Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#371

Post by lylecubed » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:00 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #336

lylecubed wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You posted them as examples of "bad ideas." Shouldn't you be able to tell me the factual standing behind the positions you hold?

Well, this sort of gets to the heart of it, doesn't it? A lot of what's being called a problem is basically people who go Gish galloping; they spew easily-refuted statements, rarely if ever offer any evidence or anything else to back them up, but if you so much as hint at the possibility that perhaps they might have said something a little bit mistaken, they come down on you like a ton of bricks with demands for cita…

> Why shouldn't platforms have the freedom to put a stop to that if they choose?

That's the heart of the question being asked. On the one hand, there's freedom of association. On the other, freedom of speech. Which one trumps the other and to what extent?

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#372

Post by ubernostrum » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:13 AM UTC

lylecubed wrote: post #371

ubernostrum wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this sort of gets to the heart of it, doesn't it? A lot of what's being called a problem is basically people who go Gish galloping; they spew easily-refuted statements, rarely if ever offer any evidence or anything else to back them up, but if you so much as hint at the possibility that perhaps they might have said something a little bit mistaken, they come down on you like a ton of bricks with demands for cita…

> Why shouldn't platforms have the freedom to put a stop to that if they choose? That's the heart of the question being asked. On the one hand, there's freedom of association. On the other, freedom of speech. Which one trumps the other and to what extent?

Spam is a form of speech.

For years, most providers and platforms have banned it, and people have organized to boycott providers who didn't.

Why is that apparently OK but other forms of organized boycott, or disassociation based on the content of speech, are not?

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#373

Post by gsich » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:13 AM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #220

gsich wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"business impact" is almost always a lie or used as an excuse to do what you want.

Having worked for many multinational clients as an advisor, I can say with 100% certainty that "business impact" is not "almost always a lie" and is in fact quite the opposite. On the other hand, if you're talking about the personal business fiefdoms of billionaires, then you're quite right--they make decisions based on what the sole owner wants, financial consequences be damned.

Small minded businesses then I guess.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#374

Post by webmaven » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:15 AM UTC

mikec3010 wrote: post #264

ezoe wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I hate censorship, There always a bunch of idiots who believes the bad ideas. Those neo-nazis are the least evil compared to the alternative medicines. Even if you don't believe your parents, you still got no vaccine, and other crazy medical treatments even the comic books can't imagine.

Isn't this very similar to what Tipper Gore's group tried in the 80s to censor rap and "hard rock" artists ? "Oh! We need to block this harmful speech. Think of the children! "

There is a subtle but important difference between blocking speech because children encountering it will supposedly be harmed, and blocking speech because the adults that encounter it will then be more likely to harm children.

A similar difference exists between preventing children from gambling, and preventing adults from gambling away the money required to feed their children.

Even though the harm in the latter examples is actually easier to substantiate, curtailing spreech because of the harm adults might do (even to children) is rather difficult, so demagogues tend to focus on the former for their bombast.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#375

Post by sheepmullet » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:15 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #342

ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of a bakery refusing to make a wedding cake for people they disapprove of?

Conservatives generally want the bakery to be able to refuse to bake the cake. Why aren't they also in favor of the ISP refusing to offer service, or the host refusing to offer use of their servers? Do you believe a baker ought to be able to refuse service to someone over religion? If so, do you believe a baker whose beliefs condemn homosexuality should be able to refuse a same-sex couple? Do you believe a baker whos…

> Conservatives generally want the bakery to be able to refuse to bake the cake. Why aren't they also in favor of the ISP refusing to offer service, or the host refusing to offer use of their servers?

It’s a very different scenario.

It’s more like people are hiring private investigators to follow gay people around and get a list of businesses they frequent and then organising harassment of those businesses until they refuse to do business with the homosexuals.

It’s orders of magnitude more creepy.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#376

Post by partiallypro » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:18 AM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #325

patrickg_zill wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: "Think of Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc. Those conspiracy theories led to the Oklahoma City bombing" What part of the admitted shooting of Vicki Weaver while holding an infant in her hands, and of 1 of Randy Weaver's under-18 sons, by FBI snipers; and the use of explosive/flammable igniters to disperse "CS gas", a form of tear gas, used against people inside wooden buildings in Waco [2], are conspiracy theories? Even the…

I think they may have meant that the conspiracy theory that an interconnected federal government planned Ruby Ridge and Waco, and planned more such incidents, led to the OKC bombing. What the government did was wrong and arguably it was systemically predisposed to do wrong in situations like that. But it wasn’t planning more such actions, the OKC bombing wasn’t connected (I think), and even if so the belief that bomb…

