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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 phi

• slg 7y ago
  >The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged. Forums like 8chan and 4chan effectively incubate hate speech by providing a safe space for anonymized, like-minded individuals to congregate, espouse their basest thoughts and feelings and receive gratification for it -all without challenge. Moderate people are repulsed by such forums and the quantity of hate-speech they generate, which further compounds the negative feedback loop. These boards do more than allow this hate to fester. They allow hate to grow as they become a recruiting ground that can radicalize people who never would have fallen into this mindset without these boards. 8chan might be compartmentalized in a way that allows it to become an echo chamber of hate, but it also is highly connect to boards about general topics like video games, TV, and movies. This normalizes the hate and it becomes just another thing to talk about. I would bet a small minority of people who spew hateful things on 8chan sought the site out because of their own hate. Maybe they went there to talk about the new Call of Duty game. Before too long they are ingrained in the whole Gamergate mindset. Then they eventual start hanging out on /pol and before you know it they are a full fledged white nationalist. (A similar thing has been reported about Youtube's recommendation algorithm [1]) This wouldn't happen if the hateful sections of 8chan were sectioned off into their own site. No one accidentally stumbles upon The Daily Stormer and becomes a white nationalist. Just visiting that site genuinely requires a predilection towards hate and a sympathetic ear to white nationalism. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/youtube-radical.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/yo...
  • rexpop 7y ago
    It's not a question of merely "allowing" hatred to grow, as though it were so much yeast on the wind, but of propagating the deliberate inculcation of white supremacism and misogyny, a campaign orchestrated by long-standing institutions of social control.
    • antepodius 7y ago
      What are you on about? 8chan is pretty damn grassroots. The people on /pol/ definitely don't see themselves as backed by the institutions of social control; in their mythology, the insitutions of social control (eg. the mainstream media, Silicon Valley, banks) are all left-wing, "pozzed", and their enemies. They consider themselves a hated minority... because they are. What big institutions are backing 8chan?!
      • rexpop 7y ago
        > In their mythology, the insitutions of social control (eg. the mainstream media, Silicon Valley, banks) are all left-wing This is a classic, authoritarian tactic of misdirection. Here's a report on some of the forces at play: 1. https://datasociety.net/output/media-manipulation-and-disinfo-online/ https://datasociety.net/output/media-manipulation-and-disinf... By the way, they're wrong—although not alone—in thinking that Silicon Valley is "left-wing". This is a convenient smoke-screen, as illuminated here: 1. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideol... I am not sure why we should put much stock in the explicit mythology of a troll army.
        • ALittleLight 7y ago
          I don't want to appear to defend 8chan here - but I don't think your critique is apt. For one, the people on 8chan are absolutely a hated minority. That's largely why they're getting banned from the internet. Mainstream figures aren't coming out in favor of 8chan, they're calling for it's dissolution. Saying you visit or enjoy 8chan in polite company would likely be a faux pas if anyone even knew what you were talking about. Of course, pretending to be a hated minority may be a rhetorical tactic - but that doesn't make it untrue. The Westborough Baptist Church may have experienced enhanced camaraderie from being almost universally reviled - but that doesn't mean they weren't, in fact, almost universally reviled. "Authoritarian" also seems like a poor description. The boards are anti authoritarian in that they have lax moderation. There isn't a punishment for unwanted opinions - you can't be downvoted or shadowbanned. People can't even judge your future posts by the content of your previous posts because everyone is anonymous and without a post history. Banning is by ip only, and easily avoided, and there aren't even accounts to lose. 8chan is much more anarchic than authoritarian. I'm making that claim based on their structure rather than their political ideology. The idea that Silicon Valley is not left wing also strikes me as highly suspect. For example, in the last Presidential election Clinton received 95% of Silicon Valley donations compared to 4% for Trump [1]. There are other, similar reports, for specific companies and different elections, but everything I've seen slowed they skew heavily left. I'm aware that there are conceptions of "left wing" where Clinton wouldn't really count as left wing, but so long as we are discussing American politics I don't think those alternate conceptions are relevant. Clinton is clearly further left than Trump. 1 - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nearly-all-of-silicon-valleys-political-dollars-are-going-to-hillary-clinton/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nearly-all-of-silicon-v...
• _bxg1 7y ago
  Put differently: this is why we can't have nice things
  • rtkwe 7y ago
    Pretty much. It's a problem anyone doing privacy conscious software is going to run into, if it works it will be used by people generally agreed to be morally detestable (eg: child abusers or human traffickers). In a similar vein I think people will need to in general get comfortable with the fact that some technology will be used by bad groups and it will make it harder for law enforcement to catch and stop people but the benefits for everyone else out weighs the downside.
    • bilbo0s 7y ago
      >In a similar vein I think people will need to in general get comfortable with the fact that some technology will be used by bad groups and it will make it harder for law enforcement to catch and stop people but the benefits for everyone else out weighs the downside... Good luck with that. I think we, as a society, may have been taken a bridge too far with the mass shootings. People are no longer interested in hearing about the "down side" of taking these guys out. This should probably have been expected though, you swing the pendulum too far in one direction, it's naturally going to swing back in the other. Just kind of the nature of these things.
      • dragontamer 7y ago
        I mean, these aren't the first mass shootings, and they won't be the last. Every time a mass shooting comes up, there's a big period of sorrow. What makes this mass shooting any different from the last few? Last time, a bunch of children were murdered in their school. In fact, there's so many where children were murdered in their school, that you probably don't even know which one I'm talking about: Columbine, Newton, or Parkland. The status quo is to do nothing about these events. That's the unfortunate truth about our current society. No laws will be pass, nothing in our society will change. We might make a new memorial and write up a new line on the (ever growing) list of mass shootings, but anyone who has been following the news for a few years has become numb to these events years ago. ----------- So 4chan brings down the ban-hammer. That's why 8chan popped up at all. There will be another site where this filth will rot, and plan their next attacks. In the meanwhile, nothing will get done from a legal standpoint. How long do you think it will be before "16chan" (or whatever replacement) pops up, or for 8chan to find a new host? I dunno, I give it about 2 months, tops. And I give it a few weeks before everyone forgets about this event, and is suddenly "surprised again" in the next mass shooting event. We'll get the 1-month writeup, the 1-year anniversary, and then maybe the 5-year and 10-year anniversary as below-the fold newspaper stories to remember this day. But by then, there will be other issues that will make us (largely) forget about this shooting.
• pickle-wizard 7y ago
  Relavent XKCD https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • DocTomoe 7y ago
    Not really relevant, though. If a private platform becomes a systemically important entity that can effectively shut down legitimate public discourse, that is a very dangerous situation. Once a platform is big enough, it essentially becomes government-like in it's ability to surpress speech, and the same rules should apply to it.
