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 people who are listening to not only reject, but to actively push back against ideals which are universally understood to be reprehensible.
The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged. Forums like 8chan and 4chan effectively incubate hate speech by providing a safe space for anonymized, like-minded individuals to congregate, espouse their basest thoughts and feelings and receive gratification for it -all without challenge. Moderate people are repulsed by such forums and the quantity of hate-speech they generate, which further compounds the negative feedback loop.
Unchecked extremism compounded by more unchecked extremism inevitably leads to scenarios like the ones we’re witnessing more and more often.
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 who to do business with. However, that freedom also isn't absolute; it was used for decades as part of race and gender discrimination, which impinges upon other people's freedoms. Thus the US theory of protected classes. [1]
Or to pick another example, employers should generally be able to hire who they want. But that has been used for religious discrimination, so we protect those people. However, that also isn't absolute; if for religious reasons I won't handle pig products, I'm not entitled to a job at a pork BBQ restaurant. To get reasonable outcomes, we need to welcome nuance and compromise.
I encourage everybody to be suspicious of anybody who thinks there's a single clear answer in situations like this. Fundamentalist positions are both appealing and dangerous.
> For example, I don't think my freedom of speech should trump Cloudflare's or Voxility's right to freedom of association.
Right, but those only produce a conflict in a very specific case and your right to free speech should be defended by your government/peers regardless of where you do the caching for your blog (or whatever).
I have a huge issue with this modern relativist approach, because it leads to the situation where - instead of acknowledging that there are in fact absolute rights - we constantly debate where _the line_ is.
I think the boldest example of why this is bad is the right to live. In my view, this is an absolute right. "But what if it's a mass murderer?" - "But what if they are terminally ill and are suffering?" - "But what if they are so heavily handicapped that... ?" Adding _ifs_ and _buts_ to a right that should be absolute leads down a very dark path, because _the line_ will be a constant subject of discussion.
I think we would do ourselves a favor to just outright declare some rights to be absolute (as we did before and seem to have forgotten).
Disagree. "Absolutely positively absolute rights" are taking decent heuristics and turning them into thought-terminating clichés.
Let's go with the "right to live". Consider questions such as:
- Who has that right? You, or your body? If you don't want to live, should you be forced to? What if you're suffering so badly it's debilitating, and this state won't improve until you eventually die? Is living in a state of endless torture better than not living?
- How do you trade lives for lives? Imagine you have a crazy shooter killing people left and right. There's no fast way to get to them except a drone strike, and each minute you hesitate, they kill another person. Do you pull the trigger and save innocent victims, or do you wait for the armoured police to arrive and safely incapacitate the shooter, honoring their right to live at the expense of many other people? What if it's you facing the shooter alone, and they intend to kill you? Will you shoot first, or give your life for their right to live?
- What if probabilities get involved? The shooter is cornered, and a police sniper has his head in their sights. You can either take the shooter down now, or have a team of officers incapacitate them. The latter has a X% of chance ending in a police officer dying. At X=100%, you're trading life for life. At what X do you decide to have the sniper take the shot? What if there's a risk of more than one police deaths involved? At what threshold in the probability density function is it worth to take that risk?
- What if money gets involved? The most complicated variant, an extension of trading lives with probabilities. You have me sitting in front of a button, pressing which will immediately wreck the economy of a small country. You can't get to me, but see my head through the scope of your sniper rifle. I'm about to press that button. Will you pull the trigger? And before you say, "obviously no!", keep in mind that wrecking the economy of a country is bound to result in many, many deaths.
"Absolute rights" are good as heuristics. But like all heuristics, they hit corner cases. These corner cases need to be thought about explicitly.
> "Absolutely positively absolute rights" are taking decent heuristics
You're assuming that moral propositions are heuristics or a utilitarian optimization problem, and not moral facts that are simply true or not true. This is still a contentious debate, and not the only possibilities either.
In this case, the answers to your questions depends entirely on what the moral facts are. For example, it may be morally impermissible to take a life under any circumstances, which answers many of your questions quite clearly.
Unless you can build some sort of moral truth detector, "simply true or not true" is still a subjective proposition, because it's you believing that. So whatever you imagine the absolute truth to be is mostly irrelevant, in that you need to persuade other people with different viewpoints to behave the way you want. That leads you back pretty to utilitarian optimization problems.
I get that this doesn't have the thrilling clarity of some sort of moral fundamentalism. But that's my point. When two groups with different absolute moral beliefs conflict, our options are negotiation or murder. People like the El Paso killer clearly favor the latter. To me that's a sign that however much people hold absolute moral beliefs (and I hope it's relatively little), they should talk about it in utilitarian, relative terms.
I'll take your word for it that most human philosophers are moral realists. Even if true, I think that says more about human brains and the social structures that bless people as professional philosophers than it does about any deep nature of reality.
May be. My point was more that those questions need to be answered one way or another; I understood GP as saying they're unnecessary and are just muddying the waters.
You are your body, they are the same thing unless you can stop being in your body this is a moot point.
> If you don't want to live, should you be forced to?
Rights are freedoms in order to have the right to do something you must also have the right to not do it, or it's not a right.
> How do you trade lives for lives?
Well you don't thats the point. If you don't respect some one else's rights then there is no reason for them to respect yours.
> Do you pull the trigger and save innocent victims
The whole good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns is a myth according to FBI statistics.[1]
The point saintPirelli made is that people focus too much on hypotheticals (what if we can stop shooters by shooting them) rather than accepting the right and focusing on the reality(how do we prevent shooters from killing people), your argument demonstrates this.
>Thats why a terrorist/psychotic killer/.. can get shot.
Yes thats the argument I was making.
>When there is someone mass killing "innocents" and the fastest way to stop it, is a bullet, then what would you propose instead?
In my comment I propose preventative measures rather than reactionary measures. I do this because reactionary measures are a reaction and measured by the thing they are reacting too. Rights are not reactionary they are fundamental and you cant base a fundamental right on a reaction, thats the point.
That answer avoids the question by suggesting it can be made irrelevant. But no matter how many preventative measures you put in place , there will still come situations when the fastest and safest way to save lives is by ending a life.
So again, what do you do? Respect the perpetrator's right to life and let him keep ending other lives? Or respect the victims' right to life and end the perpetrator's?
> You are your body, they are the same thing unless you can stop being in your body this is a moot point.
No, you're not. You're the runtime state of the software that's running in your brain. Your body is just a peripheral, and can very well work against your will. More importantly, your body doesn't think.
I phrased it this way because in the case when someone wants to die, but the society won't let them, it's technically not them that have the right to live but their body (and the body can't voice its opinion).
> Well you don't thats the point.
Real world sometimes doesn't give you that option. Situations happen in which a choice between who lives and who dies needs to be made.
> The point saintPirelli made is that people focus too much on hypotheticals (what if we can stop shooters by shooting them) rather than accepting the right and focusing on the reality(how do we prevent shooters from killing people), your argument demonstrates this.
If you keep avoiding a problem, you'll be unprepared when you're suddenly forced to confront it head-on.
>You're the runtime state of the software that's running in your brain
That is not independent of the state of the underlying neural network, it seems no more reasonable to dissociate the two than it does to conflate them.
My issue with this whole argument is that, in the U.S. there is also a right in the 2nd amendment. Either that right needs to be abolished or we're left in the push-pull dynamic of the rights-against-rights.
I personally dislike the idea of whittling away a Constitutional right through piecemeal laws rather than an amendment to the Constitution. It a disingenuous workaround, like a poll-tax/literacy test erodes a specific class' right to vote without actually changing their Constitutional right.
The reason that a specific political bent in this country uses laws to curb the Second ("shall not be infringed", lol) is because any amendment altering or abolishing this right will never be ratified.
It's just much easier to sneak in legislation like the Hughes Amendment and hope a favorable Supreme Court and political climate allows it to stand.
We can talk about edge cases when we agree on the base principles. A principle isn't automatically invalid because it has hard-to-answer edge cases. This is faulty logic.
I think we agree on the basic principle, or at least we seem to be talking about the same principle.
My point is that any principle is going to hit edge cases when applied in real life, and so "instead of acknowledging that there are in fact absolute rights - we constantly debate where _the line_ is" is actually the right thing to do, because principles are not absolute rights, and edge cases in fact need to be solved.
Most edge cases, in fact, can just be managed—they don't need to be solved.
With people, I would argue that not solving edge cases and just managing them when they arise should be the norm. People are messy, and our system should have enough slack in it to act humanely in the vast majority of cases. We really don't need hard and fast rules to cover everything, just "normal" things.
The principle needs to remain unchanged though. A principle can and should not be designed to cover it's own edge cases. It's in it's application where we can apply tolerance. Aristotle calls this principle Epikeia: "epikeia is a restrictive interpretation of positive law based on the benign will of the legislator who would not want to bind his subjects in certain circumstances"
But the application of law should be explicitly defined in order to be applied equally by law enforcement and courts. If you define the law to be "all people have the right to live as decided by local law enforcement and courts" then by not having explicit definitions of legality you're introducing the potential for abuse. Or even confusion as to what is actually allowed (and thus litigation as to whether certain behavior was within the spirit of the enforced law).
It sounds as though what you want is the The Constitution / Bill of Right. A basic set of simply worded principles that influence the definition of law, but aren't themselves "the law".
You seem to be contradicting yourself, unless I'm misreading things.
There are absolute rights, and debating where the line falls is pointless. But when applying it to the real world, you need flexibility (i.e. debate where the line falls).
Anyway, isn't that basically what we already have, with free speech? It's legally protected in even extreme cases where it arguably causes more damage than value, but per event it tends to go through courts (or there is enough court precedence to make that wasted effort).
Court precedence applying flexibility to an absolute intent/right is the debating of the line. Isn't it?
I sympathize with this argument, but it has several problems: Rights and wrongs are inherently social constructs. The is no (currently) discovered moral potential in the laws of the universe, nor is there a well defined, clearly bounded, definition of life.
I would argue that relativism is in fact the fundamental construct, and that societies only arise in the unstable balances between extremes.
That's not to say that fundamental rights cannot be instrumental in strengthening society, but since they arise from within society, they will need to be updated as society inevitably changes in time.
> Rights and wrongs are inherently social constructs.
This is an assumption, and not on supported by debates in ethics. Once you start questioning everything, you'll see that some moral propositions appear to be unassailable, in that, no argument can simultaneously question the truth of the proposition without also descending into logical incoherency. The categorical imperative would be one such approach, although not the only one.
There are good reasons why most philosophers are moral realists.
> I would argue that relativism is in fact the fundamental construct
Then you pretty much agree with any practice that is currently-bad-but-wasn't-in-the-past? After all, it was relatively ok at the time, and can be again.
> I think the boldest example of why this is bad is the right to live. In my view, this is an absolute right. "But what if it's a mass murderer?" - "But what if they are terminally ill and are suffering?" - "But what if they are so heavily handicapped that... ?" Adding _ifs_ and _buts_ to a right that should be absolute leads down a very dark path, because _the line_ will be a constant subject of discussion.
Could you clarify what exactly you're arguing here? This part is not entirely clear to me.
I'm basically saying that the answer to the question of "Is murder wrong" should be a boolean value, not a float. Once it's a float, you open the door to all kinds of nasty thoughts arguing about where to draw the line.
Are handicapped people worthy of killing? What about long-term unemployed? What about the opressors - like rich people? Homosexuals? There have literally been people arguing and executing all of these appalling thoughts in the last century and I would argue beneath it all lies a deadly relativism that says "Of course there is a universal right to live, well, unless you are a ... of course."
I feel like that depends entirely on how you define murder. If you define murder to exclude things like assisted suicide then, yes sure it's always bad. If you define it to include things like assisted suicide it stops being quite that black and white.
EDIT: I guess my point is that people have a right to live, not a duty to do so.
I'm not sure what you are getting at, in my country the main areas of operation for the military are helping flood victims and providing drinking water after natural disasters ... so no, those are good things.
If you are asking me, if I think there is such a thing as a "just war": I don't know. I have read Saint Augustine[0] on this topic and am not convinced. I have not personally reached a conclusion on this matter.
...so why is the right to live an absolute right? What does it mean for a right to be absolute? (e.g. if someone kills other people to save himself, was he entitled to do so on the basis of his right to live?) Who gets to decide what rights are absolute and what rights aren't? Whose responsibility is it to enforce these absolute rights (and thereby to impose corresponding obligations on other people)?
The logic of "absolute" rights requires an over-simplification that doesn't reflect how rights work in practice.
If I declare a right an "absolute" right I do not aim to answer any of the questions you posed, those are all good questions that need to be carefully considered, but none of them render the "over-simplified" right to live any less morally justified or desirable.
That 'consideration' is drawing a line though. Where when two 'absolute' rights come into conflict does the decision to break one way or another get made? Choosing one over the other draws a limitation around the one that's less important in this context.
We have all sorts of restrictions on the right of free speech. I can't libel someone, I can't make a product and say it's the product of another company, I can't open a random burger place and call it Wendy's. These are all restrictions on my speech and (as far as I've ever seen) even the most ardent free speech activist isn't saying abolish trademarks.
Declaring them absolute also don't solve these problems, because sometimes you can end up with conflicts between absolute rights, where you are not able to protect both rights at once.
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.
Would you find it acceptable if we societally agreed to do away with the privacy that surrounds the dispensation of healthcare - all the costly protocols (like Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and others), the costly mandated use of privacy compliant software, the costly mandated use of approved healthcare vendors and sub-vendors, the costly management, storing and archival of your records - all of that - say in the name of cheaper, higher quality and more widely accessible healthcare with more rich array of options offered to the citizenry as a whole - the likes of which that are unimaginable in our bloated, archaic and fault-prone system?
Doesn't that sound like a good societal trade off? Your paramount right to privacy can't be defended absolutely at the cost of people's basic access to quality healthcare.
I think you must be talking about HIPPA compliance, not SOX?
Anyhow, I think the right to privacy is also not absolute. If I'm in public and someone takes a photo, I can't stop that. I also can't force people not to look at me when I'm out in public, or stop them from saying they saw me on the street. Their rights to go about their business in public and their right to free speech are not trumped by my right to privacy.
Medical privacy is different, of course, but that's just another example of my point. In narrow circumstances, certain people (e.g., doctors, hospital staff) can be punished for violating your privacy about certain topics. But there are plenty of exceptions to that. The first hit on my search for "HIPPA exceptions" lists at least 10 reasonable exceptions, including public health and law enforcement: https://www.healthcarecompliancepros.com/blog/exceptions-to-...
In case it isn't clear, I think this is a fine example of balancing societal trade-offs.
Data protection is a huge latent cost in the dispensation of healthcare that goes unnoticed in discussions. And HIPAA can get expensive for the providers.
If you are a small covered entity, HIPAA should cost:
Risk Analysis and Management Plan ~$2,000
Remediation ~ $1,000 - $8,000
Training and policy development ~ $1,000-2,000
Total: $4,000 - $12,000
If you are a medium/large covered entity, HIPAA should cost:
Onsite audit ~ $40,000+
Risk Analysis and Management Plan ~ $20,000+
Vulnerability scans ~ $800
Penetration testing ~ $5,000+
Remediation ~ Varies based on where entity stands in compliance
and security
Training and policy development ~ $5,000+
Total: $50,000+, depending on the entity’s current environment
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 self defense are natural rights.
The absolutist nature of these discussions and the near deification of a bunch of well-meaning but ultimately fallible humans has me puzzled. There is no way that the people that wrote up the constitutions of the various still functioning (to greater or lesser extent) democracies had the foresight to deal with 100's of years of technological progress.
You seem to be arguing with some point I don't make. I'm saying rights only matter in a social context. If Elon Musk launches himself to Mars and lives alone there forever as a hermit, the concept of "rights" isn't useful there.
That said, I think rooting rights in somebody's mythological figures isn't a good idea. And "natural" in this case isn't much more meaningful. It's fine rhetoric, but it's not a very strong conceptual model.
Speech is a God given right. Nobody can stop you from saying anything you like, but that doesn't extend to inviting you to share that belief with the student body of your local school. The school are absolutely free to refuse to allow you to use their podium if they don't like what you have to say.
Equally, you have every right to set up a website to say whatever you want. That doesn't mean the people who provide the infrastructure behind that website have to continue to host your platform, it doesn't mean other peoples internet providers have to allow access to your website, and it doesn't mean search providers have to list your website in their results.
Freedom of speech worked really well when the largest audience you could get was the people in your local tavern, but it doesn't scale to a global internet without some adjustment. Just like your other example of the right to self defence - the idea of taking arms against a tyrannical government made perfect sense when everybody had muskets, but it doesn't really scale when the tyrannical government has drones and nukes.
Freedom of speech worked really well when the largest
audience you could get was the people in your local tavern
Even then, even before printing presses or the written word itself there were major, major limitations.
- You were never allowed to "say whatever you like" in the name of committing fraud
- You were never allowed to "say whatever you like" in terms of threats; I don't know any society that would tolerate a person standing outside his neighbor's home and screaming death threats
- etc.
I make this somewhat pedantic point because the idea of "free speech with limits" is not some kind of modern idea that represents a watering-down of the lofty ideals upon which modern nations were founded, which is why many people seem to object to it. There were always necessary limits to free speech; the right to free speech has never trumped other peoples' rights not to be threatened, killed, defrauded, etc.
> I don't know any society that would tolerate a person standing outside his neighbor's home and screaming death threats
Such societies did and do exist, but usually they are good examples of why we limit hate speech. Nazi Germany and the US South during the KKK’s peak are a couple easy ones to reference. Both of those are examples of societies without free speech that still allowed speech that most societies do not.
And, even then (at least in the US in the late 1800s) it was never legal to scream death threats at people or take other terroristic actions. The laws, unfortunately, were simply well enforced and a lot of people suffered as a result.
The founding fathers enumerated rights like "free speech" because those were novel (not entirely new, but fairly novel) notions at the time.
What many folks (often, seemingly willingly) fail to understand is that those rights were never intended to be parsed in a naive, simplistic way that supersedes the rights of others.
The most obvious example would be speech that causes others to be killed: you have a right to free speech, but other people also have a right not to be killed.
That's why you can't yell "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater and cause a stampede that kills people, etc.
There are many other examples of free speech that infringe on others' rights.
Call free speech a "natural" right if you wish, whatever that means to you, but only a fool would think that either the Founding Fathers or basic human decency and sense dictate that free speech is meant to exist in some sort of vacuum independent from any and all other rights.
> The founding fathers enumerated rights like "free speech" because those were novel (not entirely new, but fairly novel) notions at the time.
Uh, your history classes have really failed you. These rights weren't novel, they were explicitly enshrined in the English Bill of Rights in 1689. Some of the other rights (particularly debtors' rights) date back to the Magna Carta in 1215.
> That's why you can't yell "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater and cause a stampede that kills people, etc.
For the record, you're citing a 1919 US Supreme Court case that has been overturned. The current standard for free speech in the US is Brandenburg v Ohio [1], which holds that it is constitutionally-protected free speech to advocate violent overthrow of the government. Only speech that amounts to incitement of "imminent lawless action" is prohibited. Note, of course, that the freedom of speech only applies to the government's ability to restrict speech for its content (which, in the US, is extremely limited); the ability of private parties to choose whether or not to provide a platform for speech is considered freedom of association and does not rely at all on any of these decisions.
[1] For what it's worth, the actual speech given by Brandenburg is basically the same sort of speech you'll find in these manifestos.
The English Bill of rights is not what you think it is.
It wasn't about giving freedom to the people, but shifting power from the monarchy to parliment.
The freedom of speech enshrined in the English bill of rights also isn't remotely comparable to the USA idea. It was about parlimentary priviledge - the ability for MPs to have freedom of speech while within parliment. It was about the freedom of parliment to debate and vote without interference from the monarchy. (Parliment can and does impose its own limits on freedom of speech within the chamber and MPs have been literally removed from the chamber for things they've said).
The UK has never had freedom of speech. We even had an official censor (Lord Chamberlain's Office) until 1968. Blasphemy was illegal until 2008, and wasn't just a legacy law which had been forgotten, but there were convictions for it right the way through to the 1990s at least.
Wow, that's a rude and (more importantly) factually incorrect remark. Is HN becoming Reddit?
Uh, your history classes have really failed you. These rights
weren't novel, they were explicitly enshrined in the English
Bill of Rights in 1689. Some of the other rights (particularly
debtors' rights) date back to the Magna Carta in 1215.
Sure. That's why I qualified my statement: "not entirely new" and "fairly novel" rather than "entirely novel" because I'm aware that the U.S. Constitution is not the first time these notions have appeared in law. It was specifically an attempt to head off a pedantic reply such as yours.
For the record, you're citing a 1919 US Supreme Court case
that has been overturned. The current standard for free speech
in the US is Brandenburg v Ohio [1], which holds that it is
constitutionally-protected free speech to advocate violent
overthrow of the government
You're simply incorrect. The justices' opinions in this case specifically agreed with this particular instance of prohibited speech, even referring to it directly.
Finally, Douglas dealt with the classic example of a man
"falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic".
In order to explain why someone could be legitimately prosecuted
for this, Douglas called it an example in which "speech is
brigaded with action". In the view of Douglas and Black, this
was probably the only sort of case in which a person could be
prosecuted for speech.
More to the point, please understand: this ruling specifically addressed inflammatory (no pun presumably intended) speech.
This was not a comprehensive ruling on speech in general. It was an influential ruling on speech specifically meant to rouse others to action.
There are innumerable other types of speech this ruling did not address. Libel, threats, etc.
Forget about folks' educations failing them; your misconceptions could have been avoided with a simple Wikipedia visit. On the bright side, this experience reminded me to make my annual donation to Wikipedia. Obviously it's a sorely-needed resource.
> Sure. That's why I qualified my statement: "not entirely new" and "fairly novel" rather than "entirely novel" because I'm aware that the U.S. Constitution is not the first time these notions have appeared in law. It was specifically an attempt to head off a pedantic reply such as yours.
I have no idea what you're trying to argue anymore here, because you seem to be both arguing that the concept of free speech was a radical invention of the American Revolution and that the fact that it predates the American Revolution is "pedantic."
(If you really want to be pedantic, the modern concept of expansive First Amendment rights is actually novel, but dates to the mid-20th century, when SCOTUS started interpreting these rights very expansively and setting up series of very stringent tests. I rather assume that the founding fathers would have been horrified at the depths that Brandenburg v Ohio went to protect offensive speech; it's certainly more radical than is the case in most countries even today).
> You're simply incorrect.
The statement "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a reference to Schenck, where the justices used that as the example of why advocating against the draft was not constitutionally-protected speech, motivating the "clear and present danger" test that was explicitly overturned by Brandenburg's "imminent lawless action" test.
In other words, Brandenburg v Ohio was quite explicitly saying that the bar for what speech is considered so dangerous as to lose its constitutional protection should not be set at a level that is merely upsetting to people but rather at the level where it is at the literal cusp of violence.
> There are innumerable other types of speech this ruling did not address. Libel, threats, etc.
Of course not. But for the kind of speech that is in question, namely these white supremacist manifestos, it is exactly the case that rules.
They were novel because they just came out of fighting for freedom against an oppressive empire who used all those things against them and they wanted to make sure that couldn’t happen again.
Any argument otherwise should be met with harsh skepticism because you could be actively trying to oppress us again or accidentally enable some future people in power to be able to.
Any argument otherwise should be met with harsh
skepticism because you could be actively trying to
oppress us again or accidentally enable some future
people in power to be able to
It works both ways.
Russia's social media operations utilized (and is surely still aiming to utilize) our relatively permissive climate of free speech to sow discord within America and deepen our divisions.
Just because someone uses the word 'rights' doesn't mean they're referring only to the US bill of rights understood in a Thomas Paine-esque 'Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants' manner. Actually, even Thomas Paine considered a right to welfare (including education), so even founding fathers can reasonably disagree.
Not sure they said that... also “founding fathers” are not the be all end all of of what are “rights”. OP is talking about what is called the “social contract”.
Freedom of speech is really important but every person has a moral responsibility to use this right responsible. it is a bit akin to: the right to bare arms doesn't give you the right to shoot anyone you like.
So you should be able to criticize the king/ president but does it mean you should say anything that pops in to your mind? Defending racist and other hate speech with the first amendment is a banalisation of the first amendment.
That's a very US-centric view. Most democratic countries with constitutions less than 230 years old have broad exceptions for certain kinds of impermissible speech. (Germany takes it to an extreme, but even that seems to be compatible with a liberal democratic basic order.)
It's just that many of my fellow Americans choose to interpret our constitution in a simplistic, childish, and frankly incorrect way.
Our constitutional rights (including free speech) were never meant to be interpreted in a vacuum, irrespective of all other rights.
Our courts have certainly never interpreted things that way. Our courts have always weighed each individual, constitutionally-mandated right against other rights.
They have, but the absolute language of the constitution has led courts to interpret freedom of speech in the US much more broadly than in countries with more modern constitutions.
>The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged. Forums like 8chan and 4chan effectively incubate hate speech by providing a safe space for anonymized, like-minded individuals to congregate, espouse their basest thoughts and feelings and receive gratification for it -all without challenge. Moderate people are repulsed by such forums and the quantity of hate-speech they generate, which further compounds the negative feedback loop.
These boards do more than allow this hate to fester. They allow hate to grow as they become a recruiting ground that can radicalize people who never would have fallen into this mindset without these boards. 8chan might be compartmentalized in a way that allows it to become an echo chamber of hate, but it also is highly connect to boards about general topics like video games, TV, and movies. This normalizes the hate and it becomes just another thing to talk about.
I would bet a small minority of people who spew hateful things on 8chan sought the site out because of their own hate. Maybe they went there to talk about the new Call of Duty game. Before too long they are ingrained in the whole Gamergate mindset. Then they eventual start hanging out on /pol and before you know it they are a full fledged white nationalist. (A similar thing has been reported about Youtube's recommendation algorithm [1]) This wouldn't happen if the hateful sections of 8chan were sectioned off into their own site. No one accidentally stumbles upon The Daily Stormer and becomes a white nationalist. Just visiting that site genuinely requires a predilection towards hate and a sympathetic ear to white nationalism.
> These boards do more than allow this hate to fester. They allow hate to grow as they become a recruiting ground that can radicalize people who never would have fallen into this mindset without these boards.
This is a common narrative, but it depends on an empirical question of whether hate spreads online and whether this motivates action. Fortunately, studies suggest that online talk does not motivate action:
To summarize: the internet does not accelerate the process of radicalization, it does not provide opportunities to self-radicalize, and it does not allow radicalization without physical contact with other radicals. So the empirical evidence does not entirely agree with your characterization of 8chan's role in radicalization.
I haven't read the full paper yet, but the 'Executive summary' section seems quite explicit that the findings relate to the internet specifically; that is, does "the internet" increase radicalization as opposed to other non-internet venues?
But that isn't the point you're replying to; the point you're replying to is about "these boards" (ie. these venues), and makes no mention of their internet-ness being a factor.
The report, crucially, does therefore not seem to contradict the post you're replying to, as that post is about radicalization in mixed-topic venues in general; this one just happens to be on the internet.
What is a "mixed topic venue", precisely, that you would distinguish it from the internet or other media? Frankly, the internet is the ultimate mixed topic venue IMO.
Furthermore, it seems pretty clear that the OP was specifically referring to online boards, and this forms the context of pretty much this entire thread and every discussion of this topic here and elsewhere about the spread of hate online.
A mixed-topic venue is precisely what they described:
> 8chan might be compartmentalized in a way that allows it to become an echo chamber of hate, but it also is highly connect to boards about general topics like video games, TV, and movies.
Nowhere in the OP is "the internet" specifically mentioned as a factor. It's all about the general concept of mixing it into other topics to make it palatable (which is precisely how radicalization usually works online and offline, see also eg. biker gangs), and an online message board just happens to be the context in this particular case.
OP here, just chiming in to say that you are exactly right on my point and what my objection would be to that study. There is a distinction between the Internet and specific sites like 4chan, 8chan, Reddit, Youtube, etc. You can accidentally stumble onto hate on those sites. The hate there is both normalized due to the presence of that other content and can be framed in an enticing and seemingly logical way. That isn't true for the Internet at large. To repeat myself, you can't really stumble on to the Daily Stormer or be accidentally recruited into their ranks. The NYT's article I linked to in my first post details how that type of accidental radicalization can happen on Youtube.
And like you said, there is nothing internet specific about this distinction. The same thing applies if white nationalists are recruiting in the physical world. There is a lot more potential for recruiting new members at the local bar than their is at a KKK rally. I think some of us just want the bar owner to stop allowing those white supremacists to use the bar as a recruiting ground because they are turning violent.
8chan incubated hate speech because no one challenged hate speech on 8chan. 8chan welcomed everyone, but everyone ignored 8chan.
>The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged. Forums like 8chan and 4chan effectively incubate hate speech by providing a safe space for anonymized, like-minded individuals to congregate, espouse their basest thoughts and feelings and receive gratification for it -all without challenge.
I've called out hate speech on 4chan and 8chan many times before. I've gotten called an "SJW cuck" a lot, and others doubled-down in posting shit gleefully when they saw their shit "triggered the libs". That was the fun part to them. To someone like me who isn't there just to challenge people, it's exasperating. I gave up and they didn't.
I think certain site structures encourage different kinds of discussion. Imagine the most extreme possibility: a site that automatically hides posts that the majority would agree with after reading, and gives points to and highlights bombastic posts. You're not going to get good discussion out of this, no matter how much you try to convince people that it would be good for society if they visited this site and tried to challenge people there.
I think imageboards like 4chan and 8chan accidentally approximate this. They bump threads to the top on every reply, so threads that trigger flame wars are incentivized. The lack of names means no one will call you out if you flip-flop opinions, so you're free to flip-flop to whatever opinion will trigger the most people, which users will do in order to make successful threads.
After a few cycles of this, normal people ("normies") either leave or adapt themselves to fit in, so the remaining users have to amp up their ridiculousness to make threads that are bombastic to the new crowd. Users get used to having to make their opinions more extreme to get noticed. I think this then causes them to flock to threads that they can tell are bombastic to normies as a way to self-reaffirm their own tendency toward making bombastic threads. If you ever try to argue for the normie opinion on a subject, it "outs" yourself as someone who isn't a true user, as someone who isn't purposefully ratcheting their opinions up into offensiveness as the site encourages.
Years ago, I helped run a once-popular imageboard dedicated to a fandom, and its level of dysfunction was legendary. A big part of that probably came from the userbase's overlap with 4chan, but the way problems regularly cropped up in common interactions even in topics and groups of users with little 4chan overlap made me skeptical of the structure itself. It helped a lot being able to see which anonymous users made which posts and see how common it was for people to sock-puppet or radically re-work their opinions in their next thread.
Regarding the "bumping" mechanism and its effect on "normies": isn't almost every forum like this? I can't think of a forum that doesn't shift threads with recent posts to the top. This isn't limited to 4chan or 8chan, so I think it's unfair to single them out as encouraging extreme views.
Regarding anonymity: perhaps anonymity has the opposite effect, allowing people to be more willing to have thoughtful discussions and change their minds, instead of having to stick to their guns for fear of losing face. Perhaps the freedom of anonymity allowed people to say what they always wanted to say but couldn't because they feared for their reputation.
All of which is not to say that 4chan and 8chan don't contain hate speech and other forms of expression deemed unacceptable in broader society. But perhaps the reason people say such things and talk in those ways isn't because of the forum itself, but because of the state that political discourse has devolved to these days. 4chan and 8chan are nothing more than fora at the end of the day; and if they're blocked, people will simply move to continue the conversation (just like they moved from 4chan to 8chan in the first place).
Reddit and HN don't bump threads on activity. HN actually penalizes threads with too much activity. The anonymity is a big factor too; I think it's the combination that helps make things bad. It could also has to do with the way replies are shown: Reddit and HN's branching style causes discussions to fork off in a hundred different directions and focus on different details. Classic bulletin board forums make it difficult to really follow a thread as it gets too busy as you have to click and wait to load a new page for every 10 or so posts. Imageboards often show replies in a single quickly-scrollable auto-updating page in a very compact manner. This might make bandwagon effects much easier.
Maybe I'm wrong about how the specific details play into it exactly, but I think the differences between site structures is not considered nearly enough when trying to understand the differences between site cultures. I hope it's apparent to most that Reddit+HN, classic forums, Twitter, and imageboards each strongly influence discussions to work in different ways, and I don't think it's just because of their different communities. I think if you swap out the people or make multiple sites with the same structure, you see that each structure reinforces its own set of behaviors.
>perhaps anonymity has the opposite effect, allowing people to be more willing to have thoughtful discussions and change their minds, instead of having to stick to their guns for fear of losing face.
I can see the logic of that, but the "thoughtful" part has rarely been my experience on any anonymous places. I think people are more willing to change their minds, but in the direction of being more willing to change their mind to follow the "hivemind"/community or change their mind in a way that's more able to provoke others.
>8chan welcomed everyone, but everyone ignored 8chan.
That's not true, the community actively tries to keep out "normies" by posting pictures of disfigured corpses or other disturbing imagery and sabotaging the posts that challenge their agenda through spam and trolling.
People did challenged hate speech on 8chan. What happened is that those who challenged hate speech on 8chan lost in following fights. One factor is that chan structure favors bad-faith actors and arguments, favoring inflammatory emotional ones. But the other fact is that bad-faith actors and arguments of the other side lost too.
It's unfortunate that IDs were not applied across the chans, as they went a long way to solving this issue (a single poster was tagged with a consistent identifier) without compromising the main point of anonymous imageboards (no persistent author identity was attached to messages, post contents stood on their own merits only).
Still possible to subvert, but harder to do so, and it made client-side blocking of particular ids fairly simple.
Tripcodes fail in this regard, as they are elective.
It's not a question of merely "allowing" hatred to grow, as though it were so much yeast on the wind, but of propagating the deliberate inculcation of white supremacism and misogyny, a campaign orchestrated by long-standing institutions of social control.
What are you on about? 8chan is pretty damn grassroots. The people on /pol/ definitely don't see themselves as backed by the institutions of social control; in their mythology, the insitutions of social control (eg. the mainstream media, Silicon Valley, banks) are all left-wing, "pozzed", and their enemies. They consider themselves a hated minority... because they are. What big institutions are backing 8chan?!
I don't want to appear to defend 8chan here - but I don't think your critique is apt.
For one, the people on 8chan are absolutely a hated minority. That's largely why they're getting banned from the internet. Mainstream figures aren't coming out in favor of 8chan, they're calling for it's dissolution. Saying you visit or enjoy 8chan in polite company would likely be a faux pas if anyone even knew what you were talking about.
Of course, pretending to be a hated minority may be a rhetorical tactic - but that doesn't make it untrue. The Westborough Baptist Church may have experienced enhanced camaraderie from being almost universally reviled - but that doesn't mean they weren't, in fact, almost universally reviled.
"Authoritarian" also seems like a poor description. The boards are anti authoritarian in that they have lax moderation. There isn't a punishment for unwanted opinions - you can't be downvoted or shadowbanned. People can't even judge your future posts by the content of your previous posts because everyone is anonymous and without a post history. Banning is by ip only, and easily avoided, and there aren't even accounts to lose. 8chan is much more anarchic than authoritarian. I'm making that claim based on their structure rather than their political ideology.
The idea that Silicon Valley is not left wing also strikes me as highly suspect. For example, in the last Presidential election Clinton received 95% of Silicon Valley donations compared to 4% for Trump [1]. There are other, similar reports, for specific companies and different elections, but everything I've seen slowed they skew heavily left.
I'm aware that there are conceptions of "left wing" where Clinton wouldn't really count as left wing, but so long as we are discussing American politics I don't think those alternate conceptions are relevant. Clinton is clearly further left than Trump.
I refer to the boards ideological content, not its own governance, although there are arguments to be made that informal, social governance employs Patriarchal tropes to keep users in line.
> so long as we are discussing American politics
We're not. We're discussing an international propagandist forum.
> I don't think those alternate conceptions are relevant. Clinton is clearly further left than Trump.
The USA has never had a "Leftist" administration in any meaningful sense.
Edit: your attitude strikes me as suspiciously apologetic on behalf of an atrocious, violent reactionary movement. If this is due to naivete, I hope the previous ly cited texts can alleviate it. If this is due to your own Patriarchal reactionary bent, we're done; I've no reason to spar with a dishonest partner.
So many unexamined assumptions here. I sort of understand the appeal of channers just calling folks like yourself a nasty name and checking out rather than spending every discussion parsing out "the patriarchy" and what true leftism is. It gets exhausting.
> calling folks like yourself a nasty name and checking out
You forget; they also murder indiscriminately. You're acting callous and self-righteous; it's not hard for me to imagine you "understand" Fascism's appeal, a la Matt Bors' reluctant Nazi.
That's a goofy thing to say. There are millions of 4chan users, and at least hundreds of thousands of 8chan users and visitors. They don't "murder indiscriminately" any more than Twitter users do.
And gee, wow, you posted a comic where the author's self-insert tries to talk to a totally crazy and unreasonable Drumpf Nazi, who is a blatant hypocrite and makes a fool of himself, confirming your political biases and allowing you to impute terrible motives to millions! How will we ever recover?
In the context of the US, it doesn't matter what the 'left' in terms of the rest of the world is. If you're gonna argue and accuse someone of having a 'patriarchal reactionary bent' and being dishonest, perhaps be honest and genuine yourself.
A summary of my earlier response is that 8chan is mostly hated or unknown, they are more anarchic than authoritarian, and Silicon Valley is largely left wing. I don't see how any of that could be fairly perceived as 8chan apologetics unless you had a favorable of anarchism (which I do not).
Calling 8chan authoritarian, when they have little to no authority and little to no rules feels like a bad judgment. Surely Nazis and authoritarians abound there, but they aren't organized in any way, they don't control the site, they are just there posting their positions because anyone can go there and post whatever they like.
You suggest that patriarchal tropes are used to keep users in line. I'd like to know more about that. To my knowledge, the users of 8chan are not kept in line - that's kind of the problem. Moderators there delete illegal content as they become aware of it, but beyond that don't do much - per my understanding.
Regarding your point about politics - it seems facile. In the US, which is where Silicon Valley is located, "The Left" refers to a superset which includes the Democrat party. Silicon Valley is overwhelmingly Left in this sense. While it is true you could use a different definition of "Left", doing so only confuses the issue and for little purpose. The people of 8chan who accuse Silicon Valley of being Left leaning are not making the accusation in the cosmopolitan sense which you are apparently interpreting it.
What a bunch of horse crap. Being told what to think, what to buy, who to vote for, how to feel.
If you claim to believe in a liberal democracy but want "education" or limited-speech then you don't have must faith in the system.
Democracy has been broken since the rise of technology and mass media. If you control the narrative, you control the people, and the power. The outrage over a shooting and some mean speech is ridiculous compared to the big corporation killing people with opiates or junk food. People have gone soft. It why Aristotle thought democracy was a bad system of government.
I don't agree with most hate speech you would see on these forums, but I enjoy seeing it because its an indicator that we haven't become completely neutered by large corporation yet, which is happening.
I respectfully and vehemently disagree. Hate speech has been proven to be able to convince people by virtue of appealing to their emotions rather than their intellect. It does not make sense to have a society based around human rights, with a point of view where stealing, murdering or otherwise deceiving people is wrong, while at the same time allowing speech which can subvert that same democracy. It's simply not smart. Just like your body has antibodies to prevent outside threats from outright destroying you from the inside (or outside), democracy too requires its defenses in order for it to work. The advent of fake news and social media manipulation should be enough to realize this: the US has a president that questions that validity of its own institutions right now, so does Brazil. Two democracies which have proven deceiving or hateful speech can mean trouble even for citizens who do not have anything to do with such rhetoric. Simply no, full-on free speech does not work and never will. The (anecdotal) fact Europe has some restraints on free speech while sporting arguably more freedoms, as in, freedom to live your life with a lot less chance of some random person killing you because they hide behind some crazy above-anything notion of freedom, should be enough to illustrate what I mean. Speech needs restraint or we need to stop pretending we care about human rights, simple as that.
I would imagine some of the dissatisfaction with life that some of the school shooters feel is at least, in part, fueled by constantly being bombarded by advertisement that is trying to make a sale by convincing them that their life is terrible as it is without whatever they're selling.
I agree with you: the real issue we're talking about is putting a restraint on capitalism, because it is the notion that "development" means profit that's causing these issues. Those same advertisements make poor people in my country join the narcos, because while the government doesn't care about inequalities and unemployment, since it does not have social welfare as goal, those people are easily lured to work in drug trafficking, which pays.
Notice the ones defending crazy "free" speech are the same who defend crazy capitalism? Yeah, that's the issue: by defending what I call "responsible speech", which is free but not ultimate, we are defending social welfare and human rights AGAINST the former, because the former has no interest in defending the latter. We see it even here in Hacker News, when a corporation does something unethical or morally wrong, there will be someone to say "but hey, the corps are right they exist just give shareholder profit and that's what they're doing". It's a serious debate about sustainable development, which has the very survival of our species at stake.
So here in Europe we have stricter hate speech laws as well as stricter gun laws. Which one do you think is contributing more to the lack of school shootings?
> What a bunch of horse crap. Being told what to think, what to buy, who to vote for, how to feel.
While much education in the US may have been reduced to this, your quote does not represent a proper education in theory or practice. A proper education teaches you how to think rather than what to think. Note that critical thinking is typically a key component in such education programs.
And yes, I think critical thinking, general literacy, and media literacy are critical for a healthy functioning democracy. The fact that many/most denizens of the US do not have access to this type of education is an incredible weak link in our democracy.
> Democracy has been broken since the rise of technology and mass media.
I'm sorry, when was everyone equally franchised? Between Jim Crow, Women's Sufferage, and Civil Rights you've got what? The mid 60s to mid 80s as the heyday of American Democracy? Having Nixon smack in the middle of that doesn't really help the arguement.
If we define democracy as universal suffrage and equal vote weight, democracy has been more of an aspiration and less of a reality since the beginning of time. If you don't define democracy that way, then we're talking past eachother.
If deomcracy been broken since the rise of technology and mass media, then I assume we're talking about Hearst and his stoking of propaganda during the Spanish-US war of 1898?
Or perhaps you're referring to British propaganda during the Boer War?
Thinking that the advent of Facebook has radically changed the use of media for propaganda purposes is misguided. It may allow for more direct propaganda and greater ability to select and target a particular audience, but it is no different to the psyops and propaganda techniques that have been prevalent during the entire 20th century.
You don't need a radical change. A lot of small, incremental changes can throw a system out of balance. Take fishing as example. Mankind is doing it since pretty much forever and made many small improvements on the way. Now in hindsight we might have the necessary knowledge, models and simulations to determine what precisely what made us exceed replenishment rates. But that doesn't really matter in retrospect and now we have regulation trying to prevent overfishing.
So yeah, if you are trying to argue nothing changed in our media usage and systems interact just like they did 50 years ago, then that is most certainly a loosing battle.
What a bunch of horse crap. Being told what to think,
what to buy, who to vote for, how to feel.
We don't do anything else this way.
When an airplane has a problem in midair, we don't let the passengers each have one equal vote on what ought to be done, regardless of how much they know about flying.
A doctor doesn't crowdsource ideas in the middle of surgery. She certainly could, and it might work, but only if the crowd consisted of qualified doctors.
I'm not advocating to anything other than "one person, one vote" democracy, but surely the success of such a government depends almost exclusively on the quality of minds found in the electorate -- and I'm sorry, but "quality of mind" correlates pretty strongly with education.
You may fancy yourself some sort of exceptional autodidact who needs no education. Perhaps you are right! This is not the case for the vast majority of humans. The vast majority of humans are (by definition) not of exceptional intelligence and drive.
This is why the US is a constitutional republic designed with a lower house that was elected by and represented the interests of the people of the several states and a senate that was appointed by the legislatures of the several states and represented their interests.
The drafters of the constitution did not want the citizens of the country to have up and down votes about specific policy. Add to that the limited spread of information due to lacking infrastructure (and, well, a man on a horse on a several day's ride being the fastest way to carry news), and the populace would be too ill informed to be able to make a decision based on current facts. This is also why the US does not elect presidents based on popular vote and uses electors are representatives for the local voters.
> Democracy has been broken since the rise of technology and mass media.
That seems to me like it might be the whole problem right there: Is there any reason to expect human institutions to survive the digital age?
I see "fake news", the problem of message authentication (not even encryption— keeping secrets —just authentication), and "deep fakes" as aspects of the same issue. Epistemology, "How do you know?"
We may have to extract the core values and value of Democracy and create some sort of new system that sustains or improves on them.
A kind of catch-phrase just occurred to me, "Computer-aided Integrity".
Why should it be a choice between education and speech? Why don't we strive to educate everyone? You have a false dichotomy here.
You're also conflating education with indoctrination. The two definitely are not the same. If you're trying to make a point that too often schools do too much of the latter and too little of the former, please make that point before relying upon it to support further claims.
> 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 should be noted that the United States at the time of the drafting of the Constitution had way way lower rates of education than today. Even as recently as 1945, the median American only had a 10th grade education. No matter how you measure it, literacy, primary school completion, even intelligence tests, there's no question that the Americans today are significantly more educated than a hundred years ago let alone two hundred.
Yes, I know you explicitly said not to focus on "technical" education. But there's no reasonable definition of the term, whereby you can honestly make a case that the America of 1789 was somehow more educated than the the America of 2019.
All of which means that you have to bite a bullet. Either the Founding Fathers were wrong to enshrine such strong protections of free speech in our Constitution. OR admit that our citizenry more than meets the threshold you posit regarding minimum level of education.
The United States at the time of the drafting of the Constitution restricted the vote to white male property owners. Even after the constitution, some states restricted voting to white male property owners (about 6% of the population). Even in colonial times, enfranchised citizens were typically at least literate and often well-educated.
> Even as recently as 1945, the median American only had a 10th grade education.
Again, high school diplomas were more common among the enfranchised population.
> But there's no reasonable definition of the term, whereby you can honestly make a case that the America of 1789 was somehow more educated than the the America of 2019.
I would be completely unsurprised if voters in 1789 -- white male property owners -- were far more likely to have studied the enlightenment philosophers.
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 that they didn't have enough revenue, didn't own enough land, couldn't read and write well enough, etc. Allowing to disenfranchise voters on some arbitrary sophistication basis can and, if history is anything to go by, unfortunately will get abused. It breaks down to: who decides what's sophisticated enough?
Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut in a you know it when you see it kind of way.
>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?
> I think pretty much everyone reasonable agrees that "kill the _INSERT GROUP_" is intolerant
I don´t know why but every time I read a sentence that starts with "I think pretty much everyone reasonable agrees that ..." I get the feeling that the person saying it haven´t really thought things through and does not see how vastly more complex the world is than they assume.
Think about it this way: what if in the mind of the person making that claim, it is one of self-defense and self-preservation? is it still intolerant?
Here is an example: As someone who grew up in the middle east, I heard people out in the open say things like: "Jews ought to be killed off" or "the imperialist American fucks deserve whatever happens to them" and if you ask them why they believe and say such evil shit, the answer in some way, shape or form always comes back to: they invaded our land, killed our ancestors and are threatening to do the same to us now, and hence we are not being intolerant but rather, we are just trying to defend ourselves (tribalism in other words).
You and I can agree that it is despicable and disgusting that people think that way. But in their minds, you are the unreasonable one. What you call intolerance to them is not that at all.
Take away: Perspectives matter in the world; and if you make a hard/deterministic rule based on a subjective understanding of an issue followed by projecting it as "what reasonable people should think", you will always get into some shady edge cases that cannot be resolved by the deterministic rule that you initially set because the world is not made up of a bunch of you:s.
You and I probably agree on what is intolerant/tolerant in most cases. However, other people who do not have the same cultural and moral upbringing might disagree with us. Hence the parent´s comment: "I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant"
I'm sorry, can you be specific: why shouldn't we burn 8chan to the ground? Which other sites do you want to preserve that would get swept up by our censorship run amok?
I'm gathering from your example that you're trying to preserve the rights of a bunch of middle easterners to say things like "kill the jews", and not understanding why you think that's permissible.
I mean, the El Paso shooter genuinely believes that the US is under invasion by mexicans too. Everyone has opinions. The point is that some opinions are just wrong. This is like morality 101. You aren't entitled to kill folks, no matter how much you want to. And you aren't entitled to egg other folks on to kill folks either.
> I'm gathering from your example that you're trying to preserve the rights of a bunch of middle easterners to say things like "kill the jews"
You seem to have extracted the wrong conclusion from the post made because you are thinking in identitarian terms.
> The point is that some opinions are just wrong. This is like morality 101. You aren't entitled to kill folks, no matter how much you want to. And you aren't entitled to egg other folks on to kill folks either.
You are 100% right, some opinions are wrong. But the point is: who´s to judge which ones are right and which one are wrong? I assume that you, in your infinite wisdom, find yourself to be of such a high caliber that all of humanity should use what is obvious to you as the "gold standard"? You took your inherited moral values from your culture, and projected them as the natural and obvious conclusion we should all reach. Now if that isn´t arrogance, I don´t know what is. And I am not trying to be offensive here, this is what your comment indicates. And that is what you should have gathered from the previous comment.
The funny thing is, I agree with you completely here. Again, you and I would probably agree on 99% in terms of what we deem "moral" because both you and I have inherited the those values from our cultures. However, you are in a sense dictating that the moral values you inherited are infinitely more superior than all the others. I mean you are making deterministic statements about subjective issues while calling those who dare not agree "unreasonable" without considering for a second that other people that live in other parts of the world might have different views.
Let me put it in a different way: I am not defending group X´s right to say or do Y. No matter the group. I hate identity politics beyond belief. I am merely rejecting the notion that YOU are reasonable enough to make claim as to what people should or shouldn´t be able to say. Because just as you think yourself to be the wise and saintly moral crusader that you are, others think the same about themselves. Soon enough HN user "bjross" will be writing the exact opposite of what you are writing while claiming that he/she is the moral authority on the subject.
It isn´t that I am defending the evil doers; it´s that I am opposing your (proposed) evil which I think is far worse as it leads down a slippery slope like which the world have seen many times before.
> who´s to judge which ones are right and which one are wrong?
Who's to judge that anything is wrong? Murder, theft etc.? In the end, we must organize a society. If you don't like thinking of society's judgment -- made through whatever institutions it creates -- as universal moral rulings, think of them as organizational rules. If you kill someone under certain conditions, society puts you in jail, and the word "wrong" is used for those things society deems jail-worthy (and probably beyond that, too). In this case, society does decide what opinions are right or wrong in the correctness sense, only what ideas can be detrimental to its own survival to a degree that justifies enforcement. Who decides where is that line? The same institutions that decide the penalty for reckless driving.
Well, normally morality is "decided" by a social process, which also shapes the rules, so they don't often diverge by much. But my point is to separate the two issues: society decides the rules; who "decides" morality is another discussion.
Freedom of speech is the social process that works because ideas can be aired and then opposed or supported. Free conversations are where extremes can be moderated. Driving ideas or words underground where they cannot be easily heard or clearly countered is a path to authoritarianism.
Your argument is not very meaningful because freedom of speech means something very different in the US and in, say, France, and both of these different things can be said to "work well". I, too, agree that freedom of speech is very important, but can have a completely different opinion on whether 8chan should be shut down, because what I mean by freedom of speech is different from what you mean, and I believe neither of us means the freedom to say anything, at any place, in any medium, and in any time or circumstance. We just differ on the degree to which we limit that freedom, or whose freedoms we value.
Any freedom is some compromise. If a society has two people or more, then either one person is allowed to, say, enslave the other, in which case the society isn't totally free, or not, in which case the society also isn't totally free. So there is no such thing as absolute freedom, and whenever we say freedom we actually mean some point on a spectrum. We could argue over what that reasonable point is, but absolute freedom is something that can't exist. So instead of speaking in absolutes, let's acknowledge that we're arguing over a favorite compromise.
Isn't that obvious, based on society's dysfunction alone?
It's not a moral principle. It's an explanation of where we find ourselves. This doesn't mean we shouldn't keep striving for a just society, but we don't live in a just society.
The question is how ? how can you have a just society that everyone will agree upon ? Unless we are invent some kind of eugenics or brain wash mechanism so that everyone has the same believe, same way of thinking then its impossible.
Or maybe we can develop really advance VR so that make possible for everyone to live in their own ideal socity.
We don't all have to agree on everything all the time. You strive in a direction by moving in that direction, there is no end point, no destination, no way to "complete" the process. There doesn't have to be. Life is messy like that, even when people are generally healthy and happy and kind to each other.
Sure, but all meaning and interpretation of life, all ideas on what is right, and so on, are subjective. There is nothing wrong with that, since it's not like objectivity actually exists on the other side of the scale. When it comes to moral questions, what is "objectively right" simply doesn't apply, and isn't needed.
If everybody simply stuck to treating others how they would want to be treated, we'd live in a much better world already, even if it wasn't "perfect", and even if there were disagreements, and it all still always subject to constant learning and reflection.
Our main problems don't stem from out confusion about what we think is right (and by "we" I mean each of us as the individuals that actually exist, not as a collective abstraction), but from wanting what we think is right for ourselves, while having double standards for others, and rationalizations for those.
It's not my system, it's reality, there is no objective morality, and even where people agree on many things, they don't have the exact same opinions and reasons for having them, and so on. That's at all not contingent on me giving you a satisfying answer on such a tricky question about a site I don't even know.
