krapp · 2 years ago

>So far, every "way" that's been developed of dealing with people who harm others has itself been used to harm others in more extreme ways than the harm they were supposed to mitigate.

Has it?

Some of the people Kiwifarms harassed were driven to suicide. Your argument is that having a forum taken offline is a more extreme form of harm than literal death?

jfengel · 2 years ago

The system is broken, we need the EFF to do more than just clutch their pearls about somebody trying to do something.

If they want to be the Electronic Frontier Foundation, they can take inspiration from the self-organization that occurs on other frontiers. When there are no rules, you get vigilantes. Well managed, the vigilantes establish the rules, by popular consent. Poorly managed, the most violent ones impose their own rules.

The EFF is well positioned to help establish rules. So merely saying "There shouldn't be any rules", they'll simply be brushed aside one way or the other.

Akronymus · 2 years ago

It seems that people really dislike that place in particular.

jdthedisciple · 2 years ago

You may want to revisit how syllogisms work. Thanks for your input.

0x0000000 · 2 years ago

RFC 6598? Interfaces needing an address does not mean the business needs to own IP address space.

justrealist · 2 years ago

I mean that's basically this history of the US in Latin America, but everyone complains anyway.

MathMonkeyMan · 2 years ago

Here's part of an English translation of the Russian constitution: http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-03.htm

and the Chinese constitution: http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Constitution/2007-11/...

It's not about the constitution.

Nursie · 2 years ago

> in the rest of the world, we don’t even have free speech.

It exists to varying degrees in various places. It's not absolute in the US, as much as people like to pretend it is - incitement to violence, the old "yelling fire in a crowded theatre" canard, criminal conspiracy, defamation etc etc. There is a line drawn, it's a fuzzy one that people pretend does not exist, but it's there just as it is in other nations.

For more information on how freedom of speech is codified in Europe, for instance, see - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#E...

raxxorraxor · 2 years ago

They seem to mostly sell that as a package.

metalspot · 2 years ago

Many countries have recognized free speech as a right through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is much broader than the 1st amendment.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...

But just because governments have recognized the right does not mean that they are complying with this recognition.

This is par for the course though. The 1st amendment was ratified in 1791 and the Alien and Sedition Acts which violated the constitution in the most blatant way were passed 8 years later.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/alien-and-sedit...

Governments never give freedom. People take it.

Dan_Sylveste · 2 years ago

> How anyone reasonable could consider this a bad thing, I don't know.

Because it's completely unproven. Their theory is that 'free speech advances the goals of [others whose views are contrary to our values]' but that's not proven, that's just their theory.

It's held for ages that free speech works as it allows for the 'disinfectant of sunlight' i.e. that ideas stand and fall on their merits with all relevant parties allowed to discuss freely.

They _posit_ that this theory no longer holds true but they never seem to actually explain how they came to that conclusion. You, similarly, just say that is 'is right' but... how did you get there? What's your proof of concept? Do you have examples?

It seems very much to me like they've just turned around and said 'yeah actually free speech is bad because it helps the bad guys more than the good guys, trust us, it's no good' and left it at that.

> reasoning has always been sound

They've done a complete 180 on this position. By definition either their reasoning before was unsound or their reasoning today is unsound. Pick one.

gameman144 · 2 years ago

> The memo listed several factors to consider, including "the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values."

This itself is the bad bit, IMO. My expectation of the ACLU is that they will always defend the rights of individuals, regardless of the goals of those exercising those rights.

When the ACLU defended Nazis marching in Skokie, they weren't defending the goals of Nazis to strip ethnic minorities of rights; they were solely defending first amendment rights.

The logic here seems so fragile that I don't see how one could see it as anything other than a bad thing if they value the ACLU as a bastion for defending rights.

For instance, if a criminal is actively going around and killing people from one political bent or ethnic background, they are clearly not respecting the rights of others.

Should we decide that it's okay to not grant them a speedy trial, since giving a jury the right to free them would definitely get in the way of theother rights we care about?

amiga386 · 2 years ago

The ACLU does debate and reflect, but they _have_ visibly changed in the wake of Charlottesville. The ACLU writing a rebuttal article listing their defenses of right-wing speech since 2017 doesn't really fix that image.

There are multiple causes: even though it is not the ACLU's fault for the murder at the Charlottesville rally, its public image took a beating. Combine that with the massive influx of new supporters and new money in 2017, in support of the ACLU directly challenging Trump, it now has a lot more partisan supporters than it used to. Donations have tripled. Even if all previous supporters were right-partisan (which would be unlikely), the sudden addition of a bloc of left-partisan supporters, double the size of your previous supporter base, could sway your organisation.

From the NY Times article:

> But in interviews, several younger lawyers suggested a toll taken. Their generational cohort, they said, placed less value on free speech, making it uncomfortable for them to express views internally that diverged from progressive orthodoxy.

> “A dogmatism descends sometimes” inside the A.C.L.U., noted Alejandro Agustin Ortiz, a lawyer with the racial justice project. “You hesitate before you question a belief that is ascendant among your peer group.”

> Some argued for carefully vetting hires. “I never do a job interview without raising Skokie/Charlottesville and asking if they are comfortable with that history,” said a lawyer who asked not to be named because of the fear of inflaming colleagues. “Not many colleagues agree. It’s about the cause.”

It seems there is both an "old guard" and "new guard" within the ACLU, only time will tell if they retain full commitment to defending free speech.

concordDance · 2 years ago

That's not the ridiculous bit, the ridiculous bit is the advocating that the government crack down on people saying mean things about third parties to each other on the Internet.

And make no mistake, that's 99% of what KiwiFarms does, the last time this came up on hackernews I browsed through hundreds of posts in a bunch of threads to see if there was anything other than that going on, so if its there it's in the DMs (and policing person-to-person communication is utterly insane) or very rare.

nextlevelwizard · 2 years ago

They want to be common carriers, but also be able to discriminate users.