• chrisco255 7y ago
  So the solution then, should be to socialize people in such a way that such views do get challenged. The alternatives, where we have gatekeepers like Google and Facebook entirely deciding what is permissible speech, is too far to the other extreme.
  • x86_64Ubuntu 7y ago
    I'm sorry, but are you really saying that Google and Facebook who have gunned no one down, is the counter-extreme to shooting folks up?
    • lixtra 7y ago
      Of course you are misunderstanding the parent. But to go with your interpretation: If you ask the victims of the Arab spring[1], fb is no better than 8chan. Also YouTube did a bad job in containing Islamic state propaganda early on [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Sp... [2] https://www.hsdl.org/c/what-does-isis-post-on-youtube/ https://www.hsdl.org/c/what-does-isis-post-on-youtube/
  • microcolonel 7y ago
    You're assuming these people socialize at all.
    • afiori 7y ago
      they are on a forum, I would say that is a base enough.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • 50656E6973 7y ago
    >So the solution then, should be to socialize people in such a way that such views do get challenged. Which is precisely the opposite of what these major corporate speech platforms are doing by creating filter bubbles and deplatforming wrong thinkers. It's the same as sending small time/non violent criminals to prison to incubate with hardened violent criminals. "We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured." -MLK
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• rnernento 7y ago
  What makes you say it's unchecked though? These are anonymous imageboards where ANYONE can say ANYTHING, there isn't anything stopping you from challenging them? Part of me wonders if we should be taking better advantage of this opportunity to reach out the people posting. Mental illness is clearly in play, but can't we as a society do better? We should be reaching out to these people and at least trying to wrestle them back to sanity. I think if anyone really believes shutting down a bunch of open forums will reduce the number of mass shootings they are delusional. This is a mental health issue AND a gun control issue and that's where we should focus efforts.
  • rebuilder 7y ago
    Have you tried to engage in that kind of discussion? These people use troll tactics. The first rule for them is to attack any attempt to ask for civil discussion.
    • rnernento 7y ago
      Yeah they just downvote you into oblivion so no one can even read what you wrote. Oh wait...
      • howard941 7y ago
        It's not like there are flag events a triggered user can reach for when nothing else satiates that urge to suppress
        • rnernento 7y ago
          I don't understand this comment but would like to.
      • lovehashbrowns 7y ago
        I'm guessing your comment got downvotes because: 1. this is obviously not going to stop the actual issue; calling people delusional over a strawman is pretty disingenuous. 2. Clearly there's mental illness and lack of gun control at play. There are candidates who try to address this in their platform. There are media outlets mentioning/discussing this. People want free healthcare, i.e. free access to mental health resources. 3. Talking to these people over the course of hundreds of years hasn't helped, but you're welcome to stop by *chan and have a logical debate with them. These are people who think their race is being targeted and that their race & culture is being destroyed, so I'm excited to hear the results of your well-reasoned and perfectly-logical debates. While you're having your debates, I'm sure people will be happy to have these extremists congregate on an easily-available website like 8chan (not applicable at the moment, obviously) and also hope they don't have to dodge bullets while they're celebrating garlic, trying to get groceries at walmart, or wherever the next shooter is gonna bring his toys next.
• Rapzid 7y ago
  A major problem IMHO is the conflation of "free speech" the government restriction with its roots in ancient Greece and early democracy with whatever else anyone wants it to mean; typically that people should be allowed to espouse whatever ideas they want without challenge because "free speech".
  • jquery 7y ago
    :s/without challenge/without censorship
• api 7y ago
  This isn't censorship though. It's private companies refusing to host something. Nobody has been arrested for speech and there are no laws prohibiting speech that isn't overtly and specifically threatening or otherwise violates the "fire in a crowded theater" test.
  • mc32 7y ago
    What if one day the government decides it wants to get in the business of offering ‘basic hosting’ for everyone. Would we say, well, no we can’t sensor that, that would be government censorship? My point is I don’t think evaluating it on government/private business is very helpful in determining whether something should be allowed or not.
    • Majromax 7y ago
      > Would we say, well, no we can’t sensor that, that would be government censorship? ... yes? We would say that. That's exactly how we draw the line now. For example, nobody would demand a stadium offer naming rights to the KKK, but the state of Georgia had to allow that organization to "adopt a highway" under its charity-for-recognition program (https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/us/georgia-kkk-adopt-a-highway-lawsuit/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/us/georgia-kkk-adopt-a-highwa...). Ultimately, there is no uncontested free speech right in private conduct. If I am exercising a speech right to (say) rent a billboard for an advertisement, then the owner of that billboard is also exercising one if they give me a discount because I'm advertising kittens for adoption. Once the government gets involved, however, it is often acting with the force of law. That is where we deem free speech rights to be sancrosanct.
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    Censorship is censorship whether it's done by a national government or not. You are conflating the First Amendment with (anti) censorship.
    • tssva 7y ago
      It is censorship, but there is nothing morally wrong with a private organization or person censoring speech on property they own. They have no obligation legally or morally to participate in speech they disagree with. The immoral act would be to force against their will a private organization or person to participate in speech with which they disagree.
• byuu 7y ago
  Several of these extremist sites even forbid and censor attempts at calm, level-headed rebuttals to such hatred. They exist solely to propagate bigotry. The dog and pony show from Google and Cloudflare of only stepping in after multiple mass shootings and tons of press coverage tells you all you really need to know about these companies' ethics. They react to sufficiently bad PR, not out of any set of principles, be they either freedom of speech (keeping these sites online) or reducing harm (deplatforming.)
  • Endy 7y ago
    Yes, it proves that they believe in ethical behavior and recognize that "deplatforming" is very dangerous because you never know when your message will fall out of favor. Only when it provably causes violence should action be taken against speech.
  • manigandham 7y ago
    Censorship rarely, if ever, solves anything. These companies are not crime-fighting services and will have no impact on criminal activity.
    • lonelappde 7y ago
      What is a crime fighting service? More specifically, what is a crime prevention service?
      • manigandham 7y ago
        The police and various other government agencies working to keep citizens safe, and are blessed with the means, motivation and authority to do so.
    • spookthesunset 7y ago
      Too bad this isn't censorship. This is a private company deciding it is unprofitable to do business with somebody.
• ddebernardy 7y ago
  Personally I'm in agreement with Popper's view that societies should tolerate everything except intolerance. It draws a fine line between what's acceptable speech and what is not. And going by it, things like 8chan should get shut down. The line of thought you put forward, by contrast, rubs me in a very wrong way. It was used to justify, depending on the period and country, not allowing people to vote on the basis that they didn't have enough revenue, didn't own enough land, couldn't read and write well enough, etc. Allowing to disenfranchise voters on some arbitrary sophistication basis can and, if history is anything to go by, unfortunately will get abused. It breaks down to: who decides what's sophisticated enough? Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut in a you know it when you see it kind of way.