I expect so. It's reasonable[0] to believe there are policement and judges who will arrest and sentence you for drug use, thus enforcing the law, while not believing the law is right.
[0] I know there are such policemen, I extrapolate to expect there are likeminded judges too.
Who's to judge that anything is wrong? Murder, theft etc.?
How many people would think that it was okay for the government to steal private property in the border states under the concept of “imminent domain” if it meant that the wall could be built?
Yes imminent domain is theft. The government rarely pays the fair market value.
> ... universal moral rulings, think of them as organizational rules
Sure. Slavery was moral, or if I disagree with it, I'll accept it as an organisational rule instead. Ditto apartheid, ditto the way many mid-eastern countries treat women.
Society must come to some decision, at any given point in time, about what to do if X does Y; are they punished? if so, how? Morality is a more complex subject, that, of course, heavily interacts with the decision I mentioned. My point was merely that while the two are intertwined, they are not necessarily the same, and regardless of where one stands on some moral question, there necessarily must be (and there is) some rule about what to do when X does Y. You can equivocate on some moral question, but you cannot equivocate on a law (although a judicial system can infuse it with some nuance). So when a particular society legislates a law, you don't necessarily have to take it as if that particular society has settled a universal moral question.
I see what you're saying, but - and I mean this constructively - you can take a rather roundabout way of saying it which fogs your meaning.
Anyway...
> So when a particular society legislates a law, you don't necessarily have to take it as if that particular society has settled a universal moral question
Point taken, but laws can be plain immoral, even evil. Laws should be as moral as possible. Laws without a moral backing would seem to be meaningless.
But lets put that aside, let's take your intended point that laws are an attempt to formalise morality, and lets also assume morality is what we'd call moral (not oppressing women/minorities/certain religions/etc). You say
> but you cannot equivocate on a law
but you damn well can! In the UK the definition of theft involves intent. From wiki "[...] if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it"
It's all about intent. It's the crux of it IIRC (and I did a short course in law). A lot of law is about intent. I hit a person in the face. Deliberate? I get spanked. Genuine unavoidable accident? I get let off. Intent is central. It is very equivocable.
In our case, which of 8chan's members are in it for pure lulz, and which because they really want to start a race war. Hard to tell intent.
Still sounds like the world is a cleaner place without them lot.
That's not equivocation, it's what I called nuance, and mentioned the judiciary's role in managing it. With ethics you can say, "this is a hard question," and leave it at that; with the law, you must decide. The judge or jury must ultimately decide whether to punish the possible thief or not, and if so, how -- say, by making a decision on intent, perhaps taking degrees into account. Either society decides to shut 8chan down or not; "it's complicated" isn't an option (I mean, it may well be, but a decision must be reached). So whatever ethics is at play, and however complicated it is, a decision on action must be and is made.
And BTW, not every offense must have criminal intent. Traffic violations, for example, do not (in the jurisdictions I know). Murder, as it is defined in many jurisdictions, requires intent, but even without it killing is often a very serious offense (e.g. you can kill through an intent to endanger, and you can kill through negligence, and you'll end up in prison for both).
> Sure. Slavery was moral, or if I disagree with it,
I think you mean that slavery was legal. Most people would hold that it was never moral. Some people hold these same beliefs now about some of our current behaviors toward other animals: they're legal but not moral.
Well, for me our current behavior towards animal is moral. Moral is subjective after all. Just like slavery it ultimately decided by who can force the other (physically or persuasively) to follow their morality.
You're pointing out that people disagree about what's "reasonable", the takeaway being that since "reasonableness" is subjective, a rule based on whether something is reasonable won't work "because the world is not made up of a bunch of you:s".
But just because people disagree about something doesn't mean it's purely subjective. Some things have an objective truth value but people will still disagree on it, because people get things wrong sometimes. Objectively wrong. All the time, in fact.
You're right that neither "ajross" nor "bjross" should be the moral authority who dictates the moral values. That's because they're almost certainly wrong about some things. You're almost certainly wrong about some things. I'm definitely wrong about some things, and I really hope I find out as much as I can about what I'm wrong about as soon as I can.
Therefore it would be a bad system to set up any one person as the moral authority. Instead, we want a system such that over time, the objectively better views dominate and the objectively worse views shrink in influence.
A total free-for-all where anyone can say anything and any kind of engagement will help promote those views, like 8chan or Gab, is clearly not such a system. You don't think a careful implementation of "tolerating anything but intolerance" could possibly be such a system, and is in fact a "far worse evil"? What rules do you think there should be, or do you think a free-for-all with no rules is the only way to not lead down the "slippery slope"?
Perhaps what would help in understanding the views espoused by OP (which I find very helpful) is to consider the idea of justifiable homicide. In France, when the police kill knife wielding maniacs, it seems to be black and white, however when cops in USA kill a mentally unstable person in self defense, the line gets murky. It gets completely greyed out when Mesa PD kills an innocent for not being able to follow contradictory commands. Where do YOU draw the line? What about moving the line to China and the Muslim minoritities being ethnically wiped? Talk to a Han Chinese on the street and see if they see it your way? Same with Palestine and Israel. The world is not black and white.
Of course the world is not black and white, there are shades of grey. That is completely orthogonal to subjectivity vs objectivity. Just because a situation is grey and no one can agree on which shade of grey it is, doesn't mean the situation doesn't objectively have a shade. It can just mean humans are fallible and can't see perfectly, so we're all wrong to some degree about the correct shade. But there could still be a correct shade.
Separately, every single example you brought up is black-and-white. If a "knife-wielding maniac" were in the process of killing random innocents and police don't have a way of nonlethally restraining them, then of course the police are justified in killing them. If a cop in the USA or anywhere was in mortal danger and had no way of nonlethally restraining their attacker, then killing their attacker is justified regardless of the mental health of their attacker. If an innocent isn't following contradictory commands and isn't threatening anyone's life, of course it isn't justified to kill them, what are you talking about?! There is nothing grey about the fact that failing to follow contradictory commands by police should clearly not be punishable by death?!?!!
I'm sure there are tons of Han Chinese on the street who think concentration camps for Muslims in China is acceptable, just like there are tons of Americans on the street who think concentration camps for Muslims in America is acceptable, just like there were tons of Americans on the street who thought that internment camps for Japanese-Americans were acceptable, tons of Palestinians who think all Jews are invaders who should be wiped out, tons of Jews who think all Palestinians are suicide-bombers who should be wiped out.
Those people are wrong. Those examples are not shades of grey and not subjective, lots of people disagree because lots of people are wrong.
I'm also wrong about lots of things, I should not be dictator of the world, and neither should anyone else. That's why we need a system with rules set up so that the more wrong ideas shrink in influence and the less wrong ideas spread in influence.
You mention "objective truth value" and "Objectively wrong", which the parent comment says " But the point is: who´s to judge which ones are right and which one are wrong?"
Sure, we can say 1 + 1 = 2, and that's objectively correct. But in terms of morality what is "objectively right" and "objectively wrong"? Moral objectively usually comes from some base assumption that has to be made. Whether its the existence of a higher being, happiness meter, or utilitarianism.
"Instead, we want a system such that over time, the objectively better views dominate and the objectively worse views shrink in influence." According to history, I wouldn't really say this is guaranteed either, but that's my opinion.
Judgement can be made based on reviewing the effects of decisions over time. We need a dynamic system of laws and legal review that is capable of correcting for mistakes and adapting to new challenges.
I agree that we do need a system, that not tolerating intolerance is a good basic principle, and that such a system can be functional. I don’t think it can ever be perfect, because people aren’t perfect, but it can be a lot better than nothing.
> "But the point is: who's to judge which ones are right and which one are wrong?"
I address this. In fact, I explicitly say I agree. No one can be trusted to make that judgment. Hence, the need for a system that doesn't place absolute trust in anyone.
> "we want a system such that [...]" [...] I wouldn't really say this is guaranteed either
What? You wouldn't say what is guaranteed? You wouldn't say it's guaranteed that we want such a system?
The system has already exist, that is the one who can force (persuasively or physically) other their rightness get to decide. In this case cloudflare has the power to decide whether 8chan is allowed or not in their platform.
If you think they are wrong then you have to gain power to be more powerful than them to override it (by gaining mass support, government support or any other means).
I don't think it's possible to have any other system.
> who´s to judge which ones are right and which one are wrong
We have the power to decide. This is what the companies dropping 8chan are doing: using their power to stand up to something they view as morally wrong. Most people are happy to take your money regardless of your politics, but endorsement of domestic terrorism isn't worth the abstract philosophical consideration. If you take a moment to empathize with your fellow humans and consider the horrific suffering wrought by ideologies endorsed by 8chan, it's very easy to come to the conclusion that 8chan deserves to be destroyed.
If you want to use your platform for good, you do good no matter the time. You do your patriotic duty and we´ll all clap and cheer you on. However ISIS and right wing extremest sites have been protected by CF for years and nothing has been done so far. It´s not like CF went on a cleaning spree and dropped hundreds of shady clients that are faaaaaar worse and much much nastier than 8chan. This wasn´t a "do good / patriotic moment". This was a timely and coordinated decision (together with patreon) which leads me to speculate that it could be one of two things: either it´s mere PR move and I despise that type of behavior as it could easily be hijacked by echo chambers among other things, or it could be something far more malicious which others have speculated enough on so I won´t bother mentioning.
That said, if you are of the opinion that "A service provider has the right to deny service to a client that it subjectively deems to have a bad effect on society", then I´d like to know in case you´d make that same argument for the Bakery/gay wedding case. If not, then what is the difference really as the same argument could be easily made in both cases?
> If you want to use your platform for good, you do good no matter the time.
Why? It's a business not a "platform for good"
> It´s not like CF went on a cleaning spree and dropped hundreds of shady clients that are faaaaaar worse and much much nastier than 8chan
So what? Maybe recent events struck a personal chord with the owners and they said "fuck it, we don't need their businesses, it's one small thing we can do to offer our support to the victims". If they're hosting "much nastier" customers than 8chan then it's fair to ask them to do better or call out their hypocrisy and ask them to rectify the situation.
> this wasn´t a "do good / patriotic moment".
I never said it was.
> I´d like to know in case you´d make that same argument for the Bakery/gay wedding case
I followed this case closely and my views on it are complex. It's not as simple as most people like to suggest. In short, I think the SCOTUS made the right ruling specifically because of the reasoning put forth by Kennedy in the majority opinion; in particular, that the colorado commissions board demonstrated a hostility towards religion in their application of the state anti-discrimination laws. The opinion even goes as far as to say that the ruling could have went the other way if the commission had more evenly applied the anti-discrimination laws in past cases. Further, I agree with the reasoning that suggests forcing the baker to create a bespoke cake-to-order is a form of artistic expression and should be protected by the first amendment and that his speech should not be compelled. However, the baker in this case specifically argued that homosexuals should be prohibited even from purchasing pre-made off-the-shelf cakes that were not made-to-order. This clearly crosses the line into discrimination of a protected class, so in my view he ultimately got away on a technicality, but the SCOTUS had no choice.
> either it´s mere PR move and I despise that type of behavior
If it's "a mere PR move" then who cares? CF is a private businesses and it's their prerogative to operate their business in a fashion that is beneficial to their PR image.
>However, the baker in this case specifically argued that homosexuals should be prohibited even from purchasing pre-made off-the-shelf cakes that were not made-to-order. This clearly crosses the line into discrimination of a protected class, so in my view he ultimately got away on a technicality
If political ideology was a protected class, would you be opposed to Cloudfare dropping 8chan?
I reject the idea that political ideology should be a protected class, but if it were, I would still support CF in this case since this ban was in response to acts of violence endorsed and enacted by the 8chan community, not as a blanket ban on all white supremacist content.
It wasn't enacted by the 8chan community, it was enacted by the shooter only. And endorsed, well, I have seen many people on Reddit and Twitter who say that all Republicans are evil and should be killed, yet when Steve Scalise was shot, they weren't banned for their support of terrorism and assassination. The same principles you apply to your side should be applied to the other side.
It was enacted by a member of the community and other members of the community voiced support for the acts before, during, and after the attacks.
> I have seen many people on Reddit and Twitter who say that all Republicans are evil and should be killed
You can find anyone saying anything anywhere on the internet, but it's very obvious to anyone who has actually used 8chan that it's a particularly toxic community that is generally friendly to violent ideologies.
I have a sneaking suspicion that some three letter agencies (US + Allied nations) have asked Cloudflare not to take ISIS and the like off the Internet.
Why? Because given the technical sophistication of NSA,GHCQ etc vs the average extremist manic in the wild, it is the easiest honeypot there could be to catch all the extremist flies. Click a Like button on FB ISIS page.. Gotcha; watch a ISIS video served through the CDN.. Gotcha; Have any sort of ingress,egress data flow from any of the ISIS content... Gotcha
That may certainly be the case. In fact, I sure hope so tbh. But who knows at this point really. The decisions seems so arbitrarily made. One could easily argue that the same agency should have asked CF to do the same with 8chan. But we get this asymmetrical decision making which leaves us wondering.... why?!
Based on the aforementioned hypotheses, I think it’s reasonable to posit that a three letter agency has concluded that since 8chan has become “internet famous”, it’s unfettered yet monitored existence is now worse in aggregate than pushing its members further underground.
Whereas foreign terrorists are always worth monitoring.
It does seem arbitrary but I think the answer might be far more mundane than conspiratorial; There is simply no legal authority to hoover up the data of and trace back to american citizens for 8chan type websites.
I don't know man, even if the NSA, FBI etc couldn't give a shit about the legal implications, Cloudflare as a public company and it's officers would have legal liability if they violated the law.
It sounds like you're proposing something akin to cultural relativism. The foundations of American democracy are definitively not in cultural relativism, but in cultural absolutism:
"All mean are created equal, etc etc".
Now, we've often failed to live up to those words in the past, but it's an (ideally) constantly-improving process. Regardless, it's much, much more desirable than some anarchical cultural relativism where everyone does what they damn well please.
>However, you are in a sense dictating that the moral values you inherited are infinitely more superior than all the others. I mean you are making deterministic statements about subjective issues while calling those who dare not agree "unreasonable" without considering for a second that other people that live in other parts of the world might have different views.
There is virtually no moral judgment that every person will agree on. So what? Just because morality is ultimately subjective, society should completely avoid making any kind of judgments regarding it? Frankly I don't care that every person, including those committing terrible acts, view themselves as morally correct. I have my own values that I obviously believe are superior, and I will make an effort to impose them on society. I assume that everyone else is doing the same thing. I hope that the "best" views will become the most common.
That is the perfect call for individualism there is. You try to push your ideas down someone else´s throat and they try to do the same. You´ll find no objection here. I am more than happy to live under such a framework. In fact, I think it would make for a much better world under the right conditions.
That said however, you are missing a lot of nuances imo if you think that this form of "every man for himself" is how the west currently operates.
Exactly! Saying that one moral code must be "superior" for we to push for it is injecting universalism (in the form of a single ladder of moral codes) into the discussion, which is exactly what we moral relativists do not find credible.
This a very well articulated comment, I wish I could have this conversation with the two of you over drinks. Maybe this should be a feature of hacker news.
> This is like morality 101. You aren't entitled to kill folks, no matter how much you want to. And you aren't entitled to egg other folks on to kill folks either.
So no death penalty? No military intervention in countries which have not attacked yours? And shutdown any site/radio/TV that try to talk about it?
I don't want to know your thoughts about those particular subject, just want to show what sort of situation you can get into when arguing for criteria to limit freedom of speech.
What about monitoring these forums possibly with keyword recognition, and enforce laws such as the ones against invitation to violence?
Because it's pointless? People that have feelings and drives that make them do heinous things won't stop having them, and won't stop seeking others having them and discussing them. They'd just publish their manifests on other places. There are tons of public places. Let's say next psycho creates a Github account and publishes the next psychotic rant as Github repo. Now we have to burn Github to the ground? Or only if there are three such psychos that know how to set up a Github account?
> The point is that some opinions are just wrong.
True enough. The problem here is that somehow you think you can always tell which ones, and that you will wield the power to do it. The experience shows neither are true - you probably hold lots of wrong opinions without knowing it, and the power to exclude wrong opinions from polite society probably will be not in your hands. The best way to check every law would be "what if my worst enemy was in charge of implementing it?". If you're still OK with it - then it's a good law. Otherwise you're assuming Powers That Be would always agree with you - and that's a dangerous thing to assume.
You aren't entitled to kill folks, no matter how much you want to. And you aren't entitled to egg other folks on to kill folks either.
Try telling that to the US military. Or cops.
And it if you step back a bit you'll see that it is _obvious_(!) that the person you are replying to is exactly NOT saying that it is permissible to massacre Jews. S/he is pointing out that "obviousness" is an ill-defined criterion which can let any old genocidal predjudice slip through.
We’re taking about rules fir governing a society. The military is for dealing with threats from outside a society, so it’s not relevant.
Cops in the US do not have impunity. They may sometimes get away with too much, but they can and do go to jail for murder. There have been a few cases I could name off the top of my head in the last few years, but I’m sure many more are findable with little effort.
A few cases over years? US cops kill over 1000 people every year (https://killedbypolice.net/), so a few prosecutions is more like bad luck than real punishment.
FYI "some opinions are just wrong" is a judgement, and it might make life easier to understand that what you consider "wrong" is your subjective _opinion_ :)
I totally don't mean that in a condescending way, just sharing my thoughts from my own experiences!
When you say that the El Paso shooter believed that the US is under invasion, that was his incorrect belief, not a "wrong opinion". The opinion would be that he thinks he's justified to try to kill those people.
"I think all right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired...
I'm certainly not! And I'm sick and tired of being told that I am." - Graham Chapman.
Usually whenever I see people evoke the paradox of tolerance they draw more attention to the authority of Popper compared to the nature of it being a paradox. It defers the question of what is tolerant, which depends on perspective as you rightly point out.
Arguments of authority are my favorites. It literally takes you 2 seconds to see through the person you are talking to and you can safely assume that they haven´t thought about the problems facing them long enough.
> You and I can agree that it is despicable and disgusting that people think that way. But in their minds, you are the unreasonable one. What you call intolerance to them is not that at all.
Don’t you think it’s despicable that we don’t think this way?
We’re there, killing their wives, children and friends. We’re destroying the infrastructure. But we don’t even have any particularly strong feelings about it. It’s just what’s economically and politically expedient...
> Perspectives matter in the world; and if you make a hard/deterministic rule based on a subjective understanding of an issue followed by projecting it as "what reasonable people should think", you will always get into some shady edge cases
Disagreement has been corner stone of any community. It is healthy in some sense, and might even be required for progress of humankind altoghter. That said...
> What you call intolerance to them is not that at all.
If ignorance, short sightedness, revenge, hatered, jealousy, wickedness is behind a thought or an action, we can universally agree to it being inferior and defective.
Like the OP said, moral and philosophical education along with ability to independently think sets reasonable people apart from others, and I agree.
I agree with most of your points here, but I am not sure I see how this really amounts to an objection to Popper's proposed prescription. Nearly everything is contested by someone, even things as mundane as who is at fault in a motor accident. And yet, we have largely workable, if imperfect, ways to resolve such disagreements, so that everyone can get on with life. So the real objection has to be along the lines of: there is no practical set of procedures that would allow us to resolve the problems of intolerant speech and behavior in a reasonably effective way.
More philosophically, however, one important way to take on the problem of subjectivism is to use something like Rawl's veil of ignorance, or Sherner's fairness principle:
“The Fairness Principle: When contemplating a moral action, imagine that you do not know if you will be the moral doer or receiver, and when in doubt err on the side of the other person.”
Not going to lie, I hold an an insane level of disdain toward Rawl´s Veil of ignorance for many reasons that I don´t want to get into right now. That said, the following sentence - I think - is one of the most important ones that I wish more people would pay very close attention to:
> ... And yet, we have largely workable, if _imperfect_, ways to resolve such disagreements, _so that everyone can get on with life_
I agree with you on the first part but disagree on the reasoning behind it.
I have a framework that I personally use when I think about topics such as this one. It has helped me understand a fair bit about social organizations in general as I see it applied everywhere I look. I´ll write the gist of it down here and you tell me what you think:
1. There are two types of solutions to problems: deterministic solutions (100% perfect solutions that can be algorithmically spelled out) and heuristics (good enough shortcuts that have x% error margin and y% efficiency - What you called imperfect solutions).
2. We desperately want to find as many deterministic solutions we possibly can to any and all problems that we face. And where we fail to do so, heuristics are brought in to help us, as best as possible, approximate that "deterministic/perfect/ideal".
3. Heuristics are things like religion, moral frameworks, political systems, language, etc. - Notice that none of them is deterministic in any way, shape or form. They are all imperfect. However, they are rule-sets that are more or less ambiguous that helps us navigate most of the problem space with relatively low effort. But the trade-off here is that heuristics break at the edges - free speech vs. hate speech is a clear example of a failure in the heuristic.
4. It is important to note that all heuristics have some error rate. If they did not, they´d be deterministic solutions. So whatever heuristic you want to use to solve a given problem, Popper´s, Rawl´s or otherwise, you have to always make sure to take the errors that might emerge into account. The error rate is far more important than most people realize as it is the determining factor for how successful/effective the heuristic is going to be in society.
5. When suggesting alternatives to an existing heuristic because of some apparent flaws - such as replacing our current understanding and notion of intolerance by Popper´s take on the matter - the new heuristic that you propose that should overwrite the old one must have a smaller margin of error. Otherwise, why even bother? in fact, if this isn´t the case, you risk making things worse rather than better.
6. Iterate on the process until you come up with better and better heuristics that increasingly approximates the deterministic solution (lower error rate over time until you reach the holy grail of 99.999999...%).
7. Every once in a while, as humanity is traversing its path, some heuristics will be replaced by deterministic answers. Ex: science replaces religion when it comes to describing the natural world -> moving from heuristic religious interpretation of the natural world to a more deterministic approach.
This is how society betters itself over time. It is an iterative process that replaces old systems with newer ones that are less prone to errors. My beef with Rawl´s, Pooper (as I call him) and most of the other thinkers that people read in 1st year college class is that the heuristics they paint are already far inferior than the ones that we currently have. But unfortunately, the academic class (read teachers) cannot see that because they lack a good framework for assessing the effectiveness/error rates of a given heuristic.
Exactly. I think that a lot of what is plaguing society right now is, in spite of how techno-sophisticated we have become, is in a sense a measurement problem.
It's not clear to me how you can say that a new heuristic is "far inferior", nor how you can say that the academics lack a good framework but you presumably don't. How do you know what a good framework would look like?
I would agree that it's a measurement problem in the sense that we don't even know what or how to measure it. But your analysis is silent on what an error is so I'm not really sure what you think you have gained by it.
Your point would stand only if these new heuristics are truly "new" when in fact, they are actually pretty old, tried and debunked at this point. And we actually do know what we want to measure and we have that as a goal but our methodology/framework isn´t all that good just yet (we currently use a form of bruteforce).
> It's not clear to me how you can say that a new heuristic is "far inferior", nor how you can say that the academics lack a good framework but you presumably don't. How do you know what a good framework would look like?
It isn´t that I have something that they don´t have. It´s far more sinister than that. And here is my argument:
The best tool we have at the moment is: you play it (any given set of ideas) out in the real world and look at the consequences in terms of elevating/reducing the amount of suffering that is at the basis of the human condition - after all, that is the end goal of political heuristics. Popper´s and Rawl´s ideas are not "new" in the sense that they have been extensively tried in the past. They were murderous beyond belief but somehow that is always forgotten and never accounted for as linguistics is used to disguise the actual end-result of the experiment by saying that "they have not been tested at all" or that "these are new cutting edge ideas".
As an example, we can take a look at communism. The total body count that was produced under communistic regimes would probably make for a giant mountain that would take months to climb. Yet somehow you always hear the slogan "that wasn´t real communism" as a rebuttal to the inherit evil of said set of ideas. If you pay close attention, parse the ideas given and see if they have previously tried or not, you can most often tell that the vast majorities of proposed changes are new reformulations of old and debunked shit.
Example: Marxism views the world as a battle between two groups, the rich and the poor. 3rd wave feminism views the world as a battle group between men and women. This is an over-simplification obviously but what I am hoping to demonstrate here is that it is the same old wolf in sheep´s clothing. We don´t need to replay that experiment to know where it will end up. This is the best we can do at the moment. Am I happy with this methodology of evaluating ideas? hell no. But we have no mechanism that performs any better. And as for the academic class, heck, it is they that purposefully spread these reformulations to the younger generations by actively reworking old debunked ideas as their own "new" takes on how the world ought to be - which is why I tend to believe that academia (especially the social "sciences") is far more sinister than first meets the eye.
Note: I used marxism/communism here as an example just for convenience. I could have just as easily used the Veil of Ignorance or the argument of intolerance to demonstrate that same principle. They have been tried many times before and they were incredibly counter-productive. In spite of what most people think, the modern form of western societies can be seen as a function of the set of most effective ideas that have been tested to date (effective = generate the most amount of reduction in overall human suffering). It isn´t perfect (it´s a heuristic after all) but in comparison to all other tried and tested set of ideas, it is the best we can do atm. Besides, even in the west, small variations of these ideas are currently being tried within each nation state. It is a process that takes time but as these experiments unfold, we will learn something new and converge on a better solution once one is found.
Have you considered that, rather that having some kind of sinister intent, other people simply have a different opinion on whether a particular idea is new or just a reworking, whether a previous idea is applicable to a current context, etc, etc?
To go way back up to your original post I kind of agree with you on subjectivity but I really don't see how you're then arguing that your framework demonstrates that Rawls etc have been 'debunked'.
But in these cases there is a blurring of bad national policy with an entire group of people unconnected to it. This is very dangerous.
For example, there maybe those who dislike Israel and even want war. But to then say "all Jews are evil" is incorrect. Most don't even live there to control policy. Of those that do, many object to policy. It's like saying some terrorists are Muslim so all Muslims are evil. Or that North Korea is dangerous therefore all Koreans are dangerous. Or America does some bad things therefore all Americans should die. It's all obviously incorrect.
You can have a reason to want to fight a _country_ but there can never be a reason to annihilate a complex, nuanced group because of their skin color or religion etc. There can be reasons for war (which is bad enough) but there can never be reasons for genocide. Americans might have reason to hate Japan after Pearl Harbor but to lock up all Japanese inside the country is obviously wrong.
More generally, there can be very good reason to stop a group organized around an action (eg Neo-Nazis). But to say "all whites must die" (because all Neo-Nazis are white) is obviously an incorrect expansion.
Unfortunately, it's a common blurring that exploitative leaders take advantage of. Today some Western leaders foment hate against all Muslims and some Islamic leaders foment hate against all Jews. In the past it was other groups. It is these leaders that are the danger.
>It's like saying some terrorists are Muslim so all Muslims are evil.
Where is the thresh hold the judgment is made at and will we consistently apply it to all groups? I can think of examples of groups that are reviled by most, yet who have members who don't desire directly evil policies. Some desire forms of what may qualify as oppression that are even seen by the majority as acceptable when you swap out certain groups.
From the POV of someone who says that, the evil actions of Israel are not a fluke, but an inevitable result of the nature of Jewish people, just like genocidal colonialism is seen as the result of the nature of white people, etc. They see themselves as frogs talking about scorpions, to put it in fabulistic terms, and the fact that a particular specimen hasn't stung is no evidence that it's harmless.
To someone like me, who believes quite intuitively that humans are generally the same everywhere, it's hard to grasp, but I don't see how I can prove it's objectively wrong.
> think about it this way: what if in the mind of the person making that claim, it is one of self-defense and self-preservation? is it still intolerant?
Yes.
It may be understandable, I get it, I have the same angry impulses as most human beings and it's very easy to feel antagonists should be simply disposed with. But that doesn't distinguish it from being intolerant.
Even if there's a genuine existential threat, indulging an intolerant response means you (1) you cut off the possibility for negotiation, and the remaining choices are victory or your own tribe's annihilation (2) it's not like the one source of antagonism/conflict is really just the other tribe, and once you build into individual minds and your tribe the idea and support for this kind of total solution, it's likely to get used again even if/after you "win."
I don't expect everyone, especially among populations that have been part of generational conflicts where they already feel they're facing an existential threat, to just sing kumbaya. Maybe it's an important descriptive point to say "not everyone can agree genocide should't be tolerated in valued discourse," but it's not a good normative point. We should be trying to get to the point where genocide is beyond the pale, where people can more finely articulate that many aspects of middle eastern policy at the state or tribal level are unacceptable for a humane civilization without kneecapping any chance for improvement, and in general where we can shape discourse it should be steered away from tribalism.
Or I guess we could always try to kill everybody who believes in genocide.
I grew up in the middle east and I still live in the middle east and I never heard anyone say kill da Jews or da imperialists because those kinds of wacky statements can only be conjured up by a Westerner with preconceived notions about what middle easterners are and pretends to be one on the internet for argument points.
I've thought about this before and respect the open-mindedness. How do you justify words purely meant to harm others and not express ideas, like the n-word?
If you think that the n-word is only used to harm others then I assume you haven't listened to any late 20th and 21st century music. Context matters. That said, its use to racially insult people is shameful and not something I support.
That's a great point, I didn't think about that. It seems like it might be difficult to prove whether or not people had an intent to harm when you allow this kind of speech though.
Your example illustrates something called "moral disengagement"[1] and it's the same thought-process used by a lot of people to justify their reprehensible views. Interestingly, the people who seem to be most "immune" to moral disengagement are individuals with high empathy. Fortunately, empathy is a skilled that can be taught and learned.
well maybe, since the US is finding this really really tricky for some reason, look at what other countries have done around hate speech.... because, you know, it didn't end civilization as we know it, we are all still free ( in fact, in terms of freedom many countries, with hate speech laws, rank better than the US ). It's bizzare that in a country where the kid who goes on a mass shooting, could engage in hate groups online, but until a couple of years ago would have been banned from getting a kinder eggs, coz ya know, it could of hurt him.
What about "kill the {terrorists|Vietnamese (circa 1960)|germans (circa 1940)|japanese(circa 1940)|rebs (circa 1860}"
My response is clearly whatboutism, and I understand that jewish, muslims, and hispanics are greatly different than naming the belligerents of armed conflicts, but this very slippery slope is why historically the US Supreme Court has resoundingly only made the most narrow rulings regarding limiting speech.
This is a terribly laid out argument. It's not kill the Germans/Japanese/Vietnamese. Hell in Vietnam we had Vietnamese allies. In Okinawa we routinely tried to stop civilians from committing suicide. There's a massive, massive difference between calling for erasing an entire people simply for existing and fighting a declared military force. No one in the US is going over to wipe out all Arabs, they are going to protect civilians and our own people under a strict set of rules of engagement meant to minimize civilian and not combatant casualties. These people are advocating violence against a people who don't even know they exist or have no defined I'll will against them. You're also conflating government protections for free speech and requirements to support said speech by civilians. No one has to provide your microphone to tell through. The mail will still deliver their racist pamphlets, they can still shout their horrors in public spaces. They don't have a right to have their hate hosted online.
There's a massive, massive difference between calling for erasing an entire people simply for existing and fighting a declared military force. No one in the US is going over to wipe out all Arabs
The clash of civilizations rhetoric makes this assertion dubious to most people that are not in the USA. That coupled with the large-scale widespread bombing of much of the world since WW2 and the support of despots engaged in torture and repression makes your fine distinction a cold comfort for hundreds of thousands (we think the price was worth it) of children.
The tendencies revealed in 8chan are a reflection of core values of US civilization.
To pretend otherwise, and agonize over the origins and supposed abnormality of racist genocide in the USA is copper-bottomed duplicity.
I suppose it makes it easier to sleep at night -- _this_ particular genocide is abnormal for us nice folks.
> The tendencies revealed in 8chan are a reflection of core values of US civilization.
To some extent, yes. But then, US civilization is sadly not all that unique.
The major issue is that the US is collapsing. Gradually, over the past few decades, but steadily. And that always creates lots of angry, nihilistic young men. Eventually they'll become cannon fodder.
All those are speech in the context of support for a declared conflict perpetuated by the government. We don't have to all agree, obviously, but yes: stated support for policies of our elected representatives has to be OK. I don't think anyone reasonable would disagree.
If someone were to talk about personal killing of gooks or japs or krauts or secesh for ethnic and not military reasons, even in a war, that would be different. But that's not what you seem to be talking about.
The distinction is precisely why we have the Geneva conventions, and this is well established law.
Your posting really gets to my core frustration with our Western political establishment: We have "rational", "moderate" politicians like Hillary, Biden, Merkel, or the late John McCain, who were in favor of the illegal attack on Iraq, well knowing that civilians would die, and that the area would be destabilized (hello IS).
But because the US didn't attack Iraq based on a protected class like race, and because the Geneva conventions exist, everything is magically okay. No reason to deplatform these heroes of bipartisan politics.
I worry about the end of radical free speech on the internet precisely because I feel deeply disconnected from "mainstream morality". As internet censorship progresses, I'm sure I'll be kicked out before any of the high-status war criminals.
(I'm referring to the 2003 Iraq war because I still remember who supported it, but I assume the handling of Vietnam was similar in its time.)
"I worry about the end of radical free speech on the internet precisely because I feel deeply disconnected from "mainstream morality". As internet censorship progresses, I'm sure I'll be kicked out before any of the high-status war criminals."
Situations where Germans were killed for just being Germans, as opposed to being soldiers, are being talked about as injustice today. The rapes done on German women after WWII are not defended as rightful today either.
There is big difference between military action against Germany, ISIS, what have you and "kill Germans" in general.
> Situations where Germans were killed for just being Germans, as opposed to being soldiers, are being talked about as injustice today. The rapes done on German women after WWII are not defended as rightful today either.
I am glad you stressed "today", because back then, I bet, they weren't talked about the same way.
It is much easier to look back at distant actions and condemn them. At the time when they actually happen, however, things aren't always as clear-cut. I am certain that a lot of "totally ok" today things will be "totally not ok" once we are removed far enough from them.
In what way they were not clear cut back then? It is not like people at the time were confused over meaning of rape or confuscation of property and so on.
These were debated as issues from the first moment. You had those who push for these kill all policies and those who oppose them. Sometimes one side win, other times the other and result is controversial from start for years.
There is this idea that "judging by the time" means judging by the perspective of worst person available, but that is not how history happened.
I was talking about generally accepted opinions by the population. Today, as the quote said, "Germans being killed for just being Germans are generally accepted as injustice".
Was it the case back in the day, though? I am not so sure about that. Of course there were plenty of people who thought this was a great injustice, but I don't think the general public back then would even raise a brow of condemnation towards a person claiming that this was ok and totally justified.
P.S. this is a total speculation about this specific scenario, but I had similar conversations about atrocities committed on the eastern front by soviet soldiers with my older family members who were young adults in 50s-60s in USSR. What I got was that their whole generation was pretty much on board with it, because, in their words, "Nazis deserved it" (with the implication being that every German person was a nazi, of course, even civilians). Not so much of a popular opinion these days.
Try putting yourself in the shoes of someone in the US in 1940.
Would the statement "kill germans" be intolerant?
///
When I was in grade school, a holocaust survivor was invited to speak at my school. At the time we had a german foreign exchange student. As a joke, one of his friends baited the speaker into going on a vitriolic rant about how much he hated Germans. The speaker than paused, and gathered himself and said he did not blame today's generation for the previous ones horror, but that the terror inflicted upon him and his family would be with him forever.
I was chosen to ask a question, and asked him what it must feel like when he sees young people today wearing Nazi paraphernalia and glorifying the Nazi regime.
That isn't protected speech. Violence against specific people, and in some cases certain people groups (calls for direct violence) is not protected even in America. Saying you hope a whole group dies off or gets killed somehow is often protected though; or gets on gray lines. In most jurisdictions in the US, police will often move on credible threats of violence.
what about the beating of an openly gay viet-american journalist on a crowded public street? does that pass the reasonable standard for intolerance? because as of writing this comment, the individuals & organizations who cheered that on still have access to mainstream platforms & seemingly have faced close to no repercussions for continuing to advocate for violence.
> 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?
I mean, saying something like "Kill the Terrorists" would be something many people agree with or find to be tolerant. This shows that there is some group of "terrorists" that people are happy to have killed.
I'm not sure we can because we can't even equally apply such philosophies or even laws modern day. For example, consider what TERFs consider acceptable and unacceptable concerning acceptance of trans individuals. Or consider the violent rhetoric aimed at the US president by prominent figures (at least enough to have appearance on TV, which is far more prominent than most of the posters here). Or protests against the rich. Or the views of what should happen to really bad people in prison. Or calling certain attractions as mental disorders (granted, they were labeled as such until recently) despite the newest research and the calls to lock such people up.
And what about cases where intolerance of intolerance is viewed as unacceptable because it can be confused with general intolerance. For example, take someone who wants to reduce/end immigration of groups that might support the execution of certain minority groups being confused with people who want to reduce/end immigration of those same groups for less agreeable reasons?
Even something as simple as "The Future is Female" has roots in a ideology of killing (most) men.
Frankly, I don't know what a specific legal criteria might even look like. In fact, I'm not even sure I'd like someone smarter than me with legal street credentials to come up with one.
What I do know is that SCOTUS famously refused to define what porn is [0], and went instead with something to the effect of: I know it when I see it, and this is not it.
On the contrary. It is so important that it cannot be secondary to something that can be defined clearly. Hence my comment.
Edit for clarity: What you think is fine or not today may or may not be considered fine in the future. So there's an incentive to not set what is intolerance in stone on the basis that today's standards may not match those in the future.
Freedom of speech ensures we can always debate the value of the rest of our rights. Without it, that amorphous 'tolerance' could remove the ability to speak against bad things.
Who defines hate speech? Mobs? Who gets to enforce the official definition of intolerant behavior? Trump? Hillary? (hyperbole to make a point) If we don't maintain freedom of speech above tolerance, then we cannot speak out when our words violate the accepted (and as you pointed out, transitory and unpredictable) definition of 'what is fine'.
Do you really want to just stop talking, without recourse, when a future mob decides your words are unacceptable?
This is exactly right. So much of the discussion here is because people can't turn their own arguments against themselves. The sentiment is, "clearly this is bad and needs to go away." This is also an extension of surveillance arguments where people say "i have nothing to hide." They forget to take into consideration the power that has been given to a group that could become immoral in the future and use that power against them.
I really wish we could agree that freedom is a burden and we can and should shoulder that burden because it is worth it. Let's all take some responsibility for not doing enough to convince extremists away from their beliefs. Let's accept that censorship represents a failure of imagination in combating the issue responsibly (whatever that might be).
That’s probably the most widely mocked thing a justice has ever said -- it's even mentioned in your source -- so it's probably not the best argument to put forward.
Part of the problem is that historically intolerance has been defined as "opposition to openness" and indeed historically most human societies were too closed.
Any hope of easy classification crumbles when you consider that a society can be too open (there are actual group that want to include age as a form of protected self expression, with significant consequences on the legality of various actions).
At this point is it being intolerant if you do not tolerate treating a 30 years old person as 8 years old in matters of law?
If the baker were only baking a cake then it would be. But these were artistic cakes with a great deal of self expression, so issues of compelled speech are forefront.
Also, I wonder if, as software devs, we'd feel comfortable being compelled to take on contracts we might object to on moral grounds, e.g. I refuse to engage in projects building weapons and surveillance systems. I'd be quite upset if I were to be taken to court for refusing the contract on those grounds.
> A majority of the US population was tolerant of refusing service to ...
But the refusal of service to certain specific races itself is intolerance. That is precisely what Popper's view is: tolerance (by the majority of Americans) of intolerance (towards non-whites) is bad.
What about certain sports teams who deny half of the population a chance from playing? They justify it with notions of biological differences, but in what other setting is that an acceptable justification?
There is also the difference in refusal to serve and refusal to provide a specific service. If you are willing to serve a group but not provide them with a service that you also refuse to provide others, even when the service has a strong corollary with a service you do provide, it is seen as a different matter than refusing to serve a group. This is seen in both the bakery case and the waxing case.
I do not see how any of the examples you cite are comparable.
Biological differences in performance have scientific basis. Racism does not.
I do not know which specific bakery or waxing cases you are referring to, there seem to be more than one such case. But I will try to clarify my position with a corollary:
Say I'm at a bar with a friend who is an observant Muslim. They are offered a complimentary drink by the bartender, who happens to be non-muslim. If my friend declines the drink because they think it is alcoholic, I will think no less of them. But if they decline the drink because of the bartender being non-muslim, I will certainly think less of my friend. In either case, it does not matter if the drink does or does not contain alcohol; only what my friend thinks.
>Biological differences in performance have scientific basis.
Yet I still can't actually use these to discriminate in most cases.
>Racism does not.
Not sure how this is comparable to the previous statement. The use of 'differences in performance' in one side and a -ism on the other indicate we aren't comparing apples to apples.
>Say I'm at a bar with a friend who is an observant Muslim. They are offered a complimentary drink by the bartender, who happens to be non-muslim. If my friend declines the drink because they think it is alcoholic, I will think no less of them. But if they decline the drink because of the bartender being non-muslim, I will certainly think less of my friend. In either case, it does not matter if the drink does or does not contain alcohol; only what my friend thinks.
So it seems the judgment is based off of the material and not the person. In that case, it seems similar to the case of the bakery as the customer was free to order any existing product. The waxing case isn't as simple, because the item relevant to the drink in that case was part of the person's body, and thus innately linked to the concept of who the individual is in a way the drink is not.
> Yet I still can't actually use these to discriminate in most cases.
Yes, you can. If you can prove a scientific basis, you can. A scientific basis is not a low bar, mind you, but if you can clear it, you absolutely can, as many of us do (from cosmetics to drug trials and prescriptions to even market investments).
> The use of 'differences in performance' in one side and a -ism on the other indicate we aren't comparing apples to apples.
Forgive me, I believed it was obvious that 'racism' in this context stood for 'differences in treatment by race'.
> So it seems the judgment is based off of the material and not the person.
You appear to have misread my point. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Let me reproduce the essential parts:
"... because of the bartender being non-muslim ..."
and added clarification:
" ... does not matter if the drink ...; only what my friend thinks of the bartender"
>Forgive me, I believed it was obvious that 'racism' in this context stood for 'differences in treatment by race'.
The problem it is that it prejudges no such situations could exist. For example, one that would be easy enough to defend is that communities are better served by a doctor who shares the same race as the community because the members are more willing to follow the doctor's advice. This is why having enough black doctors to serve black communities can be argued to be a good thing, despite it being discrimination based on race. But past personal experience has taught me that the agreeableness of such judgment can changes when swapping to a so called majority group.
>You appear to have misread my point. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Let me reproduce the essential parts:
Let me rephrase my point because I think I may have compacted it too much.
Your judgment depends upon your friends judgment being based on the material and not the person. That is to say, if you have reason to believe you friend is judging based on the person (the server being non-Muslim), you will view them negatively, but if you believe that their judgment is based on the material (thinking the drink has alcohol) you won't judge them negatively. Thus, you judgment of the friend's discrimination against the drink depends upon why they discriminate against the drink. If they did so because of a property of the drink it is fine. Does this correctly match your view?
> For example, one that would be easy enough to defend ...
I'm sorry, but at this point, I think you're being pedantic. I have no interest in that here, and while I could have been exhaustively thorough in my original statement, I just didn't think I needed to and thus chose to be terse. I continue to believe I was clear then, and also believe that in the example you cite here a scientific basis (either for or against) can be clearly tested and observed.
> Thus, you judgment of the friend's discrimination against the drink ...
No. My point is I do not judge my friend on their discrimination against the drink. I judge my friend on their discrimination against the person. The drink is just an object, it's only purpose is in being 'not a person'. Replace it with anything else (say, something edible, or, a greeting) and my point still stands.
> If they did so because of a property of the drink it is fine.
No, that doesn't matter. If they did so because of the time of day, or their mood, or the colour of their shirt that day, would be the same. The difference lies in whether they did so because of the person offering.
That's the crux of the whole problem. The government passed unpopular policies and tried to morally "correct" its people from the top down. It seems most people gradually caught on and normalized those changes, but it isn't surprising to me at all that some/many didn't. I'm wholly on the side of civil rights, but lately I wonder about whether the experiment of using the federal government to try to bring together a big landmass full of people who too often really despise each other along ideological and/or ethnic lines is failing.
Here we are talking about curtailing free speech because the majority can sometimes be wrong and evil, which sounds fair, but that raises the question for me of whether constantly doing things that most people don't want in the name of social progress will create a stable society. I wish I was wrong, but I think not.
I did know. That was an "um, come again?" not a "can you repeat that?"
Your comment literally reads as "they used to tolerate refusing service to (slur)s." Not only was it totally inexplicable to use the slur in the first place, you didn't qualify it in any way. No quotes, no "people they called," nothing. You just used it. Absolutely insane.
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.
So, the gay couple coming to the baker that doesn't want to make a cake for a gay wedding are the intolerant ones because they are the first intolerant action in the chain? Because you know that will be how it will be spun.
Congratulations on the apt handle. Your argument is irrational because it ignores the fact that the baker committed the first intolerant act in the chain, not the gay couple.
It isn't irrational because every human being involved experiences a different intolerant act as their first intolerant act. The baker experiences the customer as committing the first intolerance to him. The customer experiences the baker as committing the first intolerance to him.
There is no global ordering of intolerant events. This is basically the CAP problem. Every node (or human) sees their own version of the database (or the world) unless all humans coordinate with all other humans (aka impossible).
So refusing to provide service is "intolerant"? Does this only works on "protected groups", or does it work in general? How about the baker is willing to provide service to the gay couple, but just not the gay wedding? Now, please elaborate how you define "intolerant".
Absolutely: refusing to provide service to gays, when you provide the same services to other people just because they are not gay, is indeed literally intolerant, without your scare-quotes or any other qualification.
What's so hard for you to understand about that?
If you're trying to argue for some slippery weaselly nuanced non-standard definition of "intolerant" which excludes bigoted bakers that you just pulled out of your butt, remember that it's a double edged sword that cuts both ways, and also excuses gay couples for not tolerating homophobic bakers.
It's not my responsibility to provide you with the standard definitions of common English words, when you're obviously capable of googling them yourself, and obviously misunderstanding them on purpose, and obviously not arguing in good faith. Look it up on Wikipedia yourself.
The baker in your chosen example is very convenient in that they are clearly anti-gay. Consider the the real life examples of bakers who are allegedly happy to serve gay couples, but believe that baking a cake for a gay couple's wedding would be a speech act in which they do not wish to engage, or a hotel providing 'separate but equal' treatment to people of colour. These things strike me as problematic, but clearly were not obviously so to the legal system of the time.
I think you're likely to run into the general issue that people seldom phrase their motives so as to make themselves sound unreasonable or intolerant.
The baker's argument was that it wasn't the same service. They would have baked them a cake; but they didn't cakes with "jim and john's wedding" written on them, in the same way you wouldn't bake a cake with the 14 words on it, even if you'd bake a cake for Richard Spencer.
I don't bake cakes for Nazis, no matter how many words they want on it. Simple as that. Not even cupcakes. No nuances.
It's pretty obvious when the baker and their supporters start bending over backwards to make nuanced hypothetical situations and ridiculous unbelievable qualifications, that they aren't making good faith arguments. If their best and most honest argument is that their bible told them to be intolerant bigots, then that's their problem for choosing to take their marching orders from that particular bible, while choosing to do business in that particular state which bans discrimination. The fact that your bible tells you to do something illegal is certainly no excuse for stoning your wife to death or killing gays, either.
So we should have the conversation in which everyone has to make the best arguments they can, instead of trying to go recursively meta with the Paradox of Tolerance, accusing the gays of being intolerant of the baker's intolerance. Simply judge them all on the merits of their best arguments and intellectual honesty and willingness to address valid counter-arguments.
I see you saying things like 'judge them by the merits of their arguments', and 'intellectual honesty'. But the problem is, I don't trust that you're intellectually honest. I don't think you actually do much logical evaluation when it comes to a case like this; you're already predisposed towards being on the side of the gay guys, and not liking the christians. Well, fine. But I don't believe that you're coming to your conclusions through reason and logic, as you claim to; my impression is that you're just declaring that the chain of evil obviously ends with the people you didn't like to begin with, and their arguments don't need to be refuted because they're not in good faith.
Meanwhile, it's alright for you to categorically refuse to give service to someone for another kind of social identity.
Fine... I just don't get the feeling I should rely on you as a source of 'good faith' arguments about this stuff. You seem to have a pretty big axe to grind.
The Supreme Court already judged the anti-gay-marriage bigots on the merits of their arguments, and they were found lacking. They brought their best arguments, and they weren't good enough. That is evidence that supports my intuition. If you have some profound new anti-gay argument that nobody's already heard countless times already, they why don't you lay it on us and change our minds?
And yes, regardless of your distrust and disbelief in me, I have already logically thought about it a lot. I'm just not writing out every step of my logical thought process right now, and I won't or dang will ding me. So you'll have to take my word that I'm smart enough to figure it out logically for myself. Even most children can come to the same conclusions as I did, if they haven't been indoctrinated to hate.
I don't owe the anti-gay-marriage bigots the respect of rehashing and yet again arguing against their tired old disproven arguments and desperate Gish Gallops. It boils down to the bible told them to be bigots. They have no better arguments.
That's why the baker case is such a great example of how to properly resolve the Paradox of Tolerance.
>The Supreme Court already judged the anti-gay-marriage bigots on the merits of their arguments, and they were found lacking.
That differs from what happened in reality. The Supreme Court issued a 7-2 ruling in favor of Phillip's right to refuse to bake the gay couple a cake. It was the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that found them to be discriminating. That ruling was overturned when brought in front of the Supreme Court.
>In a 7-2 decision, the Court ruled on narrow grounds that the Commission did not employ religious neutrality, violating Masterpiece owner Jack Phillips' rights to free exercise, and reversed the Commission's decision. [0]
Can you explain how you are balancing the notion of freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom of speech here?
It sounds to me like you're are arguing that those rights aren't worth protecting for the baker and you are choosing to protect the customer's right to ... what exactly? What "right" is being protected in your analysis?
Only as long as it's intolerance of real, non-contrived intolerance, which in this case it clearly is.
Intolerance of gays is real intolerance, because it can't be logically justified, and it's based on religious bigotry instead of any legitimate justification.
Contrived intolerance is the baker claiming other people are intolerant of the baker's real intolerance of gays. You're not entitled to that kind of intolerance.
Is it your opinion that "religious bigotry" is not protected by the Constitution?
How are you going to define that outside your preferred scenario of bigotry against gays? Do you intend to insist (by law) that Orthodox Jews, for example, work on Saturdays because that is more convenient for you and that that they are being intolerant of your beliefs for no rational reason?
What about Orthodox Jewish wedding photographer? Are they required to work for you on a Saturday or is it OK for them too refuse you service based on their religious beliefs?
There's a huge difference between discriminating against a day and a gay: you can discriminate against a day because it's Saturday, but you can't discriminating against a person because they're gay.
It's ok for Jews to be Saturday-intolerant, just as many Christians are Sunday-intolerant. Days don't have feelings or human rights. And there's not a long history of discrimination and institutionalized biases against Saturday, the way there are against gays.
In both cases the vendor is refusing to conduct business with the customer due to religious beliefs. Why do you think it is OK for the customer to have to find a new photographer in one case but not a different baker in the other?
I really have a hard time with the idea that the government is expected to pick the "right" set of beliefs to back on what should just be a voluntary transaction. Either both parties agree to conduct business or they don't. I realize that a laissez faire approach to commerce is not what we have today but I would prefer it over asking the government to mediate. And I do realize that would allow people and businesses to discriminate, but that just represents a business opportunity for someone else.
In the case of the photographer, the customer isn't being shamed, shunned, and stigmatized. The government definitely has a role here and should intervene in such cases in order to ensure that businesses treat customers equally and respectably.
Just think about the way modern media companies constantly shame and stigmatize people. How are you going to even define when someone is "shamed" or "stigmatized"? Aren't there people who should be shamed and stigmatized?
This seems completely unworkable and guaranteed to make absolutely no one happy other than the lawyers making money off of all the frivolous legal disputes.
> Only as long as it's intolerance of real, non-contrived intolerance...
And this is where it all falls down. Any belief system which conflicts with your own is a system which is expressing “intolerance” to your belief system.
The whole idea is a crock in my opinion, as a way for one person to scream down another because they are the one who is being intolerant.
There is a lot of hate in the world, and fighting words should be shut down clearly. But this “intolerance” argument is extremely weak the way I see it, as is used as a way to hate and threaten harm against people with a different belief system, a belief system which may not have anything to do with hating or physically harming people.
>And this is where it all falls down. Any belief system which conflicts with your own is a system which is expressing “intolerance” to your belief system.
Not true. Belief systems can conflict without calling for each other's destruction, or discrimination and cruelty against each other's followers.
But the ones that do call for that kind of behavior, like religion calls for discrimination against gays and cruelty towards women, don't have the right to complain about people who they discriminate against (and other non-bigoted allies) not tolerating their discrimination.
> ... discrimination and cruelty against each other's followers.
A belief system is--by definition--discrimination against contrary beliefs, and therefore, followers of those contrary beliefs. And one definition of "cruelty" (e.g. to women - by denying full and free access to abortions) might be the inverse of someone else's definition of "cruelty" (e.g. to unborn children - by aborting them).
