17 ms·

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 opin

• not_a_cop75 7y ago
  You could simply say that threat actors that are allowed to post in the open are much more accessible and predictable than ones who do not.
  • IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
    You could say that. But you'd be wrong. There is absolutely no evidence that the 8chan circle-hate happening out in the open has had any mitigating effect. It only made it accessible to even the technically illiterate among the potential audience.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • not_a_cop75 7y ago
      There's no evidence that law enforcement took any action till afterwards, and on multiple occasions. So is the medium to blame or is the clear lack of policing?
• the8472 7y ago
  8chan is a platform allowing any kind of legal content. Pol is just one of them. You also have technology and comic book discussion for example.
  • egypturnash 7y ago
    So imagine you own a bunch of ponds and let groups of people use them. Some people use them for breeding goldfish. Some use them for canoe races. Some for swim meets. But one of the biggest ponds you own lies still and stagnant. A perfect place for mosquitos to lay their eggs. In fact you’ve managed to make it especially hospitable to mosquitos that carry malaria. And all your other ponds are next to it, all your other ponds connect to it. Lots of people who come to your ponds for other things end up with malaria. Should you be allowed to keep operating these ponds?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • the8472 7y ago
      I don't think equating people to mosquitos is a good analogy, it seems dehumanizing the other to me. But let's roll with it anyway. What we have here is actually a large-scale land owner who leases out the land to anyone without further conditions to the lessee. It would seem silly to blame the leaser and not the lessee for what happens on those lands. Of course the government can still come in and request that they do something about the mosquitoes, if laws and regulations require that, but until then they won't become active because it would mean going back on their lease agreements which grant the lessee free use.
    • yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      > Should you be allowed to keep operating these ponds? Are your actions illegal? I don't want pond ownership determined by the moral outage of the day.
      • anigbrowl 7y ago
        Mass murder as a tool of genocide is a bit more than 'the moral outrage of the day'.
• tombert 7y ago
  I think I'm on the same boat as you on this one; I tend to have a pretty libertarian view on free speech, but lately the bizarre rise of hyper-radical idiots on places like 8chan (and even YouTube to a lesser extent) has really made me question these things. It's very easy to shout the mantra of "Free speech!!! OMG!!!" but we gain nothing by acting like there aren't natural consequences to it. By having a liberal free-speech system, you are going to expose glitches in the "marketplace of ideas", and demagogues and radicals are going to be able to exploit it. It might still be worth it (I haven't made up my mind yet on where we draw the line in censorship).
  • sigstoat 7y ago
    > I think I'm on the same boat as you on this one; I tend to have a pretty libertarian view on free speech, but lately the bizarre rise of hyper-radical idiots on places like 8chan (and even YouTube to a lesser extent) has really made me question these things. there have always been hyper-radical idiots. with 8chan and such, you can see them. you're not getting rid of anything, you're just sticking your head into the sand.
    • tombert 7y ago
      > there have always been hyper-radical idiots. with 8chan and such, you can see them. Sure, I'm aware that the KKK existed before the internet. > you're not getting rid of anything, you're just sticking your head into the sand. I didn't claim I was getting rid of anyone or anything. I didn't really claim much at all in my post, but there's a difference between "getting rid" of stuff and deplatforming it. For that matter, how does your logic make any sense? If I hire a hitman to kill someone, could my defense in court be "Well he was going to kill somebody anyway! You're just sticking your head in the sand by blaming me for it!" Is your argument that rhetoric, delivered consistently enough and effectively enough, can't possibly influence people to do reprehensible things?
      • ethbro 7y ago
        However, most southern states still have anti-masking laws on the books specifically to discourage KKK meetings and actions.
• eridius 7y ago
  > it's beyond clear to me that it absolutely had the potential to radicalize shooters and terrorists I mean, it literally radicalized white supremacist terrorists. There's no "had the potential" anymore, it's a fact. It also sounds like it held plenty of child porn, so I don't understand why it took until now for anyone to do anything about the site.
  • javagram 7y ago
    I doubt the CP part is accurate, the government could take the site down in that case (unless they were intentionally leaving it up as a honeypot).
    • dd36 7y ago
      The government sure got Backpage down quick and thoroughly.