  • oarabbus_ 7y ago
    You make some great points. Let me also ask you a devil's advocate question. "Let's go to oarabbus_'s house at <DOXXED ADDRESS> and kill him" is not protected speech, correct? I am sure everyone agrees upon this. But "Let's attack folks who are <oarabbus_'s ethnicity> as they are a scourge upon our nation" is protected? Why?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • TacticalTable 7y ago
      That is not protected speech. The 'attack' is the keyword. Therefore, supremacist groups typically say "<oarabbus_'s ethnicity> is destroying <oarabbus_'s country of residence>" which is legal. They're just connecting the dots the only way they know how.
      • rjf72 7y ago
        Yes, it is. The nuance he was intentionally illustrating is the basis of our entire law. The one key exception to freedom of speech is speech that will, with high certainty, provoke "imminent lawless action." And this is something that is interpreted in the most literal and conservative fashion possible. In his former statement he has a specific target, time, and location. It is extremely likely that his behavior will result in imminent unlawful action. By contrast condemning a large group lacks any specificity and is, in and of itself, not likely to suddenly drive any specific unlawful action.
• fromthestart 7y ago
  >The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged. There is no such thing as universally reprehensible speech and, frankly, this is a dangerous line of thought. What is and is not acceptable is fundamentally tied to localized social norms. Further, there is plenty of challenge on these forums, in fact arguably more so than forums like Reddit, because their very nature is antagonistic and contrarian. >Unchecked extremism compounded by more unchecked extremism inevitably leads to scenarios like the ones we’re witnessing more and more often. Terrorism of all flavors existed long before the internet and it's frequency has waxed and waned over the years. The drivers of this very recent trend have far more behind them than simple incubation on forums - like the dismissal of legitimate concerns by demonizing, blanket epithets like "racist" and "xenophobic". The recent growth of populism cannot be explained by the tiny minority of posters on the chans. While the extreme actions of these recent attacks are reprehensible, if you read these manifestos, they highlight genuine problems which are deliberately ignored by "left" leaning politicians and media, although because of today's growing polarization of society, the only discussions of such issues that surface publically are mixed heavily with extreme views and extreme solutions, and the average person begins to equate, say, immigration control, with extremist racism, which is neither rational nor good for society.
• malvosenior 7y ago
  There are other ways to deal with this than censorship. Why are there not FBI agents in /pol/ on 8chan actively chasing up leads on people who are threatening violence? It seems actually useful that these people are willing to make these kind of plans in the public eye. Force them underground and behind encryption and it will be harder to monitor. Does anyone know how law enforcement engages with places like 8chan? Instead of curtailing free speech and pushing for censorship (which will have anti-humanitarian effects soon enough), why not enforce the laws already on the books and investigate people who threaten violence online?
  • _id 7y ago
    > Why are there not FBI agents in /pol/ on 8chan actively chasing up leads on people who are threatening violence? There are. And not only on 8chan.
  • mechamicro 7y ago
    Maybe there will be less monitoring. But with a lack of easily available places to congregate, the assholes will find it much more difficult to recruit, organize, and build their organization. This stagnates or reduces their membership numbers. Also, it sends a great signal to anyone who might think of joining: that this ideology is so terrible that it's being chased off of the internet. That even the hands-off companies like Reddit and Cloudflare are rejecting it. Sure, there will be a few who are attracted to it because it is so reviled, but many more will be repulsed. There's a reason why the hate groups did everything they could to be more appealing to the mainstream. Being forced back into the underground essentially means defeat. As far as monitoring goes, I don't think it will make much of an impact. These are not difficult groups to infiltrate. Generally speaking, they're not the best and the brightest. Their opsec is poor. Activist groups have infiltrated many of them and have posted the discord transcripts. I'm sure the FBI, and other organizations, have gone even further than that.
    • saltminer 7y ago
      >Sure, there will be a few who are attracted to it because it is so reviled, but many more will be repulsed. There's a reason why the hate groups did everything they could to be more appealing to the mainstream. Being forced back into the underground essentially means defeat. This is correct, it's the very essence of the southern strategy. As Lee Atwater once said (censorship mine, dunno HN's policy about this type of language) [0]: >You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-----, n-----, n-----." By 1968 you can't say "n-----" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-----, n-----." If you join a forum and start saying "N-----, n-----, n-----", you'll probably get banned right away. But if you're talking about crime statistics and totally true stories that totally happened to you which just so happen to feature minorities as the antagonists, your dogwhistling might be allowed, and that can serve as a valuable recruiting tactic as people who don't realize it's a dogwhistle read "sources" you provide and fall down a racist rabbit hole. (Even if someone doesn't buy into these ideas right away, planting that seed can bear fruit someday - maybe they've been unsuccessful getting a job for awhile and are really frustrated, then they remember the links they were sent long ago, and suddenly it doesn't seem so unreasonable...) [0]: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#It.27s_about_states.27_rights.21 https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#It.27s_about...
• 49531 7y ago
  > It requires people who are able to fully parse the implications of what they are hearing to make sound and rational judgements on the rejection of an idea or the embrace of it. This is the crux of liberal (classical, libertarian, and contemporary) ideology as a whole. The idea that if only people were enlightened we could have nice things. All in all, it is kind of useless, or utopian. You can't enlighten people, and merely giving them education doesn't do the trick on its own. Liberalism (classical, libertarian, and contemporary) ignores material conditions as a base for which all things are formed, leaving it ill-equipped to handle any real issues. We can hem and haw all day about how "if only the plebs were enlightened" but nothing will change until we make real efforts to change people's material existence. It's easy to turn to fascism and extremism if you have literally nothing going for you in life. I'm not excusing individuals actions, but don't try to solve a systemic problem with individualism if you want anything to actually change.
• lonelappde 7y ago
  > universally That word doesn't mean what you think it means. If it did, censorship wouldn't be relevant. The content you don't like isn't a naturally or accidentally occurring substance. Someone wanted it to exist.
  • olleromam91 7y ago
    You talkin bout God?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• agumonkey 7y ago
  > freedom of speech duty of thinking prior
• asdf333 7y ago
  to put another way, my freedom to swing my fist ends where your nose starts.
• dcolkitt 7y ago
  > My opinion is that freedom of speech is a fine ideal to strive for, but it relies on having a stable society with some minimum level of education (moral and philosophical too, not just the technical kind). It should be noted that the United States at the time of the drafting of the Constitution had way way lower rates of education than today. Even as recently as 1945, the median American only had a 10th grade education. No matter how you measure it, literacy, primary school completion, even intelligence tests, there's no question that the Americans today are significantly more educated than a hundred years ago let alone two hundred. Yes, I know you explicitly said not to focus on "technical" education. But there's no reasonable definition of the term, whereby you can honestly make a case that the America of 1789 was somehow more educated than the the America of 2019. All of which means that you have to bite a bullet. Either the Founding Fathers were wrong to enshrine such strong protections of free speech in our Constitution. OR admit that our citizenry more than meets the threshold you posit regarding minimum level of education.