Someone can presume that they hold the absolute claim to the "truth" of which side is cruel, and which side is intolerant, but as human beings we simply do not and cannot know the truth of the matter.
So the problem I have is, when faced with such a dilemma, calling for violence against someone in the name of being "intolerant to intolerance".
Is this confounded or bound up with things like fake news or bad science -- would I, if I owned a platform – call it π-Chan –be prohibited from banning users who espoused anti-vax ideas because I firmly believed they put society at risk (or whatever the justification may be)?
I would, on the one hand, be strongly supported by science, but on the other intolerant of others' who have differing points of view. Would I be allowed to run my platform the way I wanted? Whose rights would prevail in that case?
The question is "who do you want to be your consumers" here. Both choices are PR choices. Legally, you're allowed to do either ("neutral platform" and "moderated discourse forum" are both things that are legally allowed to exist in the US at least).
If you want to appease the free speech crowd, you let the anti-vaxers stay (Gratz, you're running a Chan!) If you want to appease the intelligent discourse crowd, you ban/moderate people who violate your TOS (Gratz, you're running something closer to Hacker News!)
And if you can´t see why the above applies, maybe you ought not to use the word "straightforward" anymore because you are clearly not qualified to do so.
Then you have a discussion about whether that is right or wrong, instead of having a discussion about how recursively meta you can go with "intolerance of intolerance of intolerance of intolerance of intolerance of ...".
Call it the "no recursion" rule.
Case in point:
The baker who refuses to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple is intolerant of gays. That is unjustified and wrong.
The gay couple who sues the baker who refuses to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple is intolerant of intolerance. That is justified and right.
The baker is unjustified and wrong to complain about the gay couple's intolerance of his intolerance, because he was unjustifiably intolerant himself, first.
Ok, let me be facetious. Take the baker situation and push it to full overdrive.
Let's say the baker was a victim of sexual abuse and the client was asking to bake a cake rape-themed. (Not in support, you can suppose it was a replica for a documentary let's say). The baker refuses, the client sues, who is the first intolerant?
Another case, a client enter the shop of a muslim baker and asks for a depiction of Allah on a cake. Who is the first intolerant?
Maybe you have answer for all such situations, but how confident are you that a majority agrees in all cases?
I think both these cases are fundamentally different -- the baker can refuse to bake a certain type of cake, on the grounds of religious expression clashing with the cake he is making. However, it's different if he refuses service on the grounds of the type of people he is making the cake for.
and in the actual case the baker refused to write a message on the cake. he was fine with the clients and with the cake.
He only objected to a custom message defying his belief. There are good arguments on both sides. (my stance is sort of about scale as in if he had enough employees to delegate or he was the only cake-maker there)
So nobody can exclude anyone else from anything? That would mean any organization is not free to stipulate who can and cannot be a member of that organization. Is the American Medical Society intolerant for excluding someone who does not believe in vaccines?
Because I'm certain a sizeable proportion of the US population would agree that it is intolerant.
It doesn't matter.
Religious freedom doesn't come before the civil rights of gay people. Gay marriage is the law of the land in the US; if your business can't service the needs of its citizens because of your religious beliefs, perhaps you shouldn't be in a position to be serving the public. It's really that simple.
It's literally the first right in the Bill of Rights. I'm not saying anything about gay rights, just that freedom of expression lays the foundation for all other rights
That's not a particularly good example. When you enter into commerce you step out of the personal space freedom of thought. And you do so in ways that may seem arbitrary. That arbitrariness is accepted as the price of entry. At least by most people with realistic expectations.
The baker case is very very specific, because it came down to the question: Is the cake art? If it is, and your business is to make are, can you be compelled to make art against your beliefs? If I recall, the bake got rid of all custom cakes and got in further trouble for refusing to tell cupcakes to homosexual couples.
But going back to the above post: at one time homosexuality was considered this abhorred plague, just has bad as modern day Neo-Nazism and white supremacy. So who decides what is and isn't acceptable speech?
When you start closing down those roads, you easily squeeze out any descent or ability to form new moral ideas.
In the case of 8chan, you're spreading these people to even more constrained services that amplify their view. You don't get less hate; you just bury it underground and give them they feeling like they're being persecuted. It will make the situation worse, not better.
Your last point seems spot on. The only way to get rid of nazis is to change their minds so they are no longer nazis. It should have been easy to show him that skin color doesn't determine culture or politics and that his actions were going to do nothing but drastically weaken his cause.
"You don't get less hate; you just bury it underground and give them they feeling like they're being persecuted. It will make the situation worse, not better."
I think the recent rise in white supremacist violence fueled by viral media on mainstream platforms like Youtube and Twitter is a pretty strong argument against this belief. Any content on such large and familiar platforms gets to borrow some sense of legitimacy, and people who consume the content have some plausible deniability. Furthermore, algorithms that favor "engagement" create the exact constrained hate-filled extremist communities you are picturing... but then actively draw users into them from the rest of the platform!
> 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?
The whole point of that position is to prevent exactly that society. Where the hate, fear, discomfort, prejudice based intolerance grows to cause a society to degenerate into a sizeable proportion of a population deciding another proportion is morally wrong for preferring their own gender.
The goal of preventing that dysfunction supersedes word games about one type of intolerance being speciously equated to another.
Popper didn't exactly write a massive book on this. It was just a footnote in which he coined a memorable name for it.
> Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
Popper argued here that we should try rational debate, but reserve the right to use force when debate has become impossible (due to intolerant people using force themselves, refusing to engage in reasonable debates, etc).
The issue isn't tolerance IMO, but the self selective societies that online forums can create.
I would also argue that asking for some minimum level of education/sophistication like the parent poster might qualify as the type of Platonic elitism which Popper was very much opposed to (The Open Society and its Enemies).
But then again defining what qualifies as tolerance also has the potential problem Platonic elitism (i.e. who sets the criteria).
It's a pretty tough job to balance freedom of speech and prevent hatebreeding at the same time. There are many philosophical approaches but I'd say that I haven't found one that satisfies me. Currently I'm leaning towards allowing everything in the hope that rationality will win out.
At the end of the day I think it's simply a very tough topic with no clear cut answer.
Very true. He also said that suppression of intolerant ideology is unwise as long as public opinion counters it. 8chan isn't really the center of public opinion.
There were third parties that pointed their fingers to those losers on these boards and now some people lashed out. I don't want to blame anyone besides the murder, but that is the game that is being played.
Being opposed to nazisim wasn't exactly rocket science some years ago, so I don't really can get behind comments pointing to the need for education and that the lack of the latter is reason enough to curb speech.
On one hand to reject it, you would be intolerant of hundreds of years of tradition.
On the other hand, to permit it is to accept the idea that men are incapable of controlling not sexually assualting a woman and that women ought to be blamed for their own victimization. This is clearly intolerant of women being full members of society.
Either way, permitting or banning the burka is intolerant.
Then you arrive at that whole legal concept of reasonable discrimination, because property laws discriminate against thieves. But what is reasonable here?
I'm fond of the idea of only tolerating tolerance, but how do you deal with these edge cases? If you rigidly adhere to that tolerance-uber-allis belief, how long until you end up jailing people for following ancient but intolerant traditions? How long until you end up with Chinese style muslim re-education camps? This isn't a troll, this is actually one of my own philosophical conundrums. I believe in a vacuum that people would be happier not following those ancient intolerant schemas, but I don't see that as the situation in the present day.
> If the woman want to wear Burka, it should be within their rights.
What if there are robbers targeting fuel stations and 7-11 stores or mugging people on the street, using burka's and the entire black garment to cover their intent on approach and foil any video surveillance?
How many such incidents would it take before you would consider that Burka's ought to be banned in public spaces? Let's up the stakes and say the robberies were violent; how many people would have to die before you banned burkhas?
Are we talking hypothetically? Because as of right now I cannot find any stats on burqa attacks in the states but people are robbing 7-11 stores every day without burqa anyways.
Netherlands just banned the Burkha in public spaces for this reason (among others).
In Australia bike helmets are banned in 7-11, Fuel stations, Banks, Pubs, Casino's, Festivals etc for the same reason.
The point I am making is that you can't ignore the possibility of bad actors now or in the future. There are layers of cultural differences and social mores and in a multicultural society you can't just import one aspect of a culture without considering the foundations and layers on top.
You can’t ban people’s right to be in public anonymously because a few crazies will use it to commit crimes. The solution of banning those measures is nearly equivalent to saying “all humans should be under 24/7 surveillance in public by the state for their own good”
In the context of American culture it seems like a significant fraction of citizens wish to own and bear arms. That desire which exists within those citizens has deep cultural and historical roots.
But export that same cultural desire via a migrant American residing in almost any other country in the world and it would seem out of place in the context of the local culture. People would be weird out by the creepy American who insists on keeping guns in his or her house.
Same goes for the Burkha. Take it out of context of it's deep historical and cultural context in it's birthplace and it is an anachronism; like taking Mt Fuji and placing in the middle of Saudi Arabia.
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.
I have a simplistic test when it comes to hate. I take the part of the message that identity the target and I change it to the opposite side of the political spectrum. If the comment/speech still sound like hate then it is hate. Thus my definition for intolerance is intolerance when it is independent of the reader/authors opinion about the target.
A lot of people disprove of this approach, arguing that by doing so we ignore the oppressed or helping the oppressors, and thus we end up with different view about intolerance.
societies should tolerate everything except intolerance
That is a nice ideal to strive for, but the problem is that one person’s idea of tolerance is another’s intolerance. Example: people in the Valley love to think of themselves as “tolerant”. But most outside the Valley view actions like those taken against Brendan Eich of Firefox and the firing of James Damore of Google as examples of extreme intolerance. Defenders of these actions would argue that they are defending tolerance, because the Valley viewed these people as being intolerant. Defenders of the individuals involved here would argue that these actions show the Valley is extraordinarily intolerant of any view that even slightly differs from their own.
It’s a thorny issue. I absolutely detest 8chan and most of the speech on it. Most normal people would. But I also recognize their right to exist, at least in a country that holds the concept of freedom of speech in such high regard.
> It was used to justify, depending on the period and country, not allowing people to vote on the basis that they didn't have enough revenue, didn't own enough land, couldn't read and write well enough, etc.
Democracy was basically conceived of as a pen-and-paper version of blockchain, where the goal was to create a balance between private property rights and the redistribution of wealth. Allowing people without proof-of-stake to vote wouldn't have made any sense in the beginning given that no one had any idea how the system would work. Keep in mind that the government was basically distributing free property to people as fast as possible so that more people could vote, and only stopped doing that once the country ran out of land.
Even today, most people wouldn't want to live in a system where millions of people could just show up for vacation for a couple days, vote to give themselves ownership of all the country's assets, and then leave.
>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.
I agree with most of your post, but on this particular point...
"First they came for the imageboards, and I did not speak out because I did not post on imageboards. Then they came for my facebooks, and zomg how did this happen?"
8chan is just an anonymous imageboard, similar to thousands of others online currently. It happens to have the characteristic of allowing creation of new imageboards in a similar way to Reddit allowing anyone to create subreddits. This characteristic has made it one of the most popular imageboards.
Much like the solution for Reddit was to shut down individual subreddits and ban particular posters, and the solution for Facebook was to close down individual groups and ban particular accounts, the solution for 8chan is to shut down individual boards and ban particular posters.
>Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut in a you know it when you see it kind of way.
This breaks down quickly when faced with a current example: Some folks oppose immigration of people that follow religions which espouse intolerance. Via your measure, this is justified. But many I think disagree with that stance, so how can this be resolved?
Clearcut is something that is easily / sharply defined. If you only know something when you see it then that thing is by its very nature not easily defined / loosely defined. These are opposite things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
That is not protected speech. The 'attack' is the keyword. Therefore, supremacist groups typically say "<oarabbus_'s ethnicity> is destroying <oarabbus_'s country of residence>" which is legal. They're just connecting the dots the only way they know how.
Yes, it is. The nuance he was intentionally illustrating is the basis of our entire law. The one key exception to freedom of speech is speech that will, with high certainty, provoke "imminent lawless action."
And this is something that is interpreted in the most literal and conservative fashion possible. In his former statement he has a specific target, time, and location. It is extremely likely that his behavior will result in imminent unlawful action. By contrast condemning a large group lacks any specificity and is, in and of itself, not likely to suddenly drive any specific unlawful action.
Issues similar to this have been brought up in the courts many times, and they almost invariably (sexual obscenity is one exception) yield lopsided results in favor of the 'offender.' One random recent case is Elonis vs the United States [1]. Elonis made statements online suggesting a desire to kill his estranged wife, later on kindergarten children, and then after that an FBI agent that had visited him in relation to the threat against children.
He claimed it was art and he was only expressing himself and not attempting to threaten or intimidate the individuals/groups in question, even though he was aware they would likely interpret it as threats. This is really a million times more threatening that some vague expression against an ethnicity. The supreme court ruled 8-1 in his favor. The US Supreme Court is extremely supportive of free speech, including the most detestable.
As an aside the links on the scotusblog are extremely high quality and provide lots of plain language analysis of the technical points. A phenomenal resource for any case or issue you're ever interested in learning about the legal nuances behind. For instance this [2] is their coverage of the 'gay cake' case.
> He claimed it was art and he was only expressing himself and not attempting to threaten or intimidate the individuals/groups in question, even though he was aware they would likely interpret it as threats. This is really a million times more threatening that some vague expression against an ethnicity. The supreme court ruled 8-1 in his favor. The US Supreme Court is extremely supportive of free speech, including the most detestable.
In this context it was not indeed a standalone statement.
from the wikipedia page indeed his statements are quite general and in a sense artistic. He did not argue for killing his ex-wife, there is no reading where he could encourage others to kill his ex-wife.
He really had a wish for it and was talking about it.
From what is reported in the wikipedia article even something like "I think it is a good idea to kill my ex-wife" would have been too much.
the "Let's" part is literally an encouragement. Surely it can be made legal (e.g. by obvious irony). In a case like Elonis v. United States the defense was that the statements where more of "I have a wish to kill X" instead of "I/you/we/they should kill X".
“Let’s attack” is generally the indicator here, and where we draw the line both morally and functionally. For example - there’s been very few partisan attacks on democrats despite the absolutely virulent “they’re destroying the country” speech from every conservative news sphere (and vice versa). Pundits have learned to walk that line because that has been the line that actual violence starts. 8chan has no filter or moderation on that. We see the results.
"The Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is 'directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.'"
Steve Scalise's assassination was attempted by a radical anti-Trumper, Antifa has cracked open skills and sent people to the hospital. We have strong evidence that anti-Trump Facebook groups and subreddits cause real-world violence.
The exception in this standard is for "likely" and "imminent" violence. There are also exceptions for the commission of a crime, but then the crime has to be committed, and thus the intent.
Episode 8 of the "Make No Law" First Amendment podcast has an excellent explanation of the difference between the two. That episode is a Q&A and covers other great topics as well. The entire podcast is excellent if you want a good, baseline understand on the exceptions to US first amendment law and why/how they are so narrowly defined.
Exactly. Its very hard to claim that one is just putting stuff out on "the marketplace of ideas", when in reality, losing ground to an ideology that places people who have non-majority skin color, sexuality or religious views (or lack thereof) below the majority is simply dangerous to any minority, and should not be allowed to fester. This is not just about ideas, its about refusing others the full rights of personhood. And that should not stand in any ethical society.
> Personally I'm in agreement with Popper's view that societies should tolerate everything except intolerance.
This is incorrect. Popper does not say intolerance should not be permitted, he said that we should not extend unlimited tolerance, and he expands by saying that only intolerance that cannot be countered by rational debate should be impermissible. Clearly escalation to violence is a form of intolerance that cannot be countered by rational debate but it's not clear at all what else should fall under this criteria.
This is clearly a very different claim that does not support your narrative, and instead, shows how your view is just another form of intolerance that we should oppose.
I’m not familiar with Popper’s work, but I see that quote (“tolerate everything but intolerance”) used to rationalize intolerance toward perfectly tolerant individuals. Any evidence that the target is “intolerant” suffices, no matter how tenuous or contrived (“an intolerant person once said a good thing about <target> therefore <target> is intolerant). This seems similar to the concern you expressed about the GP’s philosophy. Did Popper lay out more stringent criteria for what constitutes “tolerance” and “intolerance”?
> societies should tolerate everything except intolerance
I disagree.
Societies are held together by common moral standards. Intolerance of anti-social/moral behaviour (compared to the accepted standard) should be accepted, even encouraged.
One of the reasons the US is falling apart at the seams is because of the 'as long as I want to do it, I should be allowed to" attitude. People don't care what others think.
An extreme (of sorts) is Japanese society... if you are out of line expect that you will hear about it immediately from many people and the negative consequences of bad behaviour can be very broad and long lasting.
That sort of intolerant social pressure also led to a famously high suicide rate and a culture of workaholism that led to a word for “death by working too much”
Antisocial behaviours included women going to work and homosexuality in the past btw
I'm not advocating Japan's strict societal ideology, just pointing out that Western society's "intolerance is bad" (i.e. therefore I can give "zero fucks" about my bad behaviour) is also a problem.
Why should people tolerate things which they don't think it's in their interest to tolerate? If, for example, people believe it's harmful to their children to see people performing sexual acts in the street, why should they tolerate that behavior?
Are you aware of anyone in this thread, or of any major national movement, advocating for a tolerance-based right to perform sexual acts in public in front of children? Looking past the strange and extreme strawman you've propped up, the reasons for tolerance in society are multitudinous. It prevents misunderstanding, fear, and hatred from festering and potentially giving rise to violence.
As a simple thought experiment ask yourself the following question. How many individuals hailing from tolerant communities or organizations have you seen commit mass shootings? Contrast that to the number of individuals committing public violence who hold intolerance as a virtue. Public violence is a serious negative for everyone and its prevention should be reason enough to support tolerance as a basic tenet of societal health. The fact of the matter, no matter who might dislike it, is that modern societies are, for the most part, very diverse. Without tolerance for differences violence is a forgone conclusion in the modern world.
>Without tolerance for differences violence is a forgone conclusion in the modern world.
What makes you think that violence is not a foregone conclusion if you start prohibiting people from expressing their genuinely held political beliefs or advocating for what they see as their interests?
I encourage you to look twice at your question - I believe that, under close scrutiny, you will see that it contains its own answer.
No one is advocating for prohibiting people from peacefully expressing their genuinely-held political beliefs in ways that do not infringe on the rights of others in public (unless you want to count the multitudes of minority voters who are regularly removed from voting rolls by GOP lawmakers or subjected to onerous identification requirements and other intimidation tactics...). If a person's "genuinely-held political beliefs" involve racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., and if said person "genuinely believes" that the appropriate way to exert their opinion upon society is to discriminate against the people they hate or even inflict violence upon them, then they are crossing a line established by our societal norms and threatening the stability of society itself.
If a person's genuinely held political beliefs lead them to enact discrimination or violence upon others then they have placed themselves outside of society and are by definition not valid input sources for determining societal norms and laws.
>No one is advocating for prohibiting people from peacefully expressing their genuinely-held political beliefs in ways that do not infringe on the rights of others in public
OK, but some people are arguing for an expansion of some of those "rights of others" to include not being offended by political speech.
>If a person's "genuinely-held political beliefs" involve racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., and if said person "genuinely believes" that the appropriate way to exert their opinion upon society is to discriminate against the people they hate or even inflict violence upon them
I'm not talking about anyone actually discriminating against anyone or inflicting violence on them. I'm talking about people merely expressing their beliefs, which may include advocating for discrimination or the use of physical force.
>If a person's genuinely held political beliefs lead them to enact discrimination or violence upon others then they have placed themselves outside of society
Right, if they've broken the laws against such behavior, they've placed themselves outside of society. However, advocating for, for example, changing laws to allow such behavior is not currently against the law, and I don't think it should be.
Tolerance isn't the absence of rules, tolerance is leaving some space between what is undesirable and what is forbidden.
Which is why I don't understand why people think you can't be tolerant towards intolerance. There's plenty of room between what I think counts as intolerance and what I think should be forbidden by law.
Popper's quote is often quite misconstrued. Here it is, in context:
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
He is specifically framing the issue as one where an ideology goes outside of the realm of debate and on to violence. So for instance an ideology that says 'attack migrants' is obviously something that should be suppressed because these people have skipped the whole debate step and instead appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner. But, by contrast, an ideology that argues for reasons why unchecked migration may be unhealthy for a society and lobbies for according change is something some may consider intolerant, but is quite obviously not what he was referring to. On the other hand, he would certainly have been opposed to Antifa which, though ostensibly fighting against intolerance, have once again appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner and have 0 interest in debate or discussion or their views.
> On the other hand, he would certainly have been opposed to Antifa which, though ostensibly fighting against intolerance, have once again appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner and have 0 interest in debate or discussion or their views.
With all due respect, "Antifa" in their use of the word is almost completely a straw man created by the extreme right to justify their insane and violent behavior. A couple people throwing milkshakes at intolerant political extremists in Portland doesn't equivocate to me with a group of people that are using stochastic terrorism tactics to murder hundreds of people. I sincerely doubt he would have made a both sides argument here with a weak resistance movement that hasn't even killed a single person yet. They're so nonviolent in comparison that the alt right has to create false information about their tactics (for example the "fast drying concrete in the milkshakes" lie that was completely false).
> They're so nonviolent in comparison that the alt right has to create false information about their tactics (for example the "fast drying concrete in the milkshakes" lie that was completely false).
Literally it was a police officer who saw and reported "what looked like" quick drying concrete.
> lie that was completely false
There were people associated with antifa publicizing this.
> I sincerely doubt he would have made a both sides argument here with a weak resistance movement that hasn't even killed a single person yet.
There is no "both side" there is violent extremists, whether they agree or not between themselves is irrelevant.
> hasn't even killed a single person yet.
Is this seriously the threshold for political violence and abandoning political rationality? (And anyway after Tacoma it is not for a lack of trying).
Right now what I see is one side being allowed with mainstream opinion of defending political violence. Antifa is performing political violence. Throwing a milkshake is not self-defense, it is political violence. Alt-right extremism is also political violence. I only see despicable people in both groups. I see no reasons why one side faults should excuse the other.
By equating "milkshake throwing" with the violence of the alt-right (using guns to murder tens/hundreds of innocent civilians) you portray both sides as equal when one side has clearly done something that is much more morally reprehensible.
This form of "enlightened centrism" is insidious because while it claims to be "neutral" and "unbiased", in reality, it artificially gives a moral advantage to one side (in this case the alt-right). It also ignores that sometimes sacrifices are necessary for the greater good.
Do you disagree with either of the following two points?
1. Even if milkshake throwing is bad, it is objectively less bad than shooting innocent civilians.
2. The "political violence" committed by the left is much smaller compared to the political violence committed by the right.
Are you unaware that of the two mass shootings that occurred in the US yesterday, one of them was perpetrated by a self-described 'leftist, anime fan, and metalhead' that supported Antifa?
I literally see no reason to compare them. Not one.
To answer: 1. true 2. agree.
So What?
The only thing you are doing is painting a romantic ideal of antifa as freedom fighters, robin hoods of the people. Stop. They answer violence with violence.
For me, the crux of the matter is that people use Antifa to claim that both the left and the right engage in equal amounts of violence or that both are equally morally bad/good.
I was pointing out that this isn't the case since Antifa uses several orders of magnitude less violence than its right-wing counterparts. Thus, antifa cannot be used to justify the statement that "the left and right are morally equivalent".
I never painted antifa in a romantic light, my point about sacrifices being made for the greater good was in reference to policies that help minorities at the cost of harming the majority.
> For me, the crux of the matter is that people use Antifa to claim that both the left and the right engage in equal amounts of violence or that both are equally morally bad/good.
For me that's simply irrelevant, because how "bad" your enemy is doesn't give you any additional leeway. You can use violence to directly prevent greater violence, for example in self-defense. Throwing milk-shakes at someone achieves nothing. Even when a murderer is arrested, the cops don't get to spit at them while they wait for trial. It doesn't matter in the least how bad a person is. It's a red herring from the word go, due process and same rights for all is a very clear standard, and normalizing violating it because "others are worse", leaves us with nothing.
How conveniently you forget how Steve Scalise was shot, how Bike Lock Man cracked open an old man's skull(and got away with probation), and many other things. The neonazis have done shootings, but the far left attempted to assassinate a senator. Both are pretty bad.
There is also the danger that if you keep equating Antifa with the right wing extremists shooting people you create a space on the ultra left for people who would do those things and I’m sure in any large movement those people are there.
It’s not like left wing groups haven’t done horrible things in decades past.
That said at the moment in the US it’s pretty clear that the body count (literal) is piling up on the right wing side.
Honestly if people could just stop shooting people for stupid reasons it would be awesome.
As an external observer it seems like the US is slowly sliding towards a worse state of affairs, the government seems unable to get it in hand, dangerous times.
Not much better over in the UK either, we have the ever present threat of the islamists, the border question in Northern Ireland hanging over everyone’s heads (I’m just old enough to to remember the IRA blowing up town centres on the mainland) and a group of people who are seriously pissed off brexit hasn’t happened yet, We already had a lovely MP shot to death by a right wing nut bag and there is a really ugly mood, people are really pissed off with the present state of affairs and another recession caused by economic fallout of brexit could light the touch paper.
I think there is a significant (though small) chance we’ll see troops on the streets peacekeeping over the next two years.
Side note:
I find the dismissal of the milkshakes to be a very disingenuous tactic.
From a group that promotes the idea that speech can be violence, the act of throwing any sort of projectile at anyone should be classified as a violent act without qualification.
You could argue that those milkshakes are also a form of stochastic terrorism as it demonstrates that those politicians are vulnerable. So those with the desire can reach them with something other than a milkshake.
I don't want to hear about how milkshakes aren't violence.
I want to hear why that violence is acceptable. Because, deep down, according to your actions, you think that sometimes violence is necessary.
He got shot, but not killed, so you are technically correct in stating that he is alive. I guess you totally defeated the parent commenter's point, good thing the shooters didn't have good aim, right?
I take the OP's original point to be that far-right ideological extremists have targeted, injured, and killed orders of magnitude more people than far-left ideological extremists during the last few years, which seems to me to be incontrovertible without resort to sophistry. Also, given that the larger context of this discussion is terrorist attacks rather than political confrontations that turned violent, it's relevant to ask "how many random bystanders have been killed when self-identified white supremacists opened fire on crowds vs. bystanders killed when self-identified 'antifa' have done so."
There's an interesting parallel here by Nassim Taleb, author of several books the most famous of which might be The Black Swan. In this article, a chapter from an in-progress book, he contends that the most intolerant faction will eventually come to dominate. In the article he's talking about extremist Muslims but it could just as easily be extremist Christians or extremist white nationalists.
Superficially, it does sound quite reasonable. The problem is that the quote itself is a call for people to abandon rational debate and use violence, not just against targets who have themselves eschewed debate for violence but against "any movement preaching intolerance". Whilst his justification is that those movements might themselves eschew debate for violence, he very specifically does not restrict this to movements which have done so or even threatened to do so.
So for instance, Poppler's paradox is easily used to justify violent intolerance of anyone who opposes unchecked immigration. Not only are they preaching intolerance, but people with very similar-sounding views are actually violently attacking immigrants so it's easy to justify the claim that those ones might as well.
The reason I offered Popper's entire quote is because while I do think many people use it as are you suggesting, his quote makes it quite clear that is not what he is suggesting. He is speaking of an intolerant view as one that is intolerant of alternative views. In other words a view that:
- refuses to debate or discuss its merits and values
- refuses to meaningfully consider or discuss alternatives
- responds to discussion with aggression
The book which includes his quote was published in 1945, Popper was of Jewish ancestry, and the book was speaking primarily about avoiding totalitarianism. His philosophy should be taken in that context. People are manipulating his quote to try to justify intolerance of anything except their own world view, but it is this exact sort of totalitarianism he was suggesting that may imperil an open and free society. In particular he also defined an open society as one "in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions" as opposed to a "magical or tribal or collectivist society."
Intolerance trends towards a closed society where you believe what you are supposed to believe, or face the consequences. Tolerance trends towards an open society where individuals may not agree, but are free to express themselves and challenge one another on any view or value.
> "I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument"
But I understand your point. To that end, attacking illegal immigrants would be "intolerant". But what about advocating their arrest and deportation?
Then it turns into a game (game theory, not Risk) of whom defines "intolerance". And once duly defined, it is now verboten and removed from discussion and vernacular.
Hot button topics: capitalism, abortion, religion, right vs left, states rights
I think the founders had it better: govt can't censor speech, so the individuals and the public could decide. Just, the framers didn't imagine companies of such scope.
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?
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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.
> 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.
One big difference is that generally video games don't claim that mexicans are trying in invade USA right now. They are violent, but they are not trying to convince you to take gun and kill real people. Unlike members of community we talk about right now, that have that political Goal and executed that political goal.
It is difference between Der Stürmer and Sherlock Holmes crime story. One of them claims to contain real stories. One of them is going out of its way to convince people to be violent while the other is going out of its way to be fun.
> There's a reason that most people, including racists/bigots/etc. don't go on shooting sprees or run people over with cars.
Yes. Most racists/bigots believe in own superiority, but do not actually believe Latinos are mortal threat that requires immediate action. You may believe they are dumber without perceiving them as acute threat or being so afraid.
That has to do with them not living exclusively in extremist bubble, but instead consuming different media.
And even those who do are in fact afraid to throw away their lives completely just like that.
Free speech isn't currently threatened here; providers are just exercising their freedom of association.
I also think waiting for "academic consensus" to act is not the neutral position it seems. Skepticism in the face of a pressing concern is not neutral, but instead acts to support the status quo. [1]
If we don't do something, more people will die. Possibly a lot more people. Academics have documented the dramatic rise in online radicalization. [2] Violent radicals themselves have described how online fora have pushed them towards extremism. So if you're going to argue a wait-and-see approach, I think you have to justify the bodies that will stack up in the meantime.
It's entirely meaningful. These people can still post whatever terrible garbage they want on their own privately hosted sites. The government is not intervening; neither is any other powerful group. It's just that some people don't want to host 8chan anymore given its body count.
Not employing people of a certain race is also freedom of association. But since freedom from racial discrimination is something we also value, sometimes that wins.
There are other ways to deal with this than censorship. Why are there not FBI agents in /pol/ on 8chan actively chasing up leads on people who are threatening violence? It seems actually useful that these people are willing to make these kind of plans in the public eye. Force them underground and behind encryption and it will be harder to monitor.
Does anyone know how law enforcement engages with places like 8chan?
Instead of curtailing free speech and pushing for censorship (which will have anti-humanitarian effects soon enough), why not enforce the laws already on the books and investigate people who threaten violence online?
Maybe there will be less monitoring. But with a lack of easily available places to congregate, the assholes will find it much more difficult to recruit, organize, and build their organization. This stagnates or reduces their membership numbers.
Also, it sends a great signal to anyone who might think of joining: that this ideology is so terrible that it's being chased off of the internet. That even the hands-off companies like Reddit and Cloudflare are rejecting it.
Sure, there will be a few who are attracted to it because it is so reviled, but many more will be repulsed. There's a reason why the hate groups did everything they could to be more appealing to the mainstream. Being forced back into the underground essentially means defeat.
As far as monitoring goes, I don't think it will make much of an impact. These are not difficult groups to infiltrate. Generally speaking, they're not the best and the brightest. Their opsec is poor. Activist groups have infiltrated many of them and have posted the discord transcripts. I'm sure the FBI, and other organizations, have gone even further than that.
The idea isn't to curtail people's freedom to assembly. It's to stop mass shootings. As much as you dislike it, people are free to organize and discuss whatever they want. They just aren't allowed to commit violence.
I think you misunderstood what I wrote. I was describing how de-platforming by private companies would weaken them while not making them substantially harder to monitor.
Of course, they still have their constitutional rights of speech and assembly. But without the signal boost provided by private companies, they'll be in a far weaker position.
>Sure, there will be a few who are attracted to it because it is so reviled, but many more will be repulsed. There's a reason why the hate groups did everything they could to be more appealing to the mainstream. Being forced back into the underground essentially means defeat.
This is correct, it's the very essence of the southern strategy. As Lee Atwater once said (censorship mine, dunno HN's policy about this type of language) [0]:
>You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-----, n-----, n-----." By 1968 you can't say "n-----" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-----, n-----."
If you join a forum and start saying "N-----, n-----, n-----", you'll probably get banned right away. But if you're talking about crime statistics and totally true stories that totally happened to you which just so happen to feature minorities as the antagonists, your dogwhistling might be allowed, and that can serve as a valuable recruiting tactic as people who don't realize it's a dogwhistle read "sources" you provide and fall down a racist rabbit hole. (Even if someone doesn't buy into these ideas right away, planting that seed can bear fruit someday - maybe they've been unsuccessful getting a job for awhile and are really frustrated, then they remember the links they were sent long ago, and suddenly it doesn't seem so unreasonable...)
>Why are there not FBI agents in /pol/ on 8chan actively chasing up leads on people who are threatening violence?
They might be, or they might not be. They tend to keep their mouths shut during active investigations, if people found out the FBI was actively subpoenaing the site they might be inclined to stop giving them more evidence. (That is, the FBI could have developed a public-private honeypot partnership for all we know.)
And many times people aren't espousing direct, actionable threats. Talking about "international bankers" and "globalists" is protected speech, saying they control the world is protected speech, and saying something needs to be done about this is also protected speech - as long as they don't get specific (i.e. "we should fight back, let's meet up at <place> on <date/time>"), they can't do much about it. So you have people constantly agreeing about how "Zionists" are a threat to "the west" and that "something" needs to happen, egging on each others hate with various hoaxes, reactionary takes and praising Hitler, and finally someone snaps. Despite these people clearly being partially responsible for encouraging one of their members to violence, none of them will get in trouble because they never gave direct threats or incitements.
> Despite these people clearly being partially responsible for encouraging one of their members to violence, none of them will get in trouble because they never gave direct threats or incitements.
That's legal for very important reasons. People have a right to freedom of speech and the right to assembly. They don't have a right to commit murder. There's a huge leap from complaining about something to committing violence in real life. The latter is rightfully illegal and the former is rightfully legal (in the United States).
Back in the 90's I think ours was the popular opinion. It's gross to see it fade so fast.
I get companies taking a stand for who they accept as a customer. It makes me feel really icky when I see suggestions that the first amendment get even more asterisks next to it.
No, genocide happened because people believed that another group would do terrible things if given the opportunity. Not freedom, but the belief that others will misuse their freedom.
Hitler believed Jews were a cancer[1] to Germany and had to be stopped.
[1] AFAIK Hitler had a very living image of Germany as a singular ideological organical being and truly though of those he tried to eliminate as a dangerous infection.
Ahh, yes. US is the spitting image of a country ravaged by WW1, with its government in shambles and crushing reparations. The similarities just impossible to ignore.
I agree. It is dangerous, but I also happen to think that attempting add asterisks to individual freedom runs counter to the spirit of this country. More than that, I believe that few dead bodies matter less than individual freedoms, as sad as those deaths are. We come at this argument from different perspectives.
Several of these extremist sites even forbid and censor attempts at calm, level-headed rebuttals to such hatred. They exist solely to propagate bigotry.
The dog and pony show from Google and Cloudflare of only stepping in after multiple mass shootings and tons of press coverage tells you all you really need to know about these companies' ethics. They react to sufficiently bad PR, not out of any set of principles, be they either freedom of speech (keeping these sites online) or reducing harm (deplatforming.)
Yes, it proves that they believe in ethical behavior and recognize that "deplatforming" is very dangerous because you never know when your message will fall out of favor. Only when it provably causes violence should action be taken against speech.
>Several of these extremist sites even forbid and censor attempts at calm, level-headed rebuttals to such hatred
I'm gonna need something citations on being "forbid" or "censor' when posting on these sites. Plenty of people get rebuttaled and turn opinion in threads all the time.
That's not fair. It's a fan subreddit, you need to be a supporter. You can go to /r/askThe_Donald if you want to have a debate.
As a conservative if I go to /r/politics, I'll get my head chewed off with talking points and downvoted to oblivion if I try to debate anything, noone wants to listen. /r/askThe_Donald is a great place to have debates though, I wonder if there's an equivalent sub to ask liberals questions.
>It's a fan subreddit, you need to be a supporter.
A fan subreddit might be ok, a subreddit that actively perpetuates violence and extremely large amounts of lies/false information is not ok. It would be ok if The_Donald was just a forum where people hyped up Donald Trump, but a lot of people post large amounts of false information that all the viewers soak up. I think that's really toxic.
"head chewed off with talking points" doesn't sound particularly bad (it even sounds like a form of debate!), certainly better than being banned for life in The_Donald.
T_D does not perpetuate violence. Post proof for such a serious claim. There's misinformation on both sides.
Yelling != debating. You can't have a serious debate if the other side isn't listening. Some subs ban conservatives, others just let their subscribers attack them.
Go pretend to be a conservative on Reddit and see how you're treated, it might give you perspective.
Id challenge that statement on whether its truthful or not, but we are talking about 8chan and 4chan here and they dont have the same level of reporting that would you get you removed from a thread
People occasionally ask about this in Ask The Donald, which is basically T_D’s “meta”, and the response from T_D regulars and mods is always the same: T_D exists solely for circle jerking.
Because it doesn't have a 100% success rate doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered, otherwise we could use the same logic to dismiss basically any rule, law or regulation ever made.
Echo chambers are never a good thing, echo chambers built around hateful extremist ideologies are a lot worse. By forcing these people to get out of them some good can be achieved. Of course some of them will manage to regroup elsewhere but statistically a significant proportion will return to a more healthy lifestyle.
That report only says that Reddit banned some subreddits and so mitigated some speech, on reddit.com.
But Reddit is not the entire internet, and that ban perhaps directly fed into 8chan's rise. People do not disappear because a forum went offline, and tools to communicate are only getting better, faster and more resilient.
When users have to migrate, plenty don't bother to. Not every extremist visits sites specifically for extremist content. Many people pick up extremist ideas just because they're popular where they were already browsing, and the reverse can be true. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-ba... and https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/alex-jones-inf... have examples of various media personalities (Milo, Alex Jones) that became much less popular once they were de-platformed from their main point of presence. Their fans and popularity could have followed them ... but mostly didn't.
Isn't that again just focusing on singular points instead of the whole picture? Who is popular now that Milo and Alex are less so? Has that been measured?
It seems highly dubious that all that attention completely disappeared instead of following other channels, which may be even more extreme. I can't find any study of this.
There's 0 negativity in this post and literally describes how a majority of 8chan's Pol board got a wave of user's same when people were getting banned on 4chan's /pol/ they just got routed to a different site.
These individuals dont disappear and it really doesnt take long to route to a new site. Fixing the udnerlying problem is a better idea than covering it with a band aid
It solves one thing though. It protects the business with the platform from getting their brand tarnished by whoever they kicked off. That alone is enough reason to allow a private business to kick somebody off their platform.
Surely you'd have an issue if the government showed up at a businesses office with guns and forced the owner (at gunpoint!) to allow a nazi hate site to continue to exist on their platform, eh? Cause that is what you are arguing for.
> Surely you'd have an issue if the government showed up at a businesses office with guns and forced the owner (at gunpoint!) to allow a nazi hate site to continue to exist on their platform.
Not the point, but even still what people are arguing against is mobs of internet users pressuring companies into political decisions.
Literally (as in figuratively) the people asking for banning the site are the one holding the owner at gunpoint asking for the termination of a business relationship.
Nobody is arguing that. The companies have a right to do what they want. We’re saying it will solve nothing.
The PR benefits you're claiming only exist because it placates the very same people that make such an outrage and call for corporate action in the first place.
There's evidence that deplatformining decreases extremists' reach and may curtail recruitment opportunities. It is an active area of research, but there is nothing to justify the position that "deplatforming rarely solves anything".
If we were to go the other direction, we can see how having a greater platform would be worse. E.g. if there were a blatantly neo-Nazi cable TV channel in everyone's home, we would expect many more people to end up watching neo-Nazi content and some of them to become radicalized. Propaganda requires a platform to be effective. It is thus not exactly surprising that you can make propaganda less effective by eliminating the reach of the platform.
If racists like those on 8chan can be pushed into the deepest corners of the dark web, where you have to use Tor to get to them or whatever, that's a win. Lots of people aren't going to bother, and thus will never run across them, and never have the opportunity to be radicalized by their propaganda/content.
My underlying point is that there is no singular "platform".
Technology is not standing still. Tor isn't necessary. We're seeing the rise of distributed, federated, encrypted, and anonymous networks that take little more than an app install or website link. They are only getting more hardened against these mitigation techniques and the approach of "just shut it down" will soon become an infeasible solution.
I think 8ch is something you already had to actively seek out. I've never come across a link to 8ch in the wild. I've only seen it in discussions of fringe extremist communities on the internet.
My concern with big companies deplatforming political extremists that weren't in the public eye is that it almost validates their "they don't want us saying XYZ because it's true" points. Not that their political shit has any basis in reality, but when impressionable people see that they actually are being squeezed out of the internet, it leads many of them to conclude that their other points are valid.
Right now, loads of extremists are taking to Discord and other private chats to discuss their points and recruit people. Inside those tight-knit private groups, there's no possibility of a random passerby to stop in and offer a dissenting view. They see their discussions as the absolute reality of the world. Pushing them deeper into those groups feels far more dangerous to me.
It is certainly not censorship at all. Calling it censorship muddies the waters and plays right into the hands of the people who want to push hate speech.
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient".[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by a government,[5] private institutions, and corporations.
In this case as far as I can tell the server provider (not CF) was repulsed by the site content. I support that choice and the company ability to make it. Still it is censorship.
In fact, people were already talking about which sites to migrate to when 8ch was about to be shut down. It's very similar to the Southpark episode about Walmart. If you shut the platform down, another one will get big. It becomes a game of whack-a-mole and harder for the authorities to monitor. End users can migrate quickly., as there are no accounts and no authentication process.
All of that said, CF can choose to not do business with anyone, especially if that entity is causing legal grief for them and/or abusing the AUP [1] See section 2.7. Rather than censorship, I would call it PITA avoidance. I would not want to be the CDN for any of the chan sites.
>So the solution then, should be to socialize people in such a way that such views do get challenged.
Which is precisely the opposite of what these major corporate speech platforms are doing by creating filter bubbles and deplatforming wrong thinkers.
It's the same as sending small time/non violent criminals to prison to incubate with hardened violent criminals.
"We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."
But to go with your interpretation: If you ask the victims of the Arab spring[1], fb is no better than 8chan. Also YouTube did a bad job in containing Islamic state propaganda early on [2].
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.
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.
Pretty much. It's a problem anyone doing privacy conscious software is going to run into, if it works it will be used by people generally agreed to be morally detestable (eg: child abusers or human traffickers). In a similar vein I think people will need to in general get comfortable with the fact that some technology will be used by bad groups and it will make it harder for law enforcement to catch and stop people but the benefits for everyone else out weighs the downside.
Agreed. Though, I would also argue that fighting the communication tools and to an extent the hateful speech is a bit fighting the symptom of a larger problem.
I think we're bogged down debating the specific problem of hate speech, without discussing why it exists. Mental health, education, and poverty have a material impact on crime; do they also have material impacts on racism? I'd wager yes, but I don't know.
Purely fighting 8chan might be akin to fighting one symptom of a larger disease. I fear we're ignoring the causes.
> Pretty much. It's a problem anyone doing privacy conscious software is going to run into, if it works it will be used by people generally agreed to be morally detestable (eg: child abusers or human traffickers).
Exactly what was happening to mastodon before they made a rule for all sane instances to not federate with neo nazi instances
>In a similar vein I think people will need to in general get comfortable with the fact that some technology will be used by bad groups and it will make it harder for law enforcement to catch and stop people but the benefits for everyone else out weighs the downside...
Good luck with that.
I think we, as a society, may have been taken a bridge too far with the mass shootings. People are no longer interested in hearing about the "down side" of taking these guys out.
This should probably have been expected though, you swing the pendulum too far in one direction, it's naturally going to swing back in the other. Just kind of the nature of these things.
I mean, these aren't the first mass shootings, and they won't be the last.
Every time a mass shooting comes up, there's a big period of sorrow. What makes this mass shooting any different from the last few?
Last time, a bunch of children were murdered in their school. In fact, there's so many where children were murdered in their school, that you probably don't even know which one I'm talking about: Columbine, Newton, or Parkland.
The status quo is to do nothing about these events. That's the unfortunate truth about our current society. No laws will be pass, nothing in our society will change. We might make a new memorial and write up a new line on the (ever growing) list of mass shootings, but anyone who has been following the news for a few years has become numb to these events years ago.
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So 4chan brings down the ban-hammer. That's why 8chan popped up at all. There will be another site where this filth will rot, and plan their next attacks. In the meanwhile, nothing will get done from a legal standpoint.
How long do you think it will be before "16chan" (or whatever replacement) pops up, or for 8chan to find a new host? I dunno, I give it about 2 months, tops. And I give it a few weeks before everyone forgets about this event, and is suddenly "surprised again" in the next mass shooting event.
We'll get the 1-month writeup, the 1-year anniversary, and then maybe the 5-year and 10-year anniversary as below-the fold newspaper stories to remember this day. But by then, there will be other issues that will make us (largely) forget about this shooting.
Personally, I believe the change is in what you can't see.
FBI counter-terrorism are not the people you want to get the attention of. And these guys just got the attention of federal law enforcement, counter-terrorism, intel and counter-intel in a single weekend.
I mean, you gotta be a special kind of stupid to mess up that badly.
If it makes you feel any better, yeah, I agree with you. These guys have no intention of making any new laws to come after these threats. My concern is more the fact that they probably have no intention of following any inconvenient laws in coming after those threats either.
> I mean, you gotta be a special kind of stupid to mess up that badly.
You underestimate the depths of depravity of these discussion boards. 8chan is (probably) already strongly monitored due to the proliferation of child porn throughout the site.
Its not that they've messed up recently. They've messed up repeatedly and consistently over the past years. Child porn, hate speech, the works. Its all there. FBI knows this, but they are only allowed to move in when the laws provide them the opportunity to move. They can't shut down the site, they can only monitor these anonymous posters (who are probably safe behind many layers of proxies) and maybe try to figure out the troll vs the serious ones.
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As I stated before: the laws have to change before the status quo changes. Its that simple. No one will support the FBI raiding private websites on free-speech grounds however, outside of specially select circumstances like child porn.
I mean, do you want to talk to white supremacists? Just go to Stormfront or Daily Stormer. Yeah, FBI probably actively monitors them too. There's an entire dark-net out there that the mainstream stays away from.
Or what, do you really expect the dark-net to just disappear because of one or two incidents? Daily Stormer was banned from Cloudflare a long time ago, they just found new hosts and carried on business as usual.
I'm glad Cloudflare is doing what they can to stop this filth. But Cloudflare is just a small part of the internet, and a real legal solution needs to be created if we really want to fight them. This is a bigger problem than Cloudflare can handle.
> 8chan is (probably) already strongly monitored due to the proliferation of child porn throughout the site.
ISPs/websites in the US are required to proactively report child abuse to NCMEC, so they don’t need to be “strongly monitored” unless of course they’re not complying.
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.
It's also inexpensive to cultivate or hire agent provocateurs to screw it up for the rest. Given the emotion of the situation & conversation, it's a low risk endeavor, as critical thinking is reduced in mass crisis scenarios.
I know this smells a bit too much like conspiracy bacon for many, but you have a valuable point here. At the end of the day, we're talking about an anonymous discussion forum accessible over Tor at the end of the day.
It's not just low risk, it's zero risk. There is literally not one single downside for a provocateur. The worst case scenario for them is that they fail.
That being said, this was not a case of a provocateur. The author went on a murder spree.
> That being said, this was not a case of a provocateur. The author went on a murder spree.
People don't just randomly go on murder sprees. I mentioned "cultivate" as somebody can be groomed or espouse a certain form of ethics & ideology that creates this behavior. This can be done with psychological manipulation, propaganda, etc. These manipulated (e.g. "brain-washed") individuals are far more effective at creating panic & division than recruited agent provocateurs, as it apparently places the blame at whatever group of people hold any philosophical position (reasonable or unreasonable) similar to the murderer.
While the manifesto mentioned politics, there have been people from different political persuasions that have committed acts of carnage including Dayton, OH or knife/truck attacks in the UK.
There's something(s) underlying this & it's more complicated, profound, philosophical, psychological, & (dare I say) spiritual than being "far-right" or "far-left" or "jihadist" or any hasty label that oversimplifies what is occurring.
'My opinion is that women's bodily autonomy 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 women who are able to fully parse the implications of what they are hearing to make sound and rational judgements on the rejection of a fetus or the embrace of it. It creates a moral duty for the people who are listening to not only reject, but to actively push back against abortions which are universally understood to be reprehensible.'
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 infrastructure. But I agree with the Founders; regardless of whether it builds a more/less optimal society, government cannot and should not infringe upon our natural right to free speech. In particular, it protects us from jumping from your hypothesis (that unchecked free speech motivated a mass killing that would have not otherwise happened, which I give a 60-70% probability of being true) to an ironclad law forever removing some liberties from the citizenry.
>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) shall not pass laws that abridge "the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble."
I don't understand. Are you suggesting that another branch of government is therefor able to restrict that freedom? That would fundamentally challenge the co-equality of the branches.
GP's point is that the constitution serves not to grant the freedom of speech, but to restrict the government from curtailing it.
>I don't understand. Are you suggesting that another branch of government is therefor able to restrict that freedom?
Yes, because that's what the constitution says, or rather because it doesn't say otherwise. All rights not granted the Federal government through the constitution devolve to the states, and further, to the people. The states and private enterprise are allowed to abridge the freedom of speech, just not the Federal government through Congress.
>GP's point is that the constitution serves not to grant the freedom of speech, but to restrict the government from curtailing it
GP's point was that the constitution made a philosophical argument about freedom of speech as a natural right that it does not, in fact, make. One can believe that freedom of speech is a natural right if one so chooses, but the only thing the constitution actually says about freedom of speech is that it's one of a list of freedoms Congress can't pass laws to abridge.
"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."
What makes you say it's unchecked though? These are anonymous imageboards where ANYONE can say ANYTHING, there isn't anything stopping you from challenging them?
Part of me wonders if we should be taking better advantage of this opportunity to reach out the people posting. Mental illness is clearly in play, but can't we as a society do better? We should be reaching out to these people and at least trying to wrestle them back to sanity.
I think if anyone really believes shutting down a bunch of open forums will reduce the number of mass shootings they are delusional. This is a mental health issue AND a gun control issue and that's where we should focus efforts.
Have you tried to engage in that kind of discussion? These people use troll tactics. The first rule for them is to attack any attempt to ask for civil discussion.
1. this is obviously not going to stop the actual issue; calling people delusional over a strawman is pretty disingenuous.
2. Clearly there's mental illness and lack of gun control at play. There are candidates who try to address this in their platform. There are media outlets mentioning/discussing this. People want free healthcare, i.e. free access to mental health resources.
3. Talking to these people over the course of hundreds of years hasn't helped, but you're welcome to stop by *chan and have a logical debate with them. These are people who think their race is being targeted and that their race & culture is being destroyed, so I'm excited to hear the results of your well-reasoned and perfectly-logical debates.
While you're having your debates, I'm sure people will be happy to have these extremists congregate on an easily-available website like 8chan (not applicable at the moment, obviously) and also hope they don't have to dodge bullets while they're celebrating garlic, trying to get groceries at walmart, or wherever the next shooter is gonna bring his toys next.
To me it's a lot like blaming the violence on video games, and I'm not even saying they aren't a cause, they just aren't the most important cause right now. This is not an unsolvable problem, we're just getting bogged down on the wrong things when we NEED to laser focus efforts on the biggest problems first. Rather than pat ourselves on the back for taking down what is basically just an open forum for communication we need to focus on bipartisan legislative measures to address mental healthcare deficiencies and at least make it a little harder for people to get a gun.
I don't get why it's so easy for "bad" people on the site to manipulate people into subscribing to these hateful ideologies but it's impossible for "good" people to pull them back out.
I strongly believe forcing them further underground will only result in more violence long term.
I agree entirely on addressing mental healthcare and gun control, but sadly neither of those is going to be possible for a while. This is an "easy" thing to do for now, like low hanging fruit, and it's hard to expect people not to go for it when it involves such tragedies.
It's easier to manipulate people into this than it is to get them out because making up facts is easier than correcting them. Look at how many people still believe the moon landing didn't happen. It's literally one of the easiest conspiracy theories to debunk. Debunking the flat Earth idea is also easy, but at least some of it requires a bit of math and logical thinking.
The racist ideas about crime in the US, rapes in Sweden/Europe, and immigration are harder to debunk. Not because I can link an article that debunks them, but because it's an entire cemented world view that keeps them from even looking at the article in the first place. My perspective on this is that a person with this world view has to spend time with the people of the race that they're against. And that you can't really do on an image forum.
To your other post, yes, I do concede that it has gotten better in a lot of ways. But it's my opinion that arguments aren't what made things better.
"My perspective on this is that a person with this world view has to spend time with the people of the race that they're against. And that you can't really do on an image forum."
This is a very good point. It's interesting because it could happen on an image forum but it would probably be hard to make it meaningful in the way that you describe (and that is so important).
