4 ms·

Unfortunately, it has become more than roleplaying several too many times to accept that excuse, and the chan owners and mods have made it pretty clear they don

Unfortunately, it has become more than roleplaying several too many times to accept that excuse, and the chan owners and mods have made it pretty clear they don't consider regulation of the public squares they serve into existence to be their responsibility. I think we're about to learn that the 'net may also interpret incitement to violence risk as damage and route around it.

adamrezich 8y ago
You can't legislate ideas out of existence. Shutting down online venues where certain ideas flourish will do nothing to solve the problem that such an action is presumably trying to solve. Why would you actively push untoward discussion further underground, instead of letting it happen out in the open, on a public website?
- calvinqwerty 8y ago
  Exactly. Occasionally a chan poster will submit that the boards continue to exist because whomever is keeping tabs on the elements is afraid they'll scatter.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Because people vulnerable to radicalization view public websites. The solution of "let it happen in the open" doesn't appear to be working in practice. Underground sites are harder for those unaware of the topic to find (and for policing what goes on on those sites, the US has the FBI and the CIA).
  - kadendogthing 8y ago
    >The solution of "let it happen in the open" doesn't appear to be working in practice. To be more blunt, it in fact has absolutely no evidence. At no point, not once, in this little foray into unrestricted publishing since the dawn of the internet, has "let it die" ever actually worked. It's a techno-libertarian myth that completely ignores human behavior.
  - 0815test 8y ago
    I understand your concern and I'm no fan of terrorist propaganda of any sort, but if you think that hiding some content from the public Internet will prevent these events, you're dreaming. The Columbine shooters weren't "radicalized" by public websites, to our best knowledge. Nor was the perpetrator of the 2012 movie-theater shooting in Colorado.
    - fixermark 8y ago
      It's unlikely that making it hard to reach 8chan / 4chan etc. would impact those shootings, no. But it may very well have had impact on the New Zealand shooting. And the Pittsburgh shooting. In the US, the bar would be pretty high for government action based on this reasoning; a direct link would have to be proven, and either an imminent threat of harm be demonstrated or the media in question be demonstrated to have nothing but illegal activities occuring with it. I don't think 4/8chan raise to this high bar. Other nations? Bar not so high.
  - adamrezich 8y ago
    >Because people vulnerable to radicalization view public websites. Why do you think people should be legally prevented from accessing information? Don't you believe in free will and the idea that everyone should be able to internally decide what is right and wrong for themselves? Or do we want that power to be put in the hands of the state? Where were the accusations of online radicalization and calls for censorship when that one guy shot those Republicans at a baseball practice in 2017[0]? There's definitely no shortage of hyperbolic anti-Republican sentiment, out in the open, on social media platforms even more mainstream than 4chan. Surely if we're banning access to places where the NZ shooter was (allegedly) "radicalized," then we should prevent people like that shooter from being "radicalized" too, right? What's different about the two situations that warrants completely different rhetoric? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...
    - fixermark 8y ago
      Free will is a fascinating hypothesis that is only partially explanatory of observed human behavior. ;) To be less glib: in the US the bar is very high, but we do, in fact, have some things that we've removed from the "free will" discussion. Child pornography is the obvious example.
      - adamrezich 8y ago
        Yes because the process of creating child pornography is harmfully exploitative of a child, and we as a society have decided this one of the worst things anyone could do, so we've made creating, distributing, and accessing child pornography illegal. If someone disagrees with this, they're most assuredly allowed to voice their opinion on it however they see fit, obviously as long as no child pornography is involved. Drawing a parallel between child pornography and untoward politically incorrect discussion out in the open doesn't seem like a very useful comparison, especially when I provided another recent example of a shooting that one could argue was caused by online "radicalization."
        fixermark 8y ago
- unethical_ban 8y ago
  >You can't legislate ideas out of existence. Just like the idea goes "if we make it harder to get guns, we may still have tragedies but fewer", the rationale may go for making it harder to find like-minded hate online. Right now. On your personal computer or through tor, go to 8chan /pol/. It is a cesspool. Where those cesspools exist, publicly searchable and accessible, hate can breed. I know I /want/ them gone, but I'm not sure if I'm okay with it being done by law, because that's a lot of power over the Internet that governments haven't had.