Start by banning racists and bigoted users, then slowly start discriminating against other groups while offering new "private connection" for only $9.99/mo extra.

hnbad · 2 years ago

You're disagreeing with the comment you replied to. That comment said the EFF is bad because it actually wants the government to intervene, not ISPs. Your comment says the EFF is bad because it wants companies to be allowed to do what they want. Did you misread the comment or did I misread yours?

didntcheck · 2 years ago

Having the ~~clergy~~ ~~nobility~~ bourgeoisie decide what is "harmful to society" and unilaterally censor it is far more harmful. The fact that "pro free-speech" is considered something to sneer at makes me want to facepalm. People will say unpleasant things, but it's far less unpleasant then being told what we're "allowed" to hear "for our safety". The idea that they're "detached from humanity" and killing people by this is ridiculous

woofcat · 2 years ago

That is a hot take. So if you post asking about abortion access as a 16 year old that should have your name plastered next to it.

The internet has saved many people by opening up questions you wouldn't ask your doctor.

ferbivore · 2 years ago

Did you somehow miss the last five million years of history? People have no problem advocating for evil under their own name.

chonkerz · 2 years ago

It's a consequence of freedom. If companies aren't allowed to make the decision, then you're saying the government should make the decision instead. It's one or the other.

There is no functional world where no one is allowed to moderate abuse, because in that world the Internet ceases to function. You don't have to like the results, but someone has to do it.

digging · 2 years ago

> most of the internet was not like this 10-15 years ago. forums and even large social media platforms were moderated lightly, if at all. you would commonly see edgelords dropping slurs, but it did not dominate the discussion.

Either you're thinking of a time much further back than 10-15 years (that is, 2008-2013), or you're wrong. Or - could be you were just in the Nazi bars at the time, also. My experience in a variety of online places at that time was that "edgelords" got told off or kicked out in most. A few places didn't, and they were already or became the Nazi bars. Alternately, the Nazis would be herded into a smaller subset of the platform, which became the Nazi bar.

kmeisthax · 2 years ago

You're right - there's an extra step. Most of the worst, most toxic shitholes on the Internet are not just unmoderated Nazi Bars, but actively moderated to silence the people telling the Nazis off. Nazi Bar explains the decay of USENET and 4chan, but not, say, Parler. Parler editorializes the shit out of their algorithm and website and actively bans left-wingers that might interrupt the perfect far-right echo chamber they want.

Major social networks don't do this, but they do actively boost things that create engagement, which is something right-wingers are very good at manufacturing. They use sockpuppet accounts to do that. This means that the underlying amount of toxicity on the Internet is not fixed - i.e. these forums not toxic purely because everyone else kicked them out and concentrated the toxicity, and we can't just disperse the toxicity. Dispersing the toxicity creates more toxicity.

Also, the forums you remember from decades ago were likely way more moderated than you remember, and probably run by people powertripping as hard as Elon Musk or Spez. The difference was that you could just leave without consequence and never come back. You don't have that luxury with Facebook or Twitter.

barfingclouds · 2 years ago

Yeah this is a fear mongering tactic, and an intentional overreach.

The Nazi bar problem is not even hard in concept. If someone is not a Nazi, let them in. If someone is edgy, let them in. If someone is a Nazi, kick them out. Not rocket science. Nazis will not accumulate if done this way.

But people get looser and looser about their definition of Nazis, which ends up being “people I don’t like or who have different politics agendas than me” and pre emptively kick out tons of people in the name of keeping themselves safe

ianburrell · 2 years ago

Right, they aren’t and shouldn’t be content neutral.

wmf · 2 years ago

For Internet harassment there basically isn't law enforcement. This needs to change but I'm not sure how.

paddlepop · 2 years ago

>> My question to those who support big brother any lawful but awful speech is - do you really think it won’t be used to silence any dissent of the ruling powers?

My question to those that use this line of reasoning is do you really think a ruling power willing to silence dissent would do so whether or not it is supported?

mcpackieh · 2 years ago

Don't forget, we have to open and read everybody's mail and read it too, otherwise somebody might deliver a bomb threat through the USPS.

The Stasi would be insanely jealous of the new tools for totalitarianism the tech industry is building. We're constructing a digital panopticon around ourselves. If this is allowed to go much further, escape will become incredibly difficult.

anigbrowl · 2 years ago

Literally the opposite of what I said. Spare me your performative outrage.

bb88 · 2 years ago

Isn't that what laws are for? Mississippi and New York can have different laws, but it's better than mob rule.

lisper · 2 years ago

I am saying that "Just Say No" is not an effective intervention for addiction. A lot of internet content is addictive, and the more addictive it is, the less likely it is to be bound to reality. So relying on individual self-control -- "just walk away from your computer" -- to counter the deleterious effects of misinformation on the internet is no more likely to succeed than it did for drug addiction.

pessimizer · 2 years ago

This is exactly what happened. They were flooded with money at the same time they were being flooded with new graduates that had strange ideas about what people shouldn't be allowed to do.

JamesBarney · 2 years ago

I'd rather have laws that prohibit free speech than have the government be able to stifle speech by pressuring large monopolistic organizations behinds closed doors.

JamesBarney · 2 years ago

The first two I disagree with but could arguably see, but the last three are really the death of the ACLU as we knew it.