I can't help but thinking the internet might at least be part of the solution though. So much opportunity for diverse groups to meet and interact.
The internet is the solution and the problem. I'm not sure how it works, exactly. It's easy for me to come on HN and see myself as interacting with great people from all over the world, but it somehow doesn't come off that way on Reddit, YouTube, or something anonymous like an image board.
I did spend time on image boards, like 7chan and 420chan, but from what I remember, they still felt isolating more than they made me feel connected. It's a weird dichotomy. I feel that way about Reddit, too, so it isn't just the anonymous aspect of image boards that makes it harder for me to feel connected.
> I don't get why it's so easy for "bad" people on the site to manipulate people into subscribing to these hateful ideologies but it's impossible for "good" people to pull them back out.
Society: Take responsibility for yourself, either accept your lot in life or affect change through self-improvement and the democratic process.
I think you're missing my point but maybe you can clarify. Do you think it's possible for a site like 8chan to radicalize someone or do you just see it as a site for people who are inherently degenerate to congregate? If it's the latter than maybe you're right, but my argument was targeted at people who believe the former.
It probably makes you feel better about yourself to label someone else a despicable degenerate and simultaneously scrub your hands of the problem and any possible attempt you could make towards a solution but it's not doing anything to make the world a better place.
There are powerful tools that have been used throughout history to dramatically change the world and change the types of people you would label as degenerates. We just have more work to do.
My assumption is that this is primarily a site for engineers who are highly effective practical problem solvers and I think we would all benefit if more people treated this like a solvable problem.
> We should be reaching out to these people and at least trying to wrestle them back to sanity.
If you believe that's what we should be doing, why aren't you doing that? There are people right here in this thread you could be reaching out to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20617883
Reasoning with these people is like reasoning with flat earthers. You present all evidence and they will still flat out deny that Earth is a sphere. They are not driven by reasoning but their internal beliefs that they have already locked in as infallaible. They have already heard all the reasons you just laboriously articulated and put together. You are not giving them any new information. You are just wasting your time. Their goal of listening to you at all is to probe any possibility to convert you in to their little tribe and they happen to have all the time in the world, often being jobless.
If everyone's beliefs are unchangeable what is the danger of open forums for discussion? I think if you really want to combat this ideology it needs to be done with rational discussion instead of terminating the discussion. If we concede that many of these people were seduced by these ideologies on these sites and didn't initially hold these beliefs (which is one of the reasons these sites are considered so dangerous) don't we have to also concede that they could be swayed back.
These forums attracts unsuspecting vulnerable people and turns them into their cesspool member. Once you are cesspool member your beliefs cannot be altered. That’s the issue.
"Once you are cesspool member your beliefs cannot be altered."
Why? This is the crux of the problem. I don't believe that anyone who could be so easily swayed in one direction can't be swayed back. What am I missing here?
the current direction of these solutions really feels like the technological equivalent of 'solving' the homelessness crisis via hostile architecture. putting spikes on every bench and doorstep doesn't make anyone less homeless but it makes them less visible so you can feel less bad about it.
turning the internet into an increasingly obfuscated series of walled gardens doesn't improve the wellbeing of anyone particularly at risk and if anything, gives ingroups and personality cults all the more power to thrive. but maybe the new york times wont tell you about some neckbearded loser who says nigger too much and therefor you've solved the only problem you actually care about.
more and more i'm lead to believe that the compassion and empathy of the sensible majority is largely performative and on a fundamentally emotional level they just want heads to roll irrelative of any actual justice.
I think you are spot on, I also think you should watch your language in that people will use it is an excuse to ignore the painful truth of the very important point you are making:
"more and more i'm lead to believe that the compassion and empathy of the sensible majority is largely performative and on a fundamentally emotional level they just want heads to roll irrelative of any actual justice"
This seems like good use of AI that can auto respond with smart anti-hate speech blurbs. I am sure, someone would counter this by AI for hate speech. Ultimately these forums would be just dominated by different AIs fighting out each other so we can all go back to doing something useful.
> Moderate people are repulsed by such forums and the quantity of hate-speech they generate, which further compounds the negative feedback loop.
As a moderate I am not repulsed by the repulsive, I'm interested in understanding it, and I think all moderates are.
People have a fascination with what repulses us look at documentaries about murders, ww2 etc.
Todays problem is that moderates can not openly debate the extremists without themselves being labled as an extremist so their arguments can be dismissed, deplatformed and then used as justification for a personal attack.
"Unchecked extremism compounded by more unchecked extremism inevitably leads to scenarios like the ones we’re witnessing more and more often" exactly this. When you have a group of people that are on the extreme of society (think that's the polite way of phrasing that and covers all groups on the edge) and isolate them; Then you end up with them being contained in an echo bubble that amplifies their extremes and increase the odds of some other form of communicating with society that has cut them off in physical ways.
Having them there, and allowing such extremes to be questioned, and with that, kept in check. The whole recruit aspect is a mixed one, shut them down, then their words can not spread. But equally they can't be questioned and raises the mystik and that means anybody who is curious will be forced to engage in a phsyical meeting with such people, allowing them to be swayed more easily than somebody engaging with them online, open for all to show the errors.
I always thought it is better for such extremes to make themselves known in public, rather than hiding in the shadows. Makes it easier to keep track of them and their state of mind.
So however much I disagree a mindset, I'd rather have them in the open and kept in check.
What would the solution be. Well, sadly the web really does need some universal age content control that is imposed upon such extreme websites. After all, a young mind should be nurtured for rational debate and not indoctrinated into a fixed mindset. We should at least get that right upon the web now, whilst we can. With that, a safer control of such extreme content is maintained. When history has shown that pushing underground, has more negative outcomes than positive ones.
Digital prohibition is not the solution we want happening here.
Is the present alternative, where sites aren't allowed to keep existing (or, assuming they find a new host, "have to switch hosts a few times") after encouraging three ethnic massacres, really worse? Is that specific line really going too far?
It's not like this is the first line to be painted about what's allowed on the internet. There are already lines drawn prohibiting hosting child porn and selling illegal drugs online. Neither of those lines caused us to slip down a slope to an overly-censored internet.
Medicinal CBD can get you arrested in places. While long ago, alcohol was also prohibited. Also, forbidding drugs was used to oppress African-Americans. None of these things seem to me good.
And we are already coming to a more censored internet. Sex work was forbidden with FOSTA. Many mainstream conservative opinions are censored. Opinions which Obama had when president are now considered hate speech and censored. There is more and more censorship.
This seems equivalent to an argument against the concept of laws in general: "Some good things were outlawed before, so we shouldn't have any laws at all". I don't think that's a good argument for complete lawlessness, and I don't think yours is a good argument for lawlessness on the internet.
If you can make your message visible to thousands of people or (tens of, hundreds of), instantly, for free, I don't think it's playing with the same rules anymore. It's a huge societal breakthrough. Freedom of speech was not an interesting idea before the printing press happened. The internet is another step beyond the printing press. It will require a lot of human thinking and debating before the internet is able to adapt and improve society like the printing press did.
China and Russia are often saying that western societies are vulnerable because freedom of speech, but it becomes true only if the internet exists.
I personally think that online hate will force society to work on the cause of hate, so in the end society will be more cautious about hateful ideologies, but we might also work on poverty, lack of education and mental illness which are often the cause of hate speech. The population will naturally become more aware of the implication of their extreme opinions, and learn to moderate their speech to let other answers happen.
In the end I think we're already benefiting a lot from the internet, it's just that the problems it create are more visible.
The problem is malignant anonymity and online trust. Once the internet is more focused on local problems, people will stop behaving like invisible ghosts and will be polite again.
This is a bad analogy because that's not how free speech havens tend to work out in practice. What happens is you probably have a fairly normal crowd at first, then the racists, anti-semites, etc start stumbling in. Gradually, normal/moderate people leave, especially those who are members of the minority groups the newcomers hate. The local Overton window shifts as moderate voices disappear and dissent becomes more scarce, making the site even less appealing to normal people who stumble across it.
>Lots of people are afraid of blood and spiders
These are inevitable in life. But you can choose to use a forum that is full of flat-earthers, racists, etc or you can choose to go elsewhere and not have to deal with people harassing you for what you were born as or what you believe in.
The first amendment says "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech". It's a limit on government. CloudFlare has no duty to provide 8chan hosting, and their denial of services is very unlikely to be considered discrimination against a protected class.
>espouse their basest thoughts and feelings and receive gratification for it -all without challenge.
Yes, this is the problem. There is no challenge to their ideas and thoughts because the conversation/debate has been completely stigmatized that there's no other way to talk about it but anonymously on the far reaches of the internet. Soon it'll be on Tor instead and a terror network will truly form (because they've already gone "so far", why not go further?).
The El Paso mass shooting as well as the anonymous chan hatespeech is nothing but a result of a very poorly moderated debateenvironment in the western world.
Imagine if these young men had someone to talk to 4 years before they found *chan? Someone who listened and validated their thoughts and fears then, before they grew into these sorts of monsters.
The entire point behind free-speech is that all opinions are allowed to be held and voiced without preconditions. It's not free if it only encompasses things you don't find morally reprehensible.
If it's "universally" reprehensible, then how would it possibly exist in such prevalence? How would it be that it was hardly reprehensible at all less than 100 years ago? What's reprehensible changes, which is why freedom of speech is necessary, because without it there's no way to fight what's reprehensible without compliance of authority figures or violent revolution.
The things you find reprehensible have existed long before 4chan or the 1st Amendment. Allowing a precedence for society to completely ostricize people at every conceivable level is a dark road to go down, especially today when there is no escape from technology. If we put an end to free speech, we may never get an ounce of it back.
Most of the basis for a free society breaks down when people lose basic morals.
Whether you choose to believe in God or not, many of the framers of our Constitution and those who penned the Declaration of Independence believed in the Supreme Judge of the World, the Creator etc. and based their morals upon that belief.
When those morals become less than the norm for society, many problems arise.
Interesting thoughts. My impression of the situation is that “freedom of ...” is colloquially internalized as “freedom from consequence.” If society had access to justice on the same terms, then I wonder if things like freedom of speech would be understood in the richer context of personal and societal responsibility.
I agree and its disheartening to see the amount of responses in opposition. There is a massive number of comments on this post compared to most social topics, or ANY topic for that matter, and a lot of them are arguing it's wrong or bad to have limits on such behavior. I would suspect many of those arguments are defensive in origin and disingenuous. But for those who aren't personally involved in those behaviors, who opposed limits and rules, I don't know how they imagine a total free for all could work. We need government, structure, rules for society to exist. Otherwise as has been shown when limits are removed, the worst people and of people will ruin it for everyone else. If you could count on people NOT to be terrible it would make all of this a lot easier. You cannot.
I believe free speech is important but to keep things civil, it has to be open who the message is from. Anywhere anonym messages are allowed quickly deteriorates to *chan levels. We have all seen this in most online games and forums. Human nature is only good if there are some sort of reckoning.
I generally agree with your opinion about freedom of speech in meatspace. It's more or less been the status quo (at least ideally) in the US.
But TFA is about the Internet. And that's a very different thing. It's hugely unstable, and vulnerable to compromise by nation states and commercial interests.
So given that, I remain convinced that freedom of speech on the Internet depends fundamentally on technology that resists censorship. That's been the official US position regarding censorship in China etc. The US promotes Tor, and has also funded VPN services, such as Anonymizer. So I see no reason to carve exceptions.
If it did, censorship wouldn't be relevant. The content you don't like isn't a naturally or accidentally occurring substance. Someone wanted it to exist.
> Forums like 8chan and 4chan effectively incubate hate speech by providing a safe space
The simplest view is that these safe spaces mostly exist because some larger platforms have been turned into safe spaces. However, even on larger platforms, these types form insular groups that are effectively walled gardens within a larger ecosystem (see T_D). The mode of operation appears to be to rally behind safe spaces, then brigade larger platforms when something catches their attention. No real discussion, just bombarding text.
It's exceedingly difficult to have honest discussion with those of opposing views because people reward themselves with safe spaces and tend to expect them. Ideally, we could rely on rational discourse to assuage the extremism issue and inoculate. If we shout them down in a given arena, they'll scurry away but never disappear.
As I see it, it's a problem of scale. On smaller vbulletin forums you'll more likely see heated, but honest, debate there without any brigades nor bans (depending on modship). A rainbow of opinions. With platforms as large as reddit, censorship is holding all out shit shows at bay.
Conservatives have few places to gather. T_D grew large because a displaced group of people finally had a commonly known enough place to gather. T_D was constantly brigaded by other subreddits. Yes T_D members may comment in other subs, but that's there right as users of the site. To my knowledge there was no coordination of all users to brigade.
Liberals have nearly the entire internet as a safe-space. It's nice to have a community with similar views, especially political as people are always just looking for confirmation bias, not really willing to debate, so it's too toxic to try all the time.
> To my knowledge there was no coordination of all users to brigade.
I was in the Discord and an active member during the 2016 election. It was actually really civil, more-so than other political subs. Outsiders aren't as welcome as supporters, but try to be a Trump supporter in the /r/politics sub.
You claim T_D was brigaded, yet claim ignorance as to whether such a thing has sprouted from the conservative base which needn't explicitly come from T_D. That's more than strange unless you haven't really explored much else on the site.
There were constantly posts in subs (including defaults) that linked to T_D. Meanwhile, T_D mods did not allow linking to other major subs to prevent brigading. There was no coordination in T_D or any official channels. As an active users in the community I can say I never saw any brigading. I was an active user on Reddit overall before, during, and a bit after T_D. I quit fully a year ago.
tl;dr There was no brigading by T_D, Reddit just didn't like conservatives using their site. Post proof if you have it, otherwise I'll go with my experience with them.
>>Unchecked extremism compounded by more unchecked extremism inevitably leads to scenarios like the ones we’re witnessing more and more often.
IMO providers like cell phone, internet and all should be forced not to cut off service based on speech. Thanks to the same Amendment they have the right to choose who they associate with, and 8Chan has the right to broadcast abhorrent (but legal, at least in USA) views. If we allow them to ban 8chan next they'll move to ban even less controversial views as time goes by.
A middle ground would be to kinda force them not to ban sites based on content that is legal but controversial. If internet providers ban you for your views, do you exist? Internet providers are as essential as electricity these days. Can PSEG cut power to KKK's headquarters? I doubt it and no one would say that PSEG agrees with their views because they provide electricity to them in exchange for money. Freedom from slaves and women voting was controversial at one point...
A major problem IMHO is the conflation of "free speech" the government restriction with its roots in ancient Greece and early democracy with whatever else anyone wants it to mean; typically that people should be allowed to espouse whatever ideas they want without challenge because "free speech".
I think there’s a grain of truth to this. However, I would ask a counter-question: by what standard do you define “morality”? Or “hate-speech”? Or “extremism”? What gives one person the right to define it and another to be held accountable to it?
To sum up your main hypothesis is that freedom of speech + internet communication leads to extremism. I don’t think that model fits very well to actual data.
While it’s true that some nations struggling with extremism have both elements, there are also nations with both without issues, and nations without either internet or freedom of speech that still struggle with extremism.
I think it’s a very USA centric view, that’s focusing on effects rather than causes.
It seems natural that everyone with any strongly held interests will take to the internet to talk about it. Be that extremist views or gardening. But gardening forums don’t cause gardeners.
> 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".
Making sound and rational judgments requires diverse ideas being available. When large platforms censor free speech, it gets relegated to uncensored platforms which will necessarily comprise the groups eliminated from discourse.
Censorship is driven by pressure from the public against advertisers. If the public accepted free speech, platforms wouldn't censor, echo chambers would choke out, and the best ideas shine.
Bad ideas can only be challenged by tyranny and free discourse. Which would you rather have?
Is this really about freedom of speech though? We toss that around a lot, but as a law or constitutional right free speech does not exist if your website is hosted on a private company's service.
But then, how does free speech apply to the internet? Unless you have servers in your closet, your site will always be hosted on someone else's servers, and even then it will be delivered through networks owned by private companies, etc...
Anyway, Cloudflare's blog post on this (which is really worth reading in full) is what made me think of this:
> We continue to feel incredibly uncomfortable about playing the role of content arbiter and do not plan to exercise it often. Some have wrongly speculated this is due to some conception of the United States' First Amendment. That is incorrect. First, we are a private company and not bound by the First Amendment. Second, the vast majority of our customers, and more than 50% of our revenue, comes from outside the United States where the First Amendment and similarly libertarian freedom of speech protections do not apply. The only relevance of the First Amendment in this case and others is that it allows us to choose who we do and do not do business with; it does not obligate us to do business with everyone.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/
> 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.
This is the crux of liberal (classical, libertarian, and contemporary) ideology as a whole. The idea that if only people were enlightened we could have nice things. All in all, it is kind of useless, or utopian. You can't enlighten people, and merely giving them education doesn't do the trick on its own.
Liberalism (classical, libertarian, and contemporary) ignores material conditions as a base for which all things are formed, leaving it ill-equipped to handle any real issues. We can hem and haw all day about how "if only the plebs were enlightened" but nothing will change until we make real efforts to change people's material existence. It's easy to turn to fascism and extremism if you have literally nothing going for you in life.
I'm not excusing individuals actions, but don't try to solve a systemic problem with individualism if you want anything to actually change.
It's hardly "freedom of speech" when it's speech deliberately insinuated with propaganda meant to edify the impressionably ignorant towards ideologies which facilitate their propagators' greater authoritarian hold over the dominant discourse and, as such, over individual sovereignty and human autonomy--as is illuminated in these reports by Data and Society:
> The Supreme Court has held that "advocacy of the use of force" is unprotected when it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and is "likely to incite or produce such action".[2][3] In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction of a Ku Klux Klan group for "advocating ... violence ... as a means of accomplishing political reform" because their statements at a rally did not express an immediate, or imminent intent, to do violence.[4] This decision overruled Schenck v. United States (1919), which held that a "clear and present danger" could justify a law limiting speech. The primary distinction is that the latter test does not criminalize "mere advocacy".[5]
That's a nice theory. How does the fact that the FBIs own screenshots of the threads, submitted as evidence, show they posted the comments egging people on?
Free speech came about in the United States at a time of an unstable and uneducated society, who hardly were able to fully parse the implications, etc.
That's exactly what they did to us in communist Bulgaria. Forced education in the politically correct curriculum so that we can be "free" to follow the communist guidelines.
And then it collapsed. Currently the western "liberalism" is going in the exactly same direction
Free speech does not apply in any of these cases. These are all privately owned platforms. The first Amendment protects the populace from the government policing speech.
How many times is this tr[oi]pe going to be blindly repeated before its promoters bother to look up the definition of free speech and find it's a more general concept than simply the first amendment to the US Constitution?
I suppose this misbelief is itself a demonstration that truth and justice do not necessarily prevail in open argument. Still, we are better off with many terrible ideas persisting than to further allow those in power to arbitrate truth.
The problem with extremists is that they drive people who disagree with them away. I've been a fairly heavy user of 4chan for well over a decade now, and I even spent some time on 8chan. I like the anarchic, less ego-driven nature of anonymous image boards. You avoid most of the empty posturing from other social networks.
I even think that 8chan was a great idea on paper. It's basically 4chan with Reddit's ability to create sub-communities on a whim instead of having to beg the admins to create a new board. I created a few of those myself.
But then of course the fascists took over. Admittedly on 8chan is happened almost immediately but on 4chan it was more gradual. Now 8chan is (rightfully IMO) dead and frankly I wouldn't be too sad to see 4chan, or at least some of its more popular boards, go the same way. The /pol/ cancer spreads everywhere, the big boards are 50% shitposting and 50% hate speech. And not in a fun "let's make ironic memes about Hitler to push people's buttons" way but in a rather depressing "I seriously hate women and minorities" way.
The more moderate people gets driven away. Actually any sane people would be driven away from this terrible and constant negativity and all you have left are the zealots who feed on each other's extremism. It's not free speech, it's a circular feedback-loop of radicalization. I've genuinely read a (supposedly videogame related) thread yesterday on 4chan where somebody was trying somewhat successfully to appear moderate by saying "I support white nationalists but I don't think we should be killing brown people". How nice.
Note that Reddit isn't a whole lot better at handling this, they're just better at hiding it under the rug while posturing in their PR releases.
>that they drive people who disagree with them away.
/leftypol/ was more or less just active on 8ch as /pol/, you'd be hard pressed to find any groups more diametrically opposed than that. people also often fail to take into account that the userbase was at varying points self reported to be upwards of 60% lgbtq and presumptively far more neurodivergent than more mainstream platforms.
also worth noting that practically every mass shooter that has been newsworthy had an abundance of typical social media accounts, so the dangerous subset of fascists you're so worried about are already present on all the so-called moderate platforms.
so who is actually dissuaded by this course of action?
certainly someone motivated enough to plan and inflict mass-death upon a group of innocent people isn't gonna be kept away from extremist content simply because they have to take 15 minutes to set up tor browser.
I'm in the same boat as the parent poster in terms of time spent on 4chan and 8chan, and I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic. I understand the nature of irony on the chans, and that a lot of "-ist" comments are "kidding" (to varying degrees of success in terms of comedy and responsibility for the message one is putting out there), but:
1. To be so sure about the numbers seems presumptuous.
I know several people who lurk and post on /pol/, and it is an ethnically diverse group from my perspective. I've heard this sentiment echoed by others.
Of course, if you live in a very white place, you probably can't tell either way, even if you know a lot of channers.
Maybe there are a lot of unironic black and native-mixed neo-nazis, but I'm not so sure myself.
Not really relevant, though. If a private platform becomes a systemically important entity that can effectively shut down legitimate public discourse, that is a very dangerous situation. Once a platform is big enough, it essentially becomes government-like in it's ability to surpress speech, and the same rules should apply to it.
>The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged.
There is no such thing as universally reprehensible speech and, frankly, this is a dangerous line of thought. What is and is not acceptable is fundamentally tied to localized social norms.
Further, there is plenty of challenge on these forums, in fact arguably more so than forums like Reddit, because their very nature is antagonistic and contrarian.
>Unchecked extremism compounded by more unchecked extremism inevitably leads to scenarios like the ones we’re witnessing more and more often.
Terrorism of all flavors existed long before the internet and it's frequency has waxed and waned over the years. The drivers of this very recent trend have far more behind them than simple incubation on forums - like the dismissal of legitimate concerns by demonizing, blanket epithets like "racist" and "xenophobic". The recent growth of populism cannot be explained by the tiny minority of posters on the chans.
While the extreme actions of these recent attacks are reprehensible, if you read these manifestos, they highlight genuine problems which are deliberately ignored by "left" leaning politicians and media, although because of today's growing polarization of society, the only discussions of such issues that surface publically are mixed heavily with extreme views and extreme solutions, and the average person begins to equate, say, immigration control, with extremist racism, which is neither rational nor good for society.
8chan being shut down because their server supplied stopped doing business with them isn't an issue of free speech. You're really arguing that the 1st amendment means businesses can't refuse a customer, and that's just silly.
The comment you're responding to said nothing about "1st amendment". You're the one that brought up that narrow codification of the wider concept of Free Speech.
Even with the people having freer speech, state-run media in the US has incited the killing of orders of magnitude more human beings than have been killed by DIY nutjobs. The trend we're witnessing is really the democratization of media-incited violence.
I don't think Mao or Stalin were ever lacking free speech, and I don't think any of those killed ever voted to abolish it. Saying "look communism bad lots dead" doesn't universally work as an argument.
This isn't censorship though. It's private companies refusing to host something. Nobody has been arrested for speech and there are no laws prohibiting speech that isn't overtly and specifically threatening or otherwise violates the "fire in a crowded theater" test.
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 pretense on the Internet whatsoever.
How many people who hold the above position, would say "yeah, this is fine. These are just private companies choosing who they want to associate with. Free speech doesn't apply here."
I watch my political debates on public service. In my last election I never saw a political ad in social media (nor on TV). Are you saying newspapers and TV can't choose whose messages they peddle? I can't relate to the problem. Perhaps your argument is an argument for a stronger public service? Or some laws actually requiring politicians in certain races to be represented? I can't say I like the latter.
To answer your question more specifically: if Facebook is like a TV-channel, then they should be regulated like one: channels can broadcast what they want. If facebook is more like the TV medium then it's a different story. Then you can't have it arbitrarily cut access to certain interests. BUT in that case it's also probably "too big to have that responsibility in private hands" and something should perhaps be done about that (just like some banks may be "too big to fail" and as such can't be responsible for the economic damage they cause).
I would, as long as the companies fulfill their contracts. And I would also support anybody who in turn would not want to deal with these companies. Which is the check and balances why these companies are not doing that.
> And I would also support anybody who in turn would not want to deal with these companies.
That implies having feasible alternatives when there are none.
Also, it implies you are aware information being prefiltered for you. Even if Warren knew about it and talked about it, she would sound like a conspiracy nut.
> That implies having feasible alternatives when there are none.
No alternatives to Google or Twitter? What?
Just because you don't like the venue or the service in no way makes them "infeasible". Just because you can't as effectively promote your cause doesn't make them "infeasible". There are other search engines besides Google, and there are other social media platforms besides Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit.
Any suggestion that a private company should be forced to broadcast speech that it finds distasteful is a direct affront to the 1st amendment, full stop.
8chan being denied access to another company's resources is in no way a free speech issue. In reality, 8chan's ideas are losing in the "marketplace of ideas" and now we have people who suggest government intervention to give their points of view a leg up.
I do hope that next time when we have large protests looming, you are ok with allowing them only in a corn field in central Iowa, somewhere where they cannot make a significant impact.
The web is the new public square. Without access to hosting, there would be a de-facto 1st amendment violation, even if the courts would refuse to recognize that for what it is.
Perhaps you could argue humans aren't built for internet communications and so free speech doesn't apply to the internet. But Supreme Court precedent disagrees. You could make a similar case that free speech doesn't apply to anonymous speech, which would have meant all the anonymous pamphleteers during the American Revolution would have had more difficulty propagating their (violent, revolutionary) ideas.
I don't think hosting is a problem for 8chan, though. They can probably find some hosting service that would in theory respect their free speech, in the absence of a court order. However, the second they go online again without cloudflare's protection, they will quickly get attacked and the hoster will have to shut it down.
Which means we now have, effectively, mob-enforced denial of free speech.
Cloudflare is the great equalizer. But when Matthew Prince wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides to nuke one out of many, many objectionable sites because he can't or doesn't want to take the political heat of proxying for some site where users talk trash or post manifestos about violent acts (which are hardly ever acted upon), cloudflare's protection can vanish. Then you have to shut up, because if you don't you're vulnerable to attack by the digital mob.
So, essentially you are saying: Because we can't enforce the law against DDOSing -- because that's how the site gets blown away without CF -- we have to encroach on the right of association of CF.
"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and corporations."/wikipedia
It is censorship, even if it is private companies and nobody got arrested etc, censorship is surpressing undesired information
What if one day the government decides it wants to get in the business of offering ‘basic hosting’ for everyone. Would we say, well, no we can’t sensor that, that would be government censorship?
My point is I don’t think evaluating it on government/private business is very helpful in determining whether something should be allowed or not.
> Would we say, well, no we can’t sensor that, that would be government censorship?
... yes? We would say that.
That's exactly how we draw the line now. For example, nobody would demand a stadium offer naming rights to the KKK, but the state of Georgia had to allow that organization to "adopt a highway" under its charity-for-recognition program (https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/us/georgia-kkk-adopt-a-highwa...).
Ultimately, there is no uncontested free speech right in private conduct. If I am exercising a speech right to (say) rent a billboard for an advertisement, then the owner of that billboard is also exercising one if they give me a discount because I'm advertising kittens for adoption.
Once the government gets involved, however, it is often acting with the force of law. That is where we deem free speech rights to be sancrosanct.
It is censorship, but there is nothing morally wrong with a private organization or person censoring speech on property they own. They have no obligation legally or morally to participate in speech they disagree with. The immoral act would be to force against their will a private organization or person to participate in speech with which they disagree.
Once someone sets up their "private property" as a public forum, they're on the spectrum of operating as a de facto government. If there were ideological competition between reverse proxies like Cloudflare, the "private association" argument would have weight. But rather Cloudflare seems to be acting due to pressure from an concerted effort to implement censorship across every such business.
Another sort of immoral act is to rile up a mob on twitter to pressure a company to drop a client with PR threats.
No one argues against the right of a company not to host Nazi forums. But there is an ongoing trend were companies that wished to be apolitical are forced into political decision.
It's hard to discuss ideas that rely on words such as 'reprehensible'.
Freedom of speech is not some ideal in isolation. We don't have freedom of food and shelter. Without food and shelter, you die. If receiving food and shelter requires you to censor your speech, you don't have freedom of speech.
Almost nobody has freedom of speech, and it's not at all clear why anyone'd want it anyway. I honestly am not interested in most things people say - I want the freedom to be away from people's speech, if anything.
Freedom of speech seems to be some ideological distraction in American society - when in reality everyone's interested in freedom of food, shelter and being away from most other people's ability to influence their lives.
I've generally been on the free speech side of this debate, as some of my previous comments on HN will show.
With 8chan, I legitimately don't know what my opinion is. I've read it before, and I spent a few hours reading it this weekend, and it's beyond clear to me that it absolutely had the potential to radicalize shooters and terrorists. I'm not referring to the simple use of racial or ethnic slurs -- of course this was extremely common there, but I don't think this is the part of the site that encouraged actual violence. Rather, among the many ideological threads that were more or less constantly ongoing on 8chan, one of them just straight-up encouraged mass shootings. "The fire rises" is a common phrase I saw there celebrating the frequency of shootings. For instance, here's a quote I saw this weekend (I screenshotted a bunch of stuff like this in anticipation of the site going down):
"holy fucking shit, a third mass shooting toda [referencing an incident near Douglas Park in Chicago], white guy shot 7 people, no one dead yet but the meter is still running!!! shooter still active!!!
its absolutely fucking happening !!! the FIRE RISES!!!"
This was attached to a picture of Trump with the text "it's happening" superimposed.
While 8chan overall was absolutely all over the place, this thread of support for shootings and terrorism was seemingly always present in the background.
I've lost good friends to 4chan/8chan. They were obsessed. At first it was cat pictures and memes, but it went way downhill from there. I've watched those sites cause the transition from normal, interesting, reasonable, open minded, intelligent, happy human beings, to horrible inexcusable pieces of shit who I never want to have anything to do with ever again.
It's not just that they inspire a few shooters and mass murders. They inspire a hell of a lot of other once-reasonable people to be deeply and irredeemably terrible in many other ways.
I would not lump 4chan into this discussion. I'll concede that some boards on the site are more polemical than others and promote alt-right ideologies without a doubt, but there are many other interesting boards and people on 4chan that are not captured by the broad strokes you're outlining. I know people that browse /fit/, /lit/, /mu/ and /out/ just to name some boards that are perfectly reasonable individuals that don't lionize shooters or hold other alienated views.
That's a concern leveled elsewhere in this thread: that you go to 4chan to discuss music or retro video games, and are one click away from an absolute hive of poisonous extremists.
The "bad" boards frequently leak, and you do see highly political or racist posts from time-to-time on the regular boards. A sign that the community is functioning properly is regulars on /out/, /lit/, etc. calling out (read mocking) ethno-nationalist threads, or race-baiting for what they are.
The answer is structuring society, socialization, and culture in a way that doesn't disenfranchise people or leave them feeling helpless enough to turn to extremism, hate, and violence.
But that requires empathy and effort, things often in short supply.
People only go down the dark paths that lead to 8chan et al when the avenues to belonging they were presented with by their parents and by default failed them.
On the other hand, the extremists are one click away from the people who will call them out on their bs. I'm not sure if that's worse or better than deplatforming them only to have they retreat to even more extremist echo-chambers.
Just to add on my own experiences, Since starting to collect toys and also make my own, I've been entirely unable to find a better community for both of these than /toy/. Every other community is brimming with an endless barrage of superhero stuff and zero interest in niche/art toy lines. /pol/-esque posting is always mocked, reported, and subsequently purged by janitors there.
Because that's the radicalized ideology that pops up most often on 4chan. If you know of a board with a contingent of alt-left/identity-politics I would be interested to know. As you said yourself, the case of the second shooter seems to be related to Twitter, not the chans.
No. Come on, are we gonna do it like this? Actually take a look at this guy.
I call him radical because he actually was. He posted overt, politically charged threats on Twitter, for example: "I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding."
Literal Nazis are German White Nationalist Socialists. That's not what the alt-right is. The alt-right is a blanket term used to describe anyone right of Bill Clinton who is currently not a media darling.
Fascists or Ethno-Centrists are both better terms, and cover the ideologies that most people attribute to the alt right.
You could say the exact same thing about Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or any other form of social media. People get absorbed in ideas all the time, and those platforms just multiply the intensity.
Personally, Twitter has been a much bigger source of anger, shock and hate than 4chan ever was. Some of the shit I've seen on Twitter made it unbearable to go on my day and yet on 4chan, on boards like /vg/, /ck/, /g/, /wg/ it was mostly just shitposts and once in a while you would see a good post.
All I can do is shrug.. People with no clue will always just yell.
>You could say the exact same thing about Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or any other form of social media. People get absorbed in ideas all the time, and those platforms just multiply the intensity. Personally, Twitter has been a much bigger source of anger, shock and hate than 4chan ever was.
Do you ever see people openly hoping for shootings, cheering them on, and then posting manifestos there (referencing not only the ideology they learned from the site, but even the in-jokes of the people cheering for it on the site) before doing their own shootings? And then after that, do those sites regularly completely refuse the concept of doing anything to try to prevent repeats?
I'm sure that other sites have been guilty of bits and pieces of that, but the combination makes 8chan on another level than any of those.
I'm in the same boat as DonHopkins. I've seen people who used to be friends get sucked into far alt-right stuff through 8chan specifically. Maybe it happens with Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, but I haven't seen it and haven't seen many people here bring up any experiences like that.
> Do you ever see people openly hoping for shootings, cheering them on, and then posting manifestos on Twitter?
Yes I have many times. Just this weekend alone, the Ohio shooter tweeted "Kill every fascist", retweeted several violent Antifa posts. His Twitter profile read “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back.” His top pinned tweet said “Millennials have a message for the Joe Biden generation: hurry up and die.” In May, he tweeted, “You’ll never be rid of me. I’ll haunt your life like a fucking vengeful spirit.” He added, “My Horoscope Just Reads ‘Doom.'” He shared posts about “concentration camps” at the border and wrote, “Cut the fences down. Slice ICE tires. Throw bolt cutters over the fences.” He retweeted a post from another person about stealing from “right wingers” at a Trump rally. One of his tweets referred to white people. “Imagine if we did the thing you liked, but in a way that totally ruins what you liked about it! Wouldn’t that be fun? Ha ha Also, of course they’re all white people, of course they are,” he wrote.
From another comment:
> "Dayton shooter Was The Lead Singer Of A "Pornogrind" Metal Band - The gunman, identified as 24 year-old (wont be named), was a member of Menstrual Munchies, a three-man band that performed regularly on the Midwest death metal scene. All the Dark Metal Bands that were friends with the shooter are distancing themselves extremely fast. All their music supports antifascists (aka antifa) and their genre of music is defined by its explicit subject matter and themes of gore and violence, specifically sexual violence and necrophilia."
> "Betts was also in a “Pornogrind” Band that, according to Vice News, “released songs about raping and killing women.” Vice called it the “extreme metal music scene.” The bands he performed in sometimes were called Menstrual Munchies and Putrid Liquid, and the songs contained vile names like “6 Ways of Female Butchery” and “Preeteen Daughter Pu$$y Slaughter,” Vice reported."
> Betts’ Twitter profile read, “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back.” One tweet on his page read, “Off to Midnight Mass. At least the songs are good. #athiestsonchristmas.” The page handle? I am the spookster. On one selfie, he included the hashtags, “#selfie4satan #HailSatan @SatanTweeting.” On the date of Republican Sen. John McCain’s death, he wrote, “F*ck John McCain.” He also liked tweets referencing the El Paso mass shooting in the hours before Dayton. The Twitter page contains multiple selfies of Betts.
>All the Dark Metal Bands that were friends with the shooter are distancing themselves extremely fast.
If the groups of these other shooters had instead responded by distributing propaganda that literally canonized the shooters like saints and praised future shooters in order to encourage more, then it might be comparable. (You don't have to look far at all on 8chan for this type of thing.) I'm probably only in the tamest of lefty circles, but I've never seen anything remotely like that. I don't see these shootings celebrated; it seems like a much harder argument to make that they're encouraged in lefty places than the argument that 8chan encourages violence.
Sorry that's not the argument I was trying to make. The argument I was trying to make is that Twitter, FB groups etc all have these type of violent posts but they are not being held liable (most likely because they are way too big and maybe also because they are US based companies). Reddit has subreddits which actively call for assassination of political figures. I have reported them a few times but the posts stay on because maybe the mods aren't getting paid to do their jobs on reddit unlike the other big companies.
The 'chans seem almost like a leaderless cult. I've also seen people get completely sucked into them in this really honestly creepy way. I suppose it's like a subculture but minus virtually everything positive like socializing with real human beings and having real experiences.
As someone who unashamedly frequents 4chan it saddens me to see this sort of view. I'm neither for or against 8chan's banning but I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of the *chan cultures.
The problem with most of the internet is that there are so many psychological incentives to repress unpopular opinions and to fit in with the hive mind. Reddit is the pinnacle of that where your opinion is literally shown or hidden based on its popularity. Now this is good for lazy content consumption since most of the time the popular content is what you want to see. But it's also very dangerous. Very very dangerous. Not only because it discourages changes in thinking but also because malicious entities can literally manipulate what you're thinking.
So yes, I may not always like what I read on 4chan. It may act as a platform for mentally ill people. But a lot of greatness also comes from it too. I mean it's no coincidence that a disproportionate amount of internet memes originate there. But a lot of thoughtful discourse also occurs there, often inciting interesting arguments where elsewhere on the internet it'd be buried by downvotes or deleted by moderators.
The antidote to social media ad populum isn't social media anarchy. They're both bad, but they're not equally bad.
It's like asking if you'd rather eat your own poop or a handful of one inch nails. As unpalatable as the former certainly is, the latter is unambiguously worse.
I never claimed it was a solution. I just said it helps you to avoid it. If it were the solution I wouldn't be on Hacker News right now.
Although I strongly disagree regarding 4chan being unambiguously worse. Maybe if you're talking about just /b/ and /pol/ I'd agree but the site is so much more than that.
For instance, the game development community there much more human and helpful than most other communities I've participated in. But there's a hundreds of other micro communities that are really great if you know where to find them.
There are tons of non-gamified and non-surveillance-capitalist forums out there about all kinds of topics. I realize not everything and everyone on the chans is toxic, but there is quite a lot of toxic presence there.
I think the chans were cool and interesting back in the early-mid 2000s but since then they've been taken over by not-actually-ironic trolls, political propagandists and astroturfers, and other nasties. Since the forums are anonymous there's no real way to police it or even tell who you're talking to or whether they're a "real person" or a sock puppet of some kind.
I distinctly remember what to me felt like the chans' shark-jumping moment: Ebola Chan.
When that appeared along with a thread full of seemingly not actually ironic comments like "maybe Ebola will de-populate Africa," I felt that the chans were done.
There's plenty of actual racism around, which of course I don't like, but most of this is limited to /b/ and /pol/ which are not representative of the entire site. They just happen to get in the spotlight more because of how controversial they can be.
A lot of people on 4chan view these boards as a sort of filter to scare away outsiders. The majority of the site isn't nearly that edgy and largely discuss the various relevant topics for each respective board.
What's tragic is that they convince cat lovers to post cat pictures on "Caturday", when they should be posting them every day! That needlessly reduces their positive contribution to society to just 14.28% efficiency.
There are definitely leaders on the chans. The site operators know who log in the most, post the most, and what they post. This sort of info is inherent to running a message board. Moot was upfront about this when he ran 4chan, and he cooperated with law enforcement when they came looking for specific people.
The idea that these movements are leaderless collectives is part of their propaganda and should not be passed on without skepticism.
Maybe those games where you control a Western European country in the middle ages and have to defend your civilization against religious, cultural and ethnic rivals?
>Prior to the start of Rawitsch's history unit, Heinemann and Dillenberger let some students at their school play it to test; the students were enthusiastic about the game, staying late at school to play. The other teachers were not as interested, but did recommend changes to the game, particularly removing negative depictions of Native Americans as they were based more on Western movies and television than history, and could be problematic towards the several students with Native American ancestry at the schools.
But they partially addressed that in the 1974 MECC version:
>He also added in more positive depictions of Native Americans, as his research indicated that many settlers received assistance from them along the trail. He placed The Oregon Trail into the organization's time-sharing network in 1975, where it could be accessed by schools across Minnesota.
Now the developer, Don Rawitsch, would like to create a version of the game from the Native American perspective.
>But developers still field questions about the game’s stereotypical portrayal of Native Americans. During a recent gaming conference, Don Rawitsch, one of three aspiring teachers who developed The Oregon Trail, said he has dreams of reimagining the game with a Native American perspective.
>“If I were to create something like Oregon Trail today, I would create the Native American version,” he said during a panel discussion at the Game Developers Conference in March. “What would it be like on the other side of the wall, so to speak?”
But even the cowboys-and-indians-movie 1971 version of Oregon Trail was a far cry from 8chan.
> once-reasonable people to be deeply and irredeemably terrible in many other ways
Like otaku. Or furries. Can't imagine anything more terribly dangerous than furry otaku spreading GNU Manifesto and forcing you to install Gentoo. Awful place!
I used to go on 4chan as a teenager. It was always "edgy" but only recently (since roughly around gamergate and Elliot Rodger, which is also when 8chan started) has it begun to seriously drift to the far-right. White nationalists saw that as an opportunity to radicalize teenagers to their cause and it's still ongoing.
There is a whole cottage industry of people attempting to radicalize jaded white teens and "skeptics" to turn them from ideological libertarians or politically unaffiliated into hateful, "alt-right" fascists. One of them was Steve Bannon [0].
It would be naive to assume that the only people who want to push America to fascism are from other countries. There are a lot of people in the US that support that too.
I'm wondering since other commenters wrote that even twitter is filled with white nationalists. I don't think you can blame some random internet platform for the world's problems. It's just that they make the problems far more visible because they are echo chambers that focus around one particular ideology.
So what exactly causes white nationalism to be rising everywhere, not just on 8chan?
I can't find anything in your comment that alludes to what being a terrible horrible utter piece of shit consists of. Do you mind elaborating?
Note that this is a sincere question, since I haven't had exposure to 4chan since before the Internet went mainstream, and even then it was fairly limited. I've heard horrible things about what it's become since, but I don't know much about it.
That's the problem with leftists in censorship discussions - they fundamentally don't believe in free will. It's not the website that shot people. It wasn't Trump. It was the individual. Believing otherwise is highly problematic as it leads to authoritarianism.
The shooter acted of his own free will. Yes, there were factors that contributed to his actions, but the responsibility is squarely on his shoulders. There's room for nuance, but unless he was forced to do something against his will, it's on him.
Culture matters. Environment matters. Yes he chose to commit the crime but if the environment promotes this kind of thinking/behavior then the environment needs change as well.
If he were Muslim or dark skinned we'd be losing our shit but because he's a white Christian male he's a lone wolf and it's solely his responsibility. Excuse me but I find that to be utter horsecrap.
I'm interested in how that can be the case. Do you mind sharing some more details of how normal people can go off the deep end through their experiences on the sites?
I posted this above, but it is a direct response to your question as well: Just look at the absurdity of Qanon. This troll gone long [1] has affected real people and real relationships [2].
There's an extremely long tail of terribly damaged human beings and relationships, once you get past all the mass murderers and white supremacists that 8chan and 4chan have inspired.
CP gets knocked off the board fast. 4chan and 8chan know the line, though it is in a weird place (it probably should be on the other side of "fomenting white supremacy")
> 4chan and 8chan know the line, though it is in a weird place
"Things we legally cannot host" is exactly where one would expect them to draw the line. Whether or not you agree with that position is another matter.
The mods remove those posts as quickly as they can. It's impossible to prevent it when you're hosting a board that allows anonymous image uploads. No pre-approval process could keep up with the amount of content posted on a popular board, especially when the site is being run on donations.
Do posters get banned? If it's not accepted on the board then why does it keep getting posted, and posted sufficiently often that many people are claiming 8chan has CP?
There's nothing stopping the same thing happening to HN, except the people that do it have no interest in doing so (and images don't auto-display, I guess).
They're all behind variable IP VPNs. Permanently getting rid of them is nearly impossible.
8chan deliberately set itself up such that it's impossible to do anything beyond an IP ban. This was a conscious choice they made, and that doesn't mean they get a pass on failure to enforce rules as a result.
By making a transaction (or series of transactions) that happen to have a binary representation (or destination address, or comment, or...) that decodes to CP - the same way that you'd store any other arbitrary data there.
The 8ch.net/delicious/ board routinely had extremely realistic animated images and video of prepubescent girls having sex with older men. The images were reported to mods who left them up.
That's the sort of thing that starts to hit some really grey areas, and also starts to illuminate some of the differences in the justifications for banning CP. If you're against CP because it means the exploitation of children, animated images of children that do not exist should be fine - but if you're against it due to it being disgusting or normalizing the abuse of real children it's not. However, I believe that the Supreme Court has thus far held that drawings fall under the 1st Amendment, as (IMO) they most certainly should.
There is an important shade of grey between "clearly artificial image" and "real image", where "artificial but real-looking image" sits. It has the same normalizing effect as a real image.
Otherwise there's no reason to oppose real images, since the harm is done before the image is ever seen.
> Otherwise there's no reason to oppose real images, since the harm is done before the image is ever seen.
We ban specifically real images for two general reasons - one is that allowing them encourages the production of more such images, necessitating additional abuse, and the second is that for the children involved, knowing that other people are looking at those images is a huge violation.
Neither of those applies for "artificial but real-looking" images.
Fun fact, there are places in the Western world where it is considered illegal to the same degree as photographs of children being abused. And ditto for textual descriptions of this fictionally happening. Scandinavia, for instance. Which is admittedly not famous for its uncompromising approach to freedom of expression.
IP Permaban and allegedly details forwarded to law enforcement. Never ever heard of any actual consequences though, and "everyone" hits 8chan / 4chan through a VPN anyway.
I think "\w+" is regex for "one or more non-specified words," so they're nitpicking that it should be "* supremacy" instead of "white supremacy", in a weirdly obtuse and technical way.
Are you of the belief that hatred and radicalization doesn’t exist in environments that lack free speech?
Lot’s of places on this planet have hyper radicalized portions of their populations that commit aggregious acts of violence, and they lack free speech.
Yet free speech is being used as the red herring to blame.
Unequivocally, your assessment of these forums causing the radicalization is wrong. Plain wrong. These people exist in any environment, they go into the shadows, they continue to lash out, and removing and restricting rights for every person DOES NOT STOP THIS BEHAVIOR.
This isn't a free speech issue. We have free speech in most parts of our country without radicalization. This is an issue of a specific environment that actively celebrates hatred and awful behavior. "Free Speech" is a red herring. Just because it's legal to say this stuff doesn't make it okay to say it, and it's society's job to stamp out this kind of thing.
Something relevant here is that I believe that there is a significant amount of illegal speech on 8chan (or also twitter for that matter). Moving the discourse over to better enforcing current laws looks like an underestimated approach.
There is illegal speech on many platforms. Twitter is used for doxing for example.
I do not like companies being the arbiters of good, but in this case (as far as CF is concerned [1]) I believe they did no wrong.
They clearly state that they should not be in the business of policing legal content they host, but also work hard to make sure they are not hosting illegal content. This way is better than a twitter-like approach where you only pay attention to high profile situations.
(In many senses twitter is doing a good job, but in other senses they (and their employees) have a strong political bias that bubbles up to how they enforce policies)
> removing and restricting rights for every person DOES NOT STOP THIS BEHAVIOR.
DUI laws don't stop DUI related accidents, but having and enforcing DUI laws decrease DUI related accidents. And while you can't prevent anything 100% of the time, you can actively work toward reducing the chances of something bad happening.
That is the equivalence of saying murder laws prevent or reduce murder, when here we are discussing mass murder events.
There is an underlying issue in our society that creates this lashing out behavior, and hiding it under the precept of preventing radicalization instead of engaging it will not stop the behavior.
We are all adults here. I have children, as many of you do. When your children exhibit a bad behavior, do you ban it or engage it and fix it?
I can tell my children to stop doing something until I’m blue in the face. I can BAN the action from my home, but until I engage with them it’s meaningless and only serves to make me feel good while they continue said things behind my back.
My point is, let’s look at the deeper issues instead of the emotional knee jerk tripe of ban guns, ban speech, blame racism. We have a problem that requires more rational behavior and level heads.
Now apply that logic to the war on drugs. Tell us how the war on drugs has actually helped society and how similarly banning 'hate speech' will result in a net decrease in the damage these ideologies cause.
If our ultimate goals are to reduce driver impairment and maximize highway safety, we should be punishing reckless driving. It shouldn't matter if it's caused by alcohol, sleep deprivation, prescription medication, text messaging, or road rage. If lawmakers want to stick it to dangerous drivers who threaten everyone else on the road, they can dial up the civil and criminal liability for reckless driving, especially in cases that result in injury or property damage.
Doing away with the specific charge of drunk driving sounds radical at first blush, but it would put the focus back on impairment, where it belongs. It might repair some of the civil-liberties damage done by the invasive powers the government says it needs to catch and convict drunk drivers. If the offense were reckless driving rather than drunk driving, for example, repeated swerving over the median line would be enough to justify the charge. There would be no need for a cop to jam a needle in your arm alongside a busy highway.
And I'm sure permanently banning everyone who ever gets a DUI from driving would also decrease DUIs, but there's an important line to draw with how we enforce those.
They may already exist, but that doesn't mean we should amplify their voices and give them the ability to recruit more to their cause and ideology.
Now, that's not to say disruptions of communication systems (e.g. censorship) is the right answer. But existence doesn't mean we shrug our shoulders and do nothing. At the very least you can stop encouraging and normalizing them.
Nasty people do exist in any environment, but in just the same way that network effects can enormously magnify things like charitable fundraising or the production of cat memes, they can also amplify the production of terrorism or other undesirable activities. Damaging social infrastructure which allows that is an effective way to impede recruitment and organization.
Ban free association then if you are worried about the wrong ideas being propogated to people. Build the police state and massive bureacracy that can enforce this at that the detriment to us all, or start trying to engage with these people and solve the fundamental problem.
If you think 8chan and 4chan haven't made it uniquely easy for groups like this to spread their message, you're being deliberately naïve. It's not about eradicating the behavior entirely, because yes, that's not truly possible. It's about making it more difficult for people to be recruited and radicalized. Just because you have the right to not go to jail for being racist doesn't mean you have the right to spread those views anywhere and everywhere, and when it has a proven link to encouraging violent behavior it crosses the line IMO.
If it was an ISIS board we wouldn't even be having this conversation, it would already be offline.
I'm afraid that part is largely accurate. While 8ch administrators and global moderators did respond to reports of CP hosted on their site, they handled these reports on a largely reactive basis -- the anonymous-imageboard model used by the site made it impossible to block individual posters in any effective fashion, and I don't believe the site had any way to block specific files from being reposted.
> they handled these reports on a largely reactive basis
I don't see anything wrong with that considering the limited and volunteer-based resources they have. Youtube-style content ID pre-censoring built into everything shouldn't be a goal we're striving for.
So it ran as a honeypot? I understand that 8chan wasn't hosted anonymously, the owners are known. If they provided a safe haven to child pornography, I assume law enforcement would put an end to that very quickly, especially with obvious and easy ways to apprehend the owners. They've been very active and successful in bringing down hidden services, it's not plausible that they looked the other way for a clearnet site.
I don't think so. What seems more likely to me is that one or more of the following is the case:
1) The "fast-flux" nature of imageboards makes it difficult for law enforcement to effectively respond to illegal content hosted on them.
2) Deleting content upon reports places board administrators technically within the boundaries of the law.
3) The arm's-length separation between the owners of 8ch, the users who operate boards on the site, and the users who post content on the site allows the owners to claim a lack of responsibility for that content.
In that case, we're talking about something different though. Saying "they have CP" to mean "there is CP posted which then gets speedily removed by mods before LE can act on it" implies that AWS, Google, FB, Youtube etc also host child pornography. Certainly it will be uploaded and they will remove it.
Only when the platform embraces it does that statement make sense, which apparently 8chan did not if I understand you correctly.
Exactly how are they at fault for responding to the issue in the only way the site design can allow? Do you also blame Twitter for only banning people after they've posted something deemed to be breaking the rules? or that it takes 5 minutes to make a new account?
Unless you aren't attempting to imply anything about them being at fault. Although, as long as they are making that good faith effort to take down CP, they can't be taken down by the US govt at least.
> I mean, it literally radicalized white supremacist terrorists. There's no "had the potential" anymore, it's a fact.
Other than the fact that 8chan had things on it that you didn’t like, where is the evidence to support this claim? How do we know that it was a website that was responsible for the views of its userbase, as opposed to any other media they accessed? How do we know that 8chan specifically was the factor that caused the outcome?
I'm not really that well informed of 8chan, but bringing it down, while practical, doesn't seem like the ideal solution. Isn't it just like covering your eyes and pretending the problem isn't there? The problem doesn't sound like it's 8chan, but rather these people and their ideologies. If 8chan was brought down, they'll just find another hub to congregate, but now we don't know where to reach them to talk.