Exactly, Ruby Ridge and Waco for that matter were completely bungled operations, and imo were largely unjustified hamfisted responses. However they weren't inherently nefarious, just sheer incompetence and cowboy minded policing. Yet their mere existence fueled a far right movement that believes they were. In an unfortunate turn, the OKC bombing was a direct result of that. It fell right into the preaching of Koresh as well as the popular right wing writings "The Turner Diaries." That was more or less my point, and all of that occurred well before people had regular internet access.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#377

Post by edmccard » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:22 AM UTC

Nadya wrote: post #31

A common argument in philosophy is that bad ideas should occur in the open - where everyone may ridicule them. When they are cast to the shadows they can grow, under everyone's noses, in private where only there are they allowed to exist. In private, these bad ideas cannot be challenged by others and people will be convinced to believe in them, with nobody challenging the idea as a genuinely terrible idea. It gives b…

> When they are cast to the shadows they can grow,

It's a nice poetic conceit to think of good ideas as thriving in the light like flowers while bad ideas flourish in the darkness like mushrooms, but they both thrive on the same thing -- attention. To make another comparison with things that grow in the shadows: the crawlspace under my front porch is full of bugs and critters, but they didn't get there because I cast them out of my house, and I don't keep my house bug-free by periodically inviting them in for debates.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#378

Post by zkms » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:33 AM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #237

zkms wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well you can host your own website on your own server. Sure, then the people who drove you off Facebook/Amazon/Apple iTunes/Youtube/Azure/EC2/Digitalocean/Cloudflare will go after your DNS registrar and the ISP/CDN/colocation-facility you're using. They won't give up and they'll ruthlessly go after every single commercial entity you do business with. After all, if it's not the government punishing you for speech, i…

Yeah, I don't buy that. If Stormfront and Daily Stormer can still be up, then there can't really be any credibility to that argument.

> Yeah, I don't buy that. If Stormfront and Daily Stormer can still be up, then there can't really be any credibility to that argument.

That those two loathsome websites are still up doesn't mean that the technique I described is invalid; it just means it doesn't have a 100% kill rate, and it certainly works on less resourced and less indefatigable targets.

I'm not worried about those specific websites -- I'm worried about the increased spread and normalisation of the "contact everyone %s has a business relationship with, and shame them until they drop them as a customer" tactic. Where does it end? We've established that pressuring domain registrars and hosts is fine; what's fair game after that?

Is it fine for me to pressure and suborn an electric company into cutting off service to someone I don't like (after all, without electricity, they can't make those bad internet posts!). If I can rile up enough of an internet mob, can I get them evicted from their residence, simply by annoying their landlord until the trouble's not worth the monthly rent cheque? I've seen firsthand these tactics used by internet mobs and it's a very ugly process, and it's not something whose prevalence I'm happy to see expand.

Just because in these cases the targets are generally disgusting doesn't mean it's something that should be tolerated (if only because those who you hate will positively relish a chance to use that against your side of things).

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#379

Post by perl4ever » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:43 AM UTC

tinalumfoil wrote: post #126

braythwayt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument works well in relatively small social groups where people generally can be relied upon to act in good faith, and where there are social disincentives to clinging to bad ideas after they have been refuted. When you have a small group with social bonds, you don't have to worry about a bad actor constantly repeating their already-refuted arguments to people who haven't heard the refutation. But when you ha…

People are better off hearing a bad idea and hearing it refuted then never hearing a bad idea. You could say, "well then detractors of the idea will have to keep refuting it" and you'd be right. That's how public forums work, and I hope you don't take everything your parent's believed for granted just because their detractors have already been "refuted".

What if your parent is one of the Sandy Hook parents victimized by Alex Jones? And the thing they believe is that your sibling existed?

I mean, at some point you realize that people have figured out repetition is the point and there can't be any refutation if they just do not acknowledge it.

Your outlook recalls the way the internet was 20 years ago, when, for instance, holocaust deniers had their little group on Usenet, and idealists could spend eternity providing evidence they were wrong. It seems so quaint now.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#380

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:57 AM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #331

jackvalentine wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nazis in dark spaces have always existed - their modern grasp of distribution on internet platforms is what has changed. For years stormfront was a well known butt of jokes about racists, but it existed. What has changed is nazis have started using the new distributive platforms (youtube, facebook, twitter etc) to spread their word outside of the dark space. All we need to do, is deny them that distribution. Motivate…

How many videos would you need to watch on youtube before it turned you into a nazi? The people watching those videos are already true believers, or they are researchers, police, and others concerned about what racists are saying, how many of them there are, how they operate, etc. It's invaluable to have ready access to what they're up to. Access that would be lost if they were forced into their own closed circles aw…

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