  • buttcoinslol 7y ago
    Americans in 1789 and 1945 did not have the ability to broadcast their thoughts worldwide for virtually nothing.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • throwawayjava 7y ago
    The United States at the time of the drafting of the Constitution restricted the vote to white male property owners. Even after the constitution, some states restricted voting to white male property owners (about 6% of the population). Even in colonial times, enfranchised citizens were typically at least literate and often well-educated. > Even as recently as 1945, the median American only had a 10th grade education. Again, high school diplomas were more common among the enfranchised population. > But there's no reasonable definition of the term, whereby you can honestly make a case that the America of 1789 was somehow more educated than the the America of 2019. I would be completely unsurprised if voters in 1789 -- white male property owners -- were far more likely to have studied the enlightenment philosophers.
• Alex3917 7y ago
  > Moderate people are repulsed by such forums and the quantity of hate-speech they generate, which further compounds the negative feedback loop. Lots of people are afraid of blood and spiders, but we still have doctors and exterminators. Actually changing other people's opinions doesn't always look like having your friends Like your Facebook posts.
  • saltminer 7y ago
    This is a bad analogy because that's not how free speech havens tend to work out in practice. What happens is you probably have a fairly normal crowd at first, then the racists, anti-semites, etc start stumbling in. Gradually, normal/moderate people leave, especially those who are members of the minority groups the newcomers hate. The local Overton window shifts as moderate voices disappear and dissent becomes more scarce, making the site even less appealing to normal people who stumble across it. >Lots of people are afraid of blood and spiders These are inevitable in life. But you can choose to use a forum that is full of flat-earthers, racists, etc or you can choose to go elsewhere and not have to deal with people harassing you for what you were born as or what you believe in.
• empath75 7y ago
  If 8chan was recruiting people to join al queada in Syria, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. They're a terrorist recruitment site, full stop. Shut them down.
  • DocTomoe 7y ago
    Many future radical islamists get into contact with radical islam through Google. They are a terrorist recuriotment site. Shut them doen.
    • lake99 7y ago
      To anyone who can understand Urdu or Hindi, it's trivially easy to find speeches of terrorist leaders on YouTube. Hundreds of thousands of people have watched instigating speeches of Masood Azhar, Ilyas Ghuman, Israr Ahmad, hundreds of thousands of "likes" on the videos, thousands of appreciative comments.
    • simple_phrases 7y ago
      This is the truth. It's also why Twitter, Google et al censored radical Islamic content and worked with the government to identify extremists.
• RazzleBerryPop 7y ago
  My main issue with this line of reasoning is that it feels largely emotion driven. Even if communities with zero moderation do offer more likely spaces for extremist thoughts to develop and become action, I can't claim I've seen a broad academic consensus that sacrificing current free speech rights would actually solve or otherwise impact the problem in a meaningful way. I don't think communities that turn a blind eye to hatespeech are wholly innocent, especially in light of how many threads downright enourage people thinking of taking violent action, but if we take a step back this doesn't seem wholly different from blaming violent video games for glamorizing gun violence or blaming rap music for gang culture. There's a reason that most people, including racists/bigots/etc. don't go on shooting sprees or run people over with cars. Handwaving the problem as a free speech issue ignores the long spans of time we weren't seeing these trends in spite of having the same rights to speech we have now. I don't know what the right answer is, but censorship affects everybody so it seems like it should be the last solution considered imo.
  • wpietri 7y ago
    Free speech isn't currently threatened here; providers are just exercising their freedom of association. I also think waiting for "academic consensus" to act is not the neutral position it seems. Skepticism in the face of a pressing concern is not neutral, but instead acts to support the status quo. [1] If we don't do something, more people will die. Possibly a lot more people. Academics have documented the dramatic rise in online radicalization. [2] Violent radicals themselves have described how online fora have pushed them towards extremism. So if you're going to argue a wait-and-see approach, I think you have to justify the bodies that will stack up in the meantime. [1] https://twitter.com/jichikawa/status/1134323822096658433 https://twitter.com/jichikawa/status/1134323822096658433 [2] E.g., https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/dp/1786634465/ https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/... and the many resources it points to.
    • afiori 7y ago
      > Free speech isn't currently threatened here; providers are just exercising their freedom of association. This is an empty argument. Literally it can be transposed as saying that not employing people of a certain race is just freedom of association. I do not dispute your point, it is just that this specific claim is meaningless.
• greyfox 7y ago
  based and redpilled.
• wpietri 7y ago
  My main issue with discussions on topics like this is a sort of fundamentalism. It's very easy to take a particular right (e.g., speech, property) and defend it absolutely. But rights are inherently social, and must be balanced against other people's rights. For example, I don't think my freedom of speech should trump Cloudflare's or Voxility's right to freedom of association. They should generally be able to decide who to do business with. However, that freedom also isn't absolute; it was used for decades as part of race and gender discrimination, which impinges upon other people's freedoms. Thus the US theory of protected classes. [1] Or to pick another example, employers should generally be able to hire who they want. But that has been used for religious discrimination, so we protect those people. However, that also isn't absolute; if for religious reasons I won't handle pig products, I'm not entitled to a job at a pork BBQ restaurant. To get reasonable outcomes, we need to welcome nuance and compromise. I encourage everybody to be suspicious of anybody who thinks there's a single clear answer in situations like this. Fundamentalist positions are both appealing and dangerous. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group
  • busymom0 7y ago
    > But rights are inherently social No, the founding fathers specifically said that freedom of speech is a God given right and not something which the government gives to a person, instead the government simply recognizes that right. They specifically said freedom of speech is a "Natural" right. Right to clean water is not a right, right to education is not a natural right in their terms. Right to speech, right to self defense are natural rights.
    • surbas 7y ago
      Not sure they said that... also “founding fathers” are not the be all end all of of what are “rights”. OP is talking about what is called the “social contract”.
    • kirrent 7y ago
      Just because someone uses the word 'rights' doesn't mean they're referring only to the US bill of rights understood in a Thomas Paine-esque 'Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants' manner. Actually, even Thomas Paine considered a right to welfare (including education), so even founding fathers can reasonably disagree.
• WalterBright 7y ago
  Free speech came about in the United States at a time of an unstable and uneducated society, who hardly were able to fully parse the implications, etc.