I thought the idea expressed by NearlyFreeSpeech.net in the following link was nice:
I don't really know anything about 8chan but my limited experience watching videos on YouTube leads me to believe that there are millions of people being radicalized through technology. Young, angry, possibly under-educated people can easily fall down into a rabbit hole of hate like never before.
It's definitely an issue worldwide regardless of race, religion or gender and unfortunately no one has the answer. I don't know if 8chan going down really helps stop radicalization but I don't think it hurts. I also don't think it's an affront to free speech if a hosting provider stops doing business with them. If the US government started arresting posters on 8chan that's most definitely a concern but losing your Cloudflare service or hosting is not breaking any first amendment rights.
> Isn't it just like covering your eyes and pretending the problem isn't there?
Not necessarily - more like taking the megaphone away. You're right that some/many will find a hub to congregate in, but if it's discoverable by the current 8chan users, there's no reason to think it won't be discoverable by media outlets/journalists either.
Like most things, obfuscation/suppression isn't going to solve the issue, but by providing spaces that allow for discussions, the views can be legitimised in the eyes of people who otherwise may not believe them. I'm for the most part against suppression of speech or views, but I do believe there is a line, and to me 4/8chan can (and do) regularly cross this line.
The "megaphone" was simply a ranking of the most popular boards on the front page. There was no promotion of a particular community, it fell on the user to see a board description and think "Oh, I might find interesting content there".
So the crime is mostly in allowing individuals to connect with other individuals interested in a particular topic.
In that case, isn't Google a far more reaching megaphone? One can find far more vicious communities through Google. I remember browsing through racist forums as a kid because a friend had found it on Google (presumably because he looked for it). The community in there certainly matched the worst 8chan boards in their belief and conviction in hateful ideals.
The only difference is 8chan is a neutral rank by popularity, while Google also filters by a user-supplied search string. The same type of communities can be found through both sites.
> The "megaphone" was simply a ranking of the most popular boards on the front page.
No, the megaphone was the site facilitating the discussion, not the ranking. In fact, by anonymising the discussion, they make it even more difficult to infer whether something is "groupthink" or just a lone spammer.
>In that case, isn't Google a far more reaching megaphone?
This is textbook whataboutism, but yes it is. That doesn't change the discussion in any way other than to attempt to muddy the discussion.
> . I remember browsing through racist forums as a kid because a friend
The internet has changed hugely in the last few years, and comparing what was on Google 10+ years ago doesn't compare to the discussions that are happening in other places today.
Let me elaborate on why this argument isn't simply "whataboutism":
Nobody would call for Google to be shut down for the "evil" content they mirror and link to. We all have an implicit understanding that Google is simply a tool, a neutral platform to connect people to websites.
In fact, we believe the exact contrary. For us well educated folks, it's preventing access to Google on the basis of its content that is seen as a backward, deeply offensive move (China, Iran).
We look at the purpose and nature of the platform itself when we judge Google.
Well, the purpose of 8chan has never been to promote hate, but instead to provide an open alternative to 4chan, where everyone is welcome to open a board about any topic[1].
The reason why 8chan is ridden by "evil" content has more to do with the heavily controlled state of the giant internet networks, than the nature of 8chan in itself. Nothing about 8chan caters to hateful communities in particular. It's simply one of the few open social networks on the web, which naturally attracts the people rejected from mainstream social networks first.
Were it to be more popular, the ratio of "evil" to "decent" communities would trend towards the ratio found in other social networks.
So why do we call for it to be shut down, when its only real fault is to be too small? If you were the user of an 8chan community about cooking cupcakes (or furries, or BDSM), you certainly wouldn't want 8chan to be shut down just because some people are using the site differently.
___
Now I don't disagree with the reality that intellectually vulnerable people can be influenced by hateful communities in sites like 8chan, and that this is a problem to solve.
But in my opinion, the solution is to go in the total opposite direction of what you propose.
The urge to seek out and enter fringe communities is healthy, and at least a necessary step in one's intellectual development. People will from time to time look to escape out of controlled environments, into the bigger space of possibilities. This won't change for as long as we keep teaching kids that freedom is good.
The problem is that, as conventional social networks get more and more controlled, and havens of diversity suppressed (Tumblr, ...), the only remaining places of freedom are those where all the "evil" has been funneled in. That's how people wanting to escape oppression or simply discover new possibilities, get shoved in places where "evil" looks like the norm.
Therefore, the solution is not to shut down one of the last places of diversity on the internet, Instead, we should try to make diversity and openness of thought as widespread as possible, so that "evil" doesn't seem like the only option to a lost, vulnerable individual.
8chan never got brought down. They just got dumped by their ISP and CDN. They are free to start their own CDN and ISP to host their content. And if they cannot find a private business willing to peer with them, they are free to offer alternative access methods (dialup?). They can even go set up a booth downtown and hand out flyers with access numbers.
No free speech rights were trampled on, and no censorship took place.
I think no free speech right was trampled because it wasn't the government that acted, not because the reasons you stated. I mean, going by your logic, it's impossible to trample the free speech of someone unless you make it physically impossible for them to express anything ever again.
I have zero qualms about private businesses or private citizens stopping nazis from shouting their hate to the world. Nazis are free to shout as much as they want, and I'm free to tell them to shut the fuck up.
"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government,[5] private institutions, and corporations."
This is the wikipedia definition of censorship, so that makes your definition wrong.
Yes, but GP was specifically stating that no rights afforded by the United States government were trampled on in this case. This is, no doubt, censorship, but some questions are:
- did censoring 8chan significantly limit any sort of harmful behavior?
- is censoring 8chan "right"?
- does this merely hide the problem, preventing an open discussion?
- should CloudFlare, an entity with massive control of Internet infrastructure, really be acting as a moral arbiter? Or do we expect some kind of neutrality from them? Do our expectations matter?
That's clearly against the spirit of free speech.
At that point, what's stopping the government from relying on corporations to perform censorship for them in exchange for say, tax benefits and just going off of this plausible deniability of "oh, but we the government didn't do it! Go blame that corporation!".
I suspect if water and electricity services weren't public utilities, you'd argue that they too can take away service from whoever they want simply because of their unrelated views.
I'm guessing you also think it's okay when banks and transaction processors can interfere in the unrelated business of their clients, relying on their large market share to coerce their clients into dumping certain users. There's absolutely nothing authoritarian about that!
Seriously, this naive approach to things is going to ruin this country. The road to hell is truly paved by good intentions.
To me its more like closing the bar they hang out in, almost all of them will find other bars to go to instead almost immediately but it'll cause at least a temporary fracture and even when they all do find themselves back to the same place (asides from the ones who just got on with their lives), it'll take a while to build up the same kind of feedback loop.
Honestly, as a teen (over a decade ago now...), there were forums I was on that totally died due to a week or two of downtime, sometimes just breaking someone away from their familiar habits is enough to get them out of a bad routine.
The notion that we could reach them on 8chan is a bit idealistic, the only thing we're able to reach is the manifestos within seconds of the news breaking as far as I can see. If your goal is to _reach_ them, then do it in reality.
The whole point of bringing 8chan down is to make it harder for them to congregate and fracture their community. It also makes it harder for new people to be indoctrinated.
Reddit found that banning hate subreddits reduced the overall usage of hate speech on the website. Even though the most dedicated users probably moved to voat, now some clueless kid who just wants to see look at memes is much less likely to just stumble upon that content.
Perhaps, but I do wonder if it actually mattered all that much whether 8chan encouraged this. There's evidence of contagion in mass shootings, that shooters seem to see the headlines about a shooting and become inspired to imitate it. Maybe there'd always be mass shootings tied to 8chan so long as there were news headlines tying the previous mass shootings to the site and leading future shooters towards it. Those certainly have a much broader reach than anything on the site itself.
It seems that the Ohio gunman claimed to be rather left leaning and wanted sen. Warren to be next president. Probably he hasn't read 8chan but still started shooting. He also claimed to be pro-Satan leftist, whatever it can possibly mean. So, I would say, that both he and large majority of public place murderers, serial killers, etc. are simply very sick people and presence of lack of presence of some random internet site does not make much difference.
A person can be sound and rational but people are tribal. It is deep human drive to find a tribe to belong to. What the internet has enabled is forming tribes irrespective of geographic proximity. Sites like 4chan/8chan allow people of radical persuasions to find each other and band together, growing their
That creates a powder keg waiting on a fight/flight trigger. Without a tribe to back someone, such a trigger will cause a flight response, but with that tribe they’ll feel emboldened and choose a fight strategy. Sites that encourage the formation of communities that promote violence will inevitably lead to actual violence once they’re past a certain size. It doesn’t even really matter what the ideology is, it just matters that they preach violence.
There is high chance that most of those in these groups don't even believe in most of the stuff they say. To them its just entertainment. People participate only because its a throwaway identity that is noncommittal. These groups have no leadership or loyalty. I'm sure this is understood a majority of the time by participants. The problem is that one individual who memes way too hard or is absolutely serious about the things they say. Real life friends call you out on your bullshit, they try to reason with you when you are irrational. they stop you from driving when you're drunk. Your internet troll squad does everything opposite.
I would not doubt that a not very small percentage of the conspiracy theories posted are done so by people who don't actually believe it but want to see how many others they can convince.
However, I do also believe that some pretty sick people use 8chan to recruit people to continue their campaign of hate.
Because when people are joking they aren't usually willing to get into arguments that span hundreds of posts about race and IQ, the so-called parasitic nature of Jews, race mixing and why every race other than whites (with the ocassional exception of asians) is subhuman.
So imagine you own a bunch of ponds and let groups of people use them. Some people use them for breeding goldfish. Some use them for canoe races. Some for swim meets.
But one of the biggest ponds you own lies still and stagnant. A perfect place for mosquitos to lay their eggs. In fact you’ve managed to make it especially hospitable to mosquitos that carry malaria. And all your other ponds are next to it, all your other ponds connect to it. Lots of people who come to your ponds for other things end up with malaria.
Should you be allowed to keep operating these ponds?
Statistically, approximately nobody dies in mass shootings (per [0], 387 deaths in 2018). Getting up in arms about something so small is absolutely a moral panic.
Statistically, approximately nobody is worse off for 8ch being inaccessible.
Presumably you have some threshold of statistical significance that would cause you to be worried about risk factors, but that threshold is itself subjective. Besides the questionable proposition that the number of deaths below that threshold don't matter, a lack of interest in the problem impairs the ability to make future predictions, since by the time you do take it seriously, you'll have to do a lot of catching up before you can assess the future course of events.
you might like to think about this in similar terms to epidemiology. while a small number of fatalities from a disease outbreak in a remote location isn't that troubling to most people, epidemiologists are in the business o assessing the potential scope, speed, and severity of communicable diseases and seem to prefer nipping things in the bud to waiting to see whether they develop into a pandemic if left alone.
Of course more people die of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, car accidents (and probably any number of other things) than in mass shootings every day.
But the seemingly random and violent nature of it is what's scary.
I can eat healthier, exercise, buy a safer car, drive more carefully, etc etc. But mass shooters aren't really avoidable while leading a normal life. That makes it scary and noteworth.
I don't think equating people to mosquitos is a good analogy, it seems dehumanizing the other to me.
But let's roll with it anyway. What we have here is actually a large-scale land owner who leases out the land to anyone without further conditions to the lessee. It would seem silly to blame the leaser and not the lessee for what happens on those lands.
Of course the government can still come in and request that they do something about the mosquitoes, if laws and regulations require that, but until then they won't become active because it would mean going back on their lease agreements which grant the lessee free use.
I visited 8chan/pol for the first time before it went down. I think reading content there should absolutely make anyone think hard about reasonable constraints on free speech. For example, I saw someone started a thread about population in Nigeria rising. Several anonymous commenters piled on, virtually everyone referring to Africans as “subhumans”. One commenter proposed that western countries should issue tags to hunt Africans in same way as animals and utilize their skills to survive as hunting challenge. Other commenter thanked Trump for shutting down Ebola research and hoped it will soon spread again. It was very clear no one had any rational debate. No one cared to fact check or cross-question anything. You can literally through whatever number and cite whatever source you want and everyone merely would go with it as long as it supports racial superiority. Everyone was busy one upping another in how grotesque and extreme they possibly could be. It is at this point I realized that hate is an addiction. I am certain it gives large dopamine hits for these people to consume all these material. It is probably highlight of their day to justify themselves as savior of humanity, being superior and created favorably by god than others. They probably hang out in here very large portions of their free time not for learning something but for pure entertainment derived dopamine hits. They are neither looking for nor want rational debates or reasoning from the other side. I can see how someone vulnerable will get in to these forums and become terminal addict. These forums should not be considered any less dangerous than drug dealers who handout cocain to young kids.
If you block 8chan, the only thing that it will result in is people will move to more censorship-resistant technologies. You will push people to TOR, distributed P2P, blockchain forums, etc. Which will make even harder to identify them.
You can't stop the signal. ThePirateBay proved it many many times.
We need to address the sources of the problem, not the symptoms.
I don't want to go into specifics, but I spent time on some of the more unsavory parts of Reddit for a while. It got me into trouble with friends and family - I said some truly mean and hateful things. I was going deeper and deeper into it. But when Reddit banned those communities, I just... moved on.
I'm ashamed I ever let myself fall into the decaying orbit I did, but when the attractor was removed, I didn't seek out a new one. I didn't even have to install tor if I wanted to: they had just moved to Voat. Still, that tiny barrier to entry caught me. And I'm glad it did.
That's already too much work for the vast majority of the population. If you can't just randomly stumble on it somewhere, it has no real discoverability.
Nobody in the history of the world has been radicalized because it was easy to access. They were radicalized because something they read resonated with something they experienced. People don't just accidentally turn into mass murderers because they read some pamphlet, a lot has to go wrong.
They don't in one step but in this analogy the pamphlet isn't static it constantly changes to show you more of what's engaging to you (or people like you as the algorithm understands you or as you engage more and more with that initial resonance) so that small initial resonance gets cranked up and up and up. It's hard to see how putting up a larger speed bump along that route won't decrease the number of people who get sucked into these radicalization spirals.
The internet has shown just how much making that slide easier means way more people fall into it. Used to be to get sucked into a world of neonazi/etc propaganda you had to know one and consciously choose to associate with it but now it gets lightly slipped into discussions online and is easy to find articles taking you to the next step.
Because the speed bump you are trying to erect only addresses the issue of people finding websites like 8chan, it does nothing to address the issue of why people stay on sites like 8chan as you described. Once they find the new site, they will be able to visit it again with ease. Furthermore, they will feel more victimized by society and point to their old sites being banned as evidence that society hates them; ergo, why they begin to hate society.
From the reporting and studying that's been done so far it seems like most people that wind up in this world get marginally attracted at first and then over time get sucked deeper and deeper into the more virulently hateful and violent edges of the ideology. My thought is that if you can sever the easy link between the on ramp and the end point people will still start over there but the jump from whatever weird subreddit or 8chan-alike to the violent side most people will stay on the clearnet.
I still wouldn't say "most people" can't access Pirate Bay. Install uTorrent, click the magnet link. Easy as that.
The very small subset of the population who live in a area where govt has blocked Piratebay can just use a VPN (which they likely already are for stuff like YouTube and Netflix).
> I've generally been on the free speech side of this debate, as some of my previous comments on HN will show.
> With 8chan, I legitimately don't know what my opinion is.
You can support free speech and still condemn 8chan, by considering Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance[1]. If a person or group enacts violence on another person or group because of their ideas, the elements of the latter will curb their speech out of fear.
Violent groups use “free speech” as an excuse because it works. They’re only interested in free speech for themselves, not others. In fact, they’re so incapable of tolerating the free speech of others that they resort to killing them.
there is no free speech side of this debate. framing the "other side" as not being free speech is false.
the free speech argument is that racist assholes should be allowed to say whatever they want, but cloudflare or voxility or any other service provider should also be allowed to tell 8chan to STFU and go away. that's part of free speech too. 8chan doesn't and shouldn't have any more rights here than cloudflare does.
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 free-speech system, you are going to expose glitches in the "marketplace of ideas", and demagogues and radicals are going to be able to exploit it.
It might still be worth it (I haven't made up my mind yet on where we draw the line in censorship).
There are a huge number of people who claim they support the Confederate flag in honor of those who lost their lives under it.
Okay. It was a racist and oppressive government, but I can understand that logic. People gave their lives, and even sacrifice in favor of an unjust cause is sacrifice.
That said... if that's what it's really about for them, then why didn't those folks say something when the flag was claimed by racists and white supremacists? Why didn't they defend it from those who would appropriate the symbol?
Silence carries its own liability.
And a lot of 8chan-style behavior that isn't guilty of outright instigation is certainly guilty of immoral silence.
They did try to defend it. They were what was meant by the "good people on both sides" remark. They are up against an increasingly consolidated media empire that generally does not like the man who made that comment. It's unfair to put the onus of successful promulgation of a message against a wave of misinformation and misappropriation, and condemn them for failing at that.
That's not its unified mission. I don't hear the BDS movement speaking out that much against suicide bomb attacks on civilians either, but that doesn't automatically delegitimize all of their arguments about the Israeli occupation.
It's tough to make the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable speech on a case-by-case basis.
The classic extremist play is to patiently gnaw at the edges of acceptability. Subtle digs at Jews, blacks, Hispanics, muslims or non-muslims (you can insert any group here, really) pave the way for innuendos about their morals, work ethic, intellectual capacity etc.
You can gaslight perfectly normal, upstanding citizens into doubting their strongly held ethical convictions, first enough that they don't argue against e.g. racist loudmouths, then to the point that they don't argue for equal treatment of "out" groups. As this process plays out, it starts to seem dangerous to defend the maligned against violence, and eventually enough citizens will have had their sense of normal behaviour pushed far enough that atrocities become possible.
I don't know how to break that cycle. I do think the root causes need to be addressed, because poverty and social decline provide fertile ground for demagogues pointing fingers.
I'd like to think I never went too far with it, and I certainly was never violent or anything, but I got pretty big into the anti-feminist, #GamerGate, and "fight the SJW snowflakes!" crap from the years of ~2013-2016; basically the TLDR for that ending was when Donald Trump was elected I realized I was wrong to hold a lot of these viewpoints, and now it is not a chapter of my life that I am proud of.
I don't think I'm an idiot, and I would like to think that I'm normally a pretty decent human, and yet I was still able to be persuaded by morons on Youtube like Sargon of Akkad and Thunderf00t, and I spread the stupid memes along with most of my friends; I can easily see the alternate universe where I didn't realize I was wrong, and went further down the rabbit hole watching idiots like Stefan Molyneux or something.
I think people like to pretend that they and everyone they care about are immune to propaganda.
Sadly we are all manipulable. Tho being aware of that fact makes you a lot more resilient to manipulation and more likely to end up with a life you would have chosen. So kudos.
Study political science, propaganda, psychology of advertising, this is something that can make you resilient to propaganda. Just being aware that you may get manipulated can't help you much as you have to be able to spot it effortlessly everywhere.
As a fellow math enthusiast, I would love to grab a coffee or beer with you next time I'm in NYC and hear about this journey. Care to email me? laughinghan@gmail.com
Totally agree. But also one needs to say that this is of course the tip of the ice berg. I don't think people land there right away, but rather start maybe at some "normal" YouTube video's comment section or the comment section of some politics focussed news site.
People voice their trashy opinions there - which is totally fine - but there are so few balancing/calming opinions. Especially if you have some conspiracy affine news site/YT video, these balancing/calming opinions are just not present.
My conclusion at the moment is that more balanced people (no, not bots :)) should visit these sites and write calming/positive comments. Dialogue has become pretty unfashionable in 2019, monologues seem to have become the norm unfortunately although I think there is hope.
Valid concern... Probably one shouldn't approach the situation with a 'improve discussion' hat on, but rather with a 'participating in critical discussion' hat. I mean just people actually reading articles, comments, thinking about them and answering would probably be a high advancement in culture.
I recently got an account at a more or less alt-right news website and the comments there were all just rants that stood for themselves.
> I continue to be surprised at the level to which people misunderstand this.
That's probably because you are actually the one misunderstanding. The argument it sounds like you're making (I apologize if I'm reading you wrong) is the often made one that "Freedom of speech only protects you from the government". This argument equivocates the idea of freedom of speech with the First Amendment.
Many Americans, and freedom loving folks internationally, believe that freedom of speech is critical for a liberal democracy to exist. Many of the American founders believed in the idea and enshrined it in our Bill of Rights to make sure the Government can not violate it. They did not, however, create he idea of freedom of speech, which existed long before the Bill of Rights, exists outside of America and outside of the context of Government and Citizens.
Think of it like murder. People do not find murder reprehensible because it is illegal. It is illegal because it is reprehensible, and most people would not support it regardless of its legal status (I hope). The idea of murder and the legality of murder are related but separate.
Your argument is therefore taking as narrow a scope of the idea of freedom of speech as possible and then arguing against that, which is a type of straw man argument. I hope that clarifies the logic fallacies involved in your argument and helps you better understand those you disagree with.
Most people understand that fine. It's about freedom of speech as a social principle and value, not strictly a matter of law.
It's granted that people are within their rights to throw out speech they dislike and that there's a world of difference between severing a voluntary business relationship and the deployment of state force, but the implications of an anxious, PR-sensitive set of internet infrastructure providers is certainly fair game for discussion.
If we get into the habit of shutting down every site that attracts a spate of negative attention, it still has the aggregate effect of chilling free discourse. If a shooter came onto HN and posted a manifesto here, would it withstand the mainstream media onslaught?
Well, wait, the question is whether or not internet service is considered a utility, and whether or not that utility is allowed to take a "side" as a result.
I think that 8chan is terrible and I would rather it not exist, but at the same time, I would be pretty against denying its owners water or something, since we've decided that utilities don't get to take sides.
Wouldn't that be more like public roads? You couldn't decide that Fords are not allowed on a road, just because of the brand, but Ford is perfectly within their rights to not sell a car to somebody, just as Cloudflare and Voxility have decided to sell their hosting services to 8chan.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, evidently; the line in which we draw "utility" is a discussion that I really don't know that I have a good viewpoint. Are you entitled to having a soapbox to shout off of? I'm genuinely not sure.
Yeah, I agree. Up until the internet, getting information out there required resources and/or a platform to speak from, be it the pulpit, a newspaper, etc. If you had something to say, you had to go through such great effort to say it.
What do we even do, besides sit and watch? I've totally shifted the way I browse the web to reduce my exposure to toxic information, and I think that the whole corporate banning of Alex Jones was a net positive, but what happens when a voice I agree with gets shunned in the same way?
Most 'internet as utility' arguments though don't extend to hosting or other services though, only the physical infrastructure that exists as a near monopoly (and at best is usually a duopoly of one cable and one DSL provider) in most locations. The argument is they shouldn't get to play favorites because the ability for competitors to come in and provide competition to limit bad behavior is extremely limited.
> 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.
> 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.
there have always been hyper-radical idiots. with 8chan and such, you can see them.
you're not getting rid of anything, you're just sticking your head into the sand.
> there have always been hyper-radical idiots. with 8chan and such, you can see them.
Sure, I'm aware that the KKK existed before the internet.
> you're not getting rid of anything, you're just sticking your head into the sand.
I didn't claim I was getting rid of anyone or anything. I didn't really claim much at all in my post, but there's a difference between "getting rid" of stuff and deplatforming it.
For that matter, how does your logic make any sense? If I hire a hitman to kill someone, could my defense in court be "Well he was going to kill somebody anyway! You're just sticking your head in the sand by blaming me for it!"
Is your argument that rhetoric, delivered consistently enough and effectively enough, can't possibly influence people to do reprehensible things?
Just like 8chan isn't getting rid of them either. They're just pushing them to a different platform where its going to be harder to keep tabs on these people.
I just wonder with all the technology we have at our disposal, how is it these people continue to slip through the system undeterred to escalate this type of violence?
I've never figured out a good way to express this without sounding like a raving censor, but here goes: I feel like freedom of speech is a means to an end (the end being general freedom and liberty) more than an end in itself. When speech leads directly to mass fear or violence engendering mass fear, which leads to people willingly sacrificing their own and others' rights just for the promise of safety, then bitter realpolitik says that we may need to limit certain kinds of speech to maintain vital freedoms.
Of course that's dangerous thinking in itself, because there's always potential for abuse when you let someone decide what people aren't allowed to say. But there has to be a balance somewhere. I hope we can find it.
> I've read it before, and I spent a few hours reading it this weekend, and it's beyond clear to me that it absolutely had the potential to radicalize shooters and terrorists.
What was it you read there that convinced you that websites are capable of turning people into murderers any more than video games are?
An implicit acceptance and endorsement for the messages of hate and violence?
I personally doubt violent video games turn people into murderers; I suspect they do desensitize people to violence, and normalize violence. That's the problem with 8chan: violence, hated, bigotry, etc are normalized
Do you not think that discussion has the potential to convey ideas and change minds? It hardly seems implausible to say that a group of people eagerly urging each other to murder could possibly result in someone getting murdered.
free speech is highly overrated, is not even granted in other democracies that are functional
It has also not prevented the US to go into a de-facto oligarchy state if anything the NRA and others have manipulated the "free speech cult" to promote private interest over a public one.
Same as with gun ownership, that sad illusion that owning guns will prevent tyranny is beyond hilarious at this point.
There is absolutely no evidence that the 8chan circle-hate happening out in the open has had any mitigating effect. It only made it accessible to even the technically illiterate among the potential audience.
There's no evidence that law enforcement took any action till afterwards, and on multiple occasions. So is the medium to blame or is the clear lack of policing?
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. Root out the terrorists wherever they may congregate, regardless of whichever flavor of terrorist they happen to be.
> Cloudflare provides services to a number of Islamist terror organizations
yes, and that entire article is about people trying to get them to take them down and the criminal statute they're using to force the issue, which is part of the GP's point. Not a lot of folks in the federal government hand wringing about deplatforming on that one.
And yet, Cloudflare didn't take them down proactively like they did with The Daily Stormer and now 8chan. Under what standards are sites like 8chan worse than the Taliban?
Looks like the standard is there hasn’t been enough bad press about their material support of those terrorist orgs yet. They clearly wait for the public outrage before acting.
According to some CEO interview they hold on as long as possible until forced otherwise.
This is relevant as the censorship here (whether justified or not, right or wrong it is censorship) is not done by CF, but by a faceless internet mob that is attacking both CF and 8chan.
CF has all the right to terminate its relationships with anyone. social media mobs should not force companies to exercise that right.
> According to some CEO interview they hold on as long as possible until forced otherwise.
I think an appropriate qualifier here might be that they used to hold on as long as possible. I don't think that's universally true anymore.
> This is relevant as the censorship here (whether justified or not, right or wrong it is censorship) is not done by CF, but by a faceless internet mob that is attacking both CF and 8chan.
In the same sense that a mob outside the courthouse ensured a guilty verdict, perhaps. But it's still the jurors who actually acted.
> In the same sense that a mob outside the courthouse ensured a guilty verdict, perhaps. But it's still the jurors who actually acted.
I am not sure what you mean here... but I would find in both cases very problematic that a mob could wield such power. A mob is not a democratic representation.
I meant that the mob may have made demands, but the only power the mob has is that which it is given. Just like the verdict reached by those jurors, Cloudflare chose their own path.
Mob power come mostly from two sources. First, the one you point out, people/companies yielding and affirming the efficacy of their method. Second from other public figure joining in the pressure.
The reason the mob has power is in the end that they do not get criticized by those they respect.
Probably it's closer to home- those sites fuel domestic terrorism, whereas the Taliban do not. Also public pressure and public attention. They're probably incredibly hesitant to take anything down, but if something becomes front page news then they have to deal with it. Also I don't know what's proactive about any of this, if anything it's way too little too late. The sites you mention provide absolutely zero value to anything resembling civilization- they're gathering places for sociopaths and psychotic morons. I'm not even close to being remotely upset that they may have been treated more harshly than actual ISIS or Taliban sites or whatever. There is a level of pathetic beneath which it all just kind of blends together and it doesn't make sense to attempt to rank them. Yeah, ISIS is shittier than the people who like Daily Stormer, but they're both so shitty that it's not really possible to rank their shittiness relative to each other. It's like the difference between jumping off a 50 story building vs. a 100 story building- there is a distinction, but it doesn't really matter.
I don't think 8chan was exactly a good site, but I'd still put it in the category of "internet-neutral". There's some horrible stuff there (which is all you really hear about), a lot of neutral stuff and a little bit of good.
IMO the reason Cloudflare took down TDS and 8chan but not the Taliban or Hamas is simply outgroup vs fargroup. [0] The operators, users and targets of 8chan or TDS are all familiarly western but different enough to hate, while islamic terror organizations are so different it's hard to relate to them - sort of like that joke about how the more similar two religious denominations are, the more likely it is that they hate the other. [1]
I agree with you. Those sites were closer to home and less alien to Americans, and thus might get more scrutiny and judgement. That's got to be a factor. But I've got to think avoiding bad publicity and negative headlines is the #1 factor behind any inconsistencies in their reaction. The news cycle can be a powerful force for companies concerned about how they're perceived by their investors.
> But I've got to think avoiding bad publicity and negative headlines is the #1 factor behind any inconsistencies in their reaction.
I don't see this working out well for them when it comes to total negative news. Would we have seen nearly as many requests to Cloudflare asking for 8chan to be cut off if they had not already done so for The Daily Stormer?
It's hard to say. It's never going to be a win/win for them, and unfairly cutting someone off would be terrible publicity for them. I'd imagine they're totally inconsistent about these things and don't spend hardly any time policing their customers (nor should they). I have a feeling these things tend to be on a case-by-case basis, mostly fueled by investor concerns, but I guess that just doesn't bother me like it does some people. I don't see them as having any responsibility at all to be guardians of free speech or anything, maybe that's the distinction.
On a more practical level, most internet infrastructure firms based in the US or Europe probably don't have that many people on staff who are fluent in Arabic, Pashto and other languages that would allow the quick identification of terrorists, as opposed to normal people who sometimes discuss terrorism as spectators of the news.
True, but these weren't terrorist propaganda sites, they were the official websites of Hamas & Co, and they do have an english version for anyone not familiar with Hamas. Zoho apparently is providing Email to them.
It being their official sites gives those value / legitimacy and makes them even more okay to not kick them off. Kind of like there should be hardly anything the US president can do to get kicked off twitter.
The US president isn't classified as a terrorist (organization) though, while Hamas is. CF's argument was that they weren't providing material support, otherwise they'd be breaking the law.
If 8chan or dailystormer never made the news, cloudflare would still be hosting them. It isn’t public opinion that is the big factor, enterprise client won’t use controversial services. Having a few large enterprise customers call up saying they can’t be hosted with a hate site is what made the CEO of cloudflare flip his decision.
I do think cloudflare will be forced to be more palatable to enterprise customers if they go public. One biggest factors why I don’t use them is who they provide access to.
I think you have it spot on, but public opinion is driving those enterprise customers to make that call. They still support the terror group websites, even after being informed of them, so it’s not based on policy but rather a business decision.
If I was choosing for a company like Monsanto that has the possibility of getting majorly shat on by internet opinion, Cloudflare's seeming policy of "if the media hates you, we'll drop you" would be the exact opposite of comforting.
If I were a US intelligence organization I would be incredibly happy that terror organizations were voluntarily letting a US company MITM all of their traffic...
We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society.
We used to, until quite recently. You could read Dabiq, the well-produced magazine of ISIL/ISIS.[1] They definitely glorified their terrorist incidents. With color pictures of their operations. All with religious justification. "Islam is the religion of the sword, not pacifism". (Dabiq, issue 7.)
Dabiq probably inspired enemies more than supporters. Dabiq says that there can be no compromise until the followers of Allah rule the earth. So ISIS could never have a peaceful border with anybody. On March 23, 2019, the last territory controlled by ISIS was captured.
8Chan is a minor annoyance in comparison. I'd let them blither and look foolish.
> 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, but we shouldn't let that too-near emotion influence out policies. We've seen that lead to stuff like the PATRIOT act in the past and we surely don't need another one of those.
> Speak for yourself, I would. I've downloaded and distributed ISIS propaganda videos before out of sheer intrigue.
It will be downvoted because it's INSANE, not because it's a hot topic.
ISIS propaganda isn't banned for the fun of it or because "too near emotions influencing policies", it's banned for the effect that it casuses, the intention it has, and the attorcities it shows.
There's a difference between supporting free speech and you spreading around videos of murders, executions of innocent people who have families, and calls for more murders of innocent people all over the world. Just because those things don't make you want to kill someone, doesn't change the fact that they do help radicalize other people.
Well, let's be clear, I simply downloaded a torrent and let it seed for a while.
You seem strongly opinionated on this one though, I'm curious, what do you think of Tor or BitTorrent? Should such services be banned as they aid in the distribution of this type of thing too? If you're running a Tor middle node you're part of the distribution of not just all sorts of propaganda like this, but far, far worse things.
Do you think banning these services, reigning in control of information to "help prevent radicalization" in a China-esque way would be a good decision? In my view this is just part of living in a free society, freedom sometimes costs security.
I don't think those services should be banned as that's not their only purpose. I do think that anyone knowingly spreading racist, extremist, terrorist material should be punished.
Platforms that can, but do not, enforce rules to remove such content should also be punished and forbidden.
I would not sacrifice the lives of the ones I love in the name of free speech. Promoting terrorist content increases ever so slightly the chances of your loved ones and your family being hurt by those who get radicalized due to such content.
If "China-esque way" is what it takes then so be it.
Interesting, most Tor operators are doing so because they feel that people should have a right to anonymity or an uncensored internet connection. I'd even argue that Tor trades lives in a far more direct way than 8chan ever could given that fentanyl and weapon sales as well as plotting of child abductions or slave sales occur right there.
Tor operators in doing so are making a choice: they feel the freedom of anonymity and speech are more important than human lives, even the lives of children.
I'd argue that running a Tor node is explicitly making that choice and that statement, so then it confuses me why you seem to be okay with Tor but more questioning of 8chan and similar services where the choice is made less directly. Is it a matter of having the ability to discern "good" uses from "evil"? You're surely accepting both uses by operating a Tor node and knowingly doing so, so I don't see how that makes sense.
If you want to look at gun laws on the other hand, that's a freedom for security trade that seems more debatable given that other countries have the same access to information, but not nearly the same gun violence problems.
When he distributed the content he didn't pick only the rational ones. Many people did exactly that, joining ISIS, traveling to Syria, doing terrorist attacks in their own countries.
They didn't get the ideas to do that out of the blue, without seeing or hearing any of the propaganda content.
I mean this seriously, more Americans should see what those ISIS videos are like.
More Americans should read the writings of Osama bin Laden too.
It's not that this material isn't horrendous, but it's very different from what you'd expect -- the people behind it are not dumb, and like all good propaganda the rationale is selectively built on compelling facts.
> No. Must I be to show someone the community's proverbial door?
Speaking for the whole site like that comes off as rather pompous. Not to mention the comment is now "in the black" on points, so it's not even clear that the community even agrees with you.
Are we talking about the comment? The one I'm talking about is flagged/dead.
Yea, I wouldn't pretend to speak for the community - for some reason our OP insinuated I do by asking if I'm a moderator.
What I'm trying to say is that a negative karma post has been shown the door by the community. That statement remains true from my perspective regardless if I upvoted, downvoted, or did not engage with that comment.
> We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society.
I certainly would tolerate those sites. Free speech arguments aside, you can't kill the hydra, but you can severely degrade intelligence operations watching that hydra. Best case the bad guys all end up on sites already being surveilled, worst case they slip under the radar.
We had this problem years ago, hacktivists targeting ISIS channels. They scatter to the winds, intelligence ends up doing more work for less rewards.
Exactly this. These sort of folk started congregating on 8chan when they got pushed out of 4chan. I certainly don't condone mass shootings, white supremacists, etc., but if you think denying 8chan hosting is going to solve this problem, you are sorely mistaken. All it does is force these people into more concentrated forums where there is less push back and opposing views to their radical ideas. Ultimately, it forces them into corners of the internet that are harder for outside groups to locate and monitor for potential threats.
I'll be quite honest, I don't know what a "good" solution here is, but I really don't think this is it.
Disagree. Of course people recongregate in less well-known haunts, but there's a cost to them in doing so, it massively inhibits recruitment, and when there's an influx of new users after the sinking of a platform security standards tend be much lower, making it that much easier to infiltrate.
In war, degrading your enemy's communications and lines of supply is often more effective than engaging in battle.
Lone wolf attacker has no supply line to degrade. The El Paso shooter used 8chan to distribute his manifesto, we have no indication that caused his radicalization.
Empirical evidence suggests that the 'lone wolf' stereotype is not well grounded in reality, and that social networks can be essential for the development of both ideological conviction and the acquisition of practical know-how.
While we need to wait for more detail to fully understand the path of radicalization, I am moderately confident in predicting the El Paso shooter visited 8ch regularly for at least 6 months, probably much longer, but posted infrequently if at all.
On the other hand making them harder to access also makes the ideas spread slower because if you get all of say white supremacist sites off Google you massively cut down on the number of random 'normies' that will fall in and get swept up in the group. Same thing applies but is probably even more effective for getting groups off the regular internet all together because then you have to convince someone to install TOR (or whatever the new flavor of the month is) to get them into the funnel.
That makes sense when the hydra is just quietly plotting. But what about if the site is the hydra's head-growing organ, i.e. radicalization platform? Disrupting recruitment seems like a viable strategy against hydras of all sorts.
That only works if you're actually going to act on the intelligence gathered from having the discussion centralized. That's something the U.S. is clearly willing to do with, e.g., ISIS. But even what limited programs we had towards combating white nationalist terrorism were canceled by Trump.
And a few months later ISIS died because the lack of easily-spread propaganda destroyed its ability to recruit susceptible idiots to its cause to replace all the soldiers that were being killed.
There is a fallacy in your thinking imo. Sites like 8chan are not entirely devoted to radicalisation, just like a mosque is not devoted to radicalisation.
Yet sometimes in a mosque some evil islamic imam or something preaches radicalisation.
Yet we tolerate and welcome mosques. Then why shouldn’t we tolerate and welcome sites like 8chan?
Also please keep in mind that now that 8chan has been basically shut down, we have no way of make an opinion of our own.
What are you talking about? We can and do arrest, charge, and convict "evil islamic imams" that "preach radicalization", and don't let them operate mosques. We tolerate and welcome mosques because they ban radicals and report them to the FBI:
"Monteilh eventually so unnerved Orange County's Muslim community that that they got a restraining order against him. [T]hey also reported Monteilh to the FBI"
You do know that Homeland is a TV show and not real life, right?
A mosque that openly fostered extremism like 8chan did would of course get shut down. By contrast, 8chan has not been shut down. Its operations have been disrupted, but it hasn't shut down, anymore than Cloudflare has shut down just because they had a site outage last month.
> What are you talking about? We can and do arrest, charge, and convict "evil islamic imams" that "preach radicalization", and don't let them operate mosques.
Indeed, you arrest the single imam, you don't shut down the whole mosque. That's the point.
If a mosque openly fostered extremism in spite of arrests and multiple massacres, you'd have a problem with their landlord refusing to continue to rent to them?
> We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society.
I completely disagree. I've read Dabiq[1] and similar publications because I want to know why people believe the things they believe. It is a good thing that such horrible ideas are available to the public, and for the same reason that it's good that flat earth sites are available to the public. JS Mill puts it best[2]:
> But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.
> If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
It is for these same reasons that I also read /pol/ and /leftypol/ on 8chan.
And yet, we let Islam continue to be preached in this nation. When will we recognize that extremist ideologies like these can not be allowed to fester? Freedom of speech needs its limits.
These aren't exactly organized bands of people funneling in millions of dollars for carrying out actual training and misson planning/execution. They're watering holes where disaffected elements of society hyperbolically play up various happenings.
Just take a step back for a moment. We have an increasing population and increasing saturation of that population with streams of data. When something happens, we know with a speed that is uncommon in human history (to be euphemistic about it).
More population = more happenings = more things to emotionally charge people in the same 24 hour frame. Even if population increases by a bajillion, we still only have 24 hours in a media cycle.
Even if the per capita incidence of violence decreases, a rising population means more slices of highly charged emotional manipulation within the same media cycle.
Edit: So instead of increasing population, resultant increasing pop density, increasing information density, and a myriad of clusterf* systems running haywire (even in an era where we're safer than even 20 years ago)...4chan and 8chan are the devil and satan for allowing people to shitpost in a hyperbolic hyperironic manner?
The "hyperirony" excuse is complete bullshit. It's not redeeming when the defense is that they only support, encourage, and enable terrorism because it's a joke. That would make it more despicable, even. Instead we have incredibly racist and hateful people who don't see themselves that way making excuses. They're still shit humans. You don't murder people and say it was irony as your defense.
Shit humans have always existed. But claiming they support "terrorism" in the same sense that we think of organizational terrorism is ridiculous.
4chan and 8chan didn't create hyperirony (although they certainly cultivate massive gardens of it) or densensitization. Our media cycle has created it in tandem with a feedback loop that synergizes with the principle of "more people + same time amount = more hyperslices of emotion eliciting news that distort mental maps of larger-than-self situations"
You're safer at a wal-mart than prior 4chan and 8chan. But if you combine higher population density and information density, you'll get more raw events of violence even if the chance of experiencing violence has gone down.
Imo, there's a more insidious risk in allotting more powers of censorship to entities who are far less subject to reciprocal investigation. Think of 9/11. If we had done nothing, we would be safer and more prosperous today. We let the fleas provoke us into gouging untold amounts of flesh to stop itches.
Edit: A more simple way to phrase it is that hyperirony and the lack of "proper affect", which is really what people seem to be most horrified about, is a defense against the 24/7 atrocity exhibition which turns emotion into banality.
I guess it would fall under stochastic terrorism, so the modus operandi is different (it doesn't need secretive cell networks for example), but it's not ridiculous to compare it.
It is ridiculous because it's a consequence of anonymity which is still precious enough to ward off against knee jerk emotionalism. As I said, 9/11 was my lesson on how much more magnificentally messed up a sort of societal "immunological reaction" can be in comparison to the actual illness. The thought of a crackdown is both a more chilling outcome and a potential catalyst for actual organizational terrorism if people can't let off steam*
* - Note that more people, especially younger folks with their hyperbolic tendencies, and anonymity means more raw sociopathy and psychopathy being displayed in relation to those events. It's at least partially a function of the numbers game.
And they're free to continue their speech elsewhere. Cloudflare and Voxility are within their rights to refuse service to a client on the basis that the client is persistently associated with terrorism and kiddy porn.
Why is that a remotely controversial statement? Nobody is suggesting that chan-tards should be rounded up for unamerican activities, and I'd be the first to speak against that, but CF don't need to tarnish their brand with 8chans bullshit.
They're free to withhold their support and so express an opinion.
Because Cloudflare used to say that they would never take anyone down, and now they have. I think it's valid to wonder if they'll be more willing to take down other content, and perhaps become a target by groups looking to restrict the spread of certain information now that they've shown that this is something they're willing to do. This also brings up the point of why Cloudflare thought this specific website was worth taking down, and not the other horrible things that they do support.
Well, say you're cruising around the fringes of the web one day and you stumble on a forum where people are plotting to kill you. You, personally. What do you do?
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 platform is meaningless in reality. It's like saying "you can say anything you want, but we won't let you use the atmosphere to propagate the sound waves".
We now live in a society where it is acceptable for private companies to essentially completely ban individuals from exercising their free speech on the internet. The canary in the coalmine was The Daily Stormer; all the content there would be considered very objectionable and completely without merit by any remotely sensible person, so few people complained about it being shut down. Then came Gab and such. Now it's 8chan, which last time I checked still had more posts about video games and anime than about politics.
Make no mistake, sites you use will be next. /r/the_donald is already quarantined. Youtube and Twitter have gotten much more aggressive with their moderation too.
We need to allow people on the edges of the spectrum to say what they want even if it is without merit. Extreme speech is what prevents normal speech from being censored.
More than anything we can not allow random internet companies to be de-facto lawmakers and speech police by controlling who is allowed to say things on the internet.
Makes me wonder how many people like GPL and free software. One of the core tenants of free software is the ability to do anything with it (freedom 0). This includes being able to do evil.
You seem to misunderstand that reason. It is because qualifying the evil is best done out of the license, and not because qualifying the evil is universally bad.
It should be noted that the Debian Free Software Guidelines words that decision as "no discrimination" and this choice is not light---it is there to prevent prejudicial behaviors by licenses. And that doesn't mean that the society should not judge them either (otherwise it won't function at all). The DFSG doesn't prevent you from doing evil with a free software and face the postjudicial consequence at all.
> [...] it applies to speech as much as it does to software.
And that's where your comparison is wrong. Not because the freedom of speech is not absolute (this is a tough topic by itself) but because 8chan was blamed because it didn't even acknowledge the post-judgement.
> It is because qualifying the evil is best done out of the license
The example in case does not qualify what counts as evil, only that it bans evil. It thus leaves it to others, outside of the license, to qualify evil when they determine how the license applies. Thus the license the FSF rejects does what you claim should be done.
>The DFSG doesn't prevent you from doing evil with a free software and face the postjudicial consequence at all.
It does suggest not using licenses that would increase the legal consequences of doing such evil.
>because 8chan was blamed because it didn't even acknowledge the post-judgement.
Does encryption acknowledge the post-judgment of all the evil it enables?
If we think of CF/Voxility as of a "neutral infrastructure", CF and Voxility shouldn't be "forced to host", but also shouldn't proactively shut down sites, unless there's an obvious violation of ToS. There's a process of forcing companies to do something, and it involves a judge and a jury.
I find it ironic to see cheering of these actions by The Verge, who is in the tank for "net neutrality". I don't like what site in question was hosting, but there're other ways of dealing with them.
Nobody denies property rights to CF and Voxility. At the same time, both companies went into the contract with the site in question. Did said site violate the contract? From my reading of the situation, no. "Contract obligations for me but not for thee?"
And to be clear: I do think that companies have capacity to terminate contracts, however, there either should be clear violation of ToS, or court's decision behind that. Neither seem to have had happened in this case.
I'm not aware of any consumer-accessible supplier who provides ToS that require abuse. In particular, CS doesn't:
"we may at our sole discretion terminate your user account or suspend or terminate your access to the Service at any time, with or without notice for any reason or no reason at all. We also reserve the right to modify or discontinue the Service at any time (including, without limitation, by limiting or discontinuing certain features of the Service) without notice to you. We will have no liability whatsoever on account of any change to the Service or any suspension or termination of your access to or use of the Service. You may terminate your account at any time through the Service’s account dashboard."
And there was certainly meeting of the minds on this term. CF has booted sites in the past due to political backlash. Those boots were high-profile and well-covered in the news. And even without those high-profile boots, any reasonable person will expect someone using CF and running a site like 8chan to know what CF's terms say about terms for continuing service with any/no reason.
If you want your site to stay up even in the event of one of your customers committing a mass murder while your other customers cheer him on, then don't use CF.
It's true that finding another provider might be hard unless you have $$$ because the market for that product is really small -- not even 8chan's original founder is in that target market.
Oh well. I want $0.001 diapers for my kid and a lower grocery bill. The market doesn't provide those either. But if universal access to cheap diapers and high-quality food aren't fundamental human rights, I don't see why cheap anything-goes top-of-the-line DDoS protection services should be.
That is the entire purpose of the Net Neutrality Debate, which most on HN support but then go against the spirit of that debate when a company shuts down people they find politically abhorrent
You can not support Net Neutrality and support this action by CF without being a hypocrite
Something relevant in my opinion is that companies could be upfront about it. If you do not want to host despicable content you can say that you reserve the right to terminate accounts for such and such reasons.
Youtube has as a policy that they will demonetize/ban you if you bring in bad PR (which has been abused by media company).
This is a good point that I do not have a solution to. I do see that "I think the internet should be a neutral platform", "I think that the internet should be run by private companies" and "I think that private companies should be free to decide who to do business with" is also a set of incompatible beliefs (that I personally hold). Thankfully, I do not need to have all the answers to point out the issue :)
The problem here is that you don't see the difference between the informal "should" from the first stance and the legal "should" from the third. You can't even say things like "the internet legally should X" because the internet is not a single entity that can be coerced to do X (yep, the legal talk all comes down to the issue of who should be coerced to do what).
This is more an argument about the hearts and minds of the public on free speech. If people don't bring outrage to advertisers, corporations will remain neutral by default.
> People are doing the "yada yada not entitled to a platform" thing, but the distinction between free speech and having a platform is meaningless in reality. It's like saying "you can say anything you want, but we won't let you use the atmosphere to propagate the sound waves".
But the size of the platform is commensurate with the tolerability of the speech, right? No one is preventing you from standing in a public place making whatever objectionable claims you want. But reddit/facebook/cloudflare/whoever don't have an obligation to let you use their platform to publish it if they don't like it.
This is certainly not a meaningless distinction.
In the age of print media, some random guy's fringe opinions were not "required to be published" -- you couldn't even buy a classified ad espousing objectionable content in large publications. No "ban" required.
> We now live in a society where it is acceptable for private companies to essentially completely ban individuals from exercising their free speech
We have always lived in such a society. And it's not "private companies" it's people. Some person makes this decision.
> no one is preventing you from standing in a public place
Social media is now the equivalent of standing in a public place. Times have changed. The town crier that used to tell people that latest headline? That's now the Facebook news feed. Public library/coffee shop where people can go discuss whatever new subversive political idea they've had? That's now online chat rooms.
Sticking our heads in the sand and thinking that the Internet is anything other than the new public square is disingenuous. People need to wake up and realise that at present, the "public space" once protected by our rights has become almost entirely controlled by private monopolies.
Using Twitter and speaking in a public place are not at all equivalent. You are not entitled to use Twitter's resources that they pay money for to amplify your speech. You simply aren't. Just because we have the means of broadcasting speech more widely and cheaply than ever before in no way entitles you to those resources.
Just as the Wall Street Journal is in no way obligated to publish your letter to the editor, Twitter is allowed to broadcast what they wish.
Nothing at all is stopping 8chan from hosting their content on their own infrastructure.
The Wall Street Journal and Twitter are not equivalent.
Due to the monopoly of control on social media right now, companies like Facebook, Twitter, et. al. are the new public spaces. Due to their unique position as monopolies over the popular communication mediums of the day, they are able to make decisions about what very large segments of the population have access to. Google even moreso.
If the WSJ was one of 2 or 3 news publications in the entire world that people got their information from, them choosing to not a run a story or firing a particular journalist would be a big deal.
> Due to the monopoly of control on social media right now, companies like Facebook, Twitter, et. al. are the new public spaces.
Just because you want them to be considered "public spaces" doesn't make them so. These are private companies using private funding, nothing public about them. Go to the countless other forums to post your opinions. Make your own Twitter alternative. Nothing is stopping you.
The ideas being promoted on 8chan and the like have lost in the "marketplace of ideas". The only free speech issue here is that you seem to want government intervention to promote hugely unpopular ideas, and force private companies to use their resources to broadcast content against their wishes, clearly violating the first amendment.
> If the WSJ was one of 2 or 3 news publications in the entire world that people got their information from, them choosing to not a run a story or firing a particular journalist would be a big deal.
How many major publications do you see running white supremacist content? How many major publications do you see running anti-vax conspiracy theories? What you describe has been happening for the entirety of media's existence. Ideas largely fall out of favor and people no longer wish to pay the cost of broadcasting them.
Actually there is quite a bit of merit in discussing the limits that are placed, or could/should be placed, on the mega-platforms in terms of what content they are allowed to censor.
This is not a definitively answered question, and is something that the courts are indeed struggling with. It is actually not as simple as having a ToS which says “we can deny service to anyone for any reason”.
Twitter, for example, advertised itself as a neutral platform. Therefore it would be an unfair and deceptive business practice (per the FTC) for it to institute politically motivated account terminations.
Similarly, Google certainly has the capability to influence both election turnout and perhaps even voting itself through the type of content it surfaces, and Congress has held many hearings and even heard testimony from Pichai on this exact topic.
> People are doing the "yada yada not entitled to a platform" thing
cloudfront is not really a platform. It's more like a CDN, or WAF. I think your point is worth discussing, just seems to link less to the context of 8chan.
> We need to allow people on the edges of the spectrum to say what they want even if it is without merit. Extreme speech is what prevents normal speech from being censored.
I wonder if the anonymous portion of these boards is what makes them so toxic?
Plenty of fringe forums for example have account names. Frequent posters are known and have reputations, if a known person says something controversial, they can be challenged by others, known or not. I think it really just allows for discussions to happen in good faith. Half the time I think some of the most toxic discussions are not even between any two people but are actually between tens of different unique trolls who may not even be following the thread at all. Maybe bots, who knows.
Mob rule and mob justice is a powerful strong drug. The more it is shown to work, the more that these errant acts of violence will be exploited to obtain a desired political outcome.
Of course people look for something to blame, and there’s nothing quite a satisfying as shooting the messenger.
It’s also convenient when a site is small enough, there’s not quite such a backlash when companies fall into PR ass-covering mode and terminate their service.
Now, there’s no forcing CloudFlare to keep hosting any particular site, and there’s no convincing the mob that bowing to their demands is a really piss poor long term strategy for everyone involved.
