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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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?
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.
"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.
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).
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.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ..
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?
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”.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
[+] [-] tepidandroid|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nilkn|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] CydeWeys|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rory096|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|6 years ago|reply
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.
[1] https://clarionproject.org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propagand...
[+] [-] buildzr|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mieseratte|6 years ago|reply
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.
Feel good outrage made things worse.
[+] [-] akerro|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] znpy|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] chroma|6 years ago|reply
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.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabiq_(magazine)
2. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Liberty/Chapter_2
[+] [-] khawkins|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] XaoDaoCaoCao|6 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] fgdaniels|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Pigo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt-attack|6 years ago|reply
Why? Think about what you're saying. Imagine equivalents:
1. We wouldn't allow cell phones that let terrorists communicate
2. We wouldn't allow roads that allow anyone to carry whatever contra-ban they want down them.
3. We wouldn't allow trains that allow just anyone to carry books on whatever topic they want.
4. We can't allow for air that allows two willing participants to communicate using sound waves.
The hubris to imagine that we dare have a say in whether a group of adults date to communicate with each other.
[+] [-] Smithalicious|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] danharaj|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] vorpalhex|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mzs|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] comex|6 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] lr4444lr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khawkins|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|6 years ago|reply
Be extremely careful about drawing conclusions about people based on the books they read or the websites they visit.
This wasn’t a blow against 8chan or 8channers, this was a blow against everyone who reads things on the internet.
[+] [-] DrDimension|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] s9w|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaolti|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|6 years ago|reply
What a sad time
How about the free speech rights of the 22 people who died in El Paso?
[+] [-] thrwayxyz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esoterica|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hacknat|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] boramalper|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] piker|6 years ago|reply
Everyone realizes that. We're past relying on the First Amendment argument.
[+] [-] randallsquared|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HBKXNCUO|6 years ago|reply
Are they also free to only do business with people of certain races? The "private enterprises" line lost its punch about 50 years ago.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DrDimension|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _trampeltier|6 years ago|reply
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 ..
[+] [-] commanderjroc|6 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] commandlinefan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grawprog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FDSGSG|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaolti|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] LargeWu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CM30|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mikedilger|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JulianMorrison|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Darth_Hobo|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] lunias|6 years ago|reply
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... ?
[+] [-] romaaeterna|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] metalgearsolid|6 years ago|reply
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.