• devmunchies 7y ago
  > some minimum level of education What a bunch of horse crap. Being told what to think, what to buy, who to vote for, how to feel. If you claim to believe in a liberal democracy but want "education" or limited-speech then you don't have must faith in the system. Democracy has been broken since the rise of technology and mass media. If you control the narrative, you control the people, and the power. The outrage over a shooting and some mean speech is ridiculous compared to the big corporation killing people with opiates or junk food. People have gone soft. It why Aristotle thought democracy was a bad system of government. I don't agree with most hate speech you would see on these forums, but I enjoy seeing it because its an indicator that we haven't become completely neutered by large corporation yet, which is happening.
  • stelonix 7y ago
    I respectfully and vehemently disagree. Hate speech has been proven to be able to convince people by virtue of appealing to their emotions rather than their intellect. It does not make sense to have a society based around human rights, with a point of view where stealing, murdering or otherwise deceiving people is wrong, while at the same time allowing speech which can subvert that same democracy. It's simply not smart. Just like your body has antibodies to prevent outside threats from outright destroying you from the inside (or outside), democracy too requires its defenses in order for it to work. The advent of fake news and social media manipulation should be enough to realize this: the US has a president that questions that validity of its own institutions right now, so does Brazil. Two democracies which have proven deceiving or hateful speech can mean trouble even for citizens who do not have anything to do with such rhetoric. Simply no, full-on free speech does not work and never will. The (anecdotal) fact Europe has some restraints on free speech while sporting arguably more freedoms, as in, freedom to live your life with a lot less chance of some random person killing you because they hide behind some crazy above-anything notion of freedom, should be enough to illustrate what I mean. Speech needs restraint or we need to stop pretending we care about human rights, simple as that.
    • ohithereyou 7y ago
      >Hate speech has been proven to be able to convince people by virtue of appealing to their emotions rather than their intellect. Replace hate speech with advertising and it reads the same.
• ravenstine 7y ago
  If it's "universally" reprehensible, then how would it possibly exist in such prevalence? How would it be that it was hardly reprehensible at all less than 100 years ago? What's reprehensible changes, which is why freedom of speech is necessary, because without it there's no way to fight what's reprehensible without compliance of authority figures or violent revolution. The things you find reprehensible have existed long before 4chan or the 1st Amendment. Allowing a precedence for society to completely ostricize people at every conceivable level is a dark road to go down, especially today when there is no escape from technology. If we put an end to free speech, we may never get an ounce of it back.
• A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  Your argument effectively says: 'people are too stupid to be trusted with their freedom'. I get that this is an unpopular opinion, but bad things will happen if people are to be free.
  • afiori 7y ago
    It is an unpopular opinion because claiming this: > but bad things will happen if people are to be free. is how most genocide got started.
    • A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
      Heh, is that supposed to shut this conversation down? Genocides get started, because people can express themselves freely? Really?
      • afiori 7y ago
        No, genocide happened because people believed that another group would do terrible things if given the opportunity. Not freedom, but the belief that others will misuse their freedom.
        • A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
          Who are those hypothetical people that would do those horrible things given the opportunity. I hate hypotheticals.
          • afiori 7y ago
            Hitler believed Jews were a cancer[1] to Germany and had to be stopped. [1] AFAIK Hitler had a very living image of Germany as a singular ideological organical being and truly though of those he tried to eliminate as a dangerous infection.
            • A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
• rapind 7y ago
  Freedom of speech sucks because you're exposed to every asshat's opinion... but the alternative is worse.
  • AgentME 7y ago
    Is the present alternative, where sites aren't allowed to keep existing (or, assuming they find a new host, "have to switch hosts a few times") after encouraging three ethnic massacres, really worse? Is that specific line really going too far?
    • blockmarker 7y ago
      Do you really want to give Trump the power to choose what is allowed to be said and what isn't?
      • AgentME 7y ago
        I'm talking about this specific line. It's not like this is the first line to be painted about what's allowed on the internet. There are already lines drawn prohibiting hosting child porn and selling illegal drugs online. Neither of those lines caused us to slip down a slope to an overly-censored internet.
        • blockmarker 7y ago
          Medicinal CBD can get you arrested in places. While long ago, alcohol was also prohibited. Also, forbidding drugs was used to oppress African-Americans. None of these things seem to me good. And we are already coming to a more censored internet. Sex work was forbidden with FOSTA. Many mainstream conservative opinions are censored. Opinions which Obama had when president are now considered hate speech and censored. There is more and more censorship.
          • AgentME 7y ago
            This seems equivalent to an argument against the concept of laws in general: "Some good things were outlawed before, so we shouldn't have any laws at all". I don't think that's a good argument for complete lawlessness, and I don't think yours is a good argument for lawlessness on the internet.
• simias 7y ago
  The problem with extremists is that they drive people who disagree with them away. I've been a fairly heavy user of 4chan for well over a decade now, and I even spent some time on 8chan. I like the anarchic, less ego-driven nature of anonymous image boards. You avoid most of the empty posturing from other social networks. I even think that 8chan was a great idea on paper. It's basically 4chan with Reddit's ability to create sub-communities on a whim instead of having to beg the admins to create a new board. I created a few of those myself. But then of course the fascists took over. Admittedly on 8chan is happened almost immediately but on 4chan it was more gradual. Now 8chan is (rightfully IMO) dead and frankly I wouldn't be too sad to see 4chan, or at least some of its more popular boards, go the same way. The /pol/ cancer spreads everywhere, the big boards are 50% shitposting and 50% hate speech. And not in a fun "let's make ironic memes about Hitler to push people's buttons" way but in a rather depressing "I seriously hate women and minorities" way. The more moderate people gets driven away. Actually any sane people would be driven away from this terrible and constant negativity and all you have left are the zealots who feed on each other's extremism. It's not free speech, it's a circular feedback-loop of radicalization. I've genuinely read a (supposedly videogame related) thread yesterday on 4chan where somebody was trying somewhat successfully to appear moderate by saying "I support white nationalists but I don't think we should be killing brown people". How nice. Note that Reddit isn't a whole lot better at handling this, they're just better at hiding it under the rug while posturing in their PR releases.
  • microcolonel 7y ago
    > But then of course the fascists took over. Keep in mind that it's still mostly ironic.
    • happytoexplain 7y ago
      I'm in the same boat as the parent poster in terms of time spent on 4chan and 8chan, and I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic. I understand the nature of irony on the chans, and that a lot of "-ist" comments are "kidding" (to varying degrees of success in terms of comedy and responsibility for the message one is putting out there), but: 1. To be so sure about the numbers seems presumptuous. 2. Does it matter?
• tomohawk 7y ago
  If you think free speech is causing violence, wait to you see what happens when there is no free speech allowed. Mao killed 70 - 150 million people through famine, war, and other means. Censorship with prejudice. Stalin killed 30 - 60 million people. Couldn't stand anyone with a different idea. I could go on, but you get the idea.