It takes very strong leadership to stand up against the mob and say “that’s no how we do things” and these days most people would rather just pile on, than risk the guilt by association.
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, movies airing on public broadcast have always been filtered, the same logic applies to platforms as wide as reddit.
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.
Facebook and others focus an inane amount of energy in keeping up a "healthy place" facade. Even if 8chan was super meticulous on the rules I doubt it could pull off the same feat without comparable effort.
I get your point, but I think responsiveness is just an aspect of the issue. For 8chan and for any other platform.
For instance if you were harrassed on twitter, twitter being blazingly fast at taking down tweets you report wouldn’t help you much, you’d still have to report every single tweet of users harrassing you.
Even if 8chan takes down every violence threat, if it still propagated enough to be worth it for the poster, 8chan’s modus operandi has very little impact on the situation.
I am not saying it’s easy, just that they clearly haven’t found a good solution.
If what 8Chan was doing was not legal, then perhaps they should have been shut down through an actual legal process, not an arbitrary decision by a cloud infrastructure provider.
Depending on what the contract says, you're may indeed be free to drop clients for any reason. Don't try to defend your decision by claiming they did something illegal though unless you're willing to go to court to prove it.
You are "free" to drop a client for any reason, regardless of what the contract says. You may, however, be liable. Contract law (torts) is different from criminal law. No one goes to prison for for dropping a client, regardless of what a contract says.
Cloudflare just decided to drop 8chan as a client. That's it. That's all that happened. 8chan can sue in civil court if they feel a contract was breached or they suffered damages. No one did anything illegal. No claim that anything illegal was done need be made. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.
There are things that you can say which will make your entire village shun you. True. Always has been. Probably always will be. Our world is now a village. It is a new thing to deal with. So far not many have adjusted well. People who fail to appreciate why their fellow citizens find a website cheering on the murder of groups of outsiders to be shun-worthy, their understanding of humans is woefully incomplete.
> 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".
I'd rephrase the first: "it's okay for 8chan to be kicked off the internet, if there is no one who is willing to host it".
> It's like saying "you can say anything you want, but we won't let you use the atmosphere to propagate the sound waves".
And what you are saying is more like "I have the right to say anything I want but I'm too lazy to move the muscles of my face, so everyone (those who I point at, actually, by calling them EVIL MONOPOLIES) MUST help me in this noble mission of spreading the truth".
Murdering people permanently limits their free speech, no? If a website's content is full of discussions about why people ought to be murdered, and how to go about it, and exhortations that it take place as soon as possible, isn't that an attack on the free speech (as well as all other freedoms) of the intended target(s)?
> private companies to essentially completely ban individuals from exercising their free speech on the internet.
"Free speech on the internet" is not something found in law.
> The canary in the coalmine was The Daily Stormer
Because The Daily Stormer was just a site to share ideas, right?
> The Daily Stormer, which has established 31 physical chapters in the United States and more in Canada
> Some of its readers do more than issue threats. Dylann Roof, who massacred nine African Americans in Charleston in 2015, posted on the site. Thomas Mair, the neo-Nazi assassin who last year killed Jo Cox, a British member of Parliament, was a regular reader. And just last month, another Daily Stormer reader, James Jackson, was charged with murder and terrorism after carrying out a plan to go to New York City to kill a black man at random.
How ever will the Nazis share their hateful and violent ideas without the private internet companies? Oh no, the poor racists!
> One message included an image of Gersh being sprayed with a green gas, along with the words: Hickory dickory dock, the kike ran up the clock. The clock struck three and the Internet Nazis trolls gassed the rest of them.
Extreme speech fosters more extreme views and welcomes people who would otherwise not feel welcome anywhere else which might bring them back to a more socially acceptable train of thought. 8chan and the like instead make these people believe that their ideology is normal and that there's a big community of like-minded people out there.
That happened because they repeatedly violated rules on Reddit, not because of their extremist views. Reddit was lenient with them for a looong time.
> We need to allow people on the edges of the spectrum to say what they want even if it is without merit
/r/jailbait was banned, but it was technically "free speech" and technically legal, so according to your standards Reddit should have allowed the community to continue to exist, right? (Even though it existing probably led to some deviant / reprehensible / illegal behavior)
But to me, it's obvious that that doesn't need to be allowed to exist on the platform. So to me, that means there is some line that we as a society draw between allowed speech and not. It's not codified in law, but it does exist. That line can move based on the whims of society.
Right now, at least in the tech world, that line seems to be moving in such a way so as to not allow right-wing extremist speech. And that's totally fine in my book - in the same way that /r/jailbait is rightfully considered unacceptable "free speech" now, so is right-wing extremist "free speech".
There are still places to congregate online for that sort of speech if you want. Or you could spin up your own server. It's not disallowed by law. But it's just not as accessible as it was before.
> We now live in a society where it is acceptable for private companies to essentially completely ban individuals from exercising their free speech on the internet.
This is phrased as something to be fearful of here, but I think I'm actually fine with this precedent.
There's nothing to stop people with extreme right-wing ideologies from marshaling the resources required to stand up all the pieces of web infrastructure they find themselves blocked from. If they can't amass those resources, that's ultimately a market decision, no?
And if they were able to stand up that infrastructure, it would indicate a high level of financial support for their agenda, which would be the real thing to be afraid of, in my own opinion.
Are you going to be saying the same thing when Elisabeth Warren's or Bernie Sander's webites/ads/donations methods get taken off the internet because big corporations don't like that they want to raise taxes?
The purpose of the canary in the coal mine is not to protect the canary. It is to protect the miner from the encroaching danger.
Good and bad is not a binary, it's a spectrum. If you put the cutoff for what is allowed very close to the limit of hwat you think is "good" (i.e. you try to ban everything you would consider "bad"), there will inevitably be people with different viewpoints who can bring up a convincing argument that your cutoff also bans some good tihngs. We need a "buffer" of things generally considered "bad" but not too bad, so that we can ensure that good things really are allowed; allowing good things is more important than banning bad things. That is a key principle of having a free society.
Of course, things wihch are obviously really very bad should be banned. Good news: they already are! Hate speech is banned in virtually every country I can think of. I'm explicitly not arguing against legal action against hate speech here; I'm arguing against private ocmpanies banning things which are not illegal.
Leaving all that aside, even if you think all bad things should be banned, I do not think that Cloudflare of all things should be the arbiter of right and wrong.
"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the deaths of others your right to say it."
How many free speech absolutists have "skin in the game", or whatever? Every alternative to censorship suggested always puts the burden on the victimized. Like, "if you debate it in public you will defeat these bad ideas". Few who are free speech absolutists roll up their sleeves and volunteer to take the action they prescribe.
Or, you have the sophists who believe free speech is the most important thing in the world but will deny that speech has any connection to its consequences. For example, separating the white nationalist rhetoric on 8chan from the white nationalist terrorism perpetrated by 8channers.
It's not that speech doesn't have consequences. If speech had no consequences, it wouldn't be worth defending. Rather, it's that no man is fit to play the censor - not the Government which would censor political criticism of itself, not a king who would censor his opponents, nor even a billionaire who would censor the media when it spurns him.
At the same time, if someone points a finger at you and shouts "I'm going to kill you", then we're getting outside of speech and into actions, and certainly actions can be prohibited. The question we have, really, is whether the content of 8chan was just speech (and therefore should be protected unless you buy into censorship) or crosses into actions (convincing someone to massacre immigrants). From what I've seen, 8chan certainly seems to be in the action category.
> At the same time, if someone points a finger at you and shouts "I'm going to kill you", then we're getting outside of speech and into actions, and certainly actions can be prohibited.
At least in my state, this is not actionable as described.
For it to be actionable, the person saying "I'm going to kill you" needs to reasonably be in a position to do so - i.e. brandishing a weapon, etc.
It's not actionable when it's a rando in an online multiplayer game upset at you. It's absolutely actionable when it's your jilted lover in your face, or even if they're texting you.
The details make the case. Coaxing in detail throngs online to attack immigrants, in my non-legal non-expert opinion, seems to be more in the actionable case.
> It's not actionable when it's a rando in an online multiplayer game upset at you. It's absolutely actionable when it's your jilted lover in your face, or even if they're texting you.
> The details make the case.
That's pretty much what I was saying, as well, I believe.
In and of itself, saying (even in person) "I'm going to kill you" is an idle threat that the police in my state will not do anything about in a vacuum.
However, saying such a thing while also being in a position to reasonably carry out such an action, the Police will step in on those threats.
In the situation you described, unfortunately, the first time they may just tell the couple to stay at different places that night to cool off. This assumes by the time they arrive there are no visible marks on the victim and no weapons out.
Now if they have to come out for several of these calls, it's no longer "in a vacuum", and they can probably detain the threatening person.
Your state or country's police force may operate under different rules and laws.
The purpose of (most) speech is to create action. If the phrase "I'm going to kill you" is intended to alter someone's behavior. If property is involved, whether it's through force or threat of force, it's still robbery. If the threat of violence is delayed, it's still extortion.
For libertarian extremists who, just treat the right to be left in peace to live your life as you see fit... as a property right.
What you say is reasonable, and is not free speech absolutist. This isn't a No True Scotsman sort of thing. There are people on this very forum who reject out of hand any question that 8chan should be censored.
Another reply to my comment supposed my criticism means that the alternative is a Soviet surveillance state. Really?
I think the point is more that there's nuance in preventing speech (like censorship) and punishing the actions as a result of speech. I get that some would call those the same thing.
In the context of 8chan, I think there's a difference between allowing people to say whatever they want online and punishing the people that use that freedom to incite violence.
The part where it gets blurry to me is the hateful rhetoric that doesn't directly call for violence, but the only logical conclusion of the position is genocidal or otherwise racial violence. Talking about "invaders" or "American cities under foreign occupation" for example.
> Rather, it's that no man is fit to play the censor
I agree with this, and I'd further say that no man is really fit to rule or have real power over his fellow men. But human society can't function, or defend itself from tyrants, without some sort of power structure. The best we can do is try to make sure that the people in power aren't tyrants.
>From what I've seen, 8chan certainly seems to be in the action category.
Users on 8chan, perhaps, but no the website itself. 8chan has cooperated with law enforcement against individuals making legally-actionable threats effectively since the website's beginning.
This is not a free speech issue. This is not a censorship issue. This is companies deciding that they will not do business with some parties. Those parties nor the reasons and the actions of the companies today do not fit inside narrow definitions which would make what anyone did today unlawful.
Moreover 8chan posts, though vile, arguably do not fit the narrow free speech exemptions of the US such as true threat or incitement. The law and judicial precedent would require a reasonable reader to take it seriously. All that is moot though as the government has taken no action here.
Well, mass shootings tend to be indiscriminate once they get started.
Those motivated by animus towards a minority group do generally target areas frequented by members of that group, like in the Texas shooting where the gunman targeted a Walmart in a largely Hispanic community. As a non-Hispanic white person (who lives in the US), that does put me at less risk of being a victim of that type of shooting. Also, to the extent that terrorism’s impact is emotional rather than purely rational, I’m less impacted simply
because I don’t feel targeted in the same way.
Nevertheless, I wouldn’t say the risk is zero; it’s not impossible that I could be in a place like that when the next shooting happens. So I have at least a bit of skin in the game.
Edit: Also, while perhaps not 8chan specifically, Internet forums have been implicated in shootings that weren’t targeting ethnic groups and thus would put me at more risk. An example would be Elliot Rodger’s shooting, which was driven by a hatred of women, but ended up killing an equal number of men and women (not too surprising, since people don’t self-segregate by gender to the same extent they do by race and religion).
> Those motivated by animus towards a minority group do generally target areas frequented by members of that group, like in the Texas shooting where the gunman targeted a Walmart in a largely Hispanic community. As a non-Hispanic white person (who lives in the US), that does put me at less risk of being a victim of that type of shooting. Also, to the extent that terrorism’s impact is emotional rather than purely rational, I’m less impacted simply because I don’t feel targeted in the same way.
Isn't this usually where hate crimes come into the picture?
So why don't we continue down the slippery slope and criminalize, like the Chinese do, speech that generally disrupts social harmony? How will you tangibly stop us from sliding down that slope, the absolutists have ever right to ask of you.
Nobody is talking about crminalizing speech. 8chan is a private website and 8chan service providers are private companies who do not wish to do businesses with 8chan because of the 8chan community's endorsement of domestic terrorism. Nobody should be forced to do businesses with 8chan and if nobody will and that means 8chan disappears from the internet, that is a decision society has made within their rights as free individuals.
How many people had to die on 9/11 to protect the free speech rights of Muslims? It is undeniable that those terrorist attacks have a direct connection to the ideas being spread by those Mosques. How many Muslims have "skin in the game"?
I think you are trying to turn the above argument on it's head, but honestly I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
"The free speech of muslims"? It's almost as if you think 9/11 was caused by a domestic terrorist. You do realize the hijackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia right? And there is no free speech there? So... what are you trying to imply? Please use more clear language instead of just trying to meme.
Clearly you understood what I was trying to say, you're just acting dumb to avoid directly engaging with it.
These arguments can be directly used to argue for the suppression of Islamic religious speech. Using the same "guilt by association" reasoning, you can easily argue that 9/11 is proof that Islam itself is a hateful and dangerous ideology which, when spread, has "consequences".
The distinction in this case is that 8chan is simply a “poisoned well” which can be boarded up until the next one takes its place, whereas “Islam” is a whole ideology followed by a billion-odd people.
“Extremist Islamic terrorists” on the other hand, that is a narrowly defined enough population to feel justified in going to war against.
But the point is, no one’s speech in particular is being suppressed. To keep the metaphor, a “mosque got too radical” and was shut down. People who were practicing there will have to find another place to go.
I've heard the same said about r/the_donald etc. That argument falls flat when an overarching theme is a reality. Terrible people always try and lump themselves in with the truly innocent who are oppressed to engender sympathy as victims. There are increasingly common intersections where a duck is a duck.
The truth is that information does not radicalize people - censorship does. That's why the channers are as radicalized as they are - they've been censored everywhere else. Censor their last remaining outlets and you will increase violence by orders of magnitude.
If ethno-nationalists are not allowed to make their political case with speech, what alternative would they have but violence? You obviously can't change their minds with censorship, only harden them.
A lot of people say "censorship radicalizes" but I've never seen any studies or evidence for this claim. Your comment is purely speculative. There is some evidence that banning extremist content reduces its potential to radicalize [1]. Do you have any evidence to suggest it increases radicalization?
Maybe not radicalizes but seems obvious that censorship sort of 'funnels' the extremists onto the same forums which turn into an echo chamber / amplification chamber for their ideas. It seems like if they were tolerated on other forums that there'd be enough mediating comments to prevent the amplification.
I'd also be interested in seeing studies that echo chambers increase radicalization in the first place. That seems to be a given right now.
> If a man can't speak his truth, what alternative does he have to violence?
No one is stopping anyone from speaking their truth. They're just saying they're not going to help you.
If you want to speak your truth, speak it. Go down to a public square and preach. Write your truth down, print it, and hand it out. If its truth and you believe it so much, you'll do the work necessary in getting it out there.
People are used to treating the Internet as the new public square. Obviously, there are many private entities that make up the Internet, but if want it to continue to serve as the public square (rather than a patchwork of corporate fiefdoms) then I think we have to accept the moral (and possibly legal) obligation of these private entities to maintain the Internet as a public square.
I essentially agree. The internet is not the public square, until you legally make it so.
And that essentially is not going to happen. Companies are "people too". They are allowed to express their free speech by not doing business with you.
Cloud Flare is within their rights to protect their stock value by doing business with whomever they choose. If the government declared the opposite, then it would truly require a massive shakeup of law and precedent.
> The internet is not the public square, until you legally make it so.
Culture and custom generally precede law and government. If the Internet is a public square, it is only so as a result of our various social relations. Passing laws would be merely to preserve it as such.
Shallow statistics are never going to replace empathy* when it comes to sound policy making.
That study does show that banning content within a forum means that you will get less of that content on that forum. A useful but not entirely surprising result. As a Reddit user, I'm glad that the site has less of such content.
It does not prove that censorship reduces "radicalization" (whatever that is). As the study says, many of those users just moved their content to Voat.
*By which I mean cognitive empathy: the capacity to infer the motivational states of other people and anticipate their actions.
I don't think that is how they come about. It is about recruitment and ideals and how they spread not about being banned on other platforms. If they could discuss saving the white race with violence on reddit or hackernews nothing would change more than they would have more potential recruits.
What will you do when your plan to censor the alt-right backfires and makes the violence worse? Attempt to start rounding them up? And when that makes it even worse?
You don't have a plan, just a knee jerk impulse to censor.
It's not censorship of the entire alt-right. It's the limited censorship on certain privately-run forums of a small subset that is directly advocating for violence and attempting to tear apart society.
If they want to speak in public, they are free to. They probably won't get a warm reception.
The US president supports and advocates for their cause. A national television syndicate (Fox) echos their talking points. I don't think you can call them censored.
Define 'citation', write a long essay about your criteria for accepting citations, maybe supply an appendix outlining your epistemological views so people know exactly what sort of citations you'll consider acceptable.
If the claim is [Donald Trump supports and advocates for ethno-nationalists causes] ...
I'd like to a source for that claim because it seems like Orange Man Bad delusions, but I'm willing to remain open minded if someone can provide a citation!
And I'd like to know what your standards are so I don't waste my time selecting and offering sources only to have them dismissed because you consider them deficient.
Since you already incline to the view that such assertions are delusional and employ a common political trope to characterize such delusions, I feel nagging doubts about your purported open-mindedness. Discussions like this generally devolve into pedantic quibbling which would be a waste of both your time and mine.
> If ethno-nationalists are not allowed to make their political case with speech, what alternative would they have but violence?
Plenty of nazi sites on the web where they make all sorts of “political cases”. Don’t confuse inability to make the case with repugnance to that case in general public.
So the campaigns against free speech show results. The wheels are in motion, the dominoes are falling. Funny how here on HN the use of the term "free speech absolutists"/"free speech absolutism" has absolutely skyrocketed for example. So are these the last days of the internet? 4chan is still there, voat too (although barely) - but I don't know how much longer. 100% legal sites are taken offline for absolutely no reason at all besides being on the "wrong side". And the internet is cheering. What a sad time
Yea. I find it quite ironic that HN of all places is generally speaking supportive of this.
I do think though that the internet is kind of a different game though. I don't think anything can be banned altogether. People will always find a way.
Ultimately we'll just end up creating new anonymous and distributed services where we can talk freely and corporations (lol) and governments can't dictate what is acceptable.
The pace has quickened though. The big corporations are all coordinated now. Hosters, domain registrars, other infrastructure, payment processors, Traditional and Social Media... everyone is locked in and blindly banning everyone who isn't theirs
The problem with stopping people from talking is that they have no choice but to get violent. In my opinion it's the politicians have ignored the public for so long on issues such as immigration which are fueling this.
It's fascinating to compare it to the desperate fight for Net Neutrality. HN was hysterical when faced with a hypothetical threat, but when we see real examples of censorship the response is filled with apologist arguments and hand-wringing.
The only difference seems to be who is doing the censoring. When it's Silicon Valley tech corporations with a well established left-wing bias, well then they're private businesses who can be trusted to choose which dialogue is okay to have. But when it's corporations outside of Silicon Valley, well the internet will never be the same, be sure to call your congressmen.
Haha good point. Sometimes it feels so ironic I wonder if there's actually a handful of us talking to mostly bots who are indistinguishable from actual people.
If you support free speech so much then you should respect Cloudflare’s right to exercise their free speech right to decide what content they want to serve on their privately owned servers.
The idea that the government should force companies to host extremist content against their will is anti-free speech, not pro-free speech. It’s equivalent to forcing people to put up political yard signs on their lawn without their consent.
What does free speech have to do with this? Cloudflare and other companies have 1st amendment rights as well. One of them is that they can serve customers as they like, as long as they are not violating the rights of a protected class. Political ideology or party affiliation is not a protected class, nor should it be. Twitter could ban every Republican on its platform tomorrow and it if the government tried to stop them the Supreme Court would likely side with Twitter.
Companies are allowed to discriminate against political ideology as much as they like. It’s their 1st amendment right to do so. So 1st amendment advocates should be on the side of company censorship, not the other way around.
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 the same? "This has nothing to do with free speech. These are merely private companies deciding they don't want to associate with Elizabeth Warren."
This is false equivalence. Imagine if I could support a company when they help take down websites breeding hate speech and terrorists - and not support that same company if they interfered with an election.
No, they aren't equating mass shooting and political candidates. They are responding to the assertion that political ideology isn't a protected class.
If you want to defend the 1st amendment rights of companies to choose their customers, you must apply that across the board, or suggest the laws be changed.
If companies can exercise their 1st amendment rights to shut down political ideology in this instance (and if you think that's fine), then to be consistent you need to defend it elsewhere. Shutting down political opponents, choosing which political ads to run, choosing which investigations to allow in search results, etc. And censoring Elizabeth Warren is a perfectly valid example of how companies could exercise their rights, if indeed you think those rights should exist.
I understand the point they're making, but I'm not putting forth the argument they're arguing against. I think companies should be banned from most forms of political speech because their goals are by nature typically harmful to their workers and often the public at large.
However, even if the laws were changed to do so, I don't think that this should count as 'political speech'. Terrorism and hate should not be considered valid or protected political ideologies.
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 with me than I have to fall silent.
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.
I've pointed this out many times, but Randal conflates freedom of speech with the first amendment of the US Constitution (and other similar protections against government interference) with freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech goes way beyond freedom from government censorship... And it isn't some mystical unlimited right that trumps all other rights.
> One of them is that they can serve customers as they like, as long as they are not violating the rights of a protected class. Political ideology or party affiliation is not a protected class, nor should it be. Twitter could ban every Republican on its platform tomorrow and it if the government tried to stop them the Supreme Court would likely side with Twitter.
Where's the line between "political ideology" and "religion"? Is it your assertion that "kill all the jews because we're nazis and our leaders say jews are evil" is something that you should be able to ban while "kill all the jews because islam says jews are evil" is protected?
Since religion is almost always a protected class.
>The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.
What about "jews should all be killed because Islam says jews are evil"? How is that different (I mean, besides the obvious) than "murderers should be put to death because the Bible says so"?
I mean, this is a slippery slope. Before Cloudflare took down TDS without any court order, they could argue that they took nothing down. Now they've taken down a site that hosted hateful extremist content along with a lot of other, more acceptable things, and further takedowns will likely be easier still to justify. That's a textbook slippery slope!
But my argument here was that treating political views and religious views differently doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me, since the content of those views can be almost identical.
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 them (b) you cannot exist without them practically.
Now imagine it resurrecting on IPFS/Dat/..., where every visitor could "pin" the website.
The arguments are generally over how private entities with relatively control of communications are regulated, not that the entities are private.
You can only pull the "They're a private entity - just choose not to do business with them" card until they're large enough to the point were you don't have an option (free market forces stop working), at which point regulators generally step in.
There are a lot of people in this thread that don't seem to understand the difference between the law and the principle.
The first amendment law protects the principle. It doesn't create it. While these hosts might not be in violation of any law, they are absolutely acting contrary to the principle of free speech.
"The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means."
I think these calls to disregard and/or weaking the principle first enshrined in the founding of this country are a greater danger than 3 mentally ill people with guns.
Decentralization is tempting for anti-censorship advocates, but the thing to remember is that freer services only win if they're also better for people who don't care about censorship, which means most people. Decentralized services are easy to demonize to the extent that they allow non-approved matters. The only way to escape that is to be so much better that it doesn't matter, like the web was in the 90s.
None of the companies discontinuing relationships with 8chan are monopolies. In some cases they're just the last in their category to finally drop 8chan.
I've always been intrigued by this, do you think that platforms such as YouTube should be considered public infrastructure? And if so for what reasons?
It might not be true in the general case yet, but it's certainly a sentiment I can get behind. Privately-owned toll roads shouldn't be able to ban political opponents - why should the Internet equivalent be different?
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 disaster. Special since today's web is a winner takes it all model. If you felt out of Youtube .. yeah, just bad for you. Apple credit card .. yeah, you can buy just almost everything .. yeah, bright future ..
Nobody is shutting them down. Cloudflare (a private company) is just choosing to no longer work with them. 8chan is completely free to operate their own servers.
Yes, I stand to my word before, Cloudflare is 100% free to choose there own customer.
But if feel it's a bad move just to throw 8chan out because "it is rainy today".
My point was more, we start to privatize all services. From Internet to money to .. whatever. For me it's just wrong if the private companys start to act instead the justice. That's my real point. There is a justice system and they just should do the job.
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.
I guess you could say that free speech has limits that are acceptable.
You know you can't yell fire in a crowded room and not get litigation and charges brought against you.
So, maybe 8chan just ran past the fine line of hate speech vs encouraging acts of hate. I.e you can be racist but you cannot encourage acts of extremism.
If 8Chan was a breeding ground for Islamic Extremists would people be okay with still existing?
Little known fact about the phrase "fire in a crowded theater": it was coined in a criminal case against a man who was distributing leaflets criticizing the draft during World War 1. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction by comparing those leaflets to "shouting fire in a crowded theater" -- even though most readers here would agree that those two things are nothing alike.
I think there's a lesson in that: when we tolerate any censorship, it will inevitably be used by the powerful to oppress the powerless. If the powerful need to compare the targeted speech to "fire in a crowded theater" or "Nazism" or whatever, they'll do it whether it makes sense or not.
Yeah but on the other hand you shouldn't be able to shout fire in a crowded theater so you need some censorship. As with like 99% of political arguments is about finding the line because the absolutist arguments generally end up kinda silly.
It's never just used for the original case either.
Now that 8chan is down why not every other site with a subset of (violent?) racist users?
By doing something about one and not doing anything about another, is Cloudflare not basically giving their ideology a greenlight to exist? This is the type of backwards anti-intellectual thinking that will seep into the decision making.
"Slippery slopes" are a cliche for a reason when talking about this stuff because it never stops with one really good example nor within a very narrow scope. Making this debate all about 8chan misses the larger point because it sets a precedent. There's already tons of people who want way more than 8chan banned from the internet.
The problem for 8chan wasn't having bad users, every place has those, it was the specific way which it enabled them. Reddit or Facebook make effort to take down extremist threats, which puts them in a different league altogether. I'm fine with taking down places that enable them in that way and it hasn't seemed to have led to the slippery slope you are worried about so far.
The point is slippery slopes don't stop after the fact.
The next time twitter blows up at Cloudflare [or insert tech company name] over a tragedy what's going to happen?
Does this apply to Islamic Extremism or some radical groups in Ukraine or some hypothetical Flemish separatist group who is openly violent and posts similar un-moderated content? Or is it only for some highly touchy US problems since they're a US company or the topic got the most noise on Twitter/news sites?
Private companies are incentivized to make money, they can host and kick off whoever the hell they want. I don't understand what you're getting at? It's capitalism at work.
If 8chan wants to exist on the internet without worrying about being knocked offline then 8chan needs to either build their infrastructure or find companies that are willing to risk their reputation to support them.
Did you know that the "fire in a crowded room" metaphor comes from Schenck v. United States in which Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr used the metaphor to defend the criminality of protesting the military draft?
I'm not sure if that's the kind of history you want to align yourself with.
The other irony is that the holding of Schenk vs. United States was later overturned in Brandenburg vs. Ohio, which set the line for where free speech becomes unprotected at "inciting imminent lawless action":
Brandenburg overturned the specifics of Schenk, not the idea of free speech having limits. "There are valid limits of free speech" remains as true as ever.
I'd had a paragraph after that said "You can, in fact, yell "fire" in a crowded theater without breaking any laws", but edited it out because in certain situations this would also violate the revised test in Brandenburg (you still can't incite a riot legally, for example). But that paragraph made it a bit more clear that yes, the irony I'm talking about is that the specific examples in Schenk are no longer law, not the general principle that free speech has limits. The limits are significantly less restrictive than Schenk held, though.
My point is that the phrase has a history of being used to criminalize speech that most people would now see as being worthy of protection. For those using it today, the burden is really on the accuser to show that they aren't doing the same.
> I mean, I wouldn't use analogies that were originally created to target people who disagreed with the draft.
> Whether or not the analogy applies now, is irrelevant. It's history makes it a bad analogy.
I appreciate your motivation, but I just can't get behind this line of reasoning. For one thing, most people aren't aware of the history.
For another, almost every good idea has a tainted history. (e.g. the golden rule. "Eh that? That's just something that Jesus guy said, and look how many people his followers killed in the crusades, witch-hunts, etc.")
Lastly, it's just not a form of rational thinking. Obviously the connotations of our words matter, but unless we can separate the connotation from the denotation we have no hope of arriving at the truth.
In that case, wouldn't it be more that it isn't allowed to yell fire in a crowded theater with the express purpose to cause injury during a stampede? Would doing so "just as a prank bro" still be protected under American precedent?
I'm not a Constitutional or 1A scholar, but I believe the test remains whether the speech is substantially likely to result in "imminent lawless action". Whether you wanted people to get trampled, or just thought it was a lulz thing to do, exigently emptying a crowded room on false pretenses is probably going to yield some pretty lawless behavior.
EDIT: Even so, that test was IIRC conceived as a means of measuring whether political speech — specifically, advocating the use of force or criminal behavior — was 1A-protected, so I really wonder whether this line of thought isn't moot.
> I guess you could say that free speech has limits that are acceptable.
There are already limits to free speech that most people don't complain about. The most frequent example is defamation.
I do like how Canada handles hate speed -- like defamation, it is illegal. There's really no benefit to protecting hate speech. If you argue it is a slippery slope, we're already on a slope with defamation so the benefits of adding hate speech out weight the risks of slipping further.
I supposed I should have mentioned how Canada defines illegal hate speech, because that has a clear definition too. The type of hate speech that is illegal there is hate speech that advocates or incites violence or genocide. That's clear and defines how it is damaging, therefore it's not definitively slippery.
Hate speech is illegal in Canada because it infringes on the right to security of the person - a Charter right. Freedom of speech is also protected, but the expression of one right cannot diminish the protection of another.
> I guess you could say that free speech has limits that are acceptable.
widely known and not really legally disputed.
> You know you can't yell fire in a crowded room and not get litigation and charges brought against you.
this seems like empty rhetoric; we already know that there are classes of speech that aren't 1A protected. this isn't controversial.
> If 8Chan was a breeding ground for Islamic Extremists would people be okay with still existing?
whether or not people "are okay" with something isn't relevant when discussing the legality of said thing, which seems to be what the rest of your post is focused on. so this seems like a red herring, or alternatively, the rest of your post was a red herring.
if your line of reasoning about the closure is legally oriented, then i'm sure you can find lots of things people aren't okay with, e.g. campaign finance.
I don't think there's a contradiction between supporting freedom of expression and suggesting that such a freedom isn't absolute. There are limits, particularly when the use of that freedom treads on the freedoms of others.
Even US law recognizes this. You're not allowed to invite violence or rioting for example. There are also rules about perjury, liable, and other things that directly limit freedom of expression.
The real questions we should be asking here are where the line is between stating an opinion and inciting violence... And what should ISPs and edge providers be asked/allowed to do?
Because not being forced to provide a platform for the speech of someone else may also be a valid freedom. If I come into your property and say things you don't like, are you allowed to ask me to leave? What if I put up a sign in my front yard? Can I take it down?
IMO, we need neutrality regulations to protect ourselves from the corporations who control everything we see... But such neutrality regulations must necessarily include ISPs as well as edge providers. Otherwise they're worthless.
Not the OP, but I think you're missing the point of the question; the question is about hypocrisy. I think the poster was trying to say "a lot of people who claim that they love free speech would suddenly become really uncomfortable with the idea of a breeding ground for Islamic Extremists".
The "fire in a crowded theater" metaphor is always mentioned in a discussion of free speech. It's like Godwin's Law. I'm tired of it.
You can say anything. But if the thing you say carries consequences beyond the utterance, the freedom of speech does not immunize that sayer from assuming responsibility for those consequences.
It's not about what happens afterward. It's about not removing someone's voice, for fear of what they might say with it.
8chan is not required to support freedom of speech; it's not the government. It is itself free to pick and choose who is allowed to use its platform. My opinion is that it should not engage in content-based censorship, because no one should. Once you start doing that, there's no ethically clear place where the line between acceptable and unacceptable should lie. If you can make a case for banning neo-Nazis and Boko Haram and Sinaloa Cartel and such, you can also make a case for banning people who put pineapple on pizza or ketchup on hot dogs, with the argument variables set to different values.
Information is not the dangerous thing, nor misinformation. When someone is recruited and turned into a soldier via online image boards, using the exact same psychology as state-based militaries around the world--dehumanizing the xeno, and propagandizing them as an existential threat to the in-group identity tribe--that isn't the fault of the medium. It is the responsibility of the recruiter, the propagandist.
The rightful answer to speech with undesired consequences is not censorship, but counter-propaganda, and to some extent psychological hardening of the whole populace, by encouraging skepticism, critical thought, and formation of individual identity and self-image over group identities.
The former is a more active measure that unfortunately requires a bloody-minded relentlessness combined with unending tolerance for nonsense. Imagine a Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham debate that lasts literally forever, and the toll that would surely take on Nye. Now sub in a pants-on-head flat-earther time-cube woo-woo troll for Ham. No one person could take it. And that's why when these fools show up, the thought-terminating cliches have to be countered with thought-provoking dissent. If you see bullshit, call bullshit.
And the latter is something that probably has to happen in young people, coming with a side effect of making them less governable, and harder to convince of anything. Resistance to radicalization over the Internet would directly translate to more difficult military recruiting, drops in the strength of religious affiliations, and harder political campaigns. Not exactly popular among those loving god and country.
It's probably easier to just censor the things the state doesn't want people to say, and just trust that they will stop with the threshold line in the correct place.
> you can't yell fire in a crowded room and not get litigation and charges brought against you.
Of course you can yell 'fire' in a crowded room and not have any charges that stick brought against you. Are you arguing the point it is not allowed to yell to a large audience? Or there is something else here you are not mentioning, like for example whether or not the statement is true is the actual crux of the matter? Of course you can yell 'fire' in a crowded room - if there is a fire!
If 8Chan was a breeding ground for Islamic Extremists would people be okay with still existing?
Strangely enough, most people who find censorship ideologically palatable consider Jihadists a more sympathetic group than Incels. Note that ISIS beheadings have been subject to far less censorship than the Christchurch shooter's propaganda, for example.
I make a factual claim you can investigate on your own. Perhaps your findings will surprise you. As an aside, I recommend engaging with people you disagree with politically to understand their motivations and opinions. Much of political discourse is superficially ridiculous, but almost everything can be made sense of and appreciated once you get a view of the whole picture. Good luck.
To Catholics, as with all Christians, God is Jesus Christ.[1]
The Islamic view is that Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet.[2][3] (The audio answer is a bit long, but quite good.)
The argument that Allah is the same as the Father in the Christian trinity depends on various heresies[4] (incorrect claims), maybe one of Monarchianism, Sabellianism, Tritheism.
So, no, neither religion accepts that they are one and the same. And this is due to central tenets of each respective faith.
Haha, well, I'm skeptical that obscure exegesis is much of a way to get closer to God, though maybe for this audience it could be.
As it's impossible to quantify the unknown, when we approach a subject we're not familiar with, our bias is to assume it's very simple. So I think it's helpful to dig in a little to give a hint at the vast amount of scholarly work done on these subjects.
I’m old enough to remember when Howard Stern, as quaint as that seems today, was considered one of the greatest threats to civilization and had to be “de-platformed” before he could successfully destroy society - and the reasoning they used against him was _exactly_ the same as this reasoning: “he, himself (8chan, itself) is not going out and doing horrible things, but he’s encouraging people to go out and do horrible things, so he (it) must be shut down”.
I'm on the record here defending /r/The_Donald. I'm even on the record saying I didn't think it should be quarantined and that I don't think it should be banned in the future. It takes a lot for me to wonder if something actually should be censored. I certainly wouldn't have been on the side of censoring Howard Stern.
Radicalizing terrorists to such an extent that they actually go through with it -- multiple times -- is extreme enough to make me wonder.
The El Paso shooter's manifesto was posted on 8chan for a reason. The manifesto was written specifically for other potential shooters. It contains tips and advice. It explains the shooter's choice of gear and that he needed to use heat-resistant gloves because one of the guns he used was prone to overheating if fired rapidly. It encourages potential shooters to avoid heavily guarded areas and to avoid engaging with security personnel regardless of how confident they are.
Throughout 8chan, I saw many posts subscribing to the general theory that racial violence has been accepted throughout most of human history and the only people who disapprove constitute a tiny little blip on the grand tapestry. The whole point of this ideology was to encourage people to commit acts of violence by indoctrinating them into the belief system that all their ancestors would not only have approved but would have done it themselves.
/r/The_Donald is not very far from the kind of hatred and prejudice used on 8chan. White supremacists use places like /r/The_Donald to "normalize" ideologies and move the overton window far enough from normal that the extremer places like explicit calls to violence on 8chan are now palatable. It's all part of the same pipeline.
This is the slippery slope that people worry about and why they fight against banning things like 8chan. First it's banning 8chan, then it's /r/The_Donald. What's next?
Mass shooters are a problem that must be dealt with. Pretending that everything to the right of mainstream Democrats is a pipeline to mass shooters that must be silenced is the type of thing that radicalizes people. It's unduly oppressive and it dehumanizes people you may not happen to agree with.
Nonsense. The kind of hate and prejudice posted on 8chan /pol/ would be deleted in a heartbeat on T_D. The worst you can say about T_D is that they don't like Islam, and given the violence and regressiveness it promotes, I can't blame them.
I should clarify that the theory also encompasses the additional inference that the above statement justifies racial violence today. The gist is that you shouldn't worry about how people today might judge you, because you'd be judged positively by the N billion people who came before you; therefore your actions are correct and justifiable.
Playing whack-a-mole with extremist communities is only going to drive them together under a common threat and make them more desperate. The dedicated ones install a tor client and go further underground. The not-so-dedicated ones leave. But the not-so-dedicated parts of the community are the ones helping contribute to the deradicalization of the others.
It should be obvious to state that if you get rid of 8chan, those people aren't suddenly deradicalized and they're still in the country holding the same beliefs. Those people who are today at risk of continuing in this shooter's footsteps have already read the manifesto. People like the shooter often do these things because they want to be heard and they want to contribute to the course of history. Taking away what little voice they have in their own spaces makes them feel less heard. Destroying the little community that they have removes their stake in the world. Suppressing their only place to express their grievances causes them to lose hope. This is the cocktail for more violence, not less.
The *chans are the furthest from centers of indoctrination because the moderation is the weakest of all social media platforms. All ideas are present and little to nothing is suppressed. Dissent is commonplace and general consensus has no power. Sure, it means ugly ideas get spread, but it means that people actually have to refine their moral argumentation. No longer can you assume that the other person has the common ground of "racism is wrong", you have to actually dive into why racism is wrong. You can act outraged all you like, but it won't convince people to change their mind. Changing minds is going to be the only effective course of action to avoid tragedies like these.
The fact that this all seems to be getting worse as more and more people are deplatformed from more mainstream carriers like Facebook and Twitter (where rational voices can chime in from time to time) bolster your suspicion that they're just driven to the more and more extreme places that let them in.
You know, I was going to argue against the above poster, but then I read your post here, and I think this is an excellent point. I think it's extremely reasonable to wonder how many folks would avoid feeling the need to go to a place like 8chan if they felt like more reasonable versions of their viewpoints could be represented in mainstream venues and subjected to healthy debate rather than aggressive and hostile deplatforming.
> It should be obvious to state that if you get rid of 8chan, those people aren't suddenly deradicalized
More importantly, you should ask yourself how they found 8chan. They were using other means of communications that didn't disappear. The invisible force that gathered them together on 8chan is still there and can definitely do that again.
At that point, it doesn't sound like freedom of speech is the problem. Rather, this sounds like conspiracy to promote and further the attempts of mass murder for the intent to cause terror.
That being said, I grew up reading TOTSE, which might by this conversation's context in today's world, also sound like a source of the same.
Hey the morons in /r/The_Donald can say what they want. That is what we have all determined.
However, one of the largest social media sites out there (reddit) does NOT have to allow them to congregate together. Reddit should have banned them years ago. They are actively responsible for providing a place for hate to thrive.
You can be 100% pro free-speech and still agree that no one (except the government is some form, meaning sure they can hold meetings in public places, etc) HAS to give them a platform. Anything private can and should say NO.
But not much gap between conflating allowing free speech and encouraging mass murder to conflating dick jokes (and having a KKK member as a frequent guest) and encouraging moral decay.
The call-in segments on Stern's show have been frequently used as a platform for extreme and fringe positions, including calls for violence. Through the mid 90s, these came from Stern himself, although he has matured and tempered with time.
The problem with 8chan is, it's not a cohesive whole. Each board is individually ran and the global moderators won't get involved unless it's content that's blatantly illegal. Not all boards there are the same. Not all the people there are the same. The problem is the hateful supremicists all congregate there. /pol/ is the board where most of them hang out. Other boards have nothing to do with politics and have completely different kinds of people that post there. There's even a /leftypol/ devoted to leftist politics that contains no white supremicists.
>There's even a /leftypol/ devoted to leftist politics that contains no white supremicists.
Leftypol is not devoted to "leftist politics", it's a counterpart to /pol which stands for "politically incorrect". /leftypol by extension is politically incorrect that curved to the left. In reality /leftypol and /pol are not that dissimilar. Both attract off-the-rocker crazy conspiracy-theory types the likes of QAnon. If you looked at /leftypol during say attempted coup in Venezuela the content you would have encountered would have been just as offensive as /pol.
We're constantly denying our responsibility to manage our emotions and giving it away to others, so that they can protect us from ever seeing anything that might upset us.
Some people seem to think that there are authorities we can trust to enforce the lines we draw in the sand on what is acceptable speech and what isn't.
There is no such authority. People abuse authority because they can and guess what. When you'll try to say "Hey, you can't do that!" they'll just ban you too.
It is hard and unpleasant and disturbing to deal with reality. It's still real though.
8Chan isn't being targeted because they hurt people's feelings, they're targeted for being a breeding ground for terrorists.
Feel free to make whatever argument you want about whether platforms should be forced to provide service to websites that radicalize terrorists, but please don't make this about something it's not.
> please don't make this about something it's not.
No, you are. How do you think 8ch manages to be a breeding ground for terrorists? By kidnapping people and sending them off to terrorist training camps?
Obviously their method is emotional manipulation. That includes hurting people’s feelings. Censoring speech to protect people from that is a piss poor long term strategy compared to equipping them to properly deal with it. Society will end up as a bunch of babies unable to deal with reality.
Can any free speech absolutists explain to me the legitimate public interest that is served by allowing terrorist breeding grounds like 8chan to continue to operate?
Moral principles don't need to be justified by the "legitimate public interest" (in the short run), otherwise we would kill all babies that we predict will become criminals, even thought they've done nothing wrong yet.
I think laws should be fair and consistent. Censorship is inconsistent with freedom and justice. Additionally, the interpretation of messages is subjective.
If laws are inconsistent and arbitrary (and consequently, unfair), then you might as well throw moral principles out the window altogether and become a fascist, a white supremacist, etc.
The only way to have a just society, in my opinion, is when freedom of the individual is the base of all laws, and those laws are logical and consistent with each other.
Well, what about the rights of the 29 individuals that were randomly murdered, plus the scores of others wounded this past weekend? What about their justice?
I'm sure it's fun for you to treat all of this as some sort of abstract thought experiment, but the reality is that people are dying senselessly and violently for no reason other than we as a society won't make difficult decisions in the name of "principle".
Shooting people is obviously against freedom, should be illegal and is illegal.
You're insinuating that if freedom of speech laws in the US were less principled, those people wouldn't have died. But maybe if news outlets didn't report on mass shootings those people wouldn't have died too, should we prohibit news outlets from reporting these things?
It's not the fault of free speech that some mentally unstable person killed people, the same way it's not the fault of the journalists that report these tragedies.
Except we only apply that thinking to things we don't like, and that varies from individual to individual. If alcohol results in more deaths than hate speech, do we ban bars? Or do you think you should be allowed to make grown-up decisions because you're not the one killing people?
edit: And to be clear, I fully support a private company's refusal to do further business with 8chan as much as their contract allows. But I tire of these arguments about how somebody died, so we have to do something, and ignoring all further reasoning.
That's a completely irrelevant comparison. People who die from alcohol-related deaths have a choice whether or not to consume alcohol. The 29 people who died this past weekend in El Paso and Dayton were not given a choice whether they wanted to get shot by terrorists.
>> People who die from alcohol-related deaths have a choice whether or not to consume alcohol.
That's not always true - many people die as the innocent victims in DUI collisions. If there were more people dying innocently from alcohol, would you support shutting down bars that had been used by people who drove drunk, because other individuals lost their freedom?
To TallGuyShort, since I can't reply to you: Bartenders can be held criminally responsible if they continue to serve somebody who is obviously intoxicated, and who then goes out and kills somebody in a drunk driving crash. If bars continue to have problems over serving they can lose their liquor license. That's the analogue here. 8chan is the bar that's over-serving.
Your definition of "justice" is warped beyond recognition. Justice doesn't mean bad things don't happen, it means people who wrong others pay for their actions.
Thousands of people every year are randomly murdered for no good reason. Many actually never get closed, meaning no one actually goes to jail or gets punished for their murder. These people actually don't receive justice, but obviously we can't live in a perfect society.
You're oversimplifying a complex issue to accuse others of being heartless. It's the lazy moralizing of tyranny.
Not a speech absolutist. I believe certain kind of speeches should be banned.
What irked me is that CloudFlare was the one who makes the decision to do censorship.
It's not really a due process. No one argue for the defendant's side. It would seem better coming from US court through a due process or something like two lawyers arguing for both sides and etc.
I dislike the rationale of "CloudFlare is a private company. They can do whatever they want" ... like wut?
Also, if what those people do is illegal, should we arrest them, instead of merely banning the site?
This is the same thing with Trump's speech on Twitter. People yelling at Twitter to ban Trump because what Trump said is very very bad. If it's so bad, he should be arrested, not simply banned from Twitter.
------------
Edit: to address the main concern in my replies.
So, we think the speech is so bad that CloudFlare should ban it. But it is not bad enough to be banned by every CDN. That sounds contradictory.
For me, the speech is bad and it should be banned by every CDN. But government should make the judgement on the speech through a due process, ban it, and arrest someone if there's illegal activity involved.
> What irked me is that CloudFlare was the one who makes the decision to do censorship.
I'm not sure what makes you think cloudfront is "censoring" anyone; 8chan no longer is using cloudflare's (likely) free service, so they need to reconfigure their DNS and go about their day.
A good majority of the internet does not use cloudflare; free or paid.
> I dislike the rationale of "CloudFlare is a private company. They can do whatever they want" ... like wut?
Doesn't CloudFlare have the same free speech rights to express their own views towards hate speech (i.e., by not providing service to white supremacists)?
Yes, they do. But that's not the world we should strive for.
In your opinion, would it be better for a government to make this kind of judgement than a company?
Do you think the speech should be banned everywhere? Or should it be banned only on CloudFlare? Or you don't have your judgement on this specific speech?
That's why it's weird that people are cheering Cloudflare for making the right decision. Then, put forward an argument that "well, the speech can be on another platform".
The US government, at least, has explicit restrictions on how it can censor speech. They're required to abide by the 1st amendment, and even have requirements for due process and such.
By contrast, none of the corporations that host the sites you use daily have any such restrictions. If Google wants to delist your website, that's too bad for you. If AWS no longer wants to host it, you have no recourse. If Comcast decides to block you, there's nothing you can do.
Do you want the corporations that control everything you see on the internet to be more neutral? That will require oversite by the government (probably the FCC specifically).
If you want to be really cynical, you could say the government is controlled by corporate money... but then what does it matter?
IMO, blind cynicism isn't helping anyone, and the government is at least ostensibly supposed to do what's in the interest of the nation, and has some limits about what it can and cannot censor. I'd rather that, than an amoral corporation motivated only by money.
> The US government, at least, has explicit restrictions on how it can censor speech. They're required to abide by the 1st amendment, and even have requirements for due process and such.
Right, which is why I'm baffled someone worried about free speech would be happy with giving them that power.
> By contrast, none of the corporations that host the sites you use daily have any such restrictions. If Google wants to delist your website, that's too bad for you. If AWS no longer wants to host it, you have no recourse. If Comcast decides to block you, there's nothing you can do.
Sure there is - you go elsewhere. Just like 8chan will, just like the Daily Stormer did.
> Right, which is why I'm baffled someone worried about free speech would be happy with giving them that power.
Ok, I'll try again. Corporations can actively censor you. The government is more restricted in what speech it can stomp on.
> Sure there is - you go elsewhere.
How do you "go elsewhere" when Comcast refuses to allow customers to see your website?
How do you "go elsewhere" when google delists you?
If 8ch gets hosted in a foreign country after being delisted from google and refused by US hosts, that's censorship. That's an infringement on freedom of speech.
If you're ok with that freedom of speech, then you are saying that it's ok for corporations to censor. That's a coherent stance... but one with which I vehemently disagree. I don't want ANYONE to have the power to censor, but with multinational mega-corps controlling the vast majority of the internet, that's simply not possible.
Considering the fact that internet providers and online services control the vast majority of the content I consume, I'd much rather have some regulation that limits what these companies can do.
> Ok, I'll try again. Corporations can actively censor you. The government is more restricted in what speech it can stomp on.
And I'll try again. Responding to "corporations can censor you" by saying "we should therefore break the First Amendment and let government censor" is bizarre if you're pro-free speech.
I get "neither should be able to censor" as a position, even if I disagree with it. I don't get "I value free speech and thus want the government to be the speech arbiter" at all.
> How do you "go elsewhere" when Comcast refuses to allow customers to see your website?
Hang on, we're talking about CDNs. Not ISPs. Where I live, there's only one real choice for broadband ISPs, and I'd argue they should be largely treated as a utility in that scenario.
> How do you "go elsewhere" when google delists you?
Bing?
> If 8ch gets hosted in a foreign country after being delisted from google and refused by US hosts, that's censorship. That's an infringement on freedom of speech.
So's me telling my kids to be quiet and eat their dinner. It's thankfully 100% legal.
> "we should therefore break the First Amendment and let government censor"
I never said any such thing. Please don't misrepresent my comments.
> we're talking about CDNs. Not ISPs.
I'm actively discussing both. Legislation regulating who can censor what must necessarily start with ISPs before we can even think about regulating edge providers.
> Bing?
You can't move to bing, because you're not the one searching for your website.
> So's me telling my kids to be quiet and eat their dinner. It's thankfully 100% legal.
I'm saying it shouldn't be legal for corporations to suppress speech in this way.
Yes, compared to a censorship coming from companies.
One point is that the decision process is rather secretive. Who argued for? Who argued against? What were their supporting arguments and etc.? Doing censorship through court would be better.
If you have a different position, could you explain why censorship coming from CloudFlare is better than censorchip coming from US government?
One is censorship and the other isn't. One need not carry a brief for Cloudflare to recognize that, protected categories aside, like any business they have the right to refuse service to anyone. 8chan falling into no protected categories, and there in any case being no shortage of other network service providers, you need first to establish that Cloudflare has acted wrongly, and your arguments thus far fall somewhat short of compelling agreement on that score.
> Yes, compared to a censorship coming from companies.
This is literally the exact opposite intention of the 2nd amendment.
> If you have a different position, could you explain why censorship coming from CloudFlare is better than censorchip coming from US government?
Cloudflare isn't an entity supported (e.g. paid) by the general populace. CF not hosting their site isn't censoring their content, they are just actively choosing not to do business with them. People on 8chan can certainly say the same exact thing on any other medium (pen/paper, facebook, etc) and no one is stopping them from doing so.
2. You can think the speech is wrong, and that CDNs shouldn't host it, while having concerns about the US government getting involved in censorship in direct violation of the First Amendment.
The chances of every CDN in the world jumping on the bandwagon is vanishingly small. The Daily Stormer managed to find hosting. Even child porn manages it. That doesn’t mean Cloudflare has to be the one to do it.
That there are minor exceptions to the First Amendment doesn’t mean we should throw it all out.
- Government shouldn't ban it even though the speech is bad.
- You are okay with the speech being hosted elsewhere.
We aren't talking about a grey area here. We are talking about promoting mass-shooting. Every sane person, including you and me, agrees the speech is extremely bad.
Wouldn't you want it to be banned everywhere?
This is the main point I'm trying to drive. We are somehow oddly satisfied that the speech is banned on CloudFlare.
Shouldn't we try to get this specific speech banned everywhere?
There will be some CDNs who do not make the ethical choice. That's a fact of life.
I am uncomfortable with government intervention that makes the ethical choice the legally required choice in this case, as I'm wary of fucking with the First Amendment. (It's also somewhat a fool's errand, as you can host a CDN outside of US jurisdiction if you really want.)
> Government is much better equipped, and the process would be more open.
Maybe - I tend to think governments have a harder time with rapidly changing scenarios, as in privacy issues in the tech world - but the flip side of that is there's little recourse if the process makes a bad decision. Both companies and government are susceptible to bad decisions.
I can switch CDN providers if one makes a stupid call. Switching governments is far less doable.
There's some sort of contradiction here that: you think the speech is bad that CloudFlare should ban it. But not bad enough to be banned from every CDN.