I think that the ACLU had a bigger impact with 60m in funding as a nonpartisan organization with a respected reputation than as a soldier in the culture war.

another_story · 2 years ago

The first point is interesting to me. Choosing not to defend the 2nd amendment while defending the first. Thank for the info.

adamrezich · 2 years ago

it's hard to remember now, but believe it or not, it used to be such that when you were done using the Internet for a session, you had to get up from your Ethernet or RJ45-connected personal computer and go live in the real world for a time.

twenty-five minutes ago, I posted the above comment, then got into my car to drive home from work. on the way home, at an intersection, I checked my phone to see if anyone had responded to my comment, and indeed, you had. I thought about it a bit, then, while waiting in line at drugstore to pick up a prescription, I typed and submitted this reply. this is most certainly not how Things Used To Be. you used to have to jack into the Matrix at a designated jacking-in terminal—you couldn't just wirelessly jack in anywhere, about the town, at any point in your daily life.

only a decade ago, the idea that a politician would use the public-facing Internet to directly attack or insult a political opponent was unthinkable—now, it's completely commonplace, as common as anyone arguing over the Internet, with anyone else about anything else. now, it's been successfully integrated into everyday life, completely. in the past, though, there most certainly was a time in which it was a completely separate thing, with completely different social norms than meatspace. I don't know why some are so eager to erase this in-the-greater-scheme-of-things extremely-recent history, and pretend like the Internet was always some sort of sanitized "safe space." there were "safe spaces", to be sure—but you had to make them yourself(!), or seek them out. communities were ideologically-driven, not advertiser/moral guardian-driven.

habinero · 2 years ago

Mostly because they tend to pick on people who can only file pro se, not because of any inherent merit.

cmh89 · 2 years ago

It's part of the American creation myth that's drilled into our heads as children.

The Alien and Sedition Act was passed in 1798 which made it illegal to critique the government. Eugene Debs went to prison for advocating for draft dodging in World War 1.

Part of is a lot of folks either can't or wont see the difference between "free speech" and "consequences for your actions".

As Americans, we've never had more free speech than we have today. Most of our history is filled with censorship from media to actual human beings being arrested for wearing the wrong clothes. Of course, a lot of those free speech absolutist cheer censorship laws when they are targeted at LGBTQ individuals.

yanderekko · 2 years ago

>My country has a censor's office, for example. Some 'speech' is literally illegal to possess.

And it's embarrassing. The KiwiFarms exchange with New Zealand after the Brenton Tarrant shooting (are you even allowed to mention his name? Hope I'm not getting you in trouble here) was one of its prouder moments.

toast0 · 2 years ago

> the same people who decry this will also decry the government taking charge of internet moderation at the ISP level, probably even louder.

Probably, yes. Which is why I mentioned the first part of the issue. Otoh, when the government does a takedown with court orders, there's always people yelling about it, but it's not as loud as when the government does a takedown without at least the appearance of due process or when a business does it without any due process.

> content on there is already probably illegal.

If the issue is illegal content, there should be indictments and court orders. Or at least, search warrants and seized equipment.

> If I run a business, and I know a customer is doing something like that, I have an ethical obligation to not facilitate it.

Depends on the circumstances of the business. IMHO, common carriers and businesses that are an awful lot like common carriers have an ethical standard to deliver all messages and parcels that are not unduly burdensome to the delivery of other messages and parcels.

This standard allows for blocking network abuse, probably spam, ddos, explosive packages, packages that emit noxious fumes or odors, etc. But not delivering letters because of their content isn't ethical for a letter delivery service, in my mind.

drak0n1c · 2 years ago

In the last year or so I've received two strikes from Reddit Admins (employees) for report abuse when I reported two separate instances of explicit calls to violence in left-wing comments. One more "report abuse strike" and my since-Digg-era account is banned, so I've stopped caring. I've also seen first-hand and second-hand how the big default subreddit powermods (volunteers) over the last 10 years have silently banned users for non-inflammatory articulate dissenting posts and comments (while leaving up ones that are poorly written and easy targets). Combine that user shedding with botted upvotes on Rising (partisan-angle posts getting 10-20x the upvote average of other higher-quality posts from the same subreddit), the net effect is clear.

Ultimately, the best way to use Reddit is the way you do - keep it to small subs specifically devoted to a genuine interest, unsub from the defaults, and only browse it from the Home (your subs) page.

nonethewiser · 2 years ago

To be fair you are vilifying crypto here. You’re just saying it’s justified. Which proves its vilified. Im not even into crypto but it’s value proposition starts to look better in this context.

ibizaman · 2 years ago

The landlord, yes. The electric company directly, bypassing the landlord, probably not.

pessimizer · 2 years ago

Why would you call the landlord instead of the police? I'll tell you why you needed to do it for this metaphor - because Kiwi Farms doesn't break any laws and "drug spots" do.

Now, we're deputizing landlords. If that isn't the perfect public-private partnership, I don't know what is.

dmix · 2 years ago

> Why does it necessarily need to be one-sided, where giving in to one iota entails giving in to the whole enchilada?

Because every single time this is what happens. Your argument basically comes down to creating some speedbumps to slow down how long it will take, not whether it will or not create the same predictable outcome.

I'd rather not live in a place like the UK where SWAT teams do over-night raids of peoples houses because they tweeted something mean. The sort of situation I'm sure people said would never happen when the ball got rolling decades ago.

zeroCalories · 2 years ago

You're not free to not associate with people in the U.S. Businesses are not allowed to discriminate against protected classes. This is because businesses are foundational to modern life, so being excluded from them greatly hurts a person. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that we should look to expand such protections to all people for certain services, especially those which are more like infrastructure for modern life. Not saying sites can't have a TOS, but an ISP should have a really good business reason for blocking you(illegal activity, spam).

lr4444lr · 2 years ago

I think the concept of Common Carrier is a direct refutation to what you're saying, but hey, that's just my opinion.

hexage1814 · 2 years ago

>it means social media companies are allowed to ban you for any reason they like

Can they ban someone for being black or gay? Do you think they should have this right, since they are private corporations?

hattmall · 2 years ago

Focus on speech though. Can the Phone company cut you off because of the content of your communication? Assuming you aren't breaking any other law like harassment?

The deciding factor is if your business revolves around facilitating speech. The law has some way to go to catch up with the current state of affairs, but right now the government is enjoying the power of censoring that speech so it may not be an easy path.

shadowgovt · 2 years ago

And an FCC that could yank your broadcast license for transmitting obscenity.

pfisch · 2 years ago

The mail wasn't really public discourse though.

Newspapers/tv/radio were, and no one was giving nazi's equal time on every issue.

Newspapers only ever published what they wanted to, censoring any viewpoint they felt like censoring.

