Earlier quoted context omitted.
We lived in that world until media pushed mentally ill people to the front. Look at the graphs reporting on racism and the surge of terror. They basically revived nationalistic movements for clicks. Not wanting to reverse cause and effect but there is ample evide ce that the call for censorship massivle accelerated occurrences like shootings.
> Not wanting to reverse cause and effect but there is ample evide ce that the call for censorship massivle accelerated occurrences like shootings. That is interesting, but just saying that it is so doesn't lend any credibility to the conclusion. If there is ample evidence, surely you should be able to present it?
Terminating Service for 8Chan
951–960 of 1001 posts
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#952And this is why gay people can't get a cake made at the bakery anymore.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#953On the one hand, I like the idea of a free, open, and distributed internet, where no one company or government has the power to control what is distributed or discussed. As the great John Gilmore said, more aspirationally than accurately even then: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." On the other hand, we don't live in that world, and I don't know how well it would work in practice if we d…
This feels like a misunderstanding of the word freedom. Freedom in speech means that I can say what I want. It does _not_ mean that a hosting company has to host it or that a CDN has to optimize it or that a search company has to rank it or that an ad-network has to monetize it. Each of those players is free to do what they think is best with their time, resources, etc.; which often includes thinking of what "the pub…
No one has the "right" to have their speech amplified by 3rd parties. However, I don't think Cloudflare is in the business of providing amplification, they are in the business of providing access, which I think is closer to censorship than restricting amplification.
Access means people who WANT this content can get it easily. If you're making it harder for people who voluntarily choose to view 8chan content, you're restricting access.
Amplification means getting content in front of new eyeballs that wouldn't have otherwise seen it. E.g. if Facebook determined that given this user's age, race, zip-code, and favorite TV shows they might be in interested in this racist-meme sharing group that one of their friends joined, and then surfaces that content, that's amplification.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#954I love how everybody is having a cow over a website where the rhetoric isn't really all that much worse than a 'mainstream' site like twitter. For example in twitter you can find guys who call for children to be fed into wood chippers because they wear Maga hats and hundreds/thousands of people including corporate accounts like Burger King cheering assaulting people. And they almost all receive absolutely no punishme…
This is just not true. Twitter puts way more effort into blocking and controlling what goes on its platform then "we like living on the edge" 8chan. At this point, there was community that kept scores and celebrated shoot outs. At this point, even original 8chan creator called to close 8chan.
Oh so 8chan indeed moderates but not enough? Whats enough moderation by your standard and why should we go with that and not a more lenient one? So we should not only censor direct threats of violence we should also censor allegedly 'celebratory' posts that don't include a threat at all? Do you have any scientific proof that simply 'celebratory' posts cause violence too? Or are we just removing them because they're disgusting? You are aware that bad actors can and probably have come to stir up shit on 8chan to take it down right? Are you going to shut down a whole site because of these few people and they don't have the resources for all the whizbang algorithms that big sites like twitter uses to quickly remove posts but leave up tons of violent leftwing posts nobody care about?
PS 8chan for the most part is hardly edgey. There are a few eccentric groups in the subboards like all communities but in away its actually more like how the old internet used to be before, everything right of communism was 'far right'.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#955Earlier quoted context omitted.
People of color, and LGBT are demographics. White supremacy is an ideology (a reprehensible one at that). People choose their ideology, not their race, or sexuality. They are not the same thing. Third party businesses should not feel any obligation to do business with "dudes who blabber" about the murdering and hate of others.
lgbt fanatics aren't much more sane than any other extremists yet they don't have any issues with being on twitter, facebook or reddit. (emphasis on _fanatics_). Widespread propaganda about kids sexualization/abuse and genitalia mutilation on these platform is A-ok and a cause for celebration. You literally can't express any opinions going against the current flow of ideas without being labelled as hostile (alt-right…
This literally makes no sense whatsoever.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#956Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The rules of society are always a trade-off. In this case, the idea is to lose a bit of free speech, and gain less hatred and less murder. That is not an arbitrary judgement; admittedly this is also not a clear-cut judgement. The system never works itself out, successful societies are the ones which have established governing rules. Game theory has given us pretty good indication that systems rather self-destruct wit…
Hatred and murder has always existed! The idea that online discussion forums create or foment hatred is laughable. That hatred has always been out there. Now people just have a place to vent. The good part about it being out in the open is that we can actually see it and be aware of it.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#957Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm always amazed at how right wingers are all "property rights, property rights". And when something like this happens, they quickly switch from demanding that the property rights of CloudFlare be observed, to "free speech, free speech" concerning the conservatives on 8chan.
