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

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#821

Post by Taek » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 12:38 AM UTC

hacknat wrote: post #795

dcolkitt wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine an alternate scenario. Say the major tech companies get fed up with Elizabeth Warren's calls to regulate them. Facebook removes all her groups. Cloudflare shuts down her websites. Youtube removes her videos. Google only leaves anti-Elizabeth Warren search results up, etc. Basically a major presidential candidate is completely locked out of having any presence on the Internet whatsoever. Would your reaction be…

I think market retribution would take care of their decision pretty handily. I also think the same is true for Republicans. Twitter could never survive the market retaliation if they banned the Republican Party, but they have every legal right to do so. Also, changing the players in my scenario has nothing to do with anything, mine isn’t an opinion it is a matter of rule of law. If you don’t share that assumption wit…

Market retribution would take time, and I'm not sure the impact on market usage would be as big as you suggest. Certainly the market retribution on Facebook invading privacy has been slow a minimal.

And that aside, Warren would certainly lose the election if that happened. The election would be materially interfered with, regardless of whether the market responded to the moderation or not.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#822

Post by manmoth » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 12:48 AM 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…

Isn't such a place a good Honeypot though?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#823

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 12:49 AM UTC

busymom0 wrote: post #782

wpietri wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main issue with discussions on topics like this is a sort of fundamentalism. It's very easy to take a particular right (e.g., speech, property) and defend it absolutely. But rights are inherently social, and must be balanced against other people's rights. For example, I don't think my freedom of speech should trump Cloudflare's or Voxility's right to freedom of association. They should generally be able to decide…

> But rights are inherently social No, the founding fathers specifically said that freedom of speech is a God given right and not something which the government gives to a person, instead the government simply recognizes that right. They specifically said freedom of speech is a "Natural" right. Right to clean water is not a right, right to education is not a natural right in their terms. Right to speech, right to sel…

You may want to look into the Magna Carta before discussing the Founding Fathers as the arbiters of rights.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#824

Post by lake99 » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 12:49 AM UTC

DocTomoe wrote: post #616

empath75 wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 8chan was recruiting people to join al queada in Syria, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. They're a terrorist recruitment site, full stop. Shut them down.

Many future radical islamists get into contact with radical islam through Google. They are a terrorist recuriotment site. Shut them doen.

To anyone who can understand Urdu or Hindi, it's trivially easy to find speeches of terrorist leaders on YouTube. Hundreds of thousands of people have watched instigating speeches of Masood Azhar, Ilyas Ghuman, Israr Ahmad, hundreds of thousands of "likes" on the videos, thousands of appreciative comments.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#825

Post by TheHypnotist » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 12:52 AM UTC

sb057 wrote: post #754

allemagne wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that you're trying to address a larger philosophical question, but what action are you actually suggesting in this particular instance? Should Cloudflare be forced to host 8chan? Even more than YouTube/Twitter, this seems like a clear case of business owners deciding that 8chan is too much of a liability to do business with.

>Should Cloudflare be forced to host 8chan? If they have a monopoly on a necessary infrastructure, yes. Alternatively, should the local power company be forced to provide electricity service to a resident in their area they do not like?

Utilities are regulated and it generally is for the good of the consumer to not have their heat/ac turned off in either extreme.

Are you suggesting this is somehow equivalent? Should we regulate the internet and hosts that serve?

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#826

Post by dsfg345ds23 » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 12:54 AM UTC

talking about freedom of speech on HN is such a complete joke and generally a waste of time given the incredibly heavy hand of censorship and moderation that occurs here.

people here can pretend they are having a discussion but this community has already removed so many voices that HN is essentially just an elite enclave, like a bunch of british colonists discussing what the savages outside are allowed to say.

HN are the bigots who cannot tolerant the speech of others.

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#827

Post by ElijahLynn » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #820

the_reformation wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American Constitution argues free speech is a human right, not granted to us by government, but by nature. Even if some all-seeing deity could build a more optimal society by restricting the free speech of some group, this would be a moral wrong because all humans have an inherent right to free speech. Ultimately this isn't very relevant because right to free speech does not mean a right to web hosting infrastruc…

>The American Constitution argues free speech is a human right, not granted to us by government, but by nature. The American Constitution doesn't argue anything about free speech, define it or make claims about its origin, or even refer to is as a right, much less a "natural" right. It only declares that Congress (explicitly, and exclusively, meaning not even inclusive of any other governing body or private entities)…

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#828

Post by ElijahLynn » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 12:56 AM UTC

Just gonna put this here so everyone has a basis to go from:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#829

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 12:59 AM 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…

> It requires people who are able to fully parse the implications of what they are hearing

Where you plan to get such people from? I'm pretty sure nobody is able to "fully parse" implications of anything, for detailed enough definition of "fully", because nobody knows everything now or in the future, and without this it's impossible to "fully" understand implications of anything. Most benign speech could, in certain circumstances, cause huge effects. You can tell an aspiring artist and a war veteran his paintings are mediocre, and he decides to go into politics instead and you've got next Adolf Hitler (yes, I know that's not what actually happened, it's just a theoretical example). Nobody can "fully" know anything.

> to actively push back against ideals which are universally understood to be reprehensible.

You must be under impression there are a lot of things that are universally understood to be something. What if I told you there aren't and people actually can disagree on pretty much anything?

> The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged.

No it does not. Somebody speaking something that you don't like does not mean freedom of speech failed, because preserving your personal tranquility and serving your personal preferences has never been a purpose of the freedom of speech. And there's no "universally" reprehensible speech - somebody would always find this speech not reprehensible. The only way you can have a workable definition is by massaging "universally" by excluding more and more people from consideration because their opinion is obviously stupid and doesn't matter - until you find yourself in a bubble that agrees with your opinions and define that as "universal".

Re: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

#830

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #375

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…

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…

> should tolerate everything except intolerance

By which definition the first person crying "intolerance!" wins - now they can be intolerant for free, because they are just intolerating intolerance, but their opponents can't be. I don't think such model can be defined as "drawing a fine line" - more like providing a rich field for rhetorical abuse, as long as you can excuse your own intolerance by casting whoever you target as "intolerant" you yourself get a free pass for anything. Very convenient, of course, but to me it looks like a cheap trick.