Dan_Sylveste · 2 years ago

> control the public discourse

The truth is that before the internet, there wasn't really any genuine public discourse. If you wanted any reach at all, you had to go through a gatekeeper of some sort.

tomtheelder · 2 years ago

Following all my opinion, but easier to write without constant hedging:

IMO public discourse is less controlled by private corporations/organizations now than at basically any other point in our history, with the possible exception of like, 10 years ago.

There was never previously any realistic method for a private citizen to gain a platform to meaningfully influence discourse. Traditional media _literally_ defined the narratives in play. I’d argue that a whole lot of the ideological carnage and polarization going on is directly a result of the “democratization” of public discourse.

While there was some oversight, the reality is that news media still had basically total control over whatever narrative they were interested in pushing.

In fact, I’d argue that a lot of the ideological chaos and subsequent censorship we have seen recently is precisely a result of private corporations losing control of public discourse.

pfisch · 2 years ago

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

pfisch · 2 years ago

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

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

Dan_Sylveste · 2 years ago

The public square had a very minimal reach. If you wanted to reach significant numbers of people you had to pay or get a sponsor.

pfisch · 2 years ago

I don't know if you've noticed, but in the short time since we have basically removed all gatekeepers things have not gone well.

Our democracy is on the verge of collapsing because liars and frauds have grabbed their newly available megaphone and convinced a very significant portion of the population that any election they lose is rigged.

If our democracy even survives this, which is questionable right now, we really need to rein in social media if we don't want to live under a despot.

yrro · 2 years ago

> Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

oh no how _terrible_

momirlan · 2 years ago

i think it's rather the political establishment has allowed big tech to set the agenda for what it considers to be "the truth"

freejazz · 2 years ago

Might as well have written this post with (((they))) given how conspiratorial it is

chrischattin · 2 years ago

I think the implication is government putting pressure (or working with) businesses to censor speech. Smaller government would mean less attack surface in that case.

Market forces and competition should help keep speech free because if a private company doesn't allow x group to use their platform, it is likely a competitor will spring up to capture the orphaned market. We see this play out in reality.

psychlops · 2 years ago

Are you suggesting that government (big or small) is immune to moral policing and that it's confined to the private sector? Any centralized system is subject to attack, the bigger the better.

michaelt · 2 years ago

> the EFF explicitly calls out the government for failing to enforce existing laws which would have shut down Kiwifarms

Eh, maybe, but don't most of these laws mostly fail to work across international borders anyway?

I mean, I haven't seen many cryptolocker authors appearing before US courts. And wikileaks remains online despite the best efforts of US authorities.

Surely anything that could shut down or block kiwifarms could do the same to wikileaks and pirate bay and sci-hub?

concordDance · 2 years ago

The issue there is that as best I can tell, kiwifarms the site doesn't break any laws. It officially discourages actual harassment of the people it insults. Individual users may harass people but as far as I could tell from my previous skim they do not organize this harassment in the open.

And requiring service providers to monitor private communications for organisation of harassment seems Orwellian to me. (Intuition pump: imagine the postal service opening every letter to check to see if someone's organising a letter writing campaign sending abuse to George Washington)

As does prohibiting people saying unpleasant things about semi-public figures in public.

ghostzilla · 2 years ago

Exactly right. Most of the new engineers have nothing of the libertarian spirit of the 2600 era. It was engineers who implemented censorship at online platforms, most incredulous of which was PayPal charging customers $2,500 in damages for spreading "misinformation." I cancelled my PayPal account the moment I read the news.

For shame. But, things go in cycles. What was once great becomes a ruin, and then rises again. We are now in the heading steadily towards the ruin phase.

ToucanLoucan · 2 years ago

> I 100% disagree with this, the engineering level of silicon valley left the old "libertarian" hacker ethos behind a long time ago

And thank fuck for that.

> at the engineering layer there is idea about using technology to build a "better society" where "better society" is ensuring people with "wrong opinions" isolated so they can not "harm" others with their "violence" and violence is now words on the internet.

People are so glib about this and it's such a catastrophic failure to engage in empathy and respect for other human beings that it simply blows my mind that people can say things like this and think they're in the moral correct. "Being bullied to death by the Internet" isn't even that uncommon anymore. Especially for people who will have a hard time finding community in the real spaces in which they live, Internet communities of like-people become a literal lifeline. Entire relationships both communal and intimate are carried out through the lens of online communication. "Words on the internet" indeed.

And if said words can be a lifeline of communication and community to like-minded people and alleviate suffering, you can be damn well assured that works the other way too. Having personally known and helped people through being the subject of online alt-right hate mobs, I assure you, "words on the internet" can absolutely kill people. I have watched in happen in real time and pulled people back from the precipice.

> We also see this through out Open Source with the raise of the CoC to implement systemic changes with in open source to ensure only those with "correct opinions" are allowed to contribute moving from just caring about code, to then caring about code and conduct with in a project and project related events, to now even more expansive monitoring of developers entire lives, and activities completely removed and unrelated to any development activities.

Yeah I don't particularly want to use software, especially pay to use software, made by people who want to exterminate people I call friends and family. If a developer comes out on their social media and broadcasts about how my friends are some combination of insane/dangerous for being who they are, no, I'm not using their product ever again and I will spread word about it to people I know who feel similarly. This is just how social networks (in the sociology sense, not the technological sense) work and always have.

I guess what I'm saying is if you want maximum capture on your product, tell your team to park their opinions on which groups of people deserve to die on personal, anonymous accounts. I don't think this is a massive ask, personally, but I also don't want anyone dead so I can't really comment on it.

gorwell · 2 years ago

There's a few things happening

Preference falsification from engineers, which was normalized after James Damore had his character publicly assassinated. Throwing rotten tomatoes at him and screaming "shame shame" before chopping off his head was a warning to everyone else to keep quiet or echo the correct opinions.

There's a lot of tribal signaling and "don't hurt me I'm one of you".

Then there's a new brand of engineer, and some old gen converts, who are true believers in the new religion and programming is just a lucrative way to participate in late stage capitalism as a wage slave. Many among them are aggressive bullies and codify their beliefs into CoCs and concern themselves with purity testing.