I think Cloudflare kicking them off their service is the moral and ethical thing to do.
I don't think 100% of the CDN providers in the entire world will do the moral and ethical thing, and I recognize that the First Amendment would (should) handily prevent legislation requiring that they do.
At best, it seems inconsistent that we are okay with other CDN providers not doing moral and ethical things. (Since we are okay with the speech being hosted elsewhere).
The US constitution does not have a monopoly on the definition of "censorship". Just because government censorship is the only kind it talks about doesn't mean the word doesn't extend to censorship imposed by other entities.
> What irked me is that CloudFlare was the one who makes the decision to do censorship.
It's their property, and they have an absolute right to decide how their property is to be used. The right to freedom of association is the most fundamental human right there is.
This is so naive. Terrorists use FB, Twitter, Youtube, Google, Cloudflare, Apache, PHP, Java, Volkswagens, US Senators, phones, pagers, etc. etc.
So here is a formula for you to use in case you want to send us back to the dark ages:
> Can any free speech absolutists explain to me the legitimate public interest that is served by allowing terrorist breeding grounds like _INSERT ANY OF THE PRODUCTS FROM THE LIST ABOVE_to continue to operate?
It's the ability to chip away at free speech. First 8chan, then something else that's bad, then something slightly intolerant, then what? Is it really worth censoring when something else will pop up to take it's place? Monitor and move on.
I see you have invoked the Slippery Slope fallacy, which is primarily a way to sidestep talking about the actual issue at hand by comparing it to hypothetical events. What's not hypothetical is that scores of people are dying in the meantime. Furthermore, the First Amendment was designed by the founders as a way to protect citizens who criticized the government. I find it unbelievable that they themselves would support extending those protections towards people who would seek to explicitly provoke mass, random violence.
It is illegal to be an accessory to murder. It is illegal to incite riots. I still haven't heard a good reason why forums that are havens for users openly and explicitly encouraging terroristic acts should not bear any responsibility, beyond lazy slippery slope arguments.
> What's not hypothetical is that scores of people are dying in the meantime.
What’s hypothetical is that banning 8ch will do anything about that.
> Furthermore, the First Amendment was designed by the founders as a way to protect citizens who criticized the government. I find it unbelievable that they themselves would support extending those protections towards people who would seek to explicitly provoke mass, random violence.
Another thing that’s hypothetical.
> I still haven't heard a good reason why forums that are havens for users openly and explicitly encouraging terroristic acts should not bear any responsibility, beyond lazy slippery slope arguments.
Considering you’re just dismissing the presented argument as a fallacy, it’s surprising that your own argument contains so little substance. Or is it?
Reducing the subjective evaluation of the content of private citizens' speech.
[Edit: Why would you down-vote? That's the legitimate interest on the other side of the balance. It's not an opinion on the merit of shutting down 8chan. In this case, the benefit in permitting this speech may be grossly outweighed by the benefit of stopping it, but the benefit in allowing 8chan to continue to exist is non-zero. In its most nefarious use, subjective elimination of speech to subvert the speech's goal is commonly known as "censorship".]
It is both the right and responsibility of every member of a civil society to make ethical judgments about what kind of society they want to create. Free speech is a means to achieve those ends, and not an end in itself.
It can be an end itself if you find that any limits are prone enough to corruption to not be tolerated.
Take encryption. It is used for some of the most vile evil content that exists on the internet. But I support encryption because I know that any limits on it will soon be corrupted by those in power to use for reasons far less just than ending the aforementioned content. Thus I see enabling encryption as an end to itself regardless of how it is used because I see any society that does differently as inferior.
> It can be an end itself if you find that any limits are prone enough to corruption to not be tolerated.
I understand that some people see things that way. And I'm saying that it's an insufficient, naïve, and (in our zeitgeist) actually unethical position.
With even first world governments engaging in significant censorship of harmful incidents, I would respond that anyone seeking to empower governments to limit freedom of speech is in the unethical position, and any trust in a government is naïve. How many more cover ups and incidents of government corruption are needed before we realize that centralizing violence is itself a bad thing and we should seek maximization of individual liberty?
Yet around the world this solution has largely failed, especially as private entities with enough political power (and money, as these are often interchangeable) have learned how to exploit flaws in human psychology to for their advantage. Until we fix these issues the best option is to minimize the possible harm caused by minimizing the instances where we fine violence an acceptable option.
> Yet around the world this solution has largely failed
That's a cynic's worldview and it's one that I totally reject. Take your pessimism to a hole in the ground and wither yourself away there. Let those of us invested in the progress and future of humanity get on with our work.
>That's a cynic's worldview and it's one that I totally reject.
Your rejection doesn't change the reality of how the word operates today.
>Take your pessimism to a hole in the ground and wither yourself away there.
Why? So others can continue to double down on failed policies that end up costing others?
>Let those of us invested in the progress and future of humanity get on with our work.
You see yourself as some benevolent being moving humanity forward but reject any criticism of the costs of your actions. You even immediately judge those who disagree with you as standing against humans, a tactic to dehumanize opposition instead of engaging with it. It is a dangerous mindset that has led to the deaths of tens of millions.
Why not take a lesson from nature that shows that a single entity that tries to do it all is far less likely to survive the future that many separate entities that each find their niche?
> You see yourself as some benevolent being moving humanity forward but reject any criticism of the costs of your actions.
I reject specifically your criticism, the criticism of cynics. I (obviously) don't agree with your characterization of which policies are "failed policies that end up costing others" or "how the world operates". Humans are of nature but also possess the ethical and rational systems to rise above it. We're not bound by our natural impulses; on the contrary, our gifts oblige us to be better than them.
Bluntly, I have no interest in living in a tribe with my Dunbar's number of tribespeople, organizing my thoughts and our policies under some presupposed limits of ambition. My ambition is boundless. So I say again, if you want to close ranks and subvert broad collective action and live in fear (or as you would say, some kind of steely-eyed realism) go dig a hole and do it well away from me. I've no interest in that moribund nihilism.
Sure, but if you reasonably suspect someone to possess such content in encrypted form, is there any moral problem with socially engineering them into giving up their private key?
Depends upon the extent of such actions. Throwing someone into prison until they give you a password they might not have is a problem. Wire tapping their phone after getting a warrant to see if they discuss the password with another person is not. Without a warrant is once again a problem.
i don’t have a strong opinion about free speech but i think the argument is: who gets to decide what’s “in the public interest”. if you don’t like somebody’s book, pamphlet, blog post, comment, or tweet, just declare it “not in the public interest”. there you have the makings of tyranny.
One man's terrorist rhetoric is another's glorious revolutionary thought. If you don't think that the precedents being set today won't affect leftist spaces which seek to alter America's failed state version of capitalism you are truly naive. Was the Patriot act and subsequent rights degrading laws about combating Islamic terrorism? Or was it about legalizing oppressive control and mass surveillance?
I'm fairly leftist and would have no problem with individual leftist spaces being shut down if they start breeding so much hatred against the right that they incite and celebrate many explicitly-politically-motivated mass murderers.
The theoretical argument is simple- if you ban one kind of speech, where does it end? The line can keep getting moved closer until what's not allowed is in a gray area and that's not where we want to be.
However, the practical side of this is pretty clear.. hate speech is hate speech. It's not a debate. The people who are for being racist/bigots are wrong- plain and simple. So removing their forum of speech is OK in my book.
Still even after saying that- it's never that simple.. I think collectively the US does not want to turn into what parts of even europe has in which you can literally get in trouble just for saying things. And trying to "ban" even the clearest of wrong views is one step closer to getting somewhere we don't want to be.
On a related note, 8chan has both a Tor/hidden service version and a ZeroNet version, and there are ads going around on how to access those.
So it's clear the folks running the site knew that something like this might happen, and set up alternatives (on 'uncensorable' services) to provide access in such a situation.
It may provide for an interesting case study in whether a community site like this moving to P2P services or Tor can maintain the same level of activity as on the clearweb, or whether that effectively hides it for a decent percentage of the userbase.
According to Andrew Torba of Gab (I cannot speak to the veracity of this myself): "As predicted in our statement to Buzzfeed: 8chan is indeed online. It's on ZeroNet, a decentralized and open source peer-to-peer version of the internet. It literally can not be censored now. By anyone. At all. Not admins. Not governments. No one. This isn't as good as it sounds. It means no illegal content can be permanently removed, including things like child exploitation, human trafficking, etc. Happy now, media elites?" https://gab.com/a/posts/102568802463422885
As a free expression absolutists I see no problem with private companies refusing service, as long as they are not breaking their contract. And ideally it should be perfectly fine to have whites-only restaurants, or do a discriminatory hiring practice and not hire any women. Because I see no logical reason why freedom of association should have any limits, as long as you are not bound by some obligations that you have agreed to.
As for people crying about how internet is getting censored - don't be an impotent and start programming decentralized alternatives. Like Fediverse and Crypto devs do. If you really care about freedom that is. At this point it should be pretty clear that the major enabler of internet censorship is the whole paradigm of centralized services, because it concentrates too much power in one hands. In order to combat it we should create high-quality decentralized alternatives, where everyone owns a small chunk of the system and can only ban somebody from that specific chunk.
Good stalling tactic, but this really just inconveniences (i.e. makes mad) a bunch of extreme individuals who will undoubtably rally through other means almost immediately.
We really need to start talking to people before they act and not shutdown their communications after the fact.
Where are the extremists now? They used to be on 8chan... now they're... ?
If we're going to have internet censorship, I don't want it to be a backroom thing. It needs to be transparent, auditable, appealable, with bright line rules and due process guarantees.
It's unfortunate if we need to live with some level of censorship. But I don't accept it being carried out in back rooms by unaccountable companies operating hand-in-hand with illegal DDoS attacks. Put it out there in the open, and let's have a legal democratic process around it that tries to guarantee some amount of fairness and attempts to give the weak protection from the strong.
Speaking as someone who runs a public site with the discretion to ban accounts, no thanks. Due process means people will game your policies. We've had arbitrary internet censorship by site operators since day 1 and it works pretty well.
Rather this is an issue for internet backbone companies like AWS or Cloudflare. If any of these groups wants to get into the censorship business, I want them to do it in a heavily regulated environment than guarantees accountability, transparency, bright line rules, right to appeal, and due process. Same for ISPs (many of us fought hard for net neutrality for this reason).
And I feel the same if the large platform monopoly companies like Google, Facebook, or Twitter, want to be in the censorship business.
Not regulating their censorship practices is incompatible with us keeping democratic government for very much longer.
I think people generally don't have a problem with forums where the moderator declares upfront that access is subject to the whims of the owner which can and will be capricious. Certainly, I see some threads now and again where people complain about such and suck, but locking the thread and telling people if they bring it up again they'll get banned is usually enough to get people back on topic. Sure, it's a brutal dictatorship, but whatever, everybody knew it was at the start. I'm certainly not on HN because of its dedication to free speech, it's in part because of the swift and effective moderation that eliminates most off-topic stuff.
The problem I have is if one of the services that says they'll provide services to everyone, especially those that say they support free speech, turn around and say we'll provide services to everyone, unless we agree that they're really reprehensible and our paying customers threaten to leave; in that case, we don't care so much about free speech or universal access.
Having a MFFAM policy[1] seems like a much more honest approach to being a free speech supporter. Of course, if you have a free tier, it's hard to take the free you're getting from the customer whose views you don't like and send it off to an organization that opposes those views.
>Due process means people will game your policies.
And? If your policies are liable to being "gamed", then either your policies or your enforcement is insufficient. And I say this with a pretty good deal of forum moderation experience. When you find something that your objectively defined rules miss, you update your rules appropriately and continue on.
Life as a mod is about a million times easier, for both you and your users, when you minimize the amount of judgment calls on edge cases that have to be made.
> Life as a mod is about a million times easier, for both you and your users, when you minimize the amount of judgment calls on edge cases that have to be made.
No, life is much easier when rule 0 is "don't piss off the people running the show", and anyone who complains about mod actions gets instantly permabanned.
I should have added "if you want happy users and not a e-fiefdom". I've been a part of many forums that moderate according to your description, and they're almost without exception, miserable places to be that could be so much better if the mods didn't let petty bureaucrat syndrome go to their heads.
I think it's really important that the web be free and open and I think Cloudflare and now Voxility have done a tremendous job in exercising their freedom as private entities to shut down voices of hate.
Other service providers can step up to the plate and bear the consequences of providing service to communities that incite violence to the point of having direct ties to mass shootings.
all philosophy aside, these decisions were not made based on a moral conscience of any sort. Just because corporations are in some sense treated like people in the United States doesnt mean they act in any way like them. Epik and Cloudflare are donning the cloak of moral turpitude to protect their shareholders.
Cloudflare and Epik are keenly aware that if they do not take some tangible action immediately, they expose the company to enormous risk. They understand that Americans will not be able to get satisfaction from their government or law enforcement. People will file lawsuits that will be well funded, and increasingly difficult to defend.
Even if there is no lawsuit, there could still be a mass exodus from these providers. GoDaddy enjoyed the same such exodus after years of bad PR and Cloudflare is no different. Host the site that planned a mass shooting, and companies will flee from your service to protect their brand.
This is really no different than Subway dropping Jared, or Disney dropping PewDiePie.
I realize this may not be the best place to talk about it, but is there some good explanation for what seems to be a totally insatiable thirst for white supremacy in America these days? It seems to me like this is the real story here and, for the most part, it is not being covered in any real sense by either liberal, conservative or independent media.
The vested interest media and political parties have in making it seem like there is an insatiable thirst for white supremacy in America.
It's on average not any worse than it ever was, but showing us how bad its always been right now serves a useful political goal in division and diversion.
Its not a conspiracy, just stupidity and greed. Outrage generates views and votes, no cartel required.
White Christians are losing their supermajority status in an increasingly ethnically diverse America. Even though white christians will continue to be the largest racial group for a long time, the shifting demographics feel very visceral by increased minority representation in media and politics. This has spurred a lot of racial anxiety.
There was a study done where people were primed by reading news articles about America becoming a "majority minority" country (e.g. white people as a group will no longer represent > 50% of the full population). Reading these articles causes white people to hold more favorable opinions of conservative policies across the board. However, if the articles included statements along the lines of, "But white people will remain as powerful", those conservative shifts go away. Further studies show this same effect across ethnic groups (e.g. Black people reading about growing Hispanic populations). The central takeaway is: when people feel like the status of their identity group is under threat, they become more conservative.
While racial anxiety can be assuaged, popular conservative media in America, like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al, do all that's in their power to inflame these anxieties. And while these anxieties all existed before Trump, Trump was the first major presidential candidate in recent memory to stoke these fires so directly (John McCain and Mitt Romney both famously refused to do so, John McCain by shutting down the "Barack is a Muslim" rhetoric at a town hall, and Mitt Romney refusing to campaign using racial anxiety even though he was showed polling that it would be effective). Trump getting elected has subsequently emboldened a lot of racially anxious people who finally have someone they can rally behind. You know, "someone who isn't afraid" to make the claim that people immigrating from Mexico are rapists and murderers.
And so here we are.
There's a whole other dimension about how damaging spending all day in internet communities can be for emotional health, how lonely a lot of young people are, and how groups like ISIS and white supremacists take advantage of these people by offering them community and subsequently radicalizing them. I'd expand but I'm lazy and I'm just another dumbass on the internet anyway.
I live in Italy. Today the biggest leftists mainstream newspaper (repubblica) opened up with a title "slaughters by the white man".
They would never dare to write "black man" and most importantly, the expression "white man" was never used before in Italy, in such a context.
There is an international anti-white culture and I'm tired to pretend there isn't a problem.
99% of "alt-righters" who got interested in politics, have done so since gamergate, and before just wanted to play videogames and live a decent life and unlike progressives were truly color blind. I know this is difficult to understand for many, but that's the truth and I hope one day you'll see how much suffering you've caused to whites only because of the color of their skin.
I wrote this for a place of love of all the people of the world and a desire of peace. I'm really tired of this nonsense. Please wake up.
Edit: gonna specify that I don't endorse violence or even coercion through the State, I just want anti-white culture to go away
In America we elected a president who made the claim that immigrants coming from Mexico were rapists and murders. He built an entire campaign around fear of Mexican immigration. Meanwhile, there's been a string of mass shootings where white people targeted, shot, and killed people of color.
What does it mean to be color blind in this scenario? That Mexican people ignore that the most powerful person in the country is labeling them as a threat? That we ignore that there has been a string of racially motivated killings in the country?
The "alt-right" didn't suddenly appear at gamer gate, these philosophies have existed for a long time and have been popular in your country and elsewhere.
If 8chan is an internet hate forum, so is reddit. Yes, 8chan has little to no moderation. People go on 8chan and talk about whatever, the fact that there is hate speech somewhere in there, and it is allowed to stay there, doesn't mean the entire site is dedicated to hate speech. We don't say "Internet Cat Photo Forum" about reddit just because /r/aww exists.
There will always be places "providing providing a safe space for anonymized, like-minded individuals to congregate, espouse their basest thoughts and feelings." This is firmly a good thing. You can always hang out somewhere else if you don't prefer it. 8chan going down means nothing in the long run. One goes down another survives.
8chan and its ilk are primarily symptoms. Of just exactly what, I'm not sure. But major factors in the US are very likely ongoing deindustrialization, increasing wealth inequity, global climate change, and changes in gender roles.
Which of those are ultimately good or bad is another conversation. Although I gotta say that gender roles certainly needed change. But the fact remains that they're happening.
But of course, 8chan and its ilk are also mechanisms that exacerbate those symptoms. However, while shutting them down may be morally satisfying, it's no substitute for actually addressing (yeah, politics speak) the underlying problems.
Many people are talking about freedom of speech, and yes it is something very important to support when you're talking about what governments cannot do.
But CloudFlare and whatever hosting company this is are not governments. Freedom of speech doesn't mean others are required to be your megaphone when you're saying objectionable things. The government should be very restricted in its ability to censor you, but your publisher? not so much.
If you really don't like it, make your own publisher (internet hardware company, CDN, etc.)
I might be late to the party. However, I still want to warn you guys that by shutting down these sites, you are doing nothing more than hiding the filth under the rug. There is an adagio going on 4chan that shutting down /b/ would be similar to clogging a toilet: it WILL overflow somewhere else.
Congratulations, you have shut down yet another site. Do you think these people and their ideologies have disappeared? Nope, they are now gone into an even more remote corner of the internet to foster even more anger.
>Of course, the simplest reason is that it's not up to us to decide what the rest of the world should or shouldn't see. Bad news, it's not up to you either. Worse news, it's still true even when we agree. Which is probably most of the time.
>Finally, censorship is always bad, for a variety of well understood reasons that we don't need to repeat here. But in the case of some types of content, it has special dangers. When you censor a web site based on the extreme or dangerous views of its creator(s), you haven't stopped those people from thinking that way. You haven't made them go away. You certainly haven't stopped the people who hold those views from doing whatever else they do when they're not posting on the Internet. What you've actually done is given yourself a false sense of accomplishment by closing your eyes, clapping your hands over your ears, and yelling "Lalala! I can't hear you!" at the top of your voice. Pretending a problem doesn't exist is not only not a solution, it makes real solutions harder to reach.
Didn’t know 8chan hosted their stuff at Voxility, it’s a small world. I’m saying this because Voxility is a Romanian company, I am Romanian, and my company used to also host our stuff at their premises until 3 or 4 years ago.
I remember that on one of my visits there (there was always a hard-drive that needed to be handed in person or something like that) I’m 100% sure that I had bumped into what looked to be an FBI team inspecting some of the machines in there. I’m saying FBI but they could also have been the the US Secret Service or whatever agency is in charge with protecting US citizens against online bad things, in any case, the people I saw inspecting stuff were definetely people working for the US government, you could tell by their pants and the way they matched (or, better yet, how they didn’t match) with their white snickers.
All this to say that I’m pretty sure that the US 3-letter agencies had direct physical access to the 8chan servers, not sure how they let all this get so out of control.
They spoke American English and a couple of days after that there were a couple of news reports about the US authorities having come to Romania in order to catch some Internet bad guys, so after the fact I just put 2 and 2 together. And believe it or not an American person usually stands out when outside of the States (and maybe a few other European Western countries), it’a like porn, difficult to put down in words but you know it when you see it.
Business people wearing sneakers is more common in the US than elsewhere. When I came to the US I was like 'wow, so many of these people are planning on going for a jog during their lunch breaks!' Nope, people just wear running shoes with their slacks.
I think they only switched to Epik/Voxility for a few hours after being kicked off Cloudflare, but I'm not familiar with where they would have been hosted or what services they used 3-4 years ago.
When Cloudflare pulled the plug on them I didn’t saw that as a good idea because by doing that you are forcing the community underground and further radicalization is the next step. And here they are using the daily stormer CDN.
On the other hand as deplatforming becomes a norm perhaps we could see a rise in demand for decentralized platforms like IPFS or ActivityPub.
When I was younger, I was a free speech absolutist. I believed in rationality and that if you couldn't defend/oppose ideas then your position had no strength. Censorship was a sign of weakness. Even clearly "good" censorship (say, banning child porn) has problematic boundaries.
Now...I'm far less confident. I still believe in rationality, but I also see clear weaknesses in human's ability to process. Rationality emerges over time, not in the moment. Speech isn't just ideas, it's emotion. It creates social pressure, fears, threats. And humans are social creatures. Even this forum is chock-ful of signaling patterns and inclusion. These aren't personal failures, but human facts - to be without these would be to dissolve the functions that make us form communities - to remove the items that make us NOT be "defectors" (to signal).
We have to trust others, or we'll spend all our time verifying all the information we get and never accomplish anything. But this introduces the ability for others to exploit this. Speech has never been inherently good nor bad, and thus "free speech" is also neither inherently good nor bad. It is just a force multiplier for whatever you try to do. And "good" speech can't be solely dedicated to battling "bad" speech if it wants to achieve any change, while bad speech achieves its goals just by existing, or even by demanding the attention of those giving "good" speech. An inherent imbalance.
In the big picture, this all shakes out over time. The good speech investigates and explores ideas. Bad speech is beaten. Speech in the middle helps ensure that the "good" speech really is good, and periodic bouts of bad speech help the system enforce the boundaries that move everything in a healthy-for-society direction. But to zoom out to that level is to ignore all the suffering such a system entails. "You can't have a society that is afraid of hurting feelings!" free speech advocates will cry out...correctly. Some amount of suffering is unavoidable. Pick any arbitrary line between restricted speech and unrestricted speech and it's easy to see that people will suffer as a result. But that does not mean that we should automatically accept that unrestricted speech is the answer. That we should be blind to all the suffering that IS happening because we fear the suffering that MIGHT happen.
Or perhaps unrestricted speech IS the answer...but a lot more of us need to be calling out for the societal responsibilities. Free speech is a powerful tool, and like any tool should be used wisely. If we aren't calling people out for using it poorly, but are calling out people for any attempt to restrict it, we're empowering only one side of the equation. But that gets into a circular argument, because if you replace government restrictions with social ones, you have the same result - restricted speech.
I don't know where I stand on this. The only thing I see clearly is that the number of people that seem to be seriously examining the issue is vanishingly small relative to the population.
No, banning speech critical of the government and racial groups that reveive priviledged treatment from the government is the basis for every decision the media tells people to make.
Deciding to commit mass murder rarely happens in a vacuum. It typically happens when you surround yourself all day by people who tell you that mass murder is a good idea. Radicalization is a social phenomenon.
I'm critical of censorship, but not because I think it's ineffective.
Radicalization happens through words. You can ban radicalization by banning words.
That won't completely get rid of it, but it can make it a lot less accessible, which reduces the amount of radicalization that occurs. I don't think people start out with the intent to get radicalized. They stumble upon a place like /pol/ and see that it's interesting and so they stick around and gradually get convinced. It's much harder to stumble upon a Tor hidden service or a private chatroom than a publicly accessible webpage.
China's great firewall is not terribly hard to get around, but it's very effective regardless. Inconvenience is powerful.
Like I said before, I'm critical of censorship. I used to be a free speech absolutist. I think I'm not quite an absolutist any more (using 8chan for years disillusioned me a little), but I still think censorship is rarely justified. China is of course terrible.
That said, I don't buy the slippery slope argument. My country bans holocaust denial, and though I think that ideally it shouldn't, it hasn't actually slipped down the slope and the situation seems stable. 8chan currently bans certain content that it didn't in the past (it's now much stricter against photographs of children) and it's still incredibly permissive.
If 8chan stopped allowing posts that promote shootings it wouldn't end up becoming like China. I don't think it would lead to other more draconian restrictions.
The harm of censorship usually outweighs the benefit (if any), but not in this case, I think. It's probably ok for 8chan to change its policies a little - and I do mean just a little.
I'm happy you expanded your opinion. I'm with you in that I think absolute free speech is very hard to defend.
At the same time I definitely think slippery slope is the right analogy. The definition of what is acceptable speech is constantly changing and IMO there is no telling what the effect of banning unacceptable speech is - over a long enough time frame.
My view is things might seem stable at the moment, but who's to say what the relevant timeframe is?
This will be an interesting experiment. Will the banning of 8chan prevent future tragedies? Or will we see the rate of these tragedies continue unabated.
Either way we should have some evidentiary support for the arguments made in this thread. "Can free speech go to far?" "Should free speech be limited only to those mentally capable of the responsibility?" "Are safe spaces key in the radicalization process?" "Should speech be limited to only those ideas which society wishes to debate?" "Are calls to violence speech?"
I'm pretty keen on tracking some of these arguments. Please suggest more arguments (and potential indicators for that argument's truth) if you feel I've neglected some aspect of the conversation.
There is a price for every freedom we have. Free speech also comes with some price. Which can include riots and deaths. All we need to ask if whether slippery slope of restrictions on free speech would lead to a higher price or a lower price.
An FBI agent working on child rape cases told me how on one occasion he was 100% sure who the criminal was and yet he had to let him go because the person had rights. Now many such freed criminals are the price for having 4t hand 5th amendment in first place.
USA as a society needs to debate whether the freedoms of having free speech or freedom to own guns are worth it. Either ways it is their choice and outsiders like me would only be curious as to what choice americans would make.
I think that is a travesty, and not for free speech reasons. Like many, I spent some time on the site this weekend. It was incredibly disturbing, but kind of inline of what some chan sites are about. I had an idea to try to mobilize some people to start spamming /pol/ with goodness. Pics of bunny rabbits and bible verses and MLK quotes. Anon is for all, but channers have intentionally scared off almost everybody else. If a massive amount of people meaningfully engaged with the board, started open discussions and appealed to reason, maybe some lives could be saved.
Too bad its gone. Their community will simply move and dig in, and reaching them will be much harder.
Everybody is keen on pointing the finger towards 8chan, no one is talking about how easy is to get firearms and bullets in the United States of America.
In the meantime, we lost one of the few spaces where we could talk anonymously and express ourselves freely.
I am not sure whether i should feel sorry for America at this point. The problem with shootings has been around for a lot if time now, yet pretty much nothing has been done. Firearms still get sold as easy as candy.
Shootings like this will keep happening because they are a symptom, not the root cause.
People will find other places to rant about stuff, get radicalised and decide to go on a killing spree. In the meantime, we lost a place of free and anonymous conversation.
I've always disliked the Verge and this article reminds me of why.
> Internet hate forum 8chan [..]
Indifference to what is perceived as good or evil is not good or evil within itself. There's objectively a lot of hate in those forums, but there's also a lot of good. 4chan for example came up with a solution to an unsolved mathematics problem [1].
> [..] following the latest of at least three mass shootings linked to 8chan.
I think far many more terrorists have had social media platforms on services such as Twitter or Facebook. As I've also said before, the reason they are here is because they kicked them out of everywhere else - of course they will now concentrate on these platforms. Beforehand there may have been a chance to de-radicalize these people with exposure to everyday persons, but when you isolate them this is what you get. The fact of the matter is, these people exist whether you like it or not and they will find somewhere to talk.
> [..] when Voxility discovered the content, it cut ties with Epik almost immediately.
I remember also that Cloudflare gave 8chan 24 hours notice. Also look at how internet services have treated the people of Iran, blocking them from basic resources without warning. In some ways I am glad to see this, as I now know which providers to avoid - I don't want any service provider I use to take a political stance and give me 24 hours or less to rethink my platform strategy.
> Over the past year, Epik has raised its profile by working with far-right-friendly sites (like Gab) that have been banned by other web service companies.
Disingenuous, Gab is free-speech-friendly, not "far-right-friendly". But even if it was far-right friendly by definition, so what? People with a different political stance have a shared platform, just look at Bread Tube for the far-left [2]. Neither are evil by default and both have their share of shitheads.
1st amendment issue. As in persons, including those that own companies have the right to associate or not associate(1) with whomever they choose. As upheld in USA with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP_v._Alabama
1) The "not associate" is not clearly as protected and is frequently abridged to protect "protected classes" eg housing, employment, ADA laws. I doubt any US court will uphold "bigot" as a protected class.
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."
The 1st Amendment was developed in a time when there was no such conceivable thing as an anonymous forum of people that encouraged each other to kill crowds of civilians at random with machine guns, leading to such killings actually being carried out, repeatedly.
The idea that "the answer to bad speech is more speech" breaks down in such a situation. There is no amount of "more speech" that can fix what's wrong with 8chan, because there's no way for mass condemnation to have any effect on it. It only serves to feed the trolls. And when the trolls are fed, the killings become more likely.
If you've got a better solution than deplatforming, I'd like to hear it. I'm certainly a free speech advocate in the abstract. But it's increasingly difficult to ignore that anonymous online communities are threatening to undercut the basic premises on which free speech as an ideal stands.
I have to say, this is very exciting technology.
This makes an impossible to censor network.
The only downside seems to be that it doesn't seem to have as good of privacy as traditional chans because this one is peer to peer.
(As for "free-speech activists" and so-called pacifists who complain about actions against you-know-who more than violence by them - I don't see the value of their words.)
But better norms are developing, even if it should have happened faster. And not just in technology, but in education and writing and many other spaces.
This might be an unpopular opinion for those who view more rules as the answer.
Banning (or discontinuing or deplatforming or whatever you want to call it) may do little but harden the resolve of key ideologues of whatever stripe. For them, it leads credence to the idea that there is conspiracy against the group afoot. Besides, when has banning actually been effective? Sure, it may reduce manifestation and reduce recruitment, but drugs and spam pretty much show wack-a-mole is not really an effective policy. That's to say nothing of the moral hazards of thought police determining who can say what.
However it is obvious that leaving these kind of groups to echo chamber louder and more extreme, egging each other on also leads to bad outcomes.
Perhaps a solution may be proactive counter speech. Some sort of volunteer regiment or something that finds where these sorts congregate and offers counterpoints to violent idiocy. Obviously flat out threats or calls to action are crimes in and of themselves and should be treated as such.
This would be a pretty thankless task because who wants to deal with this type of idiocy and darkness all day? But I think it could be more effective if properly done than banning as far as changing minds and hearts, especially before people get sucked too far down echo chambers and start seeing the world in a way it really isn't. Other people, smart people, articulate people, right there calling out wrongness, calling out stupidity, calling out misunderstanding, giving counterpoints, arguing for right action, this might be a more effective way to damp down the extremism.
Furthermore, leaving it out in the open allows it to spread. There's good evidence that "de-platforming" is highly effective at preventing the spread of hate.
So we make more laws and rules which we hope we can actually enforce and hope the baddies dissipate into the ether?
Chase them from reddit to 4-chan to 8-chan then have cloudflare ban 8-chan and proclaim "mission accomplished!"?
I'm just saying I think the effective way to fix this is by breaking the echo chamber. With argument and knowledge and guidance and wit and mockery and whatever we have.
Young males of this primate species need guidance and leadership and direction. They need answers. They are a pack dog really. Without someone there personally spanking them verbally when they get out line they apparently devolve into feral internet packs. But nobody (understandably) wants to deal with them nor put up with their abuse and trash, so they coagulate into places they can find direction and meaning. That is what I think needs to be addressed. Not trying to stamp out places, which I doubt will work long term. Nor most especially encouraging them to self filter into these packs.
A lot of these mass shooters (and a number of serial killers) quote social Darwinism nonsense as inspiration. I wonder why that ideological portion is not being dealt with more. I hear social Darwinism ideas fairly frequently in everyday conversations with people, like casual lunch conversations.
It is not individual Darwinism but social Darwinism. They think they are part of a superior race, and so it does not matter as much what happens to them individually.
Looking at this logically, 8chan is available all over the world.
Yet only America has these shooting happening regularly.
Could it not be 8chan but America that has the issues?
I have a feeling 8chan and Video Games and guns are not the issue here but structural social problems with America.
The part that I concerned with has to do with discoverability. If you push these people underground they will not disappear. That has never happened in the history of humanity.
I would much rather the exist in plain view, free to voice their hatred in plain view. I would much rather the algorithms and people of sound mind monitor these individuals and groups in broad daylight than have them exist behind encrypted radicalization chat rooms.
If the standard is to shutdown services that can lead to radicalization and, therefore, harm or death, then the government should shut down Facebook, Twitter, Google and maybe more.
Why treat this any differently that 737 MAX crashes?
The only reason I can see not to do this is to be able to keep an eye on people who self-radicalize.
Sadly I have an example of this in my own family. We have an older relative (late 70’s) who, up until about two years ago, did not own a computer or use the Internet.
He was given a computer by a family member so he could use FB to keep in touch with family in the US and abroad.
We have been watching, in absolute horror, as he has been going down a path towards ever increasing hatred. No, not what you think. I won’t go into details other than to say that he had his political leanings a couple of years ago and FB turned them into nothing less than hatred, constant unrelenting hatred.
No, he isn’t going to go hurt anyone. He is hurting himself. He is in a solid gradient descent into a sad existence and likely already very much in the grips if depression.
I know it’s FB because that’s all he does with the computer. He is, otherwise, computer illiterate. He doesn’t have much if an education, which makes the constant stream of hateful memes, posts and articles impossible for him to filter. He is, effectively, mostly incapable of critical thinking now that he has been pulled down into this dark cave.
Precisely because this is happening in plain sight, various members of our family, myself included, have been engaging with him to try and pull him out of Plato’s proverbial cave.
This task is incredibly difficult. FB feeds him a constant stream of similar material and the world of reason evaporates behind a cloud of hatred. All he sees are shadows on the wall.
We need this in the open in order to be able to help those we love as well as others.
We also need FB and others to understand how much harm their algorithms seem to be causing.
Precisely because this is happening in plain sight, various members of our family, myself included, have been engaging with him to try and pull him out of Plato’s proverbial cave. This task is incredibly difficult. [...]
It's enormously difficult to deal with even for a family member that you know fairly well. Now imagine trying to deal with it at scale where you're trying to reach (likely) complete strangers who are not confused, but actively engaged as conscious information and/or real world warriors and smart enough to anticipate, avoid, and deflect counter-arguments.
There are already people who monitor these social groups but actively and algorithmically, and because of that are aware of where and how to locate them when a hub goes down.
I'm assuming you are echoing my case for making sure they do their business in the open. Or did I misread you?
In our particular case there violence isn't of concern at all. It's just an older man getting pulled into a dark corner full of hateful messaging. This is having negative consequences as friends and some family don't want to be around that kind of negativity.
In other words, our older family member's case is more about FB effectively destroying his quality of life than him becoming a problem for someone else. It's really sad to watch.
With regards to your comment about it being harder to intercede in the case of complete strangers. Yes, absolutely agreed, it's nearly impossible with someone you've known your entire life I could not imagine what it might take to "reprogram" a complete stranger.
My assumption, when it comes to the case of random strangers, wasn't that someone would necessarily intercede to try and play amateur psychologist. What I would expect is for law enforcement to become involved, bring experts into the fold and deal with each case as necessary. I am not a psychologist, so I can't even being to presume to know how or if this could be done.
My other assumption is that the task is much easier when the conversations happen in the open. That said, I am not in law enforcement, I could be completely wrong, it might be the case that the various agencies can do a better job when these people think they are invisible. I don't know.
From "Justia": "...A conspiracy occurs when two or more people agree to commit an illegal act and take some step toward its completion. Conspiracy is an inchoate crime because it does not require that the illegal act actually has been completed. ..."
Conspiracy and encouragement to harm others by seeking agreement online by providing detailed plans, strategies, and the execution therein, as witnessed in some hastily written screeds and manifestos by shooters and terrorists, appears to cross that line.
Is 8Chan guilty as an active contributor to the horror that has occurred? More than plausible, but its liability albeit civil of punishable has seemingly not yet been defined.
" 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."
Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of scum and villainy. The internet has to grow up and conclusively eject these kinds of people - don't tolerate them, don't tolerate their providers.
A bit out of the loop. The hell is 8chan? Similar to 4chan? Are the by the same people? I always knew 4chan was a cesspool, just like youtube comment sections. So, never ventured.
Next question, is there any actual evidence or proof that they're "apart of it"?
Literally, out of the loop and I trust a random person on HN a bit more than CNN. I saw the thing about Cloudflare here... was it yesterday? Day before? I figured, whatever, a private company can think what they want and do what the want as long as they're honoring the terms of the contract (as in there's a warning that service can be cut because of "our reasons").
Just curious about this 8chan thing and where the hell it came from.
It's an Imageboard, there are many of them.
8chan gained a lot of traffic because of the Gamergate [1] controversy in late 2014
The site has nothing to-do with 4chan in terms of administration.
I can't say anything about how 8chan is involved in the El Paso shooting, since it's been some time I've been active on 8chan, but the Christchurch mosque shootings was announced on 8chan.
There are many more of such incidents where Imageboards have played a role - e.g. the killing of a kid by Marcel H. in Herne, Germany was posted and documented on 4chan.
8chan is basically 4chan, but with a Reddit-esque spin: anyone can create their own sub-board and moderate it as they please so long as the content they allow isn't illegal in the USA.
1) 8chan richly deserved to go down and its a good thing for all of us they are down. Hopefully this stays that way.
2) That does not change the structural reality that a small collection of private entities can now act as gatekeepers. This is not a result of this affair - but something that already existed. Can we rely on this power always being used for good purposes? I dunno. If you deal with controversial stuff, better have a backup plan. Good thing 8chan were too stupid to have one.
Conclusion: the result is good, the path indicates some troubling realities. I often oppose the 'get a good result in a dubious way' method, but here the balance tilted strongly towards action. My tolerance drops to zero when it comes to terrorist breeding sites and the 'damage' merely shows us what already existed. There's an argument this should have been done much earlier.
So curious that out of 1592 comments, not one mentions the QAnon movement. This is the true reason 8chan was brought down. An attempt to disrupt their communications.
meanwhile, to us canadians, it's painfully obvious that the problem isn't websites, but guns. curbing free speech is not going to solve this problem for you.
That's an extremely narrow view of a nuanced issue. We have divisive cultural issues, a severe mental health problem, an opiate addiction problem, and problems with access to guns in some areas. We also have a huge country. We also have a huge country, taking away guns from people in Alaska will solve nothing.
While I get your point about guns in Alaska (I am assuming you mean there aren't mass shootings happening there), I think your overall statement is misguided. Alaska has the highest suicide rate [1] and second highest murder rate per captia in the USA [2].
I didn't pull articles for this, but it's pretty widely accepted that easy access to firearms directly ties to increases in suicide and murder.
It's going great. Stabbing deaths in London in 2018 were just over 3 "El Pasos". It's less than 3X if you change the metric to "2019 mass shootings posted to 8chan ahead of time".
I'm sorry that Fox News has led you so astray, but the whole "actually everyone in London gets stabbed because they don't have guns" narrative is horseshit.
Also, if I understand correctly, very uneven economic progress in different areas.
Call me a reductionist, but I'm inclined to view social extremism primarily as a symptom of economic decline. When growth falters, the fires always seem to start burning.
If it wasn't video games it would be video nasties.
If it wasn't video nasties it would be drugs.
Anything except the guns.
Interesting how the U.S. President can say how he wants the perpetrators executed. There is a whole culture of killing just south of that border of yours.
This is why Facebook host their own servers... well not the only reason, but you could easily make the argument that Facebook is an "Internet hate forum" and should be shut down for failing to police their site.
Not even hosting your own servers would do much to prevent a site shutdown since the domain can also be censored by the company that owns the TLD.
Facebook takes their hosting to a whole new level by being part of the ICANN as a domain registrar which their domains are registered under themselves, making it close to impossible to be shutdown on the domain level.
No, not really, no. Facebook is a media company that has half-assed moderation because it's not profitable to them to be any better about it, and is mostly old ladies posting ancient memes and chain letters.
But it's not just half-assed is it, it's misguide, misleading and misdirected. Facebook will actively block a post selling baby items from a "non-smoking home" because their shitty A.I. and $2 an hour moderators can tell that the post isn't selling tobacco or animals. At the same time they can't find an entire group applauding the death of police officers or groups encouraging violent racism.
And those last two, those aren't old ladies, those a shit people who aren't technically literate enough to find 8chan.
Just imagine how hard it would be for Facebook to exist if they didn't host their own servers. They would have to be under constant threats of being kicked off from whatever ISP they used because of the content users submit. And also quite obviously the press would be yelling at ISPs for hosting them, same they are doing with 8chan
The usual argument on this topic is: whether suppression of free speech is even effective; you just push the ugliness underground and it festers; sunlight is the best disinfectant; etc. However, those arguments go back way before the internet and social media. And do not account for the fact that social media accelerates the spread of hatred and actual, physical danger. As we are seeing.
People keep telling "they are a peivate company, they can serve whoever they". Can they really? Can I open a shop that doesn't serve people with political view X? Or religion? Race?
This is totally ridiculous. Every major political issue in the USA has been injected with a “protected” group so any criticism can be silenced as it now fits the criteria for hate speech.
This seems like a good move, and the opposite of a slippery, "government restricted our free speech" slope. It's more like, "companies and individuals are under no obligation to offer their services to people they perceive to be assholes." The reason governments shouldn't do this is because there is no alternative. Companies and individuals are the right place to make an individual choice about what they wish to endorse, host, and support.
People (i.e. the Cloudflare CEO saying "no one should have this power") wishing the government would let them off the moral hook for hosting literal Nazis is pretty absurd.
Consider an alternative hypothesis: that sites like those are containment zones. If those sorts of people don't have any peaceful outlet for their feelings, what then?
This is ridiculous, how many people in the comments appear to think this can be considered good in any way. I'm honestly shocked, like WTF I'm even reading...
Let me start by stating my views on free speech and rights in general, and then how they are shaped by these events.
I think that human rights and freedoms are just that: personal freedoms. Freedom of religion is about personal religious observance without harming others. These freedoms philosophically should not mean entitlement to unlimited exercise thereof.
The right to bear arms doesn’t mean you should be able able to stockpile unlimited amounts of ammunition and incendiary devices etc.
Similarly, FREEDOM of speech to me is a PERSONAL human freedom. You can say what you want, and not be punished by the government for it. You can say it in a car, you can say it in a bar, you can say it very far, you can wish upon a star. But there are limits to how many people can hear you. Maybe 10 or 100 people at an event.
Once you get into situations where 5,000,000 people can hear a tweet, that’s clearly not about FREEDOM of speech in its strict sense. It is about entitlement to use a PLATFORM, maintained by an ORGANIZATION that involves many people, to broadcast arbitrary, unfiltered one-to-many messages to everyone.
I think this latter thing is toxic, in both directions. Society listening to tweets of celebrities cheapens public discussion and civic thought. And being reachable by the whole world using email (rather than through networks of shared invited/capabilities) leads to constant spam and papparazzi for celebrities. What happened here is an ORGANIZATION put on a show or movie and catapulted this celebrity into the limelight and carefully maintains their stature, along with their own publicists, social media team on twitter, etc.
This is the society we live in, where we have heroes. But entitlement to unlimited unfiltered megaphones is NOT the same as freedom of speech, any more than being a leader if a paramilitary group of unlimited size is the same as the right to bear arms.
So, freedoms and rights have limits. Where those limits lie is the heap paradox - as you take away grains, when is a heap no longer a heap? etc.
So what is the alternative to this type of misnamed “free speech” aka megaphones run by organizations, super PACs, mainstream media, and so on? It is COLLABORATION.
Look at Wikipedia.
Look at peer reviewed journals and science.
Look at large open source projects
There, individual contributions are filtered and often butt up against changes, revisions, etc. The result is that when the general public sees something, it is the result of a collaborative process of filtering and refining the presentation of information, citing sources, etc. There are no heroes on wikipedia, and only a few in science and open source. Most contributions are filtered by a community of experts, not state governments or platforms employing boiler rooms of low paid workers to determine what’s true.
I would like to see more of that COLLABORATION and less of COMPETITION. I would like to see a patentleft movement in drug research, instead of big pharma. I would like to see news reported like Wikipedia with footage submitted by everyday people on the ground instead of “intrepid reporters in a warzone”. CNN used to have a motto that they have “no celebrities”. News agencies tried to stay lukewarm and neutral. FOX News changed the game, lots of people copied the model. The Internet eliminated newspapers and classifieds. News had to adapt because capitalism and cutthroat competition for the same ad dollars means MORE clickbait and MORE lockin to one type of audience. For-profit Social networks further use this content to herd us into echo chambers of outrage, because that’s what drives the most engagement, which the social networks need to monetize. They send notifications in an increasingly desperate attempt to grab your attention in a tragedy of the commons where the commons is our attention.
This has had a corrosive effect on society. The capitalist (competition based) news has made us more polarized and outraged, while the capitalist (competition based) social networks have made us more addicted to our notification slot machine, with smaller attention spans and self control, responding to that stranger on the internet over that latest outrage.
THIS is the culture that leads to more mass shootings. The fact that we have giant platforms instead of peer to peer is another problem. By banning extremist people from platforms, a platform can pop up which attracts the worst extremists, and feeds them. This platform should ABSOLUTELY be a honeypot for the FBI to watch these people. In our world of centralized platforms, Platforms like this should be RUN by the FBI.
Instead, our government takes the wrong approach. They shut down the Craigslist and Backpage hookers sections instead of using them to entrap and catch traffickers. Then they threaten large platforms with SESTA (2018) when they should be the ones catching the people who are out there. The platforms should be honeypots!
Anyway. So although I feel my stance is correct, and beneficial to society, there are three practical problems with it:
1. First Amendment is not interpreted as I do. In fact Citizens United even allowed our politics to be run by PACs with huge money and megaphones (although nonprofits could have always done that). So legally my literal understanding of limits of freedoms is not matching the traditional ones (slander, yelling fire etc.)
2. This may be the more serious one. As we have more end to end encryption and better personal technology, all well-meaning ideas about limits of freedom of speech and arms melt away. Imagine Alex Jones on SAFE Network with 1,000,000 people subscribed to his encrypted feed. Or imagine 3d printed guns from illegally shared 3d models, stored in 10% of the homes in NYC. Can’t stop people using a turing complete language to turn out banned material.
3. Even with numerical limits on each person’s audience, a hateful message can attract people who make plans to use technology to asymetrically perpetrate criminal acts. And end-to-end encryption means we won’t know what they’re saying.
However, I believe that if we took the freedoms in the way I defined them, and moved to collaborative platforms instead of competitive ones, our society’s health would measurably improve.
Your thoughts on E2E are ridiculous, everyone needs E2E for many things they do every day. Isn't it a bit absurd to claim to be in favor of free speech in public, but against private speech?
I am in favor of free speech in private and in public. I am saying exactly what I said... that this freedom is different than an entire organization giving you an unfiltered megaphone. Do you have some substantive critique or question?
>Even with numerical limits on each person’s audience, a hateful message can attract people who make plans to use technology to asymetrically perpetrate criminal acts. And end-to-end encryption means we won’t know what they’re saying.
Yea why do you feel the need to know everything that is said? You stop just short of calling for back doors in encryption.
>Fbi should honey pot everything
It's a bit weird to be pro free speech and pro Orwellian police state. It seems like a strategy to force people to speak in a certain way, coerced self-censorship. Are you a "government contractor" by chance?
How would you even come to the conclusion that it would be a german company? They are HQd in Romania and only have a virtual office address in Frankfurt, for their GmbH.
So I've posted before about how bad this is, and been flagged and downvoted, which sort of proves the point - this is not an open platform for the exchange of ideas in the same way a chan board is.
However, rather than reiterate my previous points, let me pose a question. Where are all the angry young men going to go to now? Will the problem become worse because now people with mental health issues have no place else to form community?
I feel we are in uncharted territory and keep trying to fix the symptoms of a broken society rather than the cause.
Make no mistake, what these young people did was sick and wrong. But they were social "losers" that no one helped or cared for. Because that costs time, money, and "sharing" social capital. By which I mean sometimes you've got to let the little guy win, because humans are social animals and we're hard wired to desire "fairness".
And our society doesn't promote fairness and fraternity. The US, as a culture, just does not give a shit about the little guy.
You want the shootings to stop? Start giving people more than McJobs, make mental health professionals cheap and accessible, start trying to gasp figure out how to get incels laid.
Do we do any of that? Fuck no. Society makes fun of nerdy anti-social people, because it makes people feel big to put others down.
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in the land of the crazy people...
This claim to logic or scientific reasoning in the face of not tolerating intolerance seems flawed and, to me, does not serve as a meaningful replacement for the subject of morality:
Imagine you have a child, who is not yours, screaming in your ear at the nearby supermarket. You do not tolerate it. You are intolerant of it.
At face value, with the paradox of tolerance in the form of "society must be intolerant of intolerance," you would need to hold to the position that society should not be tolerant of your intolerance to children screaming in your ear.
You'd need to accept that it's acceptable for children to scream in your ear.
The child's right to scream ends where my right to peacefully exist in a public space begins. The child's act of screaming directly in my ear clearly violates my right and is thus intolerant of it.
Hmm, yes, you're right. Thanks for the example. Perhaps further arguments could be made about what constitutes peace among individuals and what infringes on those definitions.
I believe we see scenarios today in which one's definition of peace infringes on another's.
I would say this example is also flawed because children scream in public all the time. It's just... reality. Kids scream sometimes for any number of good or not good reasons and making the parent feel even shittier than they already do about disturbing everyone around them isn't going to solve anything.
Would you advocate tolerating, say, parents neglecting their children in various ways that we think are harmful to development? Or would you instead try to spin those forms of child neglect as acts of intolerance?
We have laws that address child neglect. I'm not sure why so many in this thread think if we forbid intolerant speech that we're also in the same motion casting the entire book of laws into the trash...? It's a very odd segue.
People who advocate for laws that address child neglect are using intolerant speech, are they not? They are literally saying that we should be intolerant toward certain choices made by other people. Should such speech be forbidden?
For the sake of argument, I will grant that. That's not what I asked though.
Why is saying "we should not tolerate X" not intolerant speech, when it is literal advocacy of intolerance in the form of speech?
If we agree with you that all intolerant speech except for speech which is intolerant of intolerance should be prohibited, why should such speech not be prohibited, when X != "intolerant speech"?
> Why is saying "we should not tolerate X" not intolerant speech, when it is literal advocacy of intolerance in the form of speech?
Because like any other law in any society, context is taken into account. You're deliberately twisting what would normally be said in this situation, something like:
"Parents must feed their children"
Into a ridiculous alike of:
"We should not tolerate parents not feeding their children"
Which is not only how literally not a single person alive speaks, but is also a transparent attempt to make a ridiculous example that wouldn't happen to discredit the idea of banning intolerant speech.
The dictionary defines intolerance as: 1 : unable or unwilling to endure, which is applicable to the sort of example you're putting forward, which is as a side-note, an excellent example of a tendency of right-leaning people to put forward arguments that, while logically sound, in any context look and are ridiculous. I know this, because I spent a long time doing it myself. Now, being that we're two smart people having a discussion, we're going to use the second definition, which is clearly what is being discussed and is relevant to the question:
2a: unwilling to grant equal freedom of expression especially in religious matters, b: unwilling to grant or share social, political, or professional rights
RE: Bigotry, which is what is behind so many movements in this vein. Speech from these movements can and should be suppressed under the law, citing that the things they are saying are intolerant, because their speech is putting forth the argument that a certain group of whatever kind of people should be denied some kinds of expression or rights in the public space, and it's doing so, going back to my original comment, for no reason or logic, but to indulge their bigotry.
Yes, are you willing to grant or share social, political, or professional rights with everyone on this earth (except perhaps bigots)? In other words, do you think it's intolerant for a country to have any immigration system other than open borders (except that bigots don't have to be allowed in) or any exclusive political benefits for its citizens, such as the right to vote? Because if so, you've just declared the majority of people in this country to be bigots, who in your view should not be tolerated according to the second definition, i.e. you don't want to grant them equal freedoms or share social, political, or professional rights with them.
> Yes, are you willing to grant or share social, political, or professional rights with everyone on this earth (except perhaps bigots)?
Yes.
> In other words, do you think it's intolerant for a country to have any immigration system other than open borders (except that bigots don't have to be allowed in) or any exclusive political benefits for its citizens, such as the right to vote?
I think it's perfectly acceptable for a country to have a reasonable set of requirements and a well documented and transparent process to attain citizenship of a country, and the benefits which citizenship confers, i.e. state benefits, school attendance, the right to vote, and safety protections.
> Because if so, you've just declared the majority of people in this country to be bigots, who in your view should not be tolerated according to the second definition, i.e. you don't want to grant them equal freedoms or share social, political, or professional rights with them.
I hope you had a protein bar or something after making all those leaps.