adamrezich 8y ago

You can't legislate ideas out of existence. Shutting down online venues where certain ideas flourish will do nothing to solve the problem that such an action is presumably trying to solve. Why would you actively push untoward discussion further underground, instead of letting it happen out in the open, on a public website?

calvinqwerty 8y ago
Exactly. Occasionally a chan poster will submit that the boards continue to exist because whomever is keeping tabs on the elements is afraid they'll scatter.
fixermark 8y ago
Because people vulnerable to radicalization view public websites. The solution of "let it happen in the open" doesn't appear to be working in practice. Underground sites are harder for those unaware of the topic to find (and for policing what goes on on those sites, the US has the FBI and the CIA).
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  >The solution of "let it happen in the open" doesn't appear to be working in practice. To be more blunt, it in fact has absolutely no evidence. At no point, not once, in this little foray into unrestricted publishing since the dawn of the internet, has "let it die" ever actually worked. It's a techno-libertarian myth that completely ignores human behavior.
- 0815test 8y ago
  I understand your concern and I'm no fan of terrorist propaganda of any sort, but if you think that hiding some content from the public Internet will prevent these events, you're dreaming. The Columbine shooters weren't "radicalized" by public websites, to our best knowledge. Nor was the perpetrator of the 2012 movie-theater shooting in Colorado.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    It's unlikely that making it hard to reach 8chan / 4chan etc. would impact those shootings, no. But it may very well have had impact on the New Zealand shooting. And the Pittsburgh shooting. In the US, the bar would be pretty high for government action based on this reasoning; a direct link would have to be proven, and either an imminent threat of harm be demonstrated or the media in question be demonstrated to have nothing but illegal activities occuring with it. I don't think 4/8chan raise to this high bar. Other nations? Bar not so high.
- adamrezich 8y ago
  >Because people vulnerable to radicalization view public websites. Why do you think people should be legally prevented from accessing information? Don't you believe in free will and the idea that everyone should be able to internally decide what is right and wrong for themselves? Or do we want that power to be put in the hands of the state? Where were the accusations of online radicalization and calls for censorship when that one guy shot those Republicans at a baseball practice in 2017[0]? There's definitely no shortage of hyperbolic anti-Republican sentiment, out in the open, on social media platforms even more mainstream than 4chan. Surely if we're banning access to places where the NZ shooter was (allegedly) "radicalized," then we should prevent people like that shooter from being "radicalized" too, right? What's different about the two situations that warrants completely different rhetoric? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...
  - fixermark 8y ago
    Free will is a fascinating hypothesis that is only partially explanatory of observed human behavior. ;) To be less glib: in the US the bar is very high, but we do, in fact, have some things that we've removed from the "free will" discussion. Child pornography is the obvious example.
    - adamrezich 8y ago
      Yes because the process of creating child pornography is harmfully exploitative of a child, and we as a society have decided this one of the worst things anyone could do, so we've made creating, distributing, and accessing child pornography illegal. If someone disagrees with this, they're most assuredly allowed to voice their opinion on it however they see fit, obviously as long as no child pornography is involved. Drawing a parallel between child pornography and untoward politically incorrect discussion out in the open doesn't seem like a very useful comparison, especially when I provided another recent example of a shooting that one could argue was caused by online "radicalization."
      - fixermark 8y ago
unethical_ban 8y ago
>You can't legislate ideas out of existence. Just like the idea goes "if we make it harder to get guns, we may still have tragedies but fewer", the rationale may go for making it harder to find like-minded hate online. Right now. On your personal computer or through tor, go to 8chan /pol/. It is a cesspool. Where those cesspools exist, publicly searchable and accessible, hate can breed. I know I /want/ them gone, but I'm not sure if I'm okay with it being done by law, because that's a lot of power over the Internet that governments haven't had.