In this case, "property rights", as you put it are at odds with free speech. I don't think it would be ideologically inconsistent to believe that free speech trumps property rights in cases where the two principles conflict. I also think there's a lot more nuance to this situation than you seem to be implying. I very much doubt there are a significant number of people ("right wingers" or otherwise) who believe proper…
So CloudFlare gets absolutely no say in what they host and serve on their private property because of "Free Speech"?
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#958Earlier quoted context omitted.
As has been explained in this thread multiple times now, Free Speech is a principle, not a law. If, for example, someone in North Korea spoke against their government and was executed for it, that'd be a violation of Free Speech. Arguing "but North Korea doesn't have a law protecting people who speak against the government" would be ridiculous. Similarly, if a person or organization in the United States is silenced b…
"Free Speech has absolutely been impinged by this decision." No, it hasn't. No one has a moral, legal, or ethical responsibility to pay for someone else's speech. The government must tread lightly, but private individuals are under no compulsion to listen to others. 8chan is NOT having their speech rights infringed, they are simply having a business agreement terminated. They are still 100% free to create a website s…
The problem with that argument is that there's no such thing as a "public square" on the internet. Everything on the internet is controlled by a private company in some manner or another. Whether you're talking about DNS, cloud hosting, ISPs, CDNs, or CAs there are always going to be some number of privately controlled intermediaries with the means to censor your speech.
For some of these entities, such as CDNs with enough infrastructure to stand up against large-scale DDOS attacks, there may only be a small number of viable options. What happens if all of those companies collectively decide to censor someone? You've effectively created a corporate oligarchy with the power to decide what sort of speech is and isn't allowed on the internet.
Now again, maybe we're not quite at that point yet (after all, the Daily Stormer did eventually find a CDN that would take them), but we may very well be getting close. You also have to consider that even without a true oligopoly; there's still a chilling effect created when a large percentage of the internet's major infrastructure providers collectively decide to censor certain speech on the basis of ideology.
At what point do you believe freedom of speech outweighs freedom of association? We've already decided freedom from racial discrimination trumps freedom of association, so it's not like this sort of thing would be entirely without precedent.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#959Who is going to deplatform Facebook and Twitter? After all plenty of shooters have used them too. Before the usual: " But 8chan is a cesspool of bla bla" Probably it is, but, either the users are doing something ilegal in the site and you close it if the owners refuse to comply with a legal request, or they are not doing anything illegal so they have to be left alone. For the "Free Speech is freedom from government p…
People of color, and LGBT are demographics. White supremacy is an ideology (a reprehensible one at that). People choose their ideology, not their race, or sexuality. They are not the same thing. Third party businesses should not feel any obligation to do business with "dudes who blabber" about the murdering and hate of others.
I think this is shaky ground. Plenty of people think LGBT "choose" their sexuality (though I do not). White supremacists, religious people etc think their beliefs reflect objective reality, which is clearly not something they can choose.
I think making "you chose this" a valid reason to censor/attack/etc. something opens the door to some pretty dangerous things, since it's not difficult to accuse things of being a choice that aren't.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#960Earlier quoted context omitted.
People of color, and LGBT are demographics. White supremacy is an ideology (a reprehensible one at that). People choose their ideology, not their race, or sexuality. They are not the same thing. Third party businesses should not feel any obligation to do business with "dudes who blabber" about the murdering and hate of others.
People choose their religion, too.
Do they? A key aspect of religion is believing that your beliefs reflect objective reality, e.g. there really is a God that did all this stuff, there really were prophets that performed these specific miracles and said these specific things etcetera.
Saying that believing in what you think is objective reality is a choice gives off some strong 1984 vibes.