8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service • Hacker News Board

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#491

Post by newhaus1994 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #468

ddebernardy wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm in agreement with Popper's view that societies should tolerate everything except intolerance. It draws a fine line between what's acceptable speech and what is not. And going by it, things like 8chan should get shut down. The line of thought you put forward, by contrast, rubs me in a very wrong way. It was used to justify, depending on the period and country, not allowing people to vote on the basis th…

>Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut What is that criteria? Because I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant. Would you agree that saying that a baker in Colorado must make a cake for a gay wedding is intolerant of the baker's belief? Because I'm certain a sizeable proportion of the US population would agree that it is intolerant.

The criteria is pretty straightforward: you apply the "intolerance of intolerance" to the first intolerant action in the chain, i.e. the one that infringes unprompted on someone else.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#492

Post by adnzzzzZ » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #353

Smithalicious wrote: post #215

This once again goes to show that you can do nothing illegal and still be virtually locked out of the internet. The viewpoint that "it's okay to kick 8chan off the internet" is not consistent with the viewpoint that "the internet should be neutral infrastructure". Take from that what you will. People are doing the "yada yada not entitled to a platform" thing, but the distinction between free speech and having a platf…

Inciting violence is not legal though. It’s reasonable to cut support to players that relentlessly fail to comply with the rules. The platforms are not turning against them, they are constantly abusing the ToS of these platforms . Now some people disagree with the ToS in the first place, but it’s another discussion to be done at another plane. There has always been a filtering of what goes to a super wide audience, m…

8chan took the shooter's manifesto down way faster than it took Facebook to take down the Christchurch shooter's streams. You're mistaken if you think that 8chan "relentlessly fails to comply with the rules", anyone paying attention knows that they're very responsive. This is nothing more than a witchhunt because people want the site to go away.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#493

Post by spookthesunset » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #294

tombert wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm on the same boat as you on this one; I tend to have a pretty libertarian view on free speech, but lately the bizarre rise of hyper-radical idiots on places like 8chan (and even YouTube to a lesser extent) has really made me question these things. It's very easy to shout the mantra of "Free speech!!! OMG!!!" but we gain nothing by acting like there aren't natural consequences to it. By having a liberal fre…

"Free speech" protections DO NOT APPLY to a private company deciding whether to provide internet services to something like 8chan. Period. I continue to be surprised at the level to which people misunderstand this.

> I continue to be surprised at the level to which people misunderstand this.

It isn't "misunderstanding" it is willfully ignoring to push a narrative. I sincerely doubt most of the people here calling this a violation of free speech are doing so in good faith.

It is a pretty basic set of logical steps to determine that a private business refusing to serve a customer is perfectly okay and should be encouraged. Arguing that a private business should be forced at gunpoint by government goons to do business with nazis or racist assholes doesn't make any sense at all.

All the attempts to derail into minutia like "cloudflare is a utility" is simply done to wear you out.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#494

Post by davidgay » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

buildzr wrote: post #105

CydeWeys wrote: post #76

We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society. What 8chan is doing is exactly the same, minus the Islamist part, yet there's hypocrisy in how they're treated vs e.g. the social media wing of ISIS. These people are trying to kill as many of us as possible. In no way should society accept it. It's simple societal self-defense. Ro…

> We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society. Speak for yourself, I would. I've downloaded and distributed ISIS propaganda videos before out of sheer intrigue. Just because someone says something you don't like doesn't mean you should ban it. Of course, this will be downvoted to hell because this is a hot topic at the moment…

At a guess, you don't belong to, or have friends in, groups ISIS believes deserve to be put to death.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#495

Post by daenz » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #257

tepidandroid wrote: post #139

My opinion is that freedom of speech is a fine ideal to strive for, but it relies on having a stable society with some minimum level of education (moral and philosophical too, not just the technical kind). It requires people who are able to fully parse the implications of what they are hearing to make sound and rational judgements on the rejection of an idea or the embrace of it. It creates a moral duty for the peopl…

Put differently: this is why we can't have nice things

Thank the Constitution that some of those "nice things" (freedom of speech, for example) are acknowledged as intrinsic rights and not granted to us by the government. So yes, we can have still them, because they cannot be taken away, only infringed upon, regardless of who is spoiling them.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#496