  • alkonaut 7y ago
    I don't think Mao or Stalin were ever lacking free speech, and I don't think any of those killed ever voted to abolish it. Saying "look communism bad lots dead" doesn't universally work as an argument.
  • onion2k 7y ago
    8chan being shut down because their server supplied stopped doing business with them isn't an issue of free speech. You're really arguing that the 1st amendment means businesses can't refuse a customer, and that's just silly.
    • trax 7y ago
      What is the customer is gay and the business doesn't want to serve homosexuals? Is the business allowed to do that?
    • mindslight 7y ago
      The comment you're responding to said nothing about "1st amendment". You're the one that brought up that narrow codification of the wider concept of Free Speech.
    • ajxs 7y ago
      Do you think there are any parallels between the bakers who wouldn't make a wedding cake for a gay customer and the company who won't host 8Chan?
  • mindslight 7y ago
    Even with the people having freer speech, state-run media in the US has incited the killing of orders of magnitude more human beings than have been killed by DIY nutjobs. The trend we're witnessing is really the democratization of media-incited violence.
• vowelless 7y ago
  I don’t understand how inciting violence is acceptable free speech. Isn’t that what 8chan did?
  • educationdata 7y ago
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions#Incitement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... > The Supreme Court has held that "advocacy of the use of force" is unprotected when it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and is "likely to incite or produce such action".[2][3] In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction of a Ku Klux Klan group for "advocating ... violence ... as a means of accomplishing political reform" because their statements at a rally did not express an immediate, or imminent intent, to do violence.[4] This decision overruled Schenck v. United States (1919), which held that a "clear and present danger" could justify a law limiting speech. The primary distinction is that the latter test does not criminalize "mere advocacy".[5]
• hestipod 7y ago
  I agree and its disheartening to see the amount of responses in opposition. There is a massive number of comments on this post compared to most social topics, or ANY topic for that matter, and a lot of them are arguing it's wrong or bad to have limits on such behavior. I would suspect many of those arguments are defensive in origin and disingenuous. But for those who aren't personally involved in those behaviors, who opposed limits and rules, I don't know how they imagine a total free for all could work. We need government, structure, rules for society to exist. Otherwise as has been shown when limits are removed, the worst people and of people will ruin it for everyone else. If you could count on people NOT to be terrible it would make all of this a lot easier. You cannot.
• abstractbarista 7y ago
  I should not be obligated to refute another person's speech. I thought silence was not consent. Right? Furthermore, the chans are about as technologically receptive to challenging ideas as is possible: Anyone can post from anywhere through any connection, without fear of harm or censorship.
• Zenst 7y ago
  "Unchecked extremism compounded by more unchecked extremism inevitably leads to scenarios like the ones we’re witnessing more and more often" exactly this. When you have a group of people that are on the extreme of society (think that's the polite way of phrasing that and covers all groups on the edge) and isolate them; Then you end up with them being contained in an echo bubble that amplifies their extremes and increase the odds of some other form of communicating with society that has cut them off in physical ways. Having them there, and allowing such extremes to be questioned, and with that, kept in check. The whole recruit aspect is a mixed one, shut them down, then their words can not spread. But equally they can't be questioned and raises the mystik and that means anybody who is curious will be forced to engage in a phsyical meeting with such people, allowing them to be swayed more easily than somebody engaging with them online, open for all to show the errors. I always thought it is better for such extremes to make themselves known in public, rather than hiding in the shadows. Makes it easier to keep track of them and their state of mind. So however much I disagree a mindset, I'd rather have them in the open and kept in check. What would the solution be. Well, sadly the web really does need some universal age content control that is imposed upon such extreme websites. After all, a young mind should be nurtured for rational debate and not indoctrinated into a fixed mindset. We should at least get that right upon the web now, whilst we can. With that, a safer control of such extreme content is maintained. When history has shown that pushing underground, has more negative outcomes than positive ones. Digital prohibition is not the solution we want happening here.
  • ip26 7y ago
    They aren't being kept in check. 8chan was reportedly not well moderated.
• alexashka 7y ago
  It's hard to discuss ideas that rely on words such as 'reprehensible'. Freedom of speech is not some ideal in isolation. We don't have freedom of food and shelter. Without food and shelter, you die. If receiving food and shelter requires you to censor your speech, you don't have freedom of speech. Almost nobody has freedom of speech, and it's not at all clear why anyone'd want it anyway. I honestly am not interested in most things people say - I want the freedom to be away from people's speech, if anything. Freedom of speech seems to be some ideological distraction in American society - when in reality everyone's interested in freedom of food, shelter and being away from most other people's ability to influence their lives.
• rexpop 7y ago
  It's hardly "freedom of speech" when it's speech deliberately insinuated with propaganda meant to edify the impressionably ignorant towards ideologies which facilitate their propagators' greater authoritarian hold over the dominant discourse and, as such, over individual sovereignty and human autonomy--as is illuminated in these reports by Data and Society: 1. https://datasociety.net/output/media-manipulation-and-disinfo-online/ https://datasociety.net/output/media-manipulation-and-disinf... 2. https://datasociety.net/output/alternative-influence/ https://datasociety.net/output/alternative-influence/
• wtdata 7y ago
  Freedom of speech already existed when society at large was vastly less educated than today.
• Moru 7y ago
  I believe free speech is important but to keep things civil, it has to be open who the message is from. Anywhere anonym messages are allowed quickly deteriorates to *chan levels. We have all seen this in most online games and forums. Human nature is only good if there are some sort of reckoning.
• ogun7 7y ago
  Free speech does not apply in any of these cases. These are all privately owned platforms. The first Amendment protects the populace from the government policing speech.
  • mindslight 7y ago
    How many times is this tr[oi]pe going to be blindly repeated before its promoters bother to look up the definition of free speech and find it's a more general concept than simply the first amendment to the US Constitution? I suppose this misbelief is itself a demonstration that truth and justice do not necessarily prevail in open argument. Still, we are better off with many terrible ideas persisting than to further allow those in power to arbitrate truth.
• espresso_enigma 7y ago
  Is this really about freedom of speech though? We toss that around a lot, but as a law or constitutional right free speech does not exist if your website is hosted on a private company's service. But then, how does free speech apply to the internet? Unless you have servers in your closet, your site will always be hosted on someone else's servers, and even then it will be delivered through networks owned by private companies, etc... Anyway, Cloudflare's blog post on this (which is really worth reading in full) is what made me think of this: > We continue to feel incredibly uncomfortable about playing the role of content arbiter and do not plan to exercise it often. Some have wrongly speculated this is due to some conception of the United States' First Amendment. That is incorrect. First, we are a private company and not bound by the First Amendment. Second, the vast majority of our customers, and more than 50% of our revenue, comes from outside the United States where the First Amendment and similarly libertarian freedom of speech protections do not apply. The only relevance of the First Amendment in this case and others is that it allows us to choose who we do and do not do business with; it does not obligate us to do business with everyone. https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/
• trhway 7y ago
  >Unchecked extremism compounded by more unchecked extremism inevitably leads to scenarios like the ones we’re witnessing more and more often. sounds like blaming free speech when basically a child can get AR-15.