RHSeeger · 2 years ago

> Restricting company’s freedom to choose a business model is not the answer.

Only, that's not how it works in our (and pretty much any) society. We, as a society, choose what we think is acceptable. And then we make laws to enforce that people behave in a way consistent with that. A company is not free to deny service to someone that is gay, or black, or married; just because that is their chosen business model.

tracker1 · 2 years ago

My own opinion is that the role of government should be mostly limited to common defense, ensuring essential infrastructure and enforcing/resolving legal disputes. Essential infrastructure should include banking and internet access at this point as it's nearly impossible to function in society without them.

Infrastructure providers should not be able to refuse customers engaging in lawful activity. Your phone company can't shut you off because you say, "I wish $POLITICIAN were dead." You don't have to like or agree with everything everyone says, but it's a very dangerous slippery slope.

Personal liberty should be maximalized so as not to infringe on the rights of others. You do not have the right to live a life without risk of being offended.

aaomidi · 2 years ago

It was mostly twitter folk.

Let's Encrypt has a post about phishing websites: https://letsencrypt.org/2015/10/29/phishing-and-malware.html

bluescrn · 2 years ago

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

rhelz · 2 years ago

Private property rights are not absolute, sure. But is regulating media companies going to solve anything? Are there any regulations which both sides could be happy with, or would it just open up a whole new front in the culture wars, of endless, highly-politicized and ham-fisted control over, say, whether or not twitter has a block function or not?

foldr · 2 years ago

Sure, pretty much everyone except extreme libertarians agrees that there are limits to private property rights that can be overriden in certain circumstances. However, if we (rightly) force businesses not to discriminate on the grounds of race, then it seems logically consistent to also allow businesses to refuse to associate with racists. I am not sure how someone could be ok with government intervention to prevent "whites only" restaurants and yet not ok with the government merely refraining from interfering with businesses that voluntarily choose not to associate with racists.

aydyn · 2 years ago

Why would you not take horseshoe theory seriously? There are countless examples of opposing extremists converging on similar beliefs.

didntcheck · 2 years ago

Unfortunately progressives have been acting like ancaps on these issues for a while. I've long since stopped being surprised to see someone with "socialist" in their bio saying it's a good thing that unelected corporations have de facto control over online political expression, or that employers should be able to threaten people's livelihoods for supporting the wrong party, and acting like it's anathema to suggest regulating a private company in any way. Very short sighted, both forwards and backwards

rhelz · 2 years ago

There is a very bright-line difference in the case of the civil rights-related curbs on private property privilege: Those actually were effective in solving the problem! Because the solution to the problem was very clear: everybody should be able to ride the bus, eat in a restaurant, etc.

The contrast with regulating the media companies couldn't be greater. What, exactly, should these regulations be? I haven't heard anything but the most vague notions--which are so undercooked that they do not rise to the level of any kind of concrete proposal.

In point of fact, no matter what regulations are adopted, there will be media winners and media losers, and the losers will always feel the system is against them. Our media will become even more hyper-politicized than it is now, because its fate would be determined by politicians who can't even agree that it's probably a good idea to pay our debt.

rhelz · 2 years ago

What, exactly, do you think these regulations should be? What kind of regulation would solve this problem?

E.g. contrast with, say, regulation of pharmaceuticals by the FDA. Certainly a curb on private property rights, but, its also pretty clear what the regulations should do: allow companies to sell only drugs which have been proven to be both safe and effective.

Is there such a very clear idea of how these proposed regulations should be written? Where do we draw the line? Does anybody really have a very clear idea let all what the solution would look like?

jameshart · 2 years ago

Owning a factory doesn’t give you the right to tell people what to do.

Having employment contracts with people gives you that right.

rhelz · 2 years ago

Freedom is certainly a tricky thing to balance, and private property rights are not absolute. But neither are freedom of speech rights.

Here's a way to cut the Gordian knot: publicly-owned services and utilities. E.g. NPR as a way to check distortions which privately-owned news organizations would otherwise be subject to. We could have a national public twitter, a national public chatGTP, etc.

So those of you who are now thinking of all the drawbacks typically associated with publicly-owned companies (real or imagined), well, the more you let the government regulate the private companies, the more the private companies will behave like public companies anyways.

Instead of getting the best of both worlds, you'll get the worst of both worlds: heavily-regulated, inefficient companies which still control the public discourse, which deliver profits not to the public but to private interests.

aydyn · 2 years ago

Why dont you talk concretely? what is a specific case involving an individual where specific laws have been broken?

matheusmoreira · 2 years ago

Which is why society needs to turn ISPs into non-discriminating common carriers of information. Now nobody will be able to "resort" to leaning on them anymore.

zirgs · 2 years ago

As far as I know - no laws prohibit adult pornography. Payment processors just decided to enforce their own laws.

dcow · 2 years ago

Yeah, this is where things are so immature. Where language has been twisted into “silence is violence”. People that think this way either have an intense moral agenda and they’re intolerant of real diversity, or they can’t actually mentally separate the concept of basic human respect (as in servicing someone you disagree with because they’re human) and political support a la providing internet to Kiwi farms perpetuates violence you’re part of the problem.

If you let authoritarians kafka trap you or you peers into thought terminating cliches left and right, and you don’t call the BS, this is the society you end up in.

tomrod · 2 years ago

Precisely.

bastardoperator · 2 years ago

I don't disagree. If a corporation has civil rights, they're akin to being a person/entity in which those rights are guaranteed aka citizenship. Some might argue that America is a "corporatocracy" for this very reason.

pauldenton · 2 years ago

It's basically just making a very poor case for corporate personhood. The more elegant argument is that the organization has no right, but every human being that is a member of that organization has rights You have an individual right to practice religion, and you have a group right to practice religion. Your ability to practice religion is not limited by joining a Parish or church organization. The Citizens United of Citizens United v. FEC wanted to Produce, Advertise and Air a documentary. They have an individual right to make a movie, and the court affirmed they have a right to make speech as a group. Citizens have a right to address political Grievances. So do Citizens United

yanderekko · 2 years ago

The Constitution would not provide a carveout for the long-term censorship of a forum like KF based on some rationale like "creating a volatile atmosphere", so I don't know what you expect regulation to accomplish here. And of course activists would scream if such regulation were applied in a viewpoint-neutral fashion (eg. platforms being mandated to delete content that advocates for crime / violence - imagine how Trump would've used this power during the BLM riots!) - the non-neutrality is considered a feature of private censorship, not a bug.