Post by Rapzid » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

_trampeltier wrote: post #360

boramalper wrote: post #182

What people (seemingly) fail to realise is that neither Cloudflare is the Internet nor Voxility is a public infrastructure. They are private enterprises which are free to act in however they want with regards to the service they provide as laid out in their contract. That is the danger of centralisation; when they remove their service, it feels as if your rights has been violated because (a) you have been so used to…

Yes they are private, and of course, they are free to choose there own customer. On the other side, as long 8chan did nothing illegal, they shouldn't shutdown 8chan. If 8chan did something illegal, then for this we have the whole justice system. If people think 8chan does something bad, but is not illegal .. then people should vote to change the law. If private company's start to play the police .. it does end in a d…

It's their right to associate or not associate through business with whoever they like as long as they are not breaking the law. Are they breaking the law? If not then it's now you suggesting imposing your viewpoint on them in a way that restricts their 1st amendment rights.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#497

Post by RazzleBerryPop » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

tepidandroid wrote: post #139

My opinion is that freedom of speech is a fine ideal to strive for, but it relies on having a stable society with some minimum level of education (moral and philosophical too, not just the technical kind). It requires people who are able to fully parse the implications of what they are hearing to make sound and rational judgements on the rejection of an idea or the embrace of it. It creates a moral duty for the peopl…

My main issue with this line of reasoning is that it feels largely emotion driven. Even if communities with zero moderation do offer more likely spaces for extremist thoughts to develop and become action, I can't claim I've seen a broad academic consensus that sacrificing current free speech rights would actually solve or otherwise impact the problem in a meaningful way.

I don't think communities that turn a blind eye to hatespeech are wholly innocent, especially in light of how many threads downright enourage people thinking of taking violent action, but if we take a step back this doesn't seem wholly different from blaming violent video games for glamorizing gun violence or blaming rap music for gang culture. There's a reason that most people, including racists/bigots/etc. don't go on shooting sprees or run people over with cars. Handwaving the problem as a free speech issue ignores the long spans of time we weren't seeing these trends in spite of having the same rights to speech we have now. I don't know what the right answer is, but censorship affects everybody so it seems like it should be the last solution considered imo.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#498

Post by laughinghan » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

tripplethrendo wrote: post #482

ddebernardy wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm in agreement with Popper's view that societies should tolerate everything except intolerance. It draws a fine line between what's acceptable speech and what is not. And going by it, things like 8chan should get shut down. The line of thought you put forward, by contrast, rubs me in a very wrong way. It was used to justify, depending on the period and country, not allowing people to vote on the basis th…

What about Islamic intolerance?

Is it your understanding that 100% of the followers of Islam are intolerant? There has never been a single person who identifies as Islamic who has been tolerant?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#499

Post by ajross » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #468

ddebernardy wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm in agreement with Popper's view that societies should tolerate everything except intolerance. It draws a fine line between what's acceptable speech and what is not. And going by it, things like 8chan should get shut down. The line of thought you put forward, by contrast, rubs me in a very wrong way. It was used to justify, depending on the period and country, not allowing people to vote on the basis th…

>Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut What is that criteria? Because I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant. Would you agree that saying that a baker in Colorado must make a cake for a gay wedding is intolerant of the baker's belief? Because I'm certain a sizeable proportion of the US population would agree that it is intolerant.

> I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant

Not in the subject at hand. I think pretty much everyone reasonable agrees that "kill the {jews,muslims,hispanics}" (once more, folks, this was the THIRD ethnic massacre advertised on 8chan!) is intolerant, no? Can't we start there?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#500

Post by VectorLock » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

DangerousPie wrote: post #69

Alex3917 wrote: post #30

IMHO this reflects poorly on CloudFlare. The supreme court has ruled time and time again that the right to free speech implies the right to be heard. While CloudFlare obviously isn't legally required to serve 8chan, the only service they are really providing is making it so that 8chan can't be DDOS'd. And DDOS'ing is very clearly a tactic that violates the first amendment. So really by no longer serving 8chan, the on…

> It reminds me a lot of Charlottesville, where people showed up to try to shout over the white nationalists and it just ended up with a bunch of people getting run over by a car. As if something like that happening wasn't entirely predictable. Wait, what are you trying to say here? That these people deserved to get run over because they dared to shout at white nationalists??

I've seen this line being trotted out by people supporting 8chan and their ilk a lot lately. "If you censor them they'll get even more violent." Regardless of your opinions on free speech, it sounds to me that cutting off the hub for these groups to network, encourage, indoctrinate and manipulate is much more likely to reduce violence than incite it.