• scottlocklin 7y ago
  Weimar Germany had really strong hate speech laws. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-violence https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...
• odessacubbage 7y ago
  'My opinion is that women's bodily autonomy is a fine ideal to strive for, but it relies on having a stable society with some minimum level of education (moral and philosophical too, not just the technical kind). It requires women who are able to fully parse the implications of what they are hearing to make sound and rational judgements on the rejection of a fetus or the embrace of it. It creates a moral duty for the people who are listening to not only reject, but to actively push back against abortions which are universally understood to be reprehensible.' you either believe in rights or you don't.
  • throwawayjava 7y ago
    Most pro-choice people do believe that education is important to women's (bodily) autonomy. And abortions are not "universally understood to be reprehensible". Only a minority of the country believes that abortion is universally reprehensible, and the rest draw various lines between "universally" and "never". The country is very divided on the morality of abortion. The country is not very divided on the morality of shooting up a WalMart.
    • syrrim 7y ago
      >abortions are not "universally understood to be reprehensible". Some abortions. Late term, say.
      • throwawayjava 7y ago
        No. Not even close. 20 ish percent believe abortion should be legal under all circumstances. IDK what the approval rate is for shooting up WalMarts, but probably a lot closer to 0 than 20...
• vinniejames 7y ago
  "universally understood to be reprehensible" therein lies the problem, there is virtually nothing universally reprehensible across all cultures
• frogpelt 7y ago
  Most of the basis for a free society breaks down when people lose basic morals. Whether you choose to believe in God or not, many of the framers of our Constitution and those who penned the Declaration of Independence believed in the Supreme Judge of the World, the Creator etc. and based their morals upon that belief. When those morals become less than the norm for society, many problems arise.
• swasheck 7y ago
  Interesting thoughts. My impression of the situation is that “freedom of ...” is colloquially internalized as “freedom from consequence.” If society had access to justice on the same terms, then I wonder if things like freedom of speech would be understood in the richer context of personal and societal responsibility.
• mirimir 7y ago
  I generally agree with your opinion about freedom of speech in meatspace. It's more or less been the status quo (at least ideally) in the US. But TFA is about the Internet. And that's a very different thing. It's hugely unstable, and vulnerable to compromise by nation states and commercial interests. So given that, I remain convinced that freedom of speech on the Internet depends fundamentally on technology that resists censorship. That's been the official US position regarding censorship in China etc. The US promotes Tor, and has also funded VPN services, such as Anonymizer. So I see no reason to carve exceptions. Edit: spelling
• the_reformation 7y ago
  The American Constitution argues free speech is a human right, not granted to us by government, but by nature. Even if some all-seeing deity could build a more optimal society by restricting the free speech of some group, this would be a moral wrong because all humans have an inherent right to free speech. Ultimately this isn't very relevant because right to free speech does not mean a right to web hosting infrastructure. But I agree with the Founders; regardless of whether it builds a more/less optimal society, government cannot and should not infringe upon our natural right to free speech. In particular, it protects us from jumping from your hypothesis (that unchecked free speech motivated a mass killing that would have not otherwise happened, which I give a 60-70% probability of being true) to an ironclad law forever removing some liberties from the citizenry.
  • krapp 7y ago
    >The American Constitution argues free speech is a human right, not granted to us by government, but by nature. The American Constitution doesn't argue anything about free speech, define it or make claims about its origin, or even refer to is as a right, much less a "natural" right. It only declares that Congress (explicitly, and exclusively, meaning not even inclusive of any other governing body or private entities) shall not pass laws that abridge "the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble."
    • ElijahLynn 7y ago
      "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment
      • krapp 7y ago
        Yes... I just didn't feel that copying and pasting it in was necessary, as anyone can Google it.
• manmoth 7y ago
  Isn't such a place a good Honeypot though?
• smsm42 7y ago
  > It requires people who are able to fully parse the implications of what they are hearing Where you plan to get such people from? I'm pretty sure nobody is able to "fully parse" implications of anything, for detailed enough definition of "fully", because nobody knows everything now or in the future, and without this it's impossible to "fully" understand implications of anything. Most benign speech could, in certain circumstances, cause huge effects. You can tell an aspiring artist and a war veteran his paintings are mediocre, and he decides to go into politics instead and you've got next Adolf Hitler (yes, I know that's not what actually happened, it's just a theoretical example). Nobody can "fully" know anything. > to actively push back against ideals which are universally understood to be reprehensible. You must be under impression there are a lot of things that are universally understood to be something. What if I told you there aren't and people actually can disagree on pretty much anything? > The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged. No it does not. Somebody speaking something that you don't like does not mean freedom of speech failed, because preserving your personal tranquility and serving your personal preferences has never been a purpose of the freedom of speech. And there's no "universally" reprehensible speech - somebody would always find this speech not reprehensible. The only way you can have a workable definition is by massaging "universally" by excluding more and more people from consideration because their opinion is obviously stupid and doesn't matter - until you find yourself in a bubble that agrees with your opinions and define that as "universal".
• storco 7y ago
  This is a non issue. The first amendment says "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech". It's a limit on government. CloudFlare has no duty to provide 8chan hosting, and their denial of services is very unlikely to be considered discrimination against a protected class. System working as intended.
• baalimago 7y ago
  >espouse their basest thoughts and feelings and receive gratification for it -all without challenge. Yes, this is the problem. There is no challenge to their ideas and thoughts because the conversation/debate has been completely stigmatized that there's no other way to talk about it but anonymously on the far reaches of the internet. Soon it'll be on Tor instead and a terror network will truly form (because they've already gone "so far", why not go further?). The El Paso mass shooting as well as the anonymous chan hatespeech is nothing but a result of a very poorly moderated debateenvironment in the western world. Imagine if these young men had someone to talk to 4 years before they found *chan? Someone who listened and validated their thoughts and fears then, before they grew into these sorts of monsters.
• throwadayaway1 7y ago
  The entire point behind free-speech is that all opinions are allowed to be held and voiced without preconditions. It's not free if it only encompasses things you don't find morally reprehensible.
