Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 61 posts

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#41

Post by chkaloon »

belorn wrote: post #40
chkaloon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to process all of them, just a relatively small number of public examples.

Sweden has a reality TV show whit that very premise and it is called trollhunters. They choose a hate comment and then proceed to locate and confront the author. When done they also sometimes help the target of the hate, by example helping them filling a police report. The show is followed with vigilantist justice as the people they locate usually end up receiving a lot of harassment from the public, and the benefit…

I don't approve of the vigilante model, it just increases the general animosity in society. I'd rather there be public prosecutions of violence-advocating speech through the legal process.

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#42

Post by DoreenMichele »

belorn wrote: post #40
chkaloon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to process all of them, just a relatively small number of public examples.

Sweden has a reality TV show whit that very premise and it is called trollhunters. They choose a hate comment and then proceed to locate and confront the author. When done they also sometimes help the target of the hate, by example helping them filling a police report. The show is followed with vigilantist justice as the people they locate usually end up receiving a lot of harassment from the public, and the benefit…

A lot of people who feel powerless use very strong language precisely because they feel like nothing they do matters. They often don't really mean it literally and wouldn't say it if they actually felt like anyone listened to anything they said.

They basically exaggerate their real desire, hoping that if they express their feelings strongly enough, it might lead to some very small action because their experience is that they are mostly not taken seriously and what they say mostly makes no impact. This is probably true of a lot of middle aged women.

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#43

Post by 80386 »

NikkiA wrote: post #26
kennywinker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the story that all this crap was on 4chan, and then 8chan was created because 4chan started cracking down on this kinda stuff. It may be argued that 4chan’s existence gave a home to this crap, or that it created it. Hard to know one way or another.

4chan didn't create it, 4chan was created for speech that wasn't allowed on somethingawful, and before that there was ogrish and before that rotten.com & stileproject, before that? Probably alt.tasteless.

> 4chan didn't create it, 4chan was created for speech that wasn't allowed on somethingawful

4chan was created by somethingawful users as an imitation of Japanese imageboards. It was used for speech that wasn't allowed on SA because it was right next door. Then SA decided it didn't like 4chan.

Then SA's culture spread to magazines like Gawker and Buzzfeed, which is part of the reason 4chan is so unpopular now.

If Gawker and Buzzfeed had hired from one side of the Harry Potter fandom, and if a handful of high-profile people like Zoe Quinn had come from it, we'd probably be hearing about how all of America's problems are caused by people who like Snape or whatever.

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#44

Post by jddj »

flukus wrote: post #32
Aloha wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically very little speech could be made without social consequences, the internet broke that paradigm

Historically they put on white hoods and gathered in person, the internet only changed the game for relatively small but geographically dispersed groups. I wouldn't be surprised if this type of person still met predominantly IRL and 8chan is mostly a few loners, it tends to net be the most tech literate bunch of people.

The 'only' there is doing a lot of work.

I don't have a citation for this, but my feeling is that historically, the majority of the people posting hate on social media aired their fringe views in much smaller and more direct social settings (the family dinner table, the pub, their barber/hairdresser) where instead of the reinforcement and gratification of many random upvotes from people in a similar situation or a vitriolic internet argument, they received either a fairly awkward smile and nod, a face-to-face rebuttal, genuine confirmation or (more likely) a mixture of the three.

Or you call up talkback radio and blabber into the void, often being shut down by the host.

A quick thought experiment:

Imagine you're pissed off because you've become disenfranchised for whatever reason and you're looking for someone to blame and lash out towards.

You don't have access to the internet. How much more effort would you have to put in to locate a similarly sized group of like-minded people who vehemently confirm and reinforce your views than you would now? How much more effective would the social filter which you encounter on the way be, remembering that every step of the way would mean real, rapport-inducing, face to face discussions with people who may disagree?

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#45

Post by londons_explore »

dinofacedude wrote: post #28
zaroth wrote: post #4

So literally everyone so much as reading 8chan/pol is on a watchlist, right? And what about the people posting they are about to “go kill as many brown people as they can find and they plan on being dead by the end of the day?” It’s a felony terroristic threat. How about we just arrest everyone posting terroristic threats before they can do this kind of damage? 8Chan, or whatever public forum these discussions are oc…

>So literally everyone so much as reading 8chan/pol is on a watchlist, right? Well, crap. When I heard the news I decided to pay 8chan a visit (never really been there before) to see how they took the news(not surprisingly, not well). I really hope I am not on a list because of this.

On the plus side, you've been removed from the list of people who haven't ever visited 8chan

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#47

Post by londons_explore »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #38
Simulacra wrote: post #18

It’s a distasteful site but I think it should stay. No speech should be silenced.

You can say whatever you want, but I am under no obligation to (a) listen to it or (b) help deliver it to the masses. That is why I agree that providers such as CloudFlare (should) have the ability to refuse to host content such as this.

I agree, but I'm still surprised at cloudflares decision.

If I'm hosting some content, I now have to worry about if my content might violate their opinions of 'tastelessness', and if so, I might be given 24 hours to leave.

If I were a customer, that's a small risk but a big impact. I'd prefer a provider that didn't do that.

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#48

Post by pingyong »

save_ferris wrote: post #17
zaroth wrote: post #4

So literally everyone so much as reading 8chan/pol is on a watchlist, right? And what about the people posting they are about to “go kill as many brown people as they can find and they plan on being dead by the end of the day?” It’s a felony terroristic threat. How about we just arrest everyone posting terroristic threats before they can do this kind of damage? 8Chan, or whatever public forum these discussions are oc…

NYT's "The Daily" podcast discussed this a little over a year ago in response to the Parkland shooting, and I found it to be quite insightful. I believe it was this episode, but I could be wrong[0]. A major factor impeding law enforcement is the sheer number of people posting violent threats on social media. I can't remember the statistic, but they mentioned that the US justice system basically wouldn't be able to ef…

You could probably just make an example out of a couple of particularly bad threats every 3 months and reduce the number of threats significantly with that. The question is what does that actually achieve? A couple of people will simply turn to Tor or similar services, while others might post less but still kill people. It might rob law enforcement of the ability to develop some sort of system that can sort through the noise and prevent a few of these incidents in the future.

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#49

Post by bmurphy1976 »

londons_explore wrote: post #47
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say whatever you want, but I am under no obligation to (a) listen to it or (b) help deliver it to the masses. That is why I agree that providers such as CloudFlare (should) have the ability to refuse to host content such as this.

I agree, but I'm still surprised at cloudflares decision. If I'm hosting some content, I now have to worry about if my content might violate their opinions of 'tastelessness', and if so, I might be given 24 hours to leave. If I were a customer, that's a small risk but a big impact. I'd prefer a provider that didn't do that.

In the two cases where CloudFlare has done this to date they seem to draw the line at murder. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Do you think any other provider you may do business with has a more liberal policy than CloudFlare? Have you actually read the terms of service for any of them?

If this is the thing that changes how you view CloudFlare then you are already on shaky ground.

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#50

Post by kennywinker »

NikkiA wrote: post #26
kennywinker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the story that all this crap was on 4chan, and then 8chan was created because 4chan started cracking down on this kinda stuff. It may be argued that 4chan’s existence gave a home to this crap, or that it created it. Hard to know one way or another.

4chan didn't create it, 4chan was created for speech that wasn't allowed on somethingawful, and before that there was ogrish and before that rotten.com & stileproject, before that? Probably alt.tasteless.

I hear what you’re saying. 4chan wasn’t the start of this. But did each step of the chain transform the idea, or was each step merely an incrementally better home for already existing ideas?
Post reply on HN