philippejara · 2 years ago

probably linking to this: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/obamas-ope...

mptest · 2 years ago

Crap, sorry guys. Luckily the other commenter was right, he found the correct link. The third party hackernews app I'm using has weird behavior when I edit a comment causing my spacing to mess up (why no line break between quote and my comment) and it also caused the ... to no longer be considered part of the link. If anyone has a good rec for an iphone app for hn, i'd appreciate it.

autoexec · 2 years ago

That covers twitter, now what about every other social media network. The claim was that this was happening for all of them.

zeroCalories · 2 years ago

You're right, I mixed the two sites up.

zeroCalories · 2 years ago

The more social pressure there is, the more meaningful the commitment is. Cloudflare doesn't get points for hosting sites that no cares about. They failed to uphold their promise when it mattered twice, so it's pretty much meaningless. Just use AWS for your DDoS protection at that point.

DharmaPolice · 2 years ago

Celebrating when someone kills themselves is a matter of opinion. Doxxing is another matter.

richbell · 2 years ago

> It might also be a meeting place for conspirators to plan crimes.

That might is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Do you have any evidence that this occurs?

sneak · 2 years ago

So are bars. Should the electric company deny service to biker bars?

superchroma · 2 years ago

Doesn't change the facts. I hope they come for kiwifarms. I hope it's snuffed out quietly one day and never returns and all its miserable denizens will be forced to know a fraction of the discomfort they inflicted on others.

huggingmouth · 2 years ago

What tier-1 provider is irresponsible enough to use this?

richbell · 2 years ago

> Ironically, appealing to authority to enforce an internet service provider to provide speech they don't want to transmit seems like an imposition on a private entity operating freely.

Look up "net neutrality" and "common carrier".

johnnyanmac · 2 years ago

They get to make that choice when I get more than 0-1 alternative choices on which ISP I can use the access the internet in my area.

Until then, saying their actions are "free speech" isn't too different from the days before water and electricity were owned by private corporations. I strongly believe primary ISP tubes should be a public service instead of owned by private corporate interests.

CogitoCogito · 2 years ago

If HE is lying in response to a complaint forwarded to them by the AG, that seems like something the AG really should investigate.

Edit: It's odd to see this downvoted. I don't care about Kiwifarms or all the other random crazy crap being discussed in this comment thread. But I do feel that companies should be honest in their communications. I'm surprised people here disagree.

plagiarist · 2 years ago

We need score voting. Being able to express a preference for a third candidate without danger of flipping the election would fix quite a bit. Unfortunately doing so currently is more useless than using the ballot as toilet paper.

bb88 · 2 years ago

I'm not saying you're wrong, I just think the founding fathers could not anticipate the world we have today.

The problem of course being that intelligence tests were used in the 60's to deny voting rights. But the founding fathers were okay with slavery, so would they have been okay with that for that purpose?

Originalism has a purpose I think, but, we've changed so much since then...

refurb · 2 years ago

Are you saying white male educated property owners can’t be gullible? Have you been to Marin county?

The founding fathers certainly did assume there were gullible voters even among the select few who could vote.

Protections such as the Constitution itself (that old archaic document!), the Senate, supermajorities, an independent legislative, executive and judicial, etc, etc.

I laugh when people say “Congress is deadlocked! It needs to be fixed!”. No, it’s working exactly as intended.

zimpenfish · 2 years ago

> I hate that Ramaswamy made that suggestion in such an embarrassing, conversation-poisoning way

Are you talking about his "failed Civics 101" gaffe re: historical ordering of Constitution and Revolution?

yanderekko · 2 years ago

Well, right now there's a odd vogue to think that a healthy democracy does things like ban political parties (currently an active debate regarding the AfD in Germany), or embrace indigenous apartheid movements (NZ, Australia), or to cede sovereignty to unaccountable transnational elites that promise to protect you from the ravages of political misinformation (the EU as a whole.) I don't think these notions will stand the test of time, but we'll see.

nonethewiser · 2 years ago

Because of criminalizing "deadnaming" or in spite of it?

For those that don't know, so-called "deadnaming" "is the act of referring to a transgender or non-binary person by a name they used prior to transitioning, such as their birth name."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadnaming

kortilla · 2 years ago

That’s orthogonal. You can have a “healthy democracy” by killing FPTP, the two party system, and other things like that.

You can still have an intellectually unhealthy society subject to groupthink and stagnation if you make it illegal to say many things.

refurb · 2 years ago

I think the problem is that people think “a lack of political debate and extreme views” is a healthy sign of democracy.

It’s actually the opposite. Plenty of authoritarian regimes look awfully peaceful because the only acceptable views are the government approved ones.

Id take political strife any day over forced “political harmony”. Far better to “air the dirty laundry” than pretend it doesn’t exist.

phpisthebest · 2 years ago

I guess that would depends on how you define "democracy" and what you believe a healthy government looks like.

I prefer a messy, publicly conflicting government to a smooth running authoritarian police state any day

indigo945 · 2 years ago

    > Also of note is that Germany already had and still has laws against numerous forms  
    > of speech, most notably anything that could threaten the public order, which you  
    > could mold into a justification to basically stop any speech.

There are laws against hate speech: "Volksverhetzung", a more direct translation: "incitement of the people", i.e. hate speech with the intent of causing mob violence or the persecution of minorities. There are also laws against disrupting the public order: "Erregung öffentlichen Ärgernisses", so "causing public offence", but those don't really target speech, they're more about taking your pants off in public and peeing on the sidewalk.

Also, neither of those laws are from the time of the monarchy.

