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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

#621

Post by loup-vaillant »

rhelz wrote: post #287
CM30 wrote: post #46

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…

// private companies a re de facto writing the laws // We can certainly discuss whether these services should be publicly or privately owned. I'm a pretty liberal guy, and wouldn't mind seeing publically-owned versions of Twitter, ChatGPT, or Google, as a guard against corporations dominating the information age. But calling for more government regulation of privately-owned services? Forcing private companies to do w…

> * The whole point of private property is that it carves out a space of freedom for you, the owner of the private property, to use it as you wish!!!*

Be careful here not to conflate personal property and lucrative property. The first (like a home) is what you say. The second (like a factory) is a way to tell others what to do on your turf, for your benefit rather than theirs.

Private companies are of the second kind: more freedom for shareholders, fewer freedoms for employees… and if they’re big and inevitable enough (like YouTube), that’s fewer freedoms for users as well.

Even if we didn’t distinguish the two kinds of property, I could easily twist your sentence into meaning that the whole point of property is to make sure rich owners have more freedom than the poor. Which is probably not the point you were trying to make.

Freedom is a tricky thing to balance.

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

#622

Post by Devasta »

richbell wrote: post #391
creata wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site is literally about stalking people and documenting their personal lives for the sake of mockery. The users are cartoonish villains, and I'm not sure how you'd get any other impression after spending a few minutes there.

> The site is literally about stalking people and documenting their personal lives for the sake of mockery. You're half right, though I'd disagree with literally stalking — at the very least, there's variety and nuance. There's such a large variety of people discussed on the forum that I don't think you can make a blanket statement like that. Is watching every video or stream from a content creator and posting in a f…

Wading through each and every single thing a person has done in their lives to mock them is stalking, yes. Even if we pretend it isn't for a second it means that the person who is being followed is now forces to look at every interaction, no matter how innocuous, under the lens of "How will Kiwifarms react to this?" Can you meet a friend without them trying to dig up information on that friend? Can you apply for a job without HR finding a thread of thousands of posts talking about you? Probably not, and that has life and mental health ruining consequences.

Its patently obvious you agree with their behavior but lack the fortitude to admit it.

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

#623

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

hellgas00 wrote: post #405
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #302

Is this situation like, say I own some commercial property like a mall, someone rents from me, I realize the person who is renting from me is allowing one of the storefronts to advertise the ritualistic sacrifice of kittens. Shouldn’t I be allowed to 1) tell the guy renting from me to boot out the kitten killers; 2) boot out the guy renting from me for letting one of the storefronts of my commercial space be kitten k…

Your analogy is poor, what you described contravene US laws. Your misunderstanding was seemingly addressed in the article. Tier 1 providers, in some regions, operate as quazi-monopolies. A more apt analogy; you dislike renters that openly promote their religious affiliation, but you also own all of the rental properties in the western United States. This leaves them with nowhere to setup shop for running foul of your…

Right, does this mean that at some point your private property is a public utility? What line is that? What if my mall is the only commercial space available in a small town?

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

#624

Post by pfisch »

bluescrn wrote: post #563
pfisch wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When in all of US history were private companies not controlling the public discourse and "censoring free speech"?

When 'the public square' was a physical location rather than a social media feed.

There is really no point in us history where getting your viewpoint out there wasn't done with media like newspapers.

You could always go yell at people in the street like a crazy person. You still can.

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

#625

Post by lifthrasiir »

yashap wrote: post #353

I agree, and I’m extremely far from a free speech absolutist - to a level that I’m sure most at HN would disagree with. I completely believe in limits to free speech on a case by case basis, online and otherwise. For example, I think HN would be a worse place without moderation, same with Reddit, I think my home country Canada would be a worse place without hate speech laws, etc. Not against limits to free speech onl…

I'm on the same page, and I think the title could have been better because it overlooks the following sentence, which is in my opinion the most effective argument against HE:

> Tier 1 ISPs don’t have the ability or the incentive to build content evaluation teams that are even as effective as those of the giant platforms who know far more about their end users and yet still engage in harmful censorship.

HE should not do the "moderation" not because those sites are okay, but because HE can't do the effective moderation. The current title doesn't suggest that the subject ("ISPs") is very important.

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

#626

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

habinero wrote: post #459
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay so like, what if I own the only mall in a large area. Like a rural suburb where there is often only one shopping space/public commercial space. Is there an upper limit where your private property is considered public utility?

No. It's the same thing. And this already happens all the time.

What do you mean by “this”, like malls ban people? Yeah I know malls refuse to rent to people sometimes. I’m asking if this is that scenario, where someone’s private ownership and business operation is not allowed to not serve a customer because they’re doing bad stuff like kitten killing.

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

#627

Post by pfisch »

stale2002 wrote: post #139
pfisch wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When in all of US history were private companies not controlling the public discourse and "censoring free speech"?

When we made laws to prevent them from doing so. In the US, related to this specific situation, the laws are called "Net Neutrality" and "Common Carrier" laws. Such laws are well established and uncontroversial. Pretty much everyone agrees that it is a good thing that the power company can't shut off your electricity just because you said something that it didn't like.

Those weren't really the public square or a mass communication system though. You're kinda comparing apples and oranges.

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

#628

Post by bluescrn »

goodpoint wrote: post #617
bluescrn wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech was a pretty fundamental value. A couple of generations ago.

Freedom of speech is being distorted by some actors in bad faith that want the freedom to be racist etc.

If you want to preserve free speech, you need to defend hateful speech. This is not a new problem:

https://www.aclu.org/report/1978-aclu-pamphlet-why-american-...

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

#629

Post by Dylan16807 »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #387
zer8k wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You're not understanding that Banning someone from your private establishment is within your rights. If they want to run their own business they can elsewhere. Banning someone via an ISP is different because ISPs have so much infrastructure they can in some sense be considered a "public utility". Nothing would stop someone from advertising ritualistic kitten killing in a public park (except maybe indecency laws…

Okay so like, what if I own the only mall in a large area. Like a rural suburb where there is often only one shopping space/public commercial space. Is there an upper limit where your private property is considered public utility?

> Is there an upper limit where your private property is considered public utility?

Maybe.

I don't think it's a problem if companies with extreme amounts of power have to give up some freedom of banning.

On a sliding scale though, you don't literally become a utility one day.

(And when it comes to "only commercial storefront space in a large area", I expect that to be very rare.)

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