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ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

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Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#41

Post by whatwhaaaaat »

anigbrowl wrote: post #22
zer8k wrote: post #14

The ACLU will absolutely oppose this. If not for the reason they stand to make a lot of money suing ISPs for "not doing enough" to stop the big-ole-meanies online. I see ISPs blocking "mean speech" to "protect people" as another symptom of the enshittification of the internet. I legitimately cannot understand problems in this arena because you can just...walk away from your computer. Or turn off the website. Or hey,…

You're thinking solely in terms of private individuals. Other entities exist and have to be internet-connected to function; corporations, nonprofits, government bodies, institutions. They can't very well use pseudonyms because their whole reason for being is to be accessible to the public. So that makes them easy to target for abuse, eg https://oaklandside.org/2023/08/29/chabot-elementary-evacuat... An episode like t…

The bomb threat is already a crime. Properly prosecute it.

Are you trying to say that some opinion posted online that may or may not have been consumed by the offender in this case is somehow directly responsible?

My question to those who support big brother any lawful but awful speech is - do you really think it won’t be used to silence any dissent of the ruling powers?

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#42

Post by fentanyl_peyotl »

jmyeet wrote: post #13

[flagged]

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them…”

“… In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.”

Karl Popper was a free speech absolutist. His point was that every form of speech should be countered with speech, not "deplatforming" or laws criminalizing it. I wish he was alive to see people mangle his thoughts into “He actually was against tolerance and said to jail your political enemies.”

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#43

Post by nickff »

lisper wrote: post #23
zer8k wrote: post #14

The ACLU will absolutely oppose this. If not for the reason they stand to make a lot of money suing ISPs for "not doing enough" to stop the big-ole-meanies online. I see ISPs blocking "mean speech" to "protect people" as another symptom of the enshittification of the internet. I legitimately cannot understand problems in this arena because you can just...walk away from your computer. Or turn off the website. Or hey,…

> you can just...walk away from your computer Just say no. Because it worked so well for Nancy Reagan. Oh, wait... (For those too young to remember: https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/just-say-no )

I understand that you're being sarcastic, but don't understand exactly what you're implying. Are you saying that Nancy Reagan became a drug addict? Or else are you saying that experimenting with one or more drugs is beneficial?

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#44

Post by alexb_ »

unsui wrote: post #40

Why does it have to be absolute/binary? If I can't have full, unfettered free speech, then it's the end of the world. Let's put aside the slippery-slope arguments. The real world is messy, with ridiculously obscure corner cases that make blanket statements and policies practically impossible to operationalize without significant collateral damage. Shouldn't a more realistic approach be something like "give me speech…

> considerations that are negotiable, such as, "does this speech promote destroying the institutions on which the speech itself is based on"

That's not a considerable negotiation. Give people power and they will use literally every single bit of it and then some. ISPs should have absolutely no say, in any way, of what people do. They shouldn't even be able to know anything about what I'm doing past what is needed for the ISP to function.

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#45

Post by cmh89 »

ibizaman wrote: post #37
thfuran wrote: post #25

I think it's fine for the ISP to police online speech over their network as long as it's clearly stated in their service agreement that they can cancel/interfere with your service if they think you're too mean and as long as they also lose all safe harbor and assume liability for everything transmitted over their network.

Quoted from the article: > When a person uses a room in a house to engage in illegal or just terrible activity, we don’t call on the electric company to cut off the light and heat to the entire house, or the post office to stop delivering mail. We know that this will backfire in the long run. Instead, we go after the bad guys themselves and hold them accountable. Although I see your point, the quote above made me swi…

If you lived next door to a house that had become a drug spot, would you find it acceptable to call the landlord, tell them what's happening, and then ask them to investigate and evict? I sure would.

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#46

Post by CM30 »

I agree, we've got far too many entities that should just be 'dumb pipes' trying to play moral police at the moment, and it's a very worrying situation when it comes to free speech on the internet. Cloudflare is an often brought up example, as are payment processors like Visa and Mastercard and app stores like the iOS and Play Stores, but ISPs trying to block traffic for a site that's not actually illegal feels like a step even further than that.

It feels like private companies are de facto writing the laws about what's allowed online and in society right now, and that it's almost become a loophole for censoring free speech on a whim.

And while the site in question here is ethically bankrupt in basically every way, it doesn't seem too far fetched to assume the same thing could (and potentially will) happen for sites many more people agree with because someone/some group at an ISP doesn't like them or think they should be accessible.

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#47

Post by fallingknife »

bewaretheirs wrote: post #11
freedomben wrote: post #2

> But just because there’s a serious problem doesn’t mean that every response is a good one. This is a fantastic line, one that I'm tucking away for future use.

The contrary belief was once mocked on "Yes, Prime Minister" as: "1. We must do something. 2. This is something. 3. Therefore, we must do this."

And to cover the opposite case:

1. Nothing is going to happen

2. Something maybe is going to happen, but we should do nothing about it

3. Maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do

4. Maybe there's something we could have done, but it's too late now

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#48

Post by gorwell »

explanatorygap wrote: post #17

EFF is on the wrong side of this, just as they were on the wrong side of the debates about what to do about spam email back in the day. They're committed to the view that the only acceptable place to block any flow of information (which they define very broadly) is at the receiving user's end and that the end user must personally opt-in. This is completely at odds with the last 30 years of experience on the internet…

Censors made the same argument with the Printing Press and since time immemorial. Censorship has always been on the wrong side of history and it still is.

Speaking of abusing systems, censors end up being the worst bad guys who imagine themselves as the good guys protecting you from the bad guys.

EFF understands the long history of this issue.

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#50

Post by lisper »

nickff wrote: post #43
lisper wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can just...walk away from your computer Just say no. Because it worked so well for Nancy Reagan. Oh, wait... (For those too young to remember: https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/just-say-no )

I understand that you're being sarcastic, but don't understand exactly what you're implying. Are you saying that Nancy Reagan became a drug addict? Or else are you saying that experimenting with one or more drugs is beneficial?

I am saying that "Just Say No" is not an effective intervention for addiction. A lot of internet content is addictive, and the more addictive it is, the less likely it is to be bound to reality. So relying on individual self-control -- "just walk away from your computer" -- to counter the deleterious effects of misinformation on the internet is no more likely to succeed than it did for drug addiction.
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