    > The Nazis made a lot of political capital because people wanted them banned and  
    > censored. Of course that was just political play and they set new standards for  
    > suppression of information and propaganda, but that came after they got into  
    > power.

    > Wir gehen in den Reichstag hinein, um uns im Waffenarsenal der Demokratie mit  
    > deren eigenen Waffen zu versorgen. Wir werden Reichstagsabgeordnete, um die  
    > Weimarer Gesinnung mit ihrer eigenen Unterstützung lahmzulegen. Wenn die  
    > Demokratie so dumm ist, uns für diesen Bärendienst Freifahrkarten und Diäten zu 
    > geben, so ist das ihre eigene Sache.

    > We enter the Reichstag [Weimar Republic parliament] to stock ourselves with  
    > weapons from democracy's own arsenal. We become assemblymen of the Reichstag to  
    > take down the spirit of Weimar with its own support. If democracy is so stupid  
    > to supply us with hall passes and diets for this disservice we do to it, then  
    > that is its own problem.

autoexec · 2 years ago

> The reason Mein Kampf could not be distributed until a few years ago is because after Hitler's death, the copyright on Mein Kampf fell to the state of Bavaria (

Bavaria used copyright to enforce an "unofficial" ban on the book. It's ridiculous to try to paint the situation as one where Bavaria just never got around to reprinting it.

nvm0n2 · 2 years ago

Sure they ban books (or punish authors for writing them, which amounts to the same thing).

https://www.racket.news/p/madness-american-satirist-cj-hopki...

Just when you may have thought things couldn’t get any crazier: American playwright and humorist C.J. Hopkins, profiled in this space on numerous occasions, has been sent a “punishment order” by a German judge, offering him a Sophie’s Choice of 60 days in jail or 3,600 euros.

His crime? Essentially, insulting the German health minister in a tweet, and using a scarcely-visible image of a Swastika on a mask in a book critical of the global pandemic response, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. He was first accused of this “crime” in June, shortly after Roger Waters was placed under investigation for wearing his clearly satirical “Pink” costume in a stage performance in Berlin. As I wrote when C.J. was charged weeks later, authorities claim that through the use of the mask image, C.J. was “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”

refurb · 2 years ago

"Considers". It's not banned.

dee-bee · 2 years ago

Why ban by ideology? Just do it by behavior of the route/node.

sneak · 2 years ago

Any company should be free to deny you service for any (or no) reason. Consent should be able to be withdrawn by anyone at any time.

chonkerz · 2 years ago

If I made a lot of unwanted phone calls and people complained to the phone company, they would definitely cut me off. As it should be.

b215826 · 2 years ago

No, the EFF is allowed to criticize RMS as much as they want. Criticizing RMS doesn't make them hypocritical. However, linking [1] and spreading slanderous lies (I'm talking about Selam G.'s hitpieces [2] from 2019) isn't very fitting for an organization that claims to defend Internet free speech.

RMS never defended Epstein -- not even once. His only crime was being a pedantic aspie. If the EFF considers that to be good enough reason to cancel him, then yes, I think that EFF are total hypocrites. FWIW, EFF's official blog post only linked Selam G.'s hitpiece that has been thoroughly debunked elsewhere [3].

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-...

[2] https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...

[3] https://stallmansupport.org

cf141q5325 · 2 years ago

I put it as a quote in the post. Would be great if you could recommend a better alternative though, especially as even watching a tweet was disabled for a time.

somenameforme · 2 years ago

I read an interesting article the other day. It was about the Freedom of Information Act. We now take this for granted, but getting it passed was a huge ordeal. It dramatically strengthened the accountability of government and gave citizens one of their strongest tools available. It was, unsurprisingly, vehemently opposed by both major parties and nearly every form of the US political establishment. It would eventually go on to be passed in 1966 after an extensive campaign in support of it.

Anyhow, the point. Check out this [1] snippet, which was published as part of said campaign. More important than the snippet is who it's written by. A young exceptionally popular congressman from Illinois by the name of Donald Rumsfeld, who was also critical about the senseless US involvement in Vietnam. His is a name, which if happens to be before your time, would later come to be synonymous with the Iraq War, US ABC agencies torturing people, and of course the complete fabrication of evidence to justify the invasion Iraq.

And he's not especially unique. I think it all comes down to a simple problem. Imagine you happen to be pro-choice. If I paid you $10,000,000 would you become an advocate for pro-life? For the overwhelming majority of people, the answer there is going to be yes. But of course you and I are relatively irrelevant, so nobody's ever going to really try to change our values. But if you or I gained power, such hypotheticals suddenly become entirely real. For a man to be surrounded by such possibilities, yet remain true to his own values - he's going to need to be rich enough that people can't afford to bribe him, or some once in a millennium Aurelius like man of true character.

[1] - https://acsc.lib.udel.edu/files/original/edbab7cd2d0e82f8e19...

hughesjj · 2 years ago

Kk, so if I want to do crimes I just gotta be a political opponent to whoever is in charge this year and no one can do anything to me. Got it.

gmd63 · 2 years ago

Forget the IRS, imagine if the President himself were to withhold American resources promised to foreign governments in exchange for dirt on his political opponents.

dietr1ch · 2 years ago

Interesting, didn't even know about it's roots on the cold war and its politics. I think by the time I studied history it had already lost it's original meaning.

The more modern view I was referring to, is that third world countries are lesser, developing countries where things that are given elsewhere, like water, food, electricity, education, healthcare or internet access are a luxury. I guess a more accurate term is "a developing country"

_cenw · 2 years ago

I hate to tell you, but attributing all feminist campaigning to some kind of misplaced compassion or lack of rationality is pretty misogynist. We got plenty of things that need and have benefitted from advocacy. Feminists and queer people are not a monolith, and they're allowed to care about the things they care about specifically - just like everyone else.

Fascists are responsible for being fascists, not foreigners or queer "degenerates".

Just like that, incels are responsible for being incels, not feminists and (again?) queer people.

