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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

#431

Post by throwaway58480 »

r721 wrote: post #318
frabbit wrote: post #20

It is not just ISPs. It is crowdfunding and payment processing companies. See for example this apparent seizure of funding to independent journalists happening right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314499 If you care about there being genuinely independent news media then funding these guys is something you can do right now.

[flagged]

I think we just need more reciprocity laws in international relations. Russian and Chinese journalists should be equally as constrained as American journalists in their countries.

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

#432

Post by cycomanic »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #330
cycomanic wrote: post #309

I think the question is not quite so easy as many here (and even the EFF) are making it seem. It's easy to talk about free-speech that needs to be protected at any cost when it comes to political speech, but if we look at e.g. spam nobody argues that spam and spammers should be blocked. Now is spam less speech, because it is not political? On a similar note, if I own a large piece of land should I allow a demonstrati…

Spam is speech that the recipient does not want to receive; deplatforming spammers is aligned with the recipient's desires. Deplatforming speech that the recipient does want to receive is not aligned with the recipient's desires and infringes on their ability to communicate freely. Therefore, the spam analogy is not valid.

That's not a very good argument. Clearly there are some people who do want to see spam otherwise spam would be uneconomical because nobody would buy. On the same note there are plenty of people who don't want to see KF material. I don't think arguing by some sort of majority works. And yes lots of spam, phishing and other material gets filtered out by ISPs (somebody further up was talking about that some ISPs were blocking the full spam house list). A

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

#433

Post by jdthedisciple »

meroes wrote: post #420

Why should an individual’s speech limit a business to being a dumb pipe? I’ve never gelled with this aspect of “tech” (startup?) culture. Why shouldn’t an ISP or any company be able to limit for any lawful reason?

Sounds like you are not disagreeing, the question is just what is a lawful reason.

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

#435

Post by chonkerz »

wredue wrote: post #207
autoexec wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's where problems arise. Most of us are comfortable oppressing people we disagree with. The reality is that you can't silence voices you don't like without making yourself vulnerable to the same treatment. We either value the freedom to express ourselves within the limits of the law or we don't. As soon as there are more people who think like you do, none of us are safe and it just becomes a system that silen…

I strongly disagree with people who seek to suppress freedom of speech. This is not the hypocrisy that you’re painting it as. I question the motives of anyone sympathizing with Nazis as “just a different opinion” Suppressing nazism is not “suppressing freedom of speech”. It is suppressing people who seek to suppress.

A number of kiwifarms victims are guilty engaging in speech that the Kiwifarms users disagreed with. So Kiwifarms users launched criminal harassment campaigns and used the forum to coordinate sharing the personal information of these victims. Personal information that has no relevance except to intimidate. And then the owner of the forum comments in these threads actively encouraging the activity.

You characterize this as a difference of opinion. Despicable.

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

#436

Post by oceanplexian »

bb88 wrote: post #241
sneak wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are bars. Should the electric company deny service to biker bars?

Do you really want the answer, or was that a question hoping to shame me? So if the biker bars are distributing child porn, or illegal drugs or guns, or using it as a place for conspiracy terrorism, then yeah, I say yes those corporations serving said bar should have a say. Particularly if the biker bar, e.g., violated the company's Christian morals. More importantly, this is supported by case law, today. The decisio…

> So if the biker bars are distributing child porn, or illegal drugs or guns, or using it as a place for conspiracy terrorism, then yeah, I say yes those corporations serving said bar should have a say.

For the sake of argument let’s change it from biker bar to a LGBT bar. Say some customers may be doing illegal drugs, and the CEO of the electric company (Known for his stance against illegal drugs) got wind of it. Like the biker bar, they were never afforded due process, and were never ordered to shut down in a court of law. Instead, the CEO orders his company to shut off the power; the reason being, he knows it must be true because a local reporter told him so. Not only that, a friend of his went to the bar and saw people doing drugs.

The bar gets no jury, no trial. A structure without electricity is considered uninhabitable, and the bar is forced to close down. Do you still think this is legal?

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

#437

Post by chonkerz »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #219
TylerE wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Even a literal Nazi should have access to utilities. Though I would say cloudflare isn't quite up to that level. Edit: Seeing this downvoted is disappointing. Access to utilities needs to be treated as a right . Only the courts should be able to take it away.

You think hosting a website is a right?

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

#438

Post by charcircuit »

mnd999 wrote: post #423

More nativity from the EFF, I dont think they live in the real world. It’s never worked that at and never will. Why? Because the systems become unusable for everyone. A simple and very very old example is email. Even back in the 1990s days of the Internet, we had spam on email and if your reputable isp caught you spamming you’d be in trouble. Same with shitposting on usenet. Sure there are nuances to consider as to w…

>Because the systems become unusable for everyone.

In this case there is no spam or resource exhaustion going on in this case. People are visiting a forum, posting things, and viewing text / images / video files posted by other users.

What makes things unusable is when you want to follow links on the web you need to use VPNs in order to route your traffic through the correct ISPs that will properly route your traffic. There could be a future where different T1 ISPs block different sites so there is no way to browse the entire internet using a single ISP, but instead you have to cleverly pick a different ISP for each destination IP to get it properly routed.

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

#440

Post by throwaway58480 »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #433
meroes wrote: post #420

Why should an individual’s speech limit a business to being a dumb pipe? I’ve never gelled with this aspect of “tech” (startup?) culture. Why shouldn’t an ISP or any company be able to limit for any lawful reason?

Sounds like you are not disagreeing, the question is just what is a lawful reason .

Further the intent of a system based on law, at least since the Magna Carta, is that the people (definitions vary) have to be consulted democratically.
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