• loxs 7y ago
  That's exactly what they did to us in communist Bulgaria. Forced education in the politically correct curriculum so that we can be "free" to follow the communist guidelines. And then it collapsed. Currently the western "liberalism" is going in the exactly same direction
• Pimpus 7y ago
  I highly doubt there is more "hate-speech" on right wing 8chan than on left wing Twitter. Also, users are driven to these sites from other social media where even moderate views are often considered "fascist" and can get you banned.
• cotelletta 7y ago
  That's a nice theory. How does the fact that the FBIs own screenshots of the threads, submitted as evidence, show they posted the comments egging people on?
• onetimemanytime 7y ago
  >>Unchecked extremism compounded by more unchecked extremism inevitably leads to scenarios like the ones we’re witnessing more and more often. IMO providers like cell phone, internet and all should be forced not to cut off service based on speech. Thanks to the same Amendment they have the right to choose who they associate with, and 8Chan has the right to broadcast abhorrent (but legal, at least in USA) views. If we allow them to ban 8chan next they'll move to ban even less controversial views as time goes by. A middle ground would be to kinda force them not to ban sites based on content that is legal but controversial. If internet providers ban you for your views, do you exist? Internet providers are as essential as electricity these days. Can PSEG cut power to KKK's headquarters? I doubt it and no one would say that PSEG agrees with their views because they provide electricity to them in exchange for money. Freedom from slaves and women voting was controversial at one point...
• jokoon 7y ago
  If you can make your message visible to thousands of people or (tens of, hundreds of), instantly, for free, I don't think it's playing with the same rules anymore. It's a huge societal breakthrough. Freedom of speech was not an interesting idea before the printing press happened. The internet is another step beyond the printing press. It will require a lot of human thinking and debating before the internet is able to adapt and improve society like the printing press did. China and Russia are often saying that western societies are vulnerable because freedom of speech, but it becomes true only if the internet exists. I personally think that online hate will force society to work on the cause of hate, so in the end society will be more cautious about hateful ideologies, but we might also work on poverty, lack of education and mental illness which are often the cause of hate speech. The population will naturally become more aware of the implication of their extreme opinions, and learn to moderate their speech to let other answers happen. In the end I think we're already benefiting a lot from the internet, it's just that the problems it create are more visible. The problem is malignant anonymity and online trust. Once the internet is more focused on local problems, people will stop behaving like invisible ghosts and will be polite again.
• dangerface 7y ago
  > Moderate people are repulsed by such forums and the quantity of hate-speech they generate, which further compounds the negative feedback loop. As a moderate I am not repulsed by the repulsive, I'm interested in understanding it, and I think all moderates are. People have a fascination with what repulses us look at documentaries about murders, ww2 etc. Todays problem is that moderates can not openly debate the extremists without themselves being labled as an extremist so their arguments can be dismissed, deplatformed and then used as justification for a personal attack.
• turk73 7y ago
  I wholeheartedly disagree. You are an elitist and don't even realize it. There is no such thing as "hate speech" there is only speech you don't like. It's too bad that people today worry so incessantly that somebody, somewhere, might disagree with them. We're on the brink of losing it all because of that. My Grandfather fought in WWI. Actually fought. Made it home alive but died from complications of his wounds. They people who died in that war believed in things like our Constitution and freedom from tyranny. And here is history repeating itself all over again. When you stifle speech, you are going to get that big war all over again, mark my words. People are already lining up just in hopes of getting a single shot at taking down their tormentors. Also, HN is censoring people like me--I get 2 posts a day because my ideas aren't in line with their own. Thing is, my ideas aren't even particularly radical. I mean, free markets? Capitalism? Really? Are we that far gone? Damn I hate this site. What are you going to do after every opinion that is different than yours is eradicated from the Internet? Do you think all these people are just going to roll over and die? There is a seething anger rising all over and you're sleepwalking right into a major conflict over this. But that's what you want, isn't it? You think you can win this, but you can't.
• vgetr 7y ago
  I think there’s a grain of truth to this. However, I would ask a counter-question: by what standard do you define “morality”? Or “hate-speech”? Or “extremism”? What gives one person the right to define it and another to be held accountable to it?
• slothtrop 7y ago
  > Forums like 8chan and 4chan effectively incubate hate speech by providing a safe space The simplest view is that these safe spaces mostly exist because some larger platforms have been turned into safe spaces. However, even on larger platforms, these types form insular groups that are effectively walled gardens within a larger ecosystem (see T_D). The mode of operation appears to be to rally behind safe spaces, then brigade larger platforms when something catches their attention. No real discussion, just bombarding text. It's exceedingly difficult to have honest discussion with those of opposing views because people reward themselves with safe spaces and tend to expect them. Ideally, we could rely on rational discourse to assuage the extremism issue and inoculate. If we shout them down in a given arena, they'll scurry away but never disappear. As I see it, it's a problem of scale. On smaller vbulletin forums you'll more likely see heated, but honest, debate there without any brigades nor bans (depending on modship). A rainbow of opinions. With platforms as large as reddit, censorship is holding all out shit shows at bay.
  • s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    Conservatives have few places to gather. T_D grew large because a displaced group of people finally had a commonly known enough place to gather. T_D was constantly brigaded by other subreddits. Yes T_D members may comment in other subs, but that's there right as users of the site. To my knowledge there was no coordination of all users to brigade. Liberals have nearly the entire internet as a safe-space. It's nice to have a community with similar views, especially political as people are always just looking for confirmation bias, not really willing to debate, so it's too toxic to try all the time.
    • slothtrop 7y ago
      > Yes T_D members may comment in other subs, but that's there right as users of the site. That's not what a brigade is.
      • s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
        Did you read the next sentence? > To my knowledge there was no coordination of all users to brigade. I was in the Discord and an active member during the 2016 election. It was actually really civil, more-so than other political subs. Outsiders aren't as welcome as supporters, but try to be a Trump supporter in the /r/politics sub.
• ribeyes 7y ago
  Making sound and rational judgments requires diverse ideas being available. When large platforms censor free speech, it gets relegated to uncensored platforms which will necessarily comprise the groups eliminated from discourse. Censorship is driven by pressure from the public against advertisers. If the public accepted free speech, platforms wouldn't censor, echo chambers would choke out, and the best ideas shine. Bad ideas can only be challenged by tyranny and free discourse. Which would you rather have?
• nabdab 7y ago
  To sum up your main hypothesis is that freedom of speech + internet communication leads to extremism. I don’t think that model fits very well to actual data. While it’s true that some nations struggling with extremism have both elements, there are also nations with both without issues, and nations without either internet or freedom of speech that still struggle with extremism. I think it’s a very USA centric view, that’s focusing on effects rather than causes. It seems natural that everyone with any strongly held interests will take to the internet to talk about it. Be that extremist views or gardening. But gardening forums don’t cause gardeners.
• Data_Junkie 7y ago
  Ok to make a lighter, not ok to make bombs.