I'm happy there are people fighting against the current state of our Self ID reform, where reporting requirements for security agencies might create the next pink list. And I don't give a shit if incels see that as an affront. I wouldn't be able to make them happy anyway - they need to sort that out themselves.

I know a lot of people outside this issue sometimes have problems differentiating the parts that get amplified by the likes of BILD, WELT and NIUS - pink capitalism's most obvious objectionable strands - and other advocacy. There's a lot of classic divide and conquer at play here too, incidentally.

hotdogscout · 2 years ago

I did not fully understand your post (men are irrational when being accused of enabling child abuse, I still don't know what kind of feminists you mean).

I think you also didn't spend enough time among incels, KF or /pol/ to understand them.

KF is a moralist forum, they have more jn common with progressive twitter with the incessant policing of behaviour than incels or /pol/.

Incels resent women because they don't have them, it's a sour grapes situation.

/pol/ is a containment board for politics on 4chan. These people exist before feminism took the internet stage of most important topic, even in the atheist vs religious era. I don't think they're a response to feminists generalizing men (which is irrational, if you disagree please state your reasoning).

ThrowawayTestr · 2 years ago

In the state that KF operates in, it actually isn't legal. ISPs like Hurricane are obligated to serve all legal traffic the same. KF's owner has already served complaints to the state authorities.

ThrowawayTestr · 2 years ago

If people saying mean things about you online bothers you that much don't read it.

richbell · 2 years ago

> The site is literally about stalking people and documenting their personal lives for the sake of mockery.

You're half right, though I'd disagree with literally stalking — at the very least, there's variety and nuance. There's such a large variety of people discussed on the forum that I don't think you can make a blanket statement like that.

Is watching every video or stream from a content creator and posting in a forum mocking them "stalking"? Is digging through someone's old Twitter posts stalking? Is noticing that a person used the same username on multiple websites (some potentially embarrassing) stalking? Kiwi Farms defense is that it's all publicly available information, often published by the people they're mocking.

That's not to say that I agree with or cosign their behaviour. All I'm saying is that there's a large chasm between what people think Kiwi Farms is and what it actually is.

habinero · 2 years ago

No. It's the same thing.

And this already happens all the time.

Dylan16807 · 2 years ago

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

Maybe.

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

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

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

chonkerz · 2 years ago

Banning based on complaints by recipients of the calls is also different from banning based on some sort of automated monitoring without any complaints.

Kiwifarms generated complaints.

DharmaPolice · 2 years ago

I've not done a thorough analysis but it seems like most flagging of posters/comments here seems to be done on the basis of conduct rather than opinion. And that's a different matter.

The thought experiment is always; if this person behaved the same way but had a different viewpoint - would they still be banned/flagged/arrested? Mostly I think it's a yes here, which is a good thing.

The problem with a lot of internet posters is they refuse to accept a distinction between conduct and opinion. If you're abusive to everyone and then get banned, it's not because they couldn't handle your radical opinions, it's because you were being a dick.

xigoi · 2 years ago

Direct threats are not free speech.

cf141q5325 · 2 years ago

There is a real chance the next German election might result in an AFD government. Which after years of tribalistic conflict left them in a state where the most extreme positions are in control.

Just thinking that you ought to have those kinds of laws doesnt mean applying them wont result in a tragedy.

Edit: Might have misunderstood your reference. The KPD NSDAP dynamic is often referenced as the "verängstigte Bürgertum". It was quite the popular reference during Pegida, but it has been a common explanation since it happened and isnt just a modern take. The coups during Weimar, and the political reactions to them has to be seen in that light as well. Can recommend Heinrich Hannovers "Politische Justiz 1918–1933" on the atmosphere of the time.

Edit1: His "Die Republik vor Gericht 1954-1995" is also something i would recommend reading for a more realistic view of Western Germany. And Ingo Müllers Furchtbare Juristen. Might be worth reminding people that actual nazis got quite the nice treatment till very recently. The current wave of prosecutions against KZ guards is a historical abnormality, unless the allies actually hung you you got away with a slap on the wrist and in good social standing. Because you were needed against the Soviets. A AFD/CDU might get really bad, there were already CDU politicians during the burning refugee housings in the 90s that argued for more compassion for the drunk piss stained mob.

There was this great picture of a piss stained drunk doing a nazi salute during one of the Pogroms that i cant find on google and bing anymore. But luckily i dont have to worry about such things anymore because everyone means well.

raxxorraxor · 2 years ago

They should indeed support democracy and freedom of expression. That many do not can only be an indictment of the education system. The quite recent turn to listen to your fears and trying to curb wrong opinions very likely made things worse than they could have been.

Vanity and fear set the current strategy and it really does not help.

krapp · 2 years ago

You'd be surprised how much damage can be done to a person within the technical limits of legality.

newsclues · 2 years ago

If you think it’s in societies best interest to filter the internet for people like me, don’t worry about my access to firearms.

I’m not an idiot and I don’t need guns to dedicate all my time to ruining society and destroying infrastructure.

gwright · 2 years ago

I'm not sure if this transitive common carrier approach makes sense.

Wouldn't that mean that every company that used telephony, railroads, airlines, or shipping would have to be behave like a common carrier?

I'm not sure what the correct balance is but I don't think it makes sense to force common carrier status to propagate in the way you seem to be suggesting.

chonkerz · 2 years ago

Compared to 4chan, kiwifarms admins take a more active role in directing and encouraging harassment towards specific targets. it's a lot easier to tie the illegal activity to the site's owner. and the cops don't do shit because internet harassment is a seriously under-prosecuted crime. even the EFF admits that. the only route for victims is to follow the chain of upstreams till they get one that isn't in league with kiwifarms. (kiwifarms' hosting provider is even posting in this thread spreading the same untruths the kiwifarms admin says)

gnopgnip · 2 years ago

4chan, pastebin go beyond the bare minimum legally required. 4chan includes "You will not post or request personal information ("dox") " and pastebin's prohibits content that is "libelous, defamatory, or fraudulent" and "discriminatory or abusive toward any individual or group"

The other difference is the site owner actively encourages harassment and bans any discussion to the contrary