I have said nothing of the sort. Not being a citizen of the United States doesn't make anyone a bigot. Conversely, being a citizen of the Unites States also doesn't mean you aren't a bigot. These terms are completely unrelated from each other and I have no idea how you think this tortured logic is supposed to work.
Perhaps instead of coming up with bizarre theories on how the people intolerant of intolerance are the REAL intolerant ones, maybe you should reflect on why you feel so personally attacked by the idea that intolerance shouldn't be tolerated?
OK, so you are unwilling to grant or share social, political, or professional rights with the people that don't meet those requirements, and who happen to have been born outside of your country. Sounds to me like you're intolerant of them, according to the second definition. Do you disagree? Would you like to revise your definition once more so that it more narrowly refers to the right people?
>Not being a citizen of the United States doesn't make anyone a bigot. Conversely, being a citizen of the Unites States also doesn't mean you aren't a bigot. These terms are completely unrelated from each other and I have no idea how you think this tortured logic is supposed to work.
I said nothing along those lines.
>how the people intolerant of intolerance are the REAL intolerant ones
I said nothing of the sort.
>maybe you should reflect on why you feel so personally attacked by the idea that intolerance shouldn't be tolerated?
I know very well why I dislike the idea that some of my countrymen should be suppressed under the law for expressing their genuinely held beliefs and advocating for what they see as their own interests, whether or not some dictionary definition calls their ideas intolerant. I think telling people they can't express their beliefs or advocate for what they see as their own interests is the first step toward a shooting war. If you tell people they can't express their beliefs, you are telling them you can't live peacefully alongside them as countrymen. In the case of many of the people you are calling intolerant, I don't believe that's how it is.
> OK, so you are unwilling to grant or share social, political, or professional rights with the people that don't meet those requirements, and who happen to have been born outside of your country. Sounds to me like you're intolerant of them, according to the second definition. Do you disagree? Would you like to revise your definition once more so that it more narrowly refers to the right people?
You're deliberately misconstruing what I'm saying. I have no problem with a country instituting an immigration policy, nor am I intolerant of people not born in my country. You're trying to put forth that I cannot both respect the rule of law of a civil society while still respecting human rights on a larger scale. These ideas are not at odds, and won't be no matter how many times you try and make it sound that way.
At it's core your example is bad because there are tons of other variables involved in an immigration process that have nothing whatsoever to do with culture, speech, views, religion, etc. (and, taken further, a properly designed immigration policy in my mind wouldn't take any of those into account anyway.) In short, it's apples and oranges.
> I know very well why I dislike the idea that some of my countrymen should be suppressed under the law for expressing their genuinely held beliefs and advocating for what they see as their own interests, whether or not some dictionary definition calls their ideas intolerant.
"Genuinely held beliefs" are a terrible basis from which to derive law. We don't make murder illegal because people think it's mean to kill people, or because a divine deity said not to. We do it because it infringes on their right to live.
If 2016 should teach you anything, it's that genuinely held beliefs by large amounts of people, no matter how large they are and no matter how much they believe them, do not constitute reality. End of. Reality is reality and beliefs are beliefs, and while they occasionally agree, one is real, and the other is not.
>You're deliberately misconstruing what I'm saying.
I'm using the definition you gave. That's it. If you want to revise the definition, feel free.
>You're trying to put forth that I cannot both respect the rule of law of a civil society while still respecting human rights on a larger scale.
No, I'm not, and I don't think that. I'm saying you're intolerant of those people according to the definition you gave. That's it.
>At it's core your example is bad because there are tons of other variables involved in an immigration process that have nothing whatsoever to do with culture, speech, views, religion, etc. (and, taken further, a properly designed immigration policy in my mind wouldn't take any of those into account anyway.)
I'm sure it wouldn't, but that's irrelevant. Refusing to share social, political, or professional rights with someone because they were born in the wrong place and don't meet your reasonable requirements means you are intolerant of them, according to that definition you gave.
>"Genuinely held beliefs" are a terrible basis from which to derive law.
Telling people they can't express genuinely held beliefs is, I think, a pre-cursor to real world violence. Avoiding real world violence is a totally reasonable objective to have in mind when crafting law.
>If 2016 should teach you anything, it's that genuinely held beliefs by large amounts of people, no matter how large they are and no matter how much they believe them, do not constitute reality.
I agree. So? Which ones are you willing to kill your fellow countrymen over?
> No, I'm not, and I don't think that. I'm saying you're intolerant of those people according to the definition you gave. That's it.
That is not intolerance.
> I'm sure it wouldn't, but that's irrelevant.
How is your example being flawed irrelevant?
> Refusing to share social, political, or professional rights with someone because they were born in the wrong place and don't meet your reasonable requirements means you are intolerant of them, according to that definition you gave.
No, it doesn't. There are all kinds of legitimate reasons to not allow a person into a country. If they are not vaccinated against certain diseases, for example. Or if they have outstanding warrants for their arrest in other countries (unless of course they're seeking asylum).
You're (I think deliberately) clouding the difference between legitimate reasons to deny entry and intolerance.
> Telling people they can't express genuinely held beliefs is, I think, a pre-cursor to real world violence. Avoiding real world violence is a totally reasonable objective to have in mind when crafting law.
Your right to express a belief ends in my mind where said belief intends harm, be it physical, economic, mental or whatever form of harm, on another person. And in turn, anyone who intends that harm and engages in such speech, either for actual beliefs or simply to make money off of those susceptible to that sort of manipulation, should be punished.
> I agree. So? Which ones are you willing to kill your fellow countrymen over?
Nobody is killing anyone. You and people who think like you will be outvoted, and dragged to a prosperous future whether you want it or not.
It is according to the definition you gave. That much seems clear.
>How is your example being flawed irrelevant?
I was referring to your desired immigration system. Regardless, I explained why it was irrelevant immediately after the line you quoted.
>No, it doesn't.
Yes, it does.
>There are all kinds of legitimate reasons to not allow a person into a country.
Relevance? The word "legitimate" did not show up in your definition. No exception for being unwilling to grant or share social, political, or professional rights was carved out for those with "legitimate reasons" for doing so.
>You're (I think deliberately) clouding the difference between legitimate reasons to deny entry and intolerance.
According to your definition, the two are orthogonal.
>Your right to express a belief ends in my mind where said belief intends harm, be it physical, economic, mental or whatever form of harm, on another person.
What exactly do you mean by "intends"? If I advocate for, say, deporting illegal immigrants, and I do so because I think it's in my self-interest for that to be done (whether or not I'm correct), but I hold no ill-will toward said illegal immigrants, and maybe even consider it unfortunate that our interests are in opposition, would you say that I "intend" them harm, simply because I know that economic harm will come to them if the policy for which I advocate is adopted?
Do I need to harbor some sort of malice in my mind in order to intend them harm, or is it enough to merely know it will happen as a (perhaps unfortunate and undesired) consequence?
>Nobody is killing anyone.
Then why ban people from saying what they want?
>You and people who think like you will be outvoted
Maybe. Let's hope not.
>and dragged to a prosperous future whether you want it or not.
Why should anyone trust you to ensure that prosperity rains upon them when you talk about them like that?
So if science and logic one day makes a good case for you to be intolerant you will then leave the tolerant side and become intolerant? That, if anything, is the nature of ideological possession. What a weird view to hold.
Besides, science and reason can tell you very little about morality as tolerance is a moral concept not a scientific one. In fact, science can make no moral claims as those by nature are value claims which by definition are the antithesis of the scientific method. So I have no idea how you intend on squaring that circle.
And the fact that you are "completely fine" with what the parent said just goes to show how little consideration you have given the topic before making such an ideologically driven comment :/
> So if science and logic one day makes a good case for you to be intolerant you will then leave the tolerant side and become intolerant?
Yes. And since there is no reason or logic behind intolerance, I'm not seeing that as a risky bet of any sort.
And you're right, I don't have consideration for this topic because there is no topic as far as I'm concerned. I used to be on the right, and I used to hold all kinds of cognitive dissonances in my head at once to explain the belief system therein. And yes, it made total sense to me at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight and a lot of experience in life, I can say with complete confidence that I was 100% full of shit, indoctrinated into a moral system that has no basis in any kind of rational thought, that is largely based on fear and maintaining a status quo under which I benefitted greatly.
There is no reason behind intolerance. There is bigotry, fear, oftentimes disgust, and occasionally just good old fashioned hate. But there is no reason, no logic, and certainly no science.
How can anyone possibly have a conversation with someone as radicalized as yourself? There is nothing I can say of value when your answer to: Would you become an intolerant evil man if presented the opportunity to? is "YES OFC! but there is a low chance of that happening atm..."
The question was, IF science would present him with the gift of intolerance (considering that he put science as the arbiter for moral truths), would he accept it?
If Yes: he´s an ideologically driven twat.
If No: why bring up science when it literally has 0 to do with the domain of value-claims?
> "Evidently you believe science and rationality is the path to evil."
I am not sure how you got there considering the fact that I am part of that group myself but yea... seems like the concept of an if/else statement is a bit too hard to grasp
This refers to a joke made by Stephen Colbert (while portraying his satirical persona of right-wing host Stephen Colbert) that "reality has a well-known liberal bias"[1].
It is generally used to point out that many of the stories pointed to by conservative media as exhibiting liberal bias are often simply reporting on facts that are incompatible with conservative talking points.
Examples include: relative sizes of inauguration crowds, whether China or US importers pay for tariffs, the contents of the Mueller report, crime statistics on undocumented immigrants, crime statistics on Muslim communities, merits of single-payer healthcare in other first-world countries, various statistics on gun crime, impact of republican vs. democratic presidents on government deficits, benefits (or lack thereof) of trickle-down economics/cutting corporate taxes, and the causes and mitigations of the US Great Recession that began in 2007/2008.
That typically people who identify as conservative often take positions that are at odds with things that should be accepted as objective fact.
Saying "the Earth is getting warmer on average every year" should not be a political statement. But here we are, where you have one group of people who have a vested interest in denying that fact. To profess the fact that our planet is warming and that it is an issue is to implicitly identify yourself as a "liberal".
Black people are disproportionately punished by the legal system for the exact same crimes committed by people of other skin colors. There's actual data showing this. But to bring this up gets you labeled as a "liberal".
To remark that police treat white people who are known to be criminals better than black people who aren't even engaged in suspicious behavior is easily documented. Mention this and you will be called a liberal.
And denying this does no favors to liberals or conservatives. Because even the batshit insane liberals get to trout out that line about "truth having a liberal bias". Because, for the most part, it's not wrong. But conservatives get to mock the statement by using it against the most radical of ideas that are generally seen as "liberal".
But what are we gonna do? If hard facts and reliable information could actually change minds, we wouldn't have Trump as President. You wouldn't have his legions of followers denying that he's doing the very things he is doing. I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat, Trump is not only unfit for the office, he's a criminal. The Republican party should be ashamed that he's representing them in the Executive branch.
Practical example: we shouldn't accept immigrants into our country (whatever the country is). Even for economical reasons. Even if there are no jobs for them. Even if there's no infrastructure to support them. Ooops, intolerant. Thoughtcrime.
Well actually now that I think of it, any argument can be reshaped as intolerant. Abortionist? Intolerant of life, or of religion. Pro-life? Intolerant of women's rights.
I don't know, I just think "intolerance" is such a stupid concept, and in this day and age it is used to attack the right, but it doesn't mean anything, it's a wildcard.
> Abortionist? Intolerant of life, or of religion.
Forcing people to abort would be intolerant of life or religion, but that is not what abortionists do or are.
> Pro-life? Intolerant of women's rights.
The pro-life position of forcing women to not have abortions is indeed intolerant of their rights. Whatever their own reasons (religion or otherwise), they are their own and not of their targets.
Thank you for providing such clear examples; it is clear one of these is actually intolerant.
In the examples you have given, it all comes down to a particular society definition of whom has rights and whom doesn't.
Your argument is based on a specific society where law states unborn children have no rights. In a society where they would have them, your all argument becomes immediately invalid.
That goes on to validate the GP argument that "intolerance" is nothing but an abstract concept.
> Your argument is based on a specific society laws about unborn children having no rights. In a society where they would have them, your all argument becomes immediately invalid.
No. I do not argue on when during a pregnancy a child begins to exist, or when it has rights. In fact, not even my parent argued these or any similar point. You are the first in this chain to bring it up here.
Please read my comment carefully. I do not argue whether abortionists are or are not intolerant. Precisely because, as you say, that depends on deciding when a child's existence and rights begin, which is not the debate we are having.
I argue instead against my parent's claim that abortionists can be called intolerant of religion simply because a religious party wants to impose their own religion on the expectant and thus force them into not aborting.
The point is that you argue that pro life are intolerant because they don't respect woman rights.
Well, then, using your argument, in a society where unborn children have rights, the exact same thing can be said about pro abortion: they are intolerant because they don't respect children rights.
So, the all concept of intolerance, comes down to a specific set of laws a society observes, making the concept abstract.
And I think you're trying to butt a point in that is not under debate.
The fact that anti-abortionists are intolerant of abortionists' rights is not affected by whether abortionists are intolerant of someone else's rights. Both can be intolerant; only, the former is clear and the latter is under debate elsewhere (i.e., not here).
> So, the all concept of intolerance, comes down to a specific set of laws a society observes, making the concept abstract.
Even within a society where both parties are intolerant, the fact that both are intolerant does not "make the concept of intolerance abstract". A can stab B and B can stab C, that does not make the stabbings of B and C "abstract".
You are effectively arguing that, in Alabama, for instance, since 2 months ago, pro choice are the intolerant ones and pro life are the non intolerant. After all, the law there, says so according to your reasoning.
> A can stab B and B can stab C, that does not make the stabbings of B and C "abstract".
If A stabbing B is a crime and thereby - according to your reasoning - "intolerant", while B stabbing C is not a crime and therefore non "intolerant". Then the concept of "intolerance" is definitively an abstract.
I am not arguing that, you are. Please, try not to put words in others' mouths.
I mean, of course according to ISIS ending the lives of "kaffirs" is rightful and correct. There is no question whether they think so or not. Their position on it is clear. But even within this position, it is clear that killing kaffirs is intolerant of their life. Even ISIS would agree. As would I. Where they and I differ is in whether this intolerance is 'right' or 'wrong'.
'Intolerance' does not automatically equate to 'right' or 'wrong'.
The state of Alabama can choose to be both intolerant and be okay with it, even call it 'the right thing'. That does not stop them from being intolerant of women's rights.
Neither 'Right' nor 'wrong' automatically equate to 'intolerant' or 'tolerant'.
> If A stabbing B is a crime and thereby - according to your reasoning - "intolerant"
Again, please, stop putting words in others' mouths. I make no comparison (or "reasoning", as you claim I did) between 'stabbing' and 'tolerance'. I merely point that a subsequent negative action by a victim does not make the concept of the negative action "abstract".
Your original words were: "The pro-life position of forcing women to not have abortions is indeed intolerant of their rights."
See, you equate "intolerance" with defending to violate someone "rights".
Obviously in place where the "rights" are different - i.e. Alabama - then it changes who is the intolerant one. In Alabama, according to your original comment, the intolerant are the pro choice ones: according to your reasoning, not to mine.
Of course that you could just accept the obvious, that the concept of intolerance is clearly abstract, and finish the discussion....
One party being intolerant does not prevent the another party from being intolerant. As I have tried to show repeatedly, multiple parties can be intolerant.
> In Alabama, according to your original comment, the intolerant are the pro choice ones: according to your reasoning, not to mine.
Expectant women in Alabama do not suddenly lose their rights when Alabama declares 'fetus' = 'child'. Alabama instead chooses to override women's rights and place fetal rights above it.
> Of course that you could just accept the obvious, that the concept of intolerance is clearly abstract, and finish the discussion
I could repeat this statement back to you, with the only change being my claim instead of yours, and it would mean just as much as it means when you say this. But that would be discourteous and discouraging of discourse, so I will try yet again, one final time:
The concept of intolerance is not any more "abstract" than "the concept of harm".
>As I have tried to show repeatedly, multiple parties can be intolerant.
Re-read your original comments then:
"The pro-life position of forcing women to not have abortions is indeed intolerant of their rights."
"Forcing people to abort would be intolerant of life or religion, but that is not what abortionists do or are."
Now understand that abortionists are "intolerant of life" as the original GP stated, because they are intolerant of the children/fetus rights, not of the woman deciding not to abort (I think that is obvious to anyone... but here I am having to write it down).
Your all argument was that woman have those rights, but children/fetus don't, therefore forcing woman to conceive was against their rights, and, you concluded, intolerant.
I confronted you with realities where the children/fetus rights are higher than those of women (i.e. Alabama) and by your reasoning, that changes who is the intolerant one.
> The concept of intolerance is not any more "abstract" than "the concept of harm".
Harm is also an abstract concept of course, I don't understand where you want to go with that sentence.
You keep saying things like "... who is the intolerant one." in response to my point that the position or capability of intolerance is not limited to only "one" party. "Multiple" vs. "one".
> Harm is also an abstract concept of course, I don't understand where you want to go with that sentence.
Harm is often quite real. Not unlike intolerance. That was my point.
> Allowing people to murder human beings is intolerant.
You see, this kind of behaviour is why I feel this discussion is not between two honest parties under good faith. Your rhetoric here and above (about religion of anti-abortionists being encroached upon by abortionists) give me the impression you are being unfair and disingenuous. If this is true, there is simply no way to discourse.
But I could be grossly wrong, and under that faith I will try to point out how you assuming that everyone automatically shares your views is wrong:
Take three people:
1. A Muslim who claims that all consumption of porcine meat is bad;
2. A Hindu who claims that all consumption of bovine meat from a female is bad; and
3. A Christian who claims that all consumption of shellfish is bad.
If these people tried to prevent everyone (including you), no matter their religion or beliefs, from consumption of all these three kinds of substances; they'd be imposing their own views and assumptions on everyone else (including you), and thus be intolerant of everyone else's (including yours) views.
Fetuses are not human beings by any scientific definition. Even without being aborted, a fetus is far from guaranteed to be born. A lot can happen in 9 months.
If the mother has a miscarriage, is she now a murderer? If she's in a car accident and loses the baby, is the other person involved in the crash a murderer? Does it depend on who was at fault in the accident?
If a doctor fails to see a birth defect in time, are they now charged with manslaughter?
Does a mother collect child support from a father at time of conception? Do they collect state benefits from the beginning of their pregnancy?
This thing conservatives want to do of making fetuses people is a bottomless pit of regulatory gotchas. It's ridiculous.
If it is established that a child exists as of the moment when the expectant wants an abortion, then yes her abortion would be intolerance of the continued existence of the child.
In fact, in many jurisdictions that allow abortion at some stages of pregnancy, there are stages of pregnancy where it is accepted that a child exists (or similar) and thus abortion (without other conditions) is not allowed.
But a debate on in which stages a child exists during a pregnancy is not the debate we are having here.
I'm not really an anti-abortionist. You can replace 'child' with 'fetus', if you like; my point is just that the word itself applies to any preference over world states.
> I don't know, I just think "intolerance" is such a stupid concept, and in this day and age it is used to attack the right, but it doesn't mean anything, it's a wildcard.
literally anyone looking for a large customer right now is salivating.
Its like how all those encrypted data stores have employees that love the vision and have no idea that all their customers are porn companies until one day they realize and also realize leadership doesn't care and is highly entertained at this reality
Just summing up the paradigm of needing to control the masses by preventing people from doing things that people will inevitably do. You can't stop people from talking.
You can stop people from talking publicly.
People will break and do harm to others, but having a vehicle to know what that harm might be in advance is invaluable.
Society would be much easier to control if we simply kept all the people in cages and let them out occasionally to work for the good of the people. On the other hand, it wouldn't be much of a society now, would it?
20 people had their lives abruptly ended while they where attempting to complete mundane errands at a WalMart and this is what you have to add to this conversation?
This isn't a good response to the situation. Yes. People have died, how do we prevent more from dying? Poking the bee hive that everyone makes it out to be?
So let's poke a bee hive to have more? Let's remove a very easy to access, scrape, court order, platform that potential shooters feel comfortable posting to hours / days before hand that the FBI / Police could use to prevent such things.
You said we have mass shootings because we take things away from people. I'm just asking what was taken away from these mass shooters (Gilroy, El Paso, Dayton)?
Surely you can't mean 8chan being 'taken away', since the outage has only happened today, after these attacks.
Taking away a platform from people, who aren't even related to it, who are now thinking about it. It's not about the shooters. It's about the ripple effect of actions.
This is a ridiculous witchhunt, 8chan is a platform for many different boards with different opinions, the media framing it as a right-wing white supremacist forum makes wonder if its ignorance or malice, /leftypol/ is probably as big as the /pol/ boogeyman, and thats just politics which is just a part of the rest of the boards.
No one is asking to close Facebook because Tarrant uploaded his shooting video there, why it would be any different in this case?
8chan's /pol/ is much larger than /leftypol/. I believe it's about tied with /v/, and those two are the largest boards. There are many basically innocent parts of 8chan, but /pol/ makes up a significant fraction of the site's activity, maybe as much as a third.
/pol/ is full of people who encourage shootings, and the website's and board's rules allow people to encourage shootings. You're not allowed to encourage shootings anywhere on Facebook, I think. That's a very significant difference between the two.
Do you have much experience with the chans? I've spent an embarrassing amount of time on them over the years, and my experience is that it would be ridiculous to compare the ratios of politically hateful, extremist content to normal content between Facebook and the chans. The difference is night and day. The chans are full of great, diverse content, but an absolutely solid core of their identity is inevitably dominated by the worst elements of society at any given time - it's just inevitable due to the nature of the format and rules.
The media will tend to focus on the part of any site that promotes and radicalizes participants into mass murder.
Facebook, as you know, moved extremely aggressively to remove the NZ shooting video, along with other extremist content. Basically Facebook employs a raft of people to prevent the thing that 8chan was trying to encourage.
Again, 8chan is not one person, most users dont encourage this at all because it brings problems like exactly this one. Its the price of a truly free platform, sadly it seems americans hate freedom.
In the practical sense, I doubt this will counter shootings at all, intelligence services had them contained in a single board, now they will just spill around the internet.
When I was much younger, I remember being filled with wonder when I learned about the Skokie case[1], where the ACLU went to court to protect the rights of Nazis to hold a rally in a mostly-Jewish town.
"Wait, they faced down criticism from every direction, and took a massive loss in donations, to stand up for the fundamental rights of people they despise? Is this what liberals do? I want to be a liberal!"
Sadly, if that happened today they'd probably say something about not tolerating intolerance and side with the government to shut them down.
The ACLU had some internal memos released last year basically saying "if you want to carry weapons, we won't represent you" and "if your speech 'harms' marginalized communities, have fun". [0] They're certainly not the universal defenders of civil liberties they used to be.
Free speech absolutism is a maladaptive local optima. Free speech isn’t an end in itself, it’s a means, a tool, that every society must use to create just and ethical outcomes.
And the reason we had free speech absolutism was that no one should be able to dictate what the proper "just and ethical outcomes" should be. Is today's morality the end of all things? By locking down speech, what developments will we prevent?
> No one should be able to dictate what the proper "just and ethical outcomes" should be
Not only is every human _able_ to dictate what "just and ethical outcomes" are, we're _obliged_ to, if we intend to form civil society.
> Is today's morality the end of all things?
No, of course not. Everyone is obliged to continuously engage in the conversation, to push the course of all society away from suffering and toward justice.
> No, of course not. Everyone is obliged to continuously engage in the conversation, to push the course of all society away from suffering and toward justice.
Well how the fuck are you supposed to be able to do this if all wrongthink is banned? Because things like "women are equal to men", "race doesn't matter", "slavery is wrong", etc were most certainly wrongthink to begin with.
I’m going to turn it around on you: how can we have a just society if women legitimately fear for their safety when they go to certain places? We’re not obliged to suffer white nationalists carrying tiki torches down the national mall chanting “Blood and thunder” and making the world unambiguously worse because we need to know their position exists. Sunlight is not always the best disinfectant.
> how can we have a just society if women legitimately fear for their safety when they go to certain places?
This is a really hard question, partly because those women are generally wrong - men are much more likely to be mugged/assaulted/killed than women in every US location I've seen statistics for.
> We’re not obliged to suffer white nationalists carrying tiki torches down the national mall chanting “Blood and thunder” and making the world unambiguously worse because we need to know their position exists.
Should we also not be obliged to suffer black supremacists doing the same? Or, more recently, gay rights advocates? How is that not exactly analogous to pride parades?
Yes, we now agree with (and approve of) some values and not others. But locking those values in place 20 years ago would have been clearly wrong (no gay marriage, etc), so why do we assume that doing the same today would have been better? How can we differentiate between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' while still allowing the next gay rights movement to take place?
> Should we also not be obliged to suffer ... gay rights advocates?
If you want to make a case that gay rights advocates make the world unambiguously worse, be my guest. At a societal scale, you will fail, because there is a clear and categorical difference between that example and mine.
It's fine that not everyone feels that way. The people who think gay rights advocates make the world worse are wrong, and society has the right to judge them that way.
Just because you can swap the nouns in a formulation of a policy and turn it from good to bad (or bad to good) doesn't mean that policy is wrong, or bad, or shouldn't be used. Social policy don't need to be content-agnostic to be useful. We can apply a policy against nouns that, in outcome, make the world better; and refuse to apply the same policy against nouns that, in outcome, make the world worse. We're gonna get those determinations wrong sometimes, and that's inevitable and fine, we can just course-correct and carry on in good faith.
> If you want to make a case that gay rights advocates make the world unambiguously worse, be my guest. At a societal scale, you will fail, because there is a clear and categorical difference between that example and mine.
My point was that 20 years ago, there are a hell of a lot of people that would have made that argument. There's probably still a double-digit percentage of Americans who believe that today.
It's like evaluating a stock trading strategy on historical data - success there does not guarantee success in the real world, but failure highly implies it. Your proposed policy - which as far as I can tell simplifies to "ban advocating for things that a supermajority of the population finds distasteful" - would have prevented (or at least harmed) quite a few movements over the past century or three, and so I say that if implemented today it would do the same in the future.
> My point was that 20 years ago, there are a hell of a lot of people that would have made that argument.
I understand that's your point. And policy reflected that majority opinion back then. But, it was wrong, and we fixed it. That's fine. That's how things should work.
> Your proposed policy - which as far as I can tell simplifies to "ban advocating for things that a supermajority of the population finds distasteful"
I'm making no policy proposals. I'm saying society is justified in making moral decisions via policy, and in many cases is ethically obligated to do so.
I'm saying that a blanket position of moral agnosticism by government (which is, as far as I can tell, what you're suggesting) is naïve in the best case, and actually actively unethical in the worst case, when that position prevents a society from protecting itself from disease.
We still have courts even though there is the possibility of convicting the innocent, a society without a justice system is unworkable. In the same way, we still have the right and responsibility to make policy on moral and ethical grounds even though we might choose incorrectly, a society without that ability is unworkable.
Oh, of course - but the point is that you can't always tell ahead of time, and giving the people in power the ability to determine such just ensures that the people in power will never change.
That case was a bad mistake, and it's telling that the ACLU changed its ways. Hopefully, one day the ACLU will apologize to the Jewish community for its role there.
We need a truly distributed way to host content and communicate. We shouldn't need cloudflare, aws, stripe or any other monopoly to police free speech.
Think of our children and what we're going to leave them. Is this the internet we had as kids? It wasn't.
Right, all those people who were having fun on 8chan will now see the error of their ways, take up sensitivity training, and post only non-controversial things where ever they land next.
Shutting down 8chan will not shut these people up. they will find somewhere else to talk to each other, as people do. While they're looking many message boards will be graced with new users: the form 8chan brigades are I fear going to discover they can land on places they don't like and cause their shutdown now too.
Painfully, painfully stupid comments here. If someone says X, and then goes on a rampage, that does not discredit X. Yes, the media wants you to believe that, unless it's Unabomber-style ramblings involved.
I'm still waiting for a new platform to take the world by storm: The freedom of Gab, with sane content filtering options to make it look as tame as reddit so by default users don't see all the fringe crap, but lets them if they really want, right to the legal edge.
People are not fringe will tend to abandon sites that embrace people who are, even tacitly. Sites that create havens for them will naturally tend to become sites that consist almost solely of them.
That's been the status quo up until now, but it doesn't have to be. We're moving towards orwellian style censorship at a breakneck pace with SV leading the charge.
Any violent thug can go spread their message in the town streets as long as they're not causing a disturbance. It doesn't happen very much, because it requires effort and it's sure to attract opposition. That opposition is necessary, like anti-bodies attacking an invading bacteria. By shutting out the harmful bacteria where anti-bodies can't reach them, they'll do nothing but grow and fester.
I think we have pretty good evidence in recent years that this is not how things really work. Those filters and algorithmic steering just provides a way to keep people in their bubble. What you’re describing is basically what YouTube was: allow anything legal but use sophisticated software to show people what they’ll respond to positively. The radicalization this led to is well documented at this point.
I’m not really in favor of what CloudFlare’s done here, but it’s really a fact of basic statistics that exposing the mainstream to well-made propaganda is far more dangerous than exposing radicals to the mainstream.
Imagine 1% of non-radicalized people exposed to radicalism become dangerous and 50% of radicalized people are de-radicalized by exposure to the mainstream (laughably optimistic). If you start with 100 million non-radicals and 500 thousand radicals, you have a 125% increase in radicalization.
This is how we now have so many flat earthers. When you have massive reach, it’s easy to grow your numbers.
> That's been the status quo up until now, but it doesn't have to be. We're moving towards orwellian style censorship at a breakneck pace with SV leading the charge.
Very few people actually want such a site arrangement. Believe it or not, I have no interest in interfacing with people who want to kill me unless they are open to honest and rational debate, which few are. One of the reasons I enjoy Hacker News is because I know won't have to deal with the type of people that will frequent the fringe elements of the style of site you are advocating for.
Also, I'd hardly call a business led moratorium on speech advocating terrorism and genocide "moving towards Orwellian style censorship". Absolutely nothing is stopping these individuals from standing up their own server and hosting this content themselves. They aren't banned by an ISP. Moreover, business owners should be allowed to express their opinions too, including who to do business with.
> with sane content filtering options to make it look as tame as reddit
People are really, really good at circumventing automated filters, while non automated filtering means subjecting people to horrific content for 8 hours a day.
I really want to be on the side of the broadest possible interpretation of free speech, but my experience leads me in a different direction. It's been my experience that corralling the fringe doesn't work because the people in that fringe are intent on spreading their message/content as far and wide as possible. Even against the wishes of the general populace of a given site like Reddit. That behaviour seems to spring from the same attention-seeking place as that of griefers like Goonswarm in EVE, whose stated goal was at one point to ruin as many people's fun in that game as possible.
So there's perhaps two parts to the freedom of speech argument space: One is that there are people who want to create/share/consume content that the general populace doesn't want to see. Then the second is that there are people who aren't acting in good faith, whose goal seems to be to ruin as much as possible.
The first group there will probably keep to themselves, manage their communities and cooperate with governmental authorities to remove illegal content or activities. Of course that doesn't take into account when those groups are acting against those authorities while still having the moral support of most of the population. For instance campaigning for marijuana legalization, which most people would say should be protected speech.
But then there's the second group, who hide within the first often enough, or who falsely act like the first because they want to destroy things because they seem to have no emotional investment in society. (in my opinion)
The second group thrives because no one wants to commit the manpower to track and manage them. I don't know how to fix that problem, I don't even know if it's possible. Heck there will be many who will argue it's not necessary at all.
1. Make users tag their content if it touches on certain topics and use harsh punishment if they fail to. If it's fringe content for example, make them tag it as such so default users will not see it unless they really want to. If someone doesn't know their ramblings are racist, they should be banned on incompetence grounds and not due to censorship.
2. Rethink real time posting. It's nice, but a 1 minute delay would be very beneficial. You could even conscript volunteer users, perhaps give them "free premium" accounts that act as sentinels for all new content so they can see all new content in real time, like a mod of sorts, and can flag inappropriately tagged content as such so it's kicked back to the poster as "You forgot to add a violence tag".
Essentially the only people who should be de-platformed are those who are either banned for legal reasons or because they're simply too incompetent or unwilling to tag their content with appropriate fringe tags.
Sane defaults. Option to not see filtered content, but see a note saying "these many comments were hidden" (and a way to see them). Both AI-based filtering (e.g. for porn & gore), and user-moderated lists (e.g. a left-moderated list of "hateful neo-Nazis" and a right-moderated list of "crazy leftists").
When will the same rules apply to other big companies. FB has never been taken down, and they have been streamig some questionable things. I know its a bit, but look at them. Im just struggeling with the feeling. I have only visisted 8chan a while a go to get a taste whats going on and its like all the other "free" boards, no moderators and it becomes a mess.
I'm one of the ones that believe that Facebook should be better at policing there content.
But they do pull down manifestos from mass murders and have been doing that for a long time. The first instances of that I'm aware of is the manifesto of the guy behind the 2011 attack on Norway. As soon as FB figured out who he was and what happened. His page and his manifesto went down, never to come back up again.
I'm sure they did similar things earlier than that too, but that one I payed a lot of attention too, and remember like it was yesterday.
Title is misleading. When I read "go dark" I think of a service doing the clever thing and burrowing itself in the darkweb where it's nearly impossible to take down (unless it gets DDOSed of course).
But even DDOS'ing can be mitigated by hardening your server, and doing rudimentary things like rate limiting and filtering out bots with captchas. Things are made even easier by using a tricked out NGINX[0] server or even Varnish cache[1].
There's this notion of 'bad money chases out the good'; stems from the time when coinage was made from expensive rare metals. Because weighing your currency is annoying, the state decrees that any stamped coin is to be treated as if it is worth precisely what it says its worth, even if it is a little light.
In such scenarios, everyone saves up their fat coins and spends their most shaved off misshapen light coins. Eventually ALL the money in circulation is the 'bad' money.
The same seems to happen with social networks: _IF_ you allow questionable stuff on your site, soon all the other users will go elsewhere, and your social network eventually caters ONLY to the questionable stuff. The counterweight to that would be lots of users who put inherent value in the notion that the social network they are a part of 'does not believe in censorship', but I think we all know a vanishingly small amount of non-incel/dailystormer/etc users care enough about it to hang out on the incel/dailystormer/etc social network, where every stranger you meet, is likely tweaked in the head.
Give it some time and I bet soon the same thing again will happen to CDNs: If most CDNs band together to censorship such content, on one hand there'll always be a CDN that sees a mission (and perhaps, a business case) in being anti-censorship. But, soon, the ONLY thing that CDN will be hosting is questionable content. And at that point, I bet plenty of sites, filters, firewalls, internet providers, etc, will just blanket-ban the entire CDN and be rid of it all.
And then sites like 8chan possibly truly cannot survive.
Or not. Maybe they'll find a way.
But if that happens, the 'council of CDNs' will have quite a bit of power to wield. So far the messaging coming from at least cloudflare is that they understand this and take this seriously (and so far do not appear to want to open the can of worms if they can avoid it), but it feels inevitable.
I'm of the opinion that if we suppress it, it doesn't go away. When it comes back, it's much harder to control.
I also firmly believe that everyone has biases and inclinations that are morally wrong. The sooner we learn how to deal with the "good guys" unfair biases, the sooner we can figure out how to deal with the "bad guys" too.
The way to deal with the "bad guys" is for private businesses to not give them a platform to spew their hate from. And it's up to us to pressure these private businesses to do that.
The study explicitly states, that the problem went away for reddit, but this does not proof that the hate went away, it maybe just left reddit for another platform.
Sure but I interpreted the claim being made to be about hate existing anywhere. Reddit can do what they want, but we can argue whether it's good for society or not, even if it's clearly good for reddit.
The "bad guys" just went somewhere else. This doesn't fix the problem it just pushed the problem away from reddit.
> And it's up to us to pressure these private businesses to do that.
No it isn't. I am fed up of something I like being ruined by moral busy bodies such as yourself. My friend and I like the "edgy" jokes because we work in environments where you have to be political correct and I need to let off some steam.
8chan isn't the problem. The problem is that large portions of the population aren't engaged in society at large. The is a huge problem with loneliness, suicide and general lack of meaning to life.
Censorship and harassing companies that run image board won't fix the problem. All you will do it hide it.
I'm in favor of extra-legal filtering, according to a company's morals, as long as market alternatives exists.
If speech crosses the line, law enforcement should pursue and prosecute.
Short of that (e.g. the "we were just joking" crowd), the best possible aggregate outcome seems like it would be companies making independent moral judgements and acting on them.
If Cloudflare doesn't want to be associated with 8chan, they refuse them as a customer.
Other customers are then free to judge Cloudflare for that action and use / not use them as they decide.
This seems far preferable to more draconian, government-enforced options.
Companies are inherently political, and a diversity of options is the healthiest ecosystem.
Not, this requires that we have functioning alternatives. For something like 8chan, Cloudflare's services are probably avoidable, but there's a market penetration at with "must serve" should be considered.
I am fed up of everything be political. I know someone is going to make Doom Eternal political somehow when the game is about a man that is too angry to die taking on the legions of the hell dimension (that is literally the plot of the game).
Gilette have tried making how I remove hair from my face political.
I want companies to sell their product and as long are people are using it legally they should probably not take a political stance.
You may not. But others certainly do. Otherwise recycled toilet paper wouldn't be stocked.
Beyond that, to use the same analogy, one brand might be dump their bleaching agents in the ocean.
It's up to the companies if they want to trumpet their behavior loudly or say nothing about it. And it's up to consumers if they care about whatever type of behavior is involved.
Well that is up to other people. It doesn't make the company inherently political.
This logic as previously stated is a horrible mind worm that infests everything and ruins a great many things that are just useful (razor blades) or fun (video games).
Politics is a set of power games done by people we call politicians and promoted by their activists. It has nothing to do with right and wrong.
> The problem is that large portions of the population aren't engaged in society at large. The is a huge problem with loneliness, suicide and general lack of meaning to life.
Do you think that this is the root cause of violent islamic extremists as well?
With extremists that grew up in the west, possibly. I did work with some Somali guys (they weren't extremists) but a few of them said they didn't feel British and they didn't feel Somalian. So there is a schism there, I've felt the same schism as someone that is essentially a nomad these days I don't belong anywhere.
Extremists that grow up in the Middle-East. No idea I haven't spent a lot of time in the Middle-East (only Israel).
> The problem is that large portions of the population aren't engaged in society at large. The is a huge problem with loneliness, suicide and general lack of meaning to life.
Well said. The American melting pot makes this loneliness stronger still as there’s no sense of community left for these people. They live amongst us but they’re not connected to anyone around them.
I’m convinced there’s twisted weirdos all over the world, but traditionally communities did a better job of watching their own and making sure they were not endangering others. That simply does not exist any more, so the dark thoughts fester and grow until they’ve taken total control.
I don’t know how to fix any of this, but know it going to require either bringing those people into the light or occasionally joining them in their darkness.
>Liberals like to make off-color jokes too, they're just in denial about it.
Are they? Myself, a liberal, and all my liberal friends and family, make off color jokes all the time and are totally aware of it. Similarly, we don't castigate conservative friends for making off color jokes.
I think you're purposefully misstating the fact that people disagree on the (admittedly fuzzy) line between off color jokes and sincere expressions of hatred.
The already radicalised don't go away, but de-platforming does help.
Sure, there are some alternatives that are harder to restrict and monitor, like if all the radicals move to private Telegram groups or the dark web or something.
However all the vulnerable people at risk of being radicalised are less likely to be radicalised if they're using a similar forum to 8chan but without all the white supremacist and other hateful memes and "jokes", that obviously have radicalised a lot of people. Even if most people just scroll past them.
Then at least they isolate themselves, and have less ability to radicalize anyone besides the true believers. A number of isolated extremist cells are probably also easier to deal with for law enforcement, and these weird beliefs will stand out more to others in a social setting if they become rare.
Also, it seems like the group egging them on motivates these shooters. Tragically seems related to internet likes. So, by deflating the social network surrounding these ideas, there will be less social motivation to carry out such horrible actions.
And, finally, people have a social concept of truth, and if such ideas are considered to only be fringe crazy ideas instead of consistent with mainstream Darwinian theory, then people will be less likely to believe such ideas are true and less likely to act on them. As it is, social Darwinism seems to be one of those unpleasant truths due to the social weight given to the idea. Such social weight needs to be eradicated.
> A number of isolated extremist cells are probably also easier to deal with for law enforcement, //
I'd expect stuff done in the open on 'chan sites to be much easier to monitor than stuff done in private encrypted channels elsewhere.
>Also, it seems like the group egging them on motivates these shooters. //
In private where all the voices coalesce around a single ideology then the effect (Echo Chamber) makes it appear that _everyone_ [who matters] shares that ideal.
Moreover, it's easier to "other" the out group, make them in to a caricature; dehumanise them. (See 2-party political systems!)
Cults don't operate in the open, forcing people underground creates a sort of cultist environment.
Contact with genuine people who are considered part of the out-group appears to be highly effective in breaking down these sorts of barriers .. that can happen on generalist sites but will never happen in closed ideology-bad groups.
It seems to me that shutting down places like 8chan is going to lead to _more_ radicalised groups (that are more extremely radicalised), though they may be smaller groups and a smaller overall population. I think bigger, less cohesive, in-the-open groups are easier to monitor and take action against when necessary.
I wonder if there are any useful models that can give actionable input to this question.
There are many times when the political, religious, or other leanings of people committing these crimes have been misrepresented by 'media' organizations and politicians and others pushing an agenda, and trying to tie the despicable acts to their opponents, etc., or to make political points.
I've seen far left crazies characterized as far right. I've seen atheists characterized as being christian. I've seen mentally ill people characterized as following some ideology.
In this sort of environment, cutting off access to raw sources just makes these kinds of mischaracterizations even easier to do.
Cutting off people's ability to communicate does not have any benefit. All it does is signal that those cutting off the communication do not have a better idea, or do not know how to sell their idea. It strengthens the hand of those being censored by giving them a real grievance, and makes it more likely that they will find other ways to express their views, which will likely be more violent.
I am genuinely upset over this. And that is after CEO pinky swears he will not do it in the future. It will be that much easier to do it now that there is a precedent. I doubt he does not know it.
I think.. I think I will be starting free speech focused entity. Like NRA. Laser focus. No restrictions on free speech of any kind. Ever.
This may be the only thing to prevent US from losing its list of temporary priviledges.
Free speech does not require that we give people a platform. Free speech also means that everyone can decide to turn their backs on people saying these sorts of things, and not let them use the things we have built to spread their message.
I would have agreed not that long ago, but a lot of those platforms became defacto public squares. You do not get to benefit from a public good without burdens that come with it.
>Free speech does not require that we give people a platform.
That's true!
Unfortunately it gets a little more complicated than that.
As providers enjoy PLATFORM protections that align with the ideas of free speech. Meaning they will enjoy legal immunity from content they host so long as they won't decide who gets a voice or why so long as the content is legally allowed. They aren't liable because they didn't have a say in what it was. They are required to remove illegal things of course.
The issue here is the PLATFORMS are now deciding they're going to keep these legal protections they basically require in order to exist - while also acting a PUBLISHERS that curate otherwise legal content to be aligned with their views.
Admit that many of the same people celebrating "they're a private company they can do what they want!" were also yelling "make the cake you bigots!"
This may be a cake-centric issue now that I think about it. Because CF, SV, FAANG are Having Cake + Eating Cake.
I think it is ridiculous to hold the position that you aren't allowed to block ANY content if you don't want to be held liable for things people say on your platform.
We can't hold a platform liable for content because it is technically impossible to perfectly block infringing content, so we realize it is unfair to hold platforms accountable.
However, this doesn't mean a platform can't make ANY effort to control what content is on their system without losing this protection. YouTube doesn't lose safe harbor protection just because they have contentid...
If we are talking about the DMCA safe harbor stuff, which is what I was talking about, it was not modeled after the first amendment at all. What makes you think they were?
There are societies which are in practice far more free in their expression of speech and which are at the same time substantially safer.
There is quite evidently no move to legally curtail any freedoms. Nor are the restrictions put on by these companies in any substantially onerous or making free speech impossible.
So instead of banning pro-guns websites and associations, internet self-righteous companies prefer to ban pro-freedom of speech websites.
How brave !
Edit: to people disagreeing, ask yourself : why is mass shooting only happening with such a high frequency in the US ? Internet is global and billions of people speak and write english. So what is the originality ?
This knee-jerk reaction for censorship needs to stop, we’re heading toward censorship at full speed, and everybody is applauding for being so responsible and mature.
If people are calling publicly for mass murdering, and if it’s illegal to do so in their country, then let the police get access to the people identity and arrest them. But don’t kill the messenger or the media !
- Voxility's actions are admirable given the nature of the content hosted on 8chan;
- I can't say much about Epik's services;
- Voxility is absolutely the worst of the worst. The content nature and their shady 'business practices' are an absolute abomination. They do a lot of spam and 'transit' a lot of shady traffic.
The truth is that information does not radicalize people - censorship does. That's why the channers are as radicalized as they are - they've been censored everywhere else. Censor their last remaining outlets and you will increase violence by orders of magnitude.
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 only thing they are doing is allowing and/or encouraging others to violate 8chan's constitutional rights.
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.
If 8chan is inciting violence or doing other things not covered by the first amendment then it should be the government's job to police that.
> 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.
>> I'm saying that I think allowing people to DDOS 8chan will result in more violence.
Violence happens because these people follow a hateful, violent ideology whose specific articulated intent is to deprive others of liberty, life, and land. People looking for excuses to be violent will find them.
Also, refusing to provide commercial DDOS mitigation technologies to hostile entities is not the same as "allowing people to DDOS" them.
CloudFlare is providing a basic service that the government should be providing itself.
If colleges need to guarantee first amendment rights since they are partially government funded, and the Internet itself is partially government funded, then I think there is a decent case for the government being required to provide a public solution for mitigating DDOS attacks if the market can't sort it out.
The moral reasoning behind restraining the government from denying speech and other rights is that the government is a monopoly (in this case of force). This reasoning extends to restrictions on the ability of other monopolies, such as local utilities, to deny service.
If every service provider with the capacity to serve the needs of Website X were to deny service, the DE FACTO effect is precisely the same as a single monopoly doing so. In which case, the moral reasoning behind restraint of government and other monopolies comes into play.
The de facto effect is the same. But is a decision independently reached by multiple parties really the same as a decision by a single monopoly?
I can't confidently say one way or another, but it feels more acceptable to me.
Assuming each company did reach that decision independently (and that's a big assumption) and not as a result of bad PR brought on by an angry internet mob.
The real reason for restraining the government from restricting speech is the hope that people use the soap box, and the ballot box, instead of the bullet box to make the changes they want to see in the world.
The monopoly on violence does not necessarily have much to do with this.
> the DE FACTO effect is precisely the same as a single monopoly doing so
The effect is the same, but the legal interpretation of the situation isn't, as long as new players are free to join the game.
You can find lots of examples where two cases of real-world events are the same, but are interpreted differently by law, depending on the context that is purely juridical.
> the moral reasoning behind restraint of government and other monopolies comes into play.
Governments hold the monopoly on violence, thus they are fundamentally different from any other entity.
A tale as old as the Internet (older!) is people arguing about how we represent our morality through legal code.
The First Amendment is a law, but it's an imperfect representation of an idea, and that idea is that everyone has a right to (among other things) express ideas free from organized oppression. A lot of people see "organized oppression" to be exclusively possible by a governing body, but some others see that to mean the platforms themselves.
"The First Amendment" is oftentimes used as a conversational shortcut to talk about the moral right of expression. Is it entirely accurate? No, and accuracy matters. However, the conversation doesn't die when the correction is made. Here, it's true that CloudFlare isn't in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, however the argument being made is that they have a moral obligation to stay a "dumb pipe", to prevent the oppression of a minority voice.
I'm not making that argument, I just wanted to point out the nuance of invoking "The First Amendment" here, that it's often not literally a reference to the legal authority of the private entity in question.
Depends upon their involvement with the government that allows them their market position. In the particular case of CloudFlare I don't actually know what the involvement is, and would default to agreeing with you. But I do know some private companies often mentioned in relation to First Amendment that there is some level of involvement, but I think the courts have largely not taken a critical look at what is going on and is still quite inconsistent on the matter (which should surprise no one who compares the pace of law and the pace of technology).
When Facebook and Twitter started de-platforming right-wing types like Alex Jones and Milo Yannopoulis, the actions-of-a-private-company-are-beyond-criticism types immediately defended them with “it’s not like they’re being thrown off the internet entirely - they can always create their own websites!” Well now, they are being thrown off the internet entirely. And a disturbingly large number of people think this is a positive thing.
But they're not being thrown off the internet entirely! There are other services they can create or use (voat, gab). The internet itself is still open for them to use.
I think you are right that the government has showed a lot of restraint in dipping its toes into this problem, and that might be a good thing. However, Cloudflare in shutting off 8chan, has not violated anybody's free speech.
The constitution only applies to the government's relationship with its people. Only the government can violate a citizen's constitutional rights. Other individuals (or companies) cannot violate another person's constitutional rights. Cloudflare, in ceasing its relationship with 8chan, is not impeding on their first amendment rights.
Even so, the first amendment is not a blanket right to say whatever you want or incite violence. The first amendment is much narrower than you may realize, and in the narrowest (most protected) case, only applies to political speech. Hate speech is definitely not protected.
While 8chan, as an operator, is not directly responsible for what happens on their site, they start taking on liability when they are knowingly aware of and take no action against people who are using the site for criminal activity. The same goes for a landlord who knowingly lets his/her house be used for criminal activity, such as crack house.
> And DDOS'ing is very clearly a tactic that violates the first amendment.
I don't follow this, much less find it "very clear." DDOSing is a crime and the prevention of it is a service provided by a third party. It's not a free speech issue.
Furthermore, you're really blaming the victim in your analysis of Charlottesville.
> Furthermore, you're really blaming the victim in your analysis of Charlottesville.
Well they're both the victims and the perpetrators. It's not legal to drive over them, but it's also not legal for them to try to prevent the people from organizing the rally from speaking.
Stuff like this has been happening for hundreds of years, there's actually a reason why the laws are the way they are.
> People _are_ allowed to shout over protesters. It's legal to do that.
Sometimes. If organizing a rally requires a government permit, then having the government give another permit for the same time and place to people whose aim was to disrupt the rally would probably violate the first amendment rights of the rally organizers. And that's basically what happened in Charlottesville, the rally organizers had permits and the protestors did not.
> having the government give another permit for the same time and place to people whose aim was to disrupt the rally would probably violate the first amendment rights of the rally organizers. And
You keep saying that this violates the first amendment rights of the protesters but yet again you're not backing that up in any way. How does this violate their first amendment right? I'm just not seeing it.
"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."
Sorry, if I may clarify. It ended up with a bunch of people protesting white nationalism being run over by a white nationalist, who has been sentenced for killing a woman with his car.
In the Charlottesville case, the people inciting violence and the people performing violence are both white nationalists.
>> 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.
People showed up to exercise their own first amendment rights, which is how the whole free speech thing works.
Those with opposing points of view also showed up to demonstrate that ordinary people wouldn't be intimidated by white nationalists marching and carrying intimidating symbols from the past.
Are you suggesting that the best response to these regressive viewpoints is for ordinary decent folk to let them alone and do their own thing in peace? Cowardice.
That would only serve to embolden them, and an emboldened hate group is even more likely to engage in violent activity against the targets of their hate.
>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.
Why disparage the innocent victims a politically-motivated terrorist? Because they "shouted" at the very extremists who celebrated that act of murder?
It's been ruled private companies can discriminate against homosexuals by refusing to provide service to them (ie: a wedding cake). Also been ruled you can discriminate against customers based on religious beliefs (ie: refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control) see “religious refusal” and “conscience protection” laws.
I don't think the main disagreement in this thread is about whether the ban was legal but whether it was moral.
There are the usual side-debates though: the ban being strategically effective and the ban being in-line with how the us constitutions concept of free speech gets interpreted.
Personally I'm not sure to what degree the latter might be relevant for an apparently(?) Filipino company.
DDoSing doesn't "violate the first amendment" anymore than a loud bar violates my first amendment rights.
The concept of free speech and the first amendment aren't the same thing. The first amendment, in part, attempts to stop the government from violating its citizens' free speech.
Yelling over you does not violate your rights. Not giving you something does not violate your rights.
Another right the first amendment guarantees is the right to assemble. That means I can associate with whomever I want. That means Cloudflare can associate with whomever they want. They choose not to associate with 8chan. That is their choice and their right. We cannot force Cloudfare to associate with 8chan.
Also, what does Charlottesville have to do with anything here? Are you trying to say the guy running over others is guilty of violating the "shouters" first amendment rights? And that they should have predicted that "shouting at white nationalists" means they would get run over? And how does that remind you of Cloudflare not hosting 8chan? Did they run a car through the server?
Everything is covered by the first amendment.
So. It's a real good look for CloudFlare because they're no longer the company that associates with white nationalists.
The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged. Forums like 8chan and 4chan effectively incubate hate speech by providing a safe space for anonymized, like-minded individuals to congregate, espouse their basest thoughts and feelings and receive gratification for it -all without challenge. Moderate people are repulsed by such forums and the quantity of hate-speech they generate, which further compounds the negative feedback loop.
Unchecked extremism compounded by more unchecked extremism inevitably leads to scenarios like the ones we’re witnessing more and more often.