      • dwighttk 7y ago
        $$$
      • gamblor956 7y ago
        It only took a decade for the government to get Backpage shut down...
    • duskwuff 7y ago
      I'm afraid that part is largely accurate. While 8ch administrators and global moderators did respond to reports of CP hosted on their site, they handled these reports on a largely reactive basis -- the anonymous-imageboard model used by the site made it impossible to block individual posters in any effective fashion, and I don't believe the site had any way to block specific files from being reposted.
      • luckylion 7y ago
        > I'm afraid that part is largely accurate. So it ran as a honeypot? I understand that 8chan wasn't hosted anonymously, the owners are known. If they provided a safe haven to child pornography, I assume law enforcement would put an end to that very quickly, especially with obvious and easy ways to apprehend the owners. They've been very active and successful in bringing down hidden services, it's not plausible that they looked the other way for a clearnet site.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• bufferoverflow 7y ago
  If you block 8chan, the only thing that it will result in is people will move to more censorship-resistant technologies. You will push people to TOR, distributed P2P, blockchain forums, etc. Which will make even harder to identify them. You can't stop the signal. ThePirateBay proved it many many times. We need to address the sources of the problem, not the symptoms.
  • dd36 7y ago
    Part of the problem is ease of access. Making it harder to get to is good.
    • bufferoverflow 7y ago
      Torrenting isn't exactly easy, but it's insanely popular. Slightly complicated access will only stop some old people. If someone creates an app that connects to some sort of distributed indestructible backend, it's game over, and all you need is an app.
    • blackflame7000 7y ago
      Nobody in the history of the world has been radicalized because it was easy to access. They were radicalized because something they read resonated with something they experienced. People don't just accidentally turn into mass murderers because they read some pamphlet, a lot has to go wrong.
      • anigbrowl 7y ago
        That's an incremental rather than a one-time process. Conventional wisdom on 8ch was that it takes about 2 years.
      • rtkwe 7y ago
        They don't in one step but in this analogy the pamphlet isn't static it constantly changes to show you more of what's engaging to you (or people like you as the algorithm understands you or as you engage more and more with that initial resonance) so that small initial resonance gets cranked up and up and up. It's hard to see how putting up a larger speed bump along that route won't decrease the number of people who get sucked into these radicalization spirals. The internet has shown just how much making that slide easier means way more people fall into it. Used to be to get sucked into a world of neonazi/etc propaganda you had to know one and consciously choose to associate with it but now it gets lightly slipped into discussions online and is easy to find articles taking you to the next step.
• makomk 7y ago
  Perhaps, but I do wonder if it actually mattered all that much whether 8chan encouraged this. There's evidence of contagion in mass shootings, that shooters seem to see the headlines about a shooting and become inspired to imitate it. Maybe there'd always be mass shootings tied to 8chan so long as there were news headlines tying the previous mass shootings to the site and leading future shooters towards it. Those certainly have a much broader reach than anything on the site itself.
• piokoch 7y ago
  It seems that the Ohio gunman claimed to be rather left leaning and wanted sen. Warren to be next president. Probably he hasn't read 8chan but still started shooting. He also claimed to be pro-Satan leftist, whatever it can possibly mean. So, I would say, that both he and large majority of public place murderers, serial killers, etc. are simply very sick people and presence of lack of presence of some random internet site does not make much difference.
• jolmg 7y ago
  I'm not really that well informed of 8chan, but bringing it down, while practical, doesn't seem like the ideal solution. Isn't it just like covering your eyes and pretending the problem isn't there? The problem doesn't sound like it's 8chan, but rather these people and their ideologies. If 8chan was brought down, they'll just find another hub to congregate, but now we don't know where to reach them to talk. I thought the idea expressed by NearlyFreeSpeech.net in the following link was nice: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#TheLongGame https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#TheLongGame
  • lancesells 7y ago
    I don't really know anything about 8chan but my limited experience watching videos on YouTube leads me to believe that there are millions of people being radicalized through technology. Young, angry, possibly under-educated people can easily fall down into a rabbit hole of hate like never before. It's definitely an issue worldwide regardless of race, religion or gender and unfortunately no one has the answer. I don't know if 8chan going down really helps stop radicalization but I don't think it hurts. I also don't think it's an affront to free speech if a hosting provider stops doing business with them. If the US government started arresting posters on 8chan that's most definitely a concern but losing your Cloudflare service or hosting is not breaking any first amendment rights.
