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Terminating Service for 8Chan

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411–420 of 1001 posts

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#411

This post repeatedly refers to 8chan as "lawless" and "unmoderated" but it is neither. As a whole, it is a public website subject to US law, complete with DMCA and search warrant contact forms. The sitewide rule is that all content must comply with US law. The media also keeps saying 8chan, 8chan, 8chan over and over, when it is really just the one most popular board ("pol") that is being discussed. But there are hun…

> This seems like a knee-jerk reaction to moral panic and bad PR I’m not so sure. We “ban” drug markets and terrorist groups by denying them access to infrastructure all the time. Private businesses get to decide which businesses they provide services to. Freedom of assembly doesn’t mean you get to live in a trash strewn public square, nor on private property that is leeching toxic waste into the surroundings.

Drug markets and terrorist groups are against US law while racist speech and broadly advocating the necessity of violence are not. Cloudflare had previously drawn the line at providing services for any US-legal content, then they suddenly changed it after a lot of bad press in a pretty poorly written blog post.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#412
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a point of contention over the unmoderated aspect is that compared to it's sister site 4chan which will actively coordinate with authorities and temporarily take the site down whenever evidence is being collected, 8chan appears to treat the authorities with contempt to the point of needing a search warrant. It's creator Fredrick calling for the site's shutdown was the killing strike in my opinion, though the…

>treat the authorities with contempt to the point of needing a search warrant Everyone must comply with lawful orders—that's the point of the law. Respect is not mandatory (so long as it doesn't interfere with lawful orders); it is earned and can be lost. If this were not true, the right to avoid self-incrimination would be meaningless.

The thing is that Moot (and probably Hiro too) actively intercepts and forwards mass-shooty type stuff it to the cops instead of waiting for a warrant to avoid this exact situation. Emphasis on intercept, you can't have a media shitstorm decrying you as the axis of evil if the only thing they can find on your site is mass speculation because a mod autosaged the shooter's manifesto 3 minutes after it was posted

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#413
post #34

It would be better if cloudflare terminated service for all media outlets. Every time you turn a mass shooting into a national spectacle, it inspires copycats in rapid succession as we've just seen. Mass shootings (generally) don't kill that many people. They are scary, yes, but not that deadly (statistically). Keep it local news, don't publish the name of the killer, basically keep the story away from the front line…

You’d have to establish that they are copycats, definitively.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#414
post #34

It would be better if cloudflare terminated service for all media outlets. Every time you turn a mass shooting into a national spectacle, it inspires copycats in rapid succession as we've just seen. Mass shootings (generally) don't kill that many people. They are scary, yes, but not that deadly (statistically). Keep it local news, don't publish the name of the killer, basically keep the story away from the front line…

The idea that the problem will go away if we talk as little as possible about it isn't borne out by experience. Why wouldn't you just expect independent media outlets to fill the information vacuum? I hear this argument a lot after every terrorist incident but in ~30 years nobody has ever provided any solid evidence to back it up.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#415
post #319

Easy way out literally noone in the US wants or will support: Get a legal definition of well regulated militia, get it to not map to the national guard or some homebred terrorist group via some ritual like the pledge or whatever, and police the crap out of the gun sales to groups outside this definition. By the Constitution's own legitimacy it's the government's choice to forego this control under those terms, and it…

>Why is it legal for me to own an elephant gun but illegal to strap it to a drone?

It's not federally illegal to attach firearms to drones, so long as you do so within FAA guidelines for flying self-built vehicles low to the ground on your own property.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it occurred to you that radicalization actually happens offline, perhaps even in childhood, due to some kind of real life events, and nothing to do with internet at all? All of this rooted in meatspace. The so called "social defeat". How often do you see successful people that have a fullfilling life go on rampages?

Sure, and people may be driven to check out extremist ideology because of IRL emotional injuries or problems, but that doesn't mean the internet aspect is overblown. I've probably met more people through the internet than via casual socialization.

overblown, as in, it is very hard to believe emotional injuries sustained over the internet are as bad as social defeat IRL.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#418

This post repeatedly refers to 8chan as "lawless" and "unmoderated" but it is neither. As a whole, it is a public website subject to US law, complete with DMCA and search warrant contact forms. The sitewide rule is that all content must comply with US law. The media also keeps saying 8chan, 8chan, 8chan over and over, when it is really just the one most popular board ("pol") that is being discussed. But there are hun…

> This post repeatedly refers to 8chan as "lawless" and "unmoderated" but it is neither. I'd encourage anyone who thinks it's plausible that /pol/ is "moderated" and "lawful" to go read that board for a few minutes. Perhaps then they can comment here on whether there's a problem with the moderation, or the policing, of the board.

Have you read the comment fully? 8chan is not just /pol/, it's an amalgation of hundreds of boards with different content and moderation rules.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#419
post #308

This post repeatedly refers to 8chan as "lawless" and "unmoderated" but it is neither. As a whole, it is a public website subject to US law, complete with DMCA and search warrant contact forms. The sitewide rule is that all content must comply with US law. The media also keeps saying 8chan, 8chan, 8chan over and over, when it is really just the one most popular board ("pol") that is being discussed. But there are hun…

> It seems like most of the outrageous incitement to violence people have posted on 8chan would be illegal under Brandenburg v. Ohio And yet, no one wants to police that. So... Cloudflare did it themselves. I mean, look, I get the principled point you're making, but it's on really shaky ground. Either the conduct on that site was garbage that should be removed or it wasn't. And if it was... well, good riddance. After…

Matthew Prince could have just said "per our terms of service we don't provide services for websites that violate US law and 8chan allows posts that in our opinion incite imminent lawless action, therefore we're terminating their account". Instead he posted this confused essay that clearly shows he understands neither 8chan nor the relevant law, instead making up weird terms and making it entirely vague what their policy will be for terminating accounts in the future.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#420

This post repeatedly refers to 8chan as "lawless" and "unmoderated" but it is neither. As a whole, it is a public website subject to US law, complete with DMCA and search warrant contact forms. The sitewide rule is that all content must comply with US law. The media also keeps saying 8chan, 8chan, 8chan over and over, when it is really just the one most popular board ("pol") that is being discussed. But there are hun…

i generally oppose silencing (online) speech, even the ugliest of it, because not only does it not quell the violence we wish to avoid, but it can enrage the already marginalized among us who tend to carry the most insult.

as such, even taking down the offending material, while possibly legal, will only escalate the situation, requiring ever more force to control. sure, you may successfully thwart this attempt, but what about the next one? rising stakes eventually lead to a police state undergirded by pervasive surveillance.

this is multi-rooted social problem that's certainly bigger than one company, especially a tech company. it's not even certain that online outlets like 8chan don't lessen real violence by allowing members to find consolation among like-minded people rather than stewing in their anger.

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