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

Terminating Service for 8Chan

new.blog.cloudflare.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 1001 posts

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#451

Post by DATACOMMANDER »

kart23 wrote: post #116
icpmacdo wrote: post #23

"the speed with which tech cos change after a bad PR cycle seems like solid proof that none of this is abt principles but abt trying to keep from making hard choices as long as possible. earlier today they argued that keeping 8chan within its network is a “moral obligation”" https://twitter.com/cwarzel/status/1158193462459506693

This always has been and always will be about publicity. 8ch started getting mentioned on national television, and there started to be questions directed at cloudflare. Reddit used to happily host discriminatory, violent communities, and only banned them once people started paying attention and companies became afraid to advertise on reddit because of its perceived connections to hate by the public. The message to ha…

Speech cannot be violent.

To the downvoters: speech cannot be violent, by definition. Using your own private definition of a word—in this case, violence—without making an explicit disclaimer is inherently deceitful.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#452

Post by FourScore »

mort96 wrote: post #234
sytelus wrote: post #205

This is the same argument cake shops make against taking order from gay people. I do believe that so-called manifesto is mind-numbingly dumb, fact-free and it is dangerous in the sense it will inspire more violence against innocent people. But that precisely what makes it a good test case for asking some fundamental questions. Can commercial businesses with deep reach, pricing power and critical function deny service…

Taking orders from gay people and hosting services for sites which support far-right terrorism aren't exactly the same though. We can be against suppressing gay people and for suppressing far-right terrorism even if the means by which the suppression happens is similar.

But don't you see how the lines blue very quickly? It's not always as clear where morality lies as when some lunatic posts terroristic threats. Arbitrary value judgements must be made when enforcing censorship so censorship always leads to conflict between groups that disagree on what should be censored.

That's why the best course of action is to not censor at all and allow the system to work itself out.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#453

Post by kuzehanka »

481092 wrote: post #448
kuzehanka wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in favour of censorship. Moderation is keeping discussion civil and on-topic, which interestingly enough mostly happens by itself in 'absolute free speech' spaces. What you support is the selective suppression of ideas that you don't like. Don't call it moderation. Call it by its name. Censorship. Cloudflare isn't 'moderating' 8chan. It's deplatforming it and enacting censorship.

"Absolute free speech" is like anarchism. I've yet to meet someone who fully practices them both yet they will preach it and condemn others with their self-righteous hypocrisy. Would you want me to come up to your kid and cuss him out for no reason? Your mom? I wouldn't even have to use foul language to bother them. Any number of reasons I could really annoy you or your loved ones with free speech and in some cases r…

Free speech is a hard requirement for democracy, and a hard requirement of free speech is accepting the freedom of speech you find objectionable. Your nation was founded upon this principle as a cornerstone, and yet you have regressed back to ochlocracy. It wasn't even 100 years ago that any discussions of LGBT welfare were censored the same way by people with the same mindset.

> Would you want me to come up to your kid and cuss him out for no reason? Your mom?

We're talking about an online discussion group that discusses things that some, including myself, find objectionable. We're talking about whether such groups should be allowed to exist, and by extension whether those ideas should be allowed to exist. You're talking about harassment with an example that doesn't even intersect freedom of speech. Terrible strawman.

When I emigrated from the former Soviet Union, freedom of speech was one of the bigger changes in everyday life. It was also something that people were proud of and supported. They understood that it's what allows democracy to function, they understood that by definition it means supporting objectionable speech. Now I'm watching the tide turn and the same people actually supporting censorship in their own nations.