  • maccard 7y ago
    > Isn't it just like covering your eyes and pretending the problem isn't there? Not necessarily - more like taking the megaphone away. You're right that some/many will find a hub to congregate in, but if it's discoverable by the current 8chan users, there's no reason to think it won't be discoverable by media outlets/journalists either. Like most things, obfuscation/suppression isn't going to solve the issue, but by providing spaces that allow for discussions, the views can be legitimised in the eyes of people who otherwise may not believe them. I'm for the most part against suppression of speech or views, but I do believe there is a line, and to me 4/8chan can (and do) regularly cross this line.
    • leppr 7y ago
• sneak 7y ago
  > I've read it before, and I spent a few hours reading it this weekend, and it's beyond clear to me that it absolutely had the potential to radicalize shooters and terrorists. What was it you read there that convinced you that websites are capable of turning people into murderers any more than video games are?
  • PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    Do you not think that discussion has the potential to convey ideas and change minds? It hardly seems implausible to say that a group of people eagerly urging each other to murder could possibly result in someone getting murdered.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • orpheline 7y ago
    An implicit acceptance and endorsement for the messages of hate and violence? I personally doubt violent video games turn people into murderers; I suspect they do desensitize people to violence, and normalize violence. That's the problem with 8chan: violence, hated, bigotry, etc are normalized
    • T4NG 7y ago
      >An implicit acceptance and endorsement for the messages of hate and violence? you mean the same thing alot of movies and videogames do also?
• Mr_Shiba 7y ago
  free speech is highly overrated, is not even granted in other democracies that are functional It has also not prevented the US to go into a de-facto oligarchy state if anything the NRA and others have manipulated the "free speech cult" to promote private interest over a public one. Same as with gun ownership, that sad illusion that owning guns will prevent tyranny is beyond hilarious at this point.
• DonHopkins 7y ago
  I've lost good friends to 4chan/8chan. They were obsessed. At first it was cat pictures and memes, but it went way downhill from there. I've watched those sites cause the transition from normal, interesting, reasonable, open minded, intelligent, happy human beings, to horrible inexcusable pieces of shit who I never want to have anything to do with ever again. It's not just that they inspire a few shooters and mass murders. They inspire a hell of a lot of other once-reasonable people to be deeply and irredeemably terrible in many other ways.
  • huduyeue 7y ago
    So you're a bigot who cannot tolerate alternative opinions.
  • api 7y ago
    The 'chans seem almost like a leaderless cult. I've also seen people get completely sucked into them in this really honestly creepy way. I suppose it's like a subculture but minus virtually everything positive like socializing with real human beings and having real experiences.
    • DonHopkins 7y ago
      What's tragic is that they convince cat lovers to post cat pictures on "Caturday", when they should be posting them every day! That needlessly reduces their positive contribution to society to just 14.28% efficiency.
    • lonelappde 7y ago
      It's the same phenomenon as mold. Everything that doesn't like toxicity flees, leaving only those who get trapped and turn into the toxic mold.
      • robocat 7y ago
        You are arguing that we should shut the internet down. To paraphrase GP: everything on the web is one click away.
• 2ion 7y ago
  > thread of support So framing an event and pushing a narrative when one neither likes the frame nor the narrative is now an offence requiring the sacking of media? When mass-media is busy framing and legitimizting the next War On Something it's in the cards again! Hypocrisy. If people can't handle reality, you should accept that not shut it out.
• PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  I've never figured out a good way to express this without sounding like a raving censor, but here goes: I feel like freedom of speech is a means to an end (the end being general freedom and liberty) more than an end in itself. When speech leads directly to mass fear or violence engendering mass fear, which leads to people willingly sacrificing their own and others' rights just for the promise of safety, then bitter realpolitik says that we may need to limit certain kinds of speech to maintain vital freedoms. Of course that's dangerous thinking in itself, because there's always potential for abuse when you let someone decide what people aren't allowed to say. But there has to be a balance somewhere. I hope we can find it.
