but if you think denying 8chan hosting is going to solve this problem, you are sorely mistaken. All it does is force these people into more concentrated forums where there is less push back and opposing views to their radical ideas. Ultimately, it forces…

> I'll be quite honest, I don't know what a "good" solution here is, but I really don't think this is it.

At the very least a good post-mortem analysis would be nice.

I guess I'll settle for watching the finger-pointing dumpster fire.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#322

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

commandlinefan wrote: post #20

I’m old enough to remember when Howard Stern, as quaint as that seems today, was considered one of the greatest threats to civilization and had to be “de-platformed” before he could successfully destroy society - and the reasoning they used against him was _exactly_ the same as this reasoning: “he, himself (8chan, itself) is not going out and doing horrible things, but he’s encouraging people to go out and do horribl…

Stern was broadcasting on public airwaves where the FCC sets a low threshold for "public decency". This isn't really comparable.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#324

Post by [deleted] »

tepidandroid wrote: post #139

My opinion is that freedom of speech is a fine ideal to strive for, but it relies on having a stable society with some minimum level of education (moral and philosophical too, not just the technical kind). It requires people who are able to fully parse the implications of what they are hearing to make sound and rational judgements on the rejection of an idea or the embrace of it. It creates a moral duty for the peopl…

[deleted]

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#325

Post by amyjess »

ergocoder wrote: post #198
LargeWu wrote: post #120

Can any free speech absolutists explain to me the legitimate public interest that is served by allowing terrorist breeding grounds like 8chan to continue to operate?

Not a speech absolutist. I believe certain kind of speeches should be banned. What irked me is that CloudFlare was the one who makes the decision to do censorship. It's not really a due process. No one argue for the defendant's side. It would seem better coming from US court through a due process or something like two lawyers arguing for both sides and etc. I dislike the rationale of "CloudFlare is a private company.…

> What irked me is that CloudFlare was the one who makes the decision to do censorship.

It's their property, and they have an absolute right to decide how their property is to be used. The right to freedom of association is the most fundamental human right there is.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#326

Post by SkyBelow »

atonse wrote: post #49
Alex3917 wrote: post #30

IMHO this reflects poorly on CloudFlare. The supreme court has ruled time and time again that the right to free speech implies the right to be heard. While CloudFlare obviously isn't legally required to serve 8chan, the only service they are really providing is making it so that 8chan can't be DDOS'd. And DDOS'ing is very clearly a tactic that violates the first amendment. So really by no longer serving 8chan, the on…

The First Amendment is completely irrelevant to this situation. No relation whatsoever. CloudFlare is a private company.

Depends upon their involvement with the government that allows them their market position. In the particular case of CloudFlare I don't actually know what the involvement is, and would default to agreeing with you. But I do know some private companies often mentioned in relation to First Amendment that there is some level of involvement, but I think the courts have largely not taken a critical look at what is going on and is still quite inconsistent on the matter (which should surprise no one who compares the pace of law and the pace of technology).

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#327

Post by cbg0 »

paganel wrote: post #122

Didn’t know 8chan hosted their stuff at Voxility, it’s a small world. I’m saying this because Voxility is a Romanian company, I am Romanian, and my company used to also host our stuff at their premises until 3 or 4 years ago. I remember that on one of my visits there (there was always a hard-drive that needed to be handed in person or something like that) I’m 100% sure that I had bumped into what looked to be an FBI…

This wild speculation of yours is based on how the "agent's" pants matched their "snickers" ?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#328

Post by [deleted] »

corodra wrote: post #258

A bit out of the loop. The hell is 8chan? Similar to 4chan? Are the by the same people? I always knew 4chan was a cesspool, just like youtube comment sections. So, never ventured. Next question, is there any actual evidence or proof that they're "apart of it"? Literally, out of the loop and I trust a random person on HN a bit more than CNN. I saw the thing about Cloudflare here... was it yesterday? Day before? I figu…

[deleted]

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#329

Post by arwineap »

Smithalicious wrote: post #215

This once again goes to show that you can do nothing illegal and still be virtually locked out of the internet. The viewpoint that "it's okay to kick 8chan off the internet" is not consistent with the viewpoint that "the internet should be neutral infrastructure". Take from that what you will. People are doing the "yada yada not entitled to a platform" thing, but the distinction between free speech and having a platf…

> People are doing the "yada yada not entitled to a platform" thing

cloudfront is not really a platform. It's more like a CDN, or WAF. I think your point is worth discussing, just seems to link less to the context of 8chan.

> We need to allow people on the edges of the spectrum to say what they want even if it is without merit. Extreme speech is what prevents normal speech from being censored.

I wonder if the anonymous portion of these boards is what makes them so toxic?

Plenty of fringe forums for example have account names. Frequent posters are known and have reputations, if a known person says something controversial, they can be challenged by others, known or not. I think it really just allows for discussions to happen in good faith. Half the time I think some of the most toxic discussions are not even between any two people but are actually between tens of different unique trolls who may not even be following the thread at all. Maybe bots, who knows.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#330

Post by [deleted] »

pickle-wizard wrote: post #277
tepidandroid wrote: post #139

My opinion is that freedom of speech is a fine ideal to strive for, but it relies on having a stable society with some minimum level of education (moral and philosophical too, not just the technical kind). It requires people who are able to fully parse the implications of what they are hearing to make sound and rational judgements on the rejection of an idea or the embrace of it. It creates a moral duty for the peopl…

Relavent XKCD https://xkcd.com/1357/

[deleted]
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