I always thought the censorship and thought-policing started with the oppressive government in the Soviet Union, I didn't believe that people initially welcomed it. But here we are, the cycle is repeating again.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#454

Post by [deleted] »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #361
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should that mean a power company can cut off your power because they don't like what you've said? Should that mean the water company can cut your water off for criticizing them? Should that mean that a bank can refuse to give you a loan, because you said something bad, even if your credit is more than acceptable? ------------------------------- Remember this: its the extremist that the law is made around. And soon en…

> Should that mean a power company can cut off your power because they don't like what you've said? No. Because they are a public utility and that would be a violation of the first amendment. > Should that mean that a bank can refuse to give you a loan, because you said something bad, even if your credit is more than acceptable? Yes. Because they are a private institution and not obligated to do business with you. Th…

[deleted]

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#455

Post by anigbrowl »

mythz wrote: post #25
whatshisface wrote: post #2

Another way to view this would be, "Cloudflare ends support for mass shooting early warning system."

That's a pretty warped view, 8chan is the support system for radicals which in all likelyhood gives them the motivation to commit mass murder since they have an audience to play to and support for their demented views. As the article states, it's very likely 8chan is just going to use a competitors service so it's unlikely to cause them much disruption, but at least Cloudflare isn't going to feel terrible for providi…

Motivation is part of it, but there's also an extensive practical support system that provides advice on technique, target selection, troubleshooting and so on.

That will not, of course, go away even if 8chan were to collapse under LOIC fire later tonight, but it will undermine the infrastructure and hinder recruiting.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#456

Post by logimame »

umvi wrote: 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 problem is, mass shootings generate a lot of revenue for media companies in terms of clicks, so when one major online newspapers posts something about it, the rest of them would follow. (Capitalism can really commoditize anything, right?)

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#457

Post by anigbrowl »

dmix wrote: post #31
barryhoodlum wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having it out in the open also attracts the users in the first place.

How exactly is this stopping them? They didn't post this on Twitter or FB already but every news media person found his manifesto quickly - just like they always do. There will be another 8chan to fill that void soon enough.

It was all over Twitter yesterday because it was short enough to render as 4 image files.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#458

Post by mort96 »

FourScore wrote: post #452
mort96 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking orders from gay people and hosting services for sites which support far-right terrorism aren't exactly the same though. We can be against suppressing gay people and for suppressing far-right terrorism even if the means by which the suppression happens is similar.

But don't you see how the lines blue very quickly? It's not always as clear where morality lies as when some lunatic posts terroristic threats. Arbitrary value judgements must be made when enforcing censorship so censorship always leads to conflict between groups that disagree on what should be censored. That's why the best course of action is to not censor at all and allow the system to work itself out.

What system are you talking about if not the system where people and companies can choose who they wish to associate with?

I should clarify, I'm not advocating complete freedom in this regard. We don't want a society where it's hard to be a gay person because lots of companies deny service to homosexuals. However, we also can't claim that every company should always have to serve everyone. There is certainly some nuance and ambiguity here, but not hosting services for groups which support far-right terror seems to be fairly reasonable.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#459

Post by jstreicher »

ivl wrote: post #213
libria wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem was that other Cloudflare customers started calling and threatening to cancel their service if Cloudflare didn't cut the Daily Stormer off. "The pressure to take it down just kept building and building," [the CEO] told Ars. [...] "I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet," So far he has been a "free speech absolutist" aside from the Daily stormer (economic extremes)…

> Daily stormer (economic extremes) and 8chan (public safety extremes). Both actually share a large cross section of users. The Daily Stormer was named after storm troopers . It is a cesspool of white supremacists. The same problem that 8chan's userbase has. I expect we'll see a continued deplatforming of sites which allow that ideology to fester.

> named after Storm troopers.

Actually it's named after this publication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Stürmer

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#460

Post by panarky »

sytelus wrote: post #205

This is the same argument cake shops make against taking order from gay people. I do believe that so-called manifesto is mind-numbingly dumb, fact-free and it is dangerous in the sense it will inspire more violence against innocent people. But that precisely what makes it a good test case for asking some fundamental questions. Can commercial businesses with deep reach, pricing power and critical function deny service…

Great example of the slippery-slope fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

Post reply on HN