• notatoad 7y ago
  there is no free speech side of this debate. framing the "other side" as not being free speech is false. the free speech argument is that racist assholes should be allowed to say whatever they want, but cloudflare or voxility or any other service provider should also be allowed to tell 8chan to STFU and go away. that's part of free speech too. 8chan doesn't and shouldn't have any more rights here than cloudflare does.
• Joeri 7y ago
  A person can be sound and rational but people are tribal. It is deep human drive to find a tribe to belong to. What the internet has enabled is forming tribes irrespective of geographic proximity. Sites like 4chan/8chan allow people of radical persuasions to find each other and band together, growing their That creates a powder keg waiting on a fight/flight trigger. Without a tribe to back someone, such a trigger will cause a flight response, but with that tribe they’ll feel emboldened and choose a fight strategy. Sites that encourage the formation of communities that promote violence will inevitably lead to actual violence once they’re past a certain size. It doesn’t even really matter what the ideology is, it just matters that they preach violence.
  • freefolks 7y ago
    There is high chance that most of those in these groups don't even believe in most of the stuff they say. To them its just entertainment. People participate only because its a throwaway identity that is noncommittal. These groups have no leadership or loyalty. I'm sure this is understood a majority of the time by participants. The problem is that one individual who memes way too hard or is absolutely serious about the things they say. Real life friends call you out on your bullshit, they try to reason with you when you are irrational. they stop you from driving when you're drunk. Your internet troll squad does everything opposite.
    • faissaloo 7y ago
      This sentiment is not at all applicable to 8chan, most people are very serious.
      • tfha 7y ago
        I'm not sure that's the case, how are you sure?
        • faissaloo 7y ago
          Because when people are joking they aren't usually willing to get into arguments that span hundreds of posts about race and IQ, the so-called parasitic nature of Jews, race mixing and why every race other than whites (with the ocassional exception of asians) is subhuman.
• faissaloo 7y ago
  Fyi 'the fire rises' is a reference to Bane from Batman
• itomato 7y ago
  The individual has rights to speak and, sing and write freely. If printing, a supplier has no obligation to provide paper or ink or typesetting. The same is true for music producers. Make all the Nazi Punk garage band cassettes you want, but don't expect Jack FM to give you airplay. Good data providers don't want Federal heat or the drag on the public perception.
• Pimpus 7y ago
  Again, as I said in my other comment, this just sounds like a right wing version of Twitter.
• sytelus 7y ago
  I visited 8chan/pol for the first time before it went down. I think reading content there should absolutely make anyone think hard about reasonable constraints on free speech. For example, I saw someone started a thread about population in Nigeria rising. Several anonymous commenters piled on, virtually everyone referring to Africans as “subhumans”. One commenter proposed that western countries should issue tags to hunt Africans in same way as animals and utilize their skills to survive as hunting challenge. Other commenter thanked Trump for shutting down Ebola research and hoped it will soon spread again. It was very clear no one had any rational debate. No one cared to fact check or cross-question anything. You can literally through whatever number and cite whatever source you want and everyone merely would go with it as long as it supports racial superiority. Everyone was busy one upping another in how grotesque and extreme they possibly could be. It is at this point I realized that hate is an addiction. I am certain it gives large dopamine hits for these people to consume all these material. It is probably highlight of their day to justify themselves as savior of humanity, being superior and created favorably by god than others. They probably hang out in here very large portions of their free time not for learning something but for pure entertainment derived dopamine hits. They are neither looking for nor want rational debates or reasoning from the other side. I can see how someone vulnerable will get in to these forums and become terminal addict. These forums should not be considered any less dangerous than drug dealers who handout cocain to young kids.
• latexr 7y ago
  > I've generally been on the free speech side of this debate, as some of my previous comments on HN will show. > With 8chan, I legitimately don't know what my opinion is. You can support free speech and still condemn 8chan, by considering Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance[1]. If a person or group enacts violence on another person or group because of their ideas, the elements of the latter will curb their speech out of fear. Violent groups use “free speech” as an excuse because it works. They’re only interested in free speech for themselves, not others. In fact, they’re so incapable of tolerating the free speech of others that they resort to killing them. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance