4 ms·

Put differently: this is why we can't have nice things

by _bxg1 7y ago

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.
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      Personally, I believe the change is in what you can't see. FBI counter-terrorism are not the people you want to get the attention of. And these guys just got the attention of federal law enforcement, counter-terrorism, intel and counter-intel in a single weekend. I mean, you gotta be a special kind of stupid to mess up that badly. If it makes you feel any better, yeah, I agree with you. These guys have no intention of making any new laws to come after these threats. My concern is more the fact that they probably have no intention of following any inconvenient laws in coming after those threats either.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - dragontamer 7y ago
        > I mean, you gotta be a special kind of stupid to mess up that badly. You underestimate the depths of depravity of these discussion boards. 8chan is (probably) already strongly monitored due to the proliferation of child porn throughout the site. Its not that they've messed up recently. They've messed up repeatedly and consistently over the past years. Child porn, hate speech, the works. Its all there. FBI knows this, but they are only allowed to move in when the laws provide them the opportunity to move. They can't shut down the site, they can only monitor these anonymous posters (who are probably safe behind many layers of proxies) and maybe try to figure out the troll vs the serious ones. ------------ As I stated before: the laws have to change before the status quo changes. Its that simple. No one will support the FBI raiding private websites on free-speech grounds however, outside of specially select circumstances like child porn. I mean, do you want to talk to white supremacists? Just go to Stormfront or Daily Stormer. Yeah, FBI probably actively monitors them too. There's an entire dark-net out there that the mainstream stays away from. Or what, do you really expect the dark-net to just disappear because of one or two incidents? Daily Stormer was banned from Cloudflare a long time ago, they just found new hosts and carried on business as usual. I'm glad Cloudflare is doing what they can to stop this filth. But Cloudflare is just a small part of the internet, and a real legal solution needs to be created if we really want to fight them. This is a bigger problem than Cloudflare can handle.
- reshie 7y ago
  yep. this is the whole concept of a double edged sword.
- IceWreck 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). Exactly what was happening to mastodon before they made a rule for all sane instances to not federate with neo nazi instances
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    Which ones are the neo Nazi ones? I wasn't aware (on several open ActivityPub nodes) that there were enough that you could pluralize that.
    - antepodius 7y ago
      There's a bunch of free-speech nodes, and the japanese ones.
- asdkhadsj 7y ago
  Agreed. Though, I would also argue that fighting the communication tools and to an extent the hateful speech is a bit fighting the symptom of a larger problem. I think we're bogged down debating the specific problem of hate speech, without discussing why it exists. Mental health, education, and poverty have a material impact on crime; do they also have material impacts on racism? I'd wager yes, but I don't know. Purely fighting 8chan might be akin to fighting one symptom of a larger disease. I fear we're ignoring the causes.
throw7 7y ago
The few always screw it up for the rest.
- briantakita 7y ago
  It's also inexpensive to cultivate or hire agent provocateurs to screw it up for the rest. Given the emotion of the situation & conversation, it's a low risk endeavor, as critical thinking is reduced in mass crisis scenarios.
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    I know this smells a bit too much like conspiracy bacon for many, but you have a valuable point here. At the end of the day, we're talking about an anonymous discussion forum accessible over Tor at the end of the day. It's not just low risk, it's zero risk. There is literally not one single downside for a provocateur. The worst case scenario for them is that they fail. That being said, this was not a case of a provocateur. The author went on a murder spree.
    - briantakita 7y ago
      > but you have a valuable point here Thank you. I appreciate the acknowledgement. > That being said, this was not a case of a provocateur. The author went on a murder spree. People don't just randomly go on murder sprees. I mentioned "cultivate" as somebody can be groomed or espouse a certain form of ethics & ideology that creates this behavior. This can be done with psychological manipulation, propaganda, etc. These manipulated (e.g. "brain-washed") individuals are far more effective at creating panic & division than recruited agent provocateurs, as it apparently places the blame at whatever group of people hold any philosophical position (reasonable or unreasonable) similar to the murderer. While the manifesto mentioned politics, there have been people from different political persuasions that have committed acts of carnage including Dayton, OH or knife/truck attacks in the UK. There's something(s) underlying this & it's more complicated, profound, philosophical, psychological, & (dare I say) spiritual than being "far-right" or "far-left" or "jihadist" or any hasty label that oversimplifies what is occurring.
daenz 7y ago
Thank the Constitution that some of those "nice things" (freedom of speech, for example) are acknowledged as intrinsic rights and not granted to us by the government. So yes, we can have still them, because they cannot be taken away, only infringed upon, regardless of who is spoiling them.

Put differently: this is why we can't have nice things

by _bxg1 7y ago

Put differently: this is why we can't have nice things

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.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Personally, I believe the change is in what you can't see. FBI counter-terrorism are not the people you want to get the attention of. And these guys just got the attention of federal law enforcement, counter-terrorism, intel and counter-intel in a single weekend. I mean, you gotta be a special kind of stupid to mess up that badly. If it makes you feel any better, yeah, I agree with you. These guys have no intention of making any new laws to come after these threats. My concern is more the fact that they probably have no intention of following any inconvenient laws in coming after those threats either.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - dragontamer 7y ago
      > I mean, you gotta be a special kind of stupid to mess up that badly. You underestimate the depths of depravity of these discussion boards. 8chan is (probably) already strongly monitored due to the proliferation of child porn throughout the site. Its not that they've messed up recently. They've messed up repeatedly and consistently over the past years. Child porn, hate speech, the works. Its all there. FBI knows this, but they are only allowed to move in when the laws provide them the opportunity to move. They can't shut down the site, they can only monitor these anonymous posters (who are probably safe behind many layers of proxies) and maybe try to figure out the troll vs the serious ones. ------------ As I stated before: the laws have to change before the status quo changes. Its that simple. No one will support the FBI raiding private websites on free-speech grounds however, outside of specially select circumstances like child porn. I mean, do you want to talk to white supremacists? Just go to Stormfront or Daily Stormer. Yeah, FBI probably actively monitors them too. There's an entire dark-net out there that the mainstream stays away from. Or what, do you really expect the dark-net to just disappear because of one or two incidents? Daily Stormer was banned from Cloudflare a long time ago, they just found new hosts and carried on business as usual. I'm glad Cloudflare is doing what they can to stop this filth. But Cloudflare is just a small part of the internet, and a real legal solution needs to be created if we really want to fight them. This is a bigger problem than Cloudflare can handle.
reshie 7y ago
yep. this is the whole concept of a double edged sword.
IceWreck 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). Exactly what was happening to mastodon before they made a rule for all sane instances to not federate with neo nazi instances
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Which ones are the neo Nazi ones? I wasn't aware (on several open ActivityPub nodes) that there were enough that you could pluralize that.
  - antepodius 7y ago
    There's a bunch of free-speech nodes, and the japanese ones.
asdkhadsj 7y ago
Agreed. Though, I would also argue that fighting the communication tools and to an extent the hateful speech is a bit fighting the symptom of a larger problem. I think we're bogged down debating the specific problem of hate speech, without discussing why it exists. Mental health, education, and poverty have a material impact on crime; do they also have material impacts on racism? I'd wager yes, but I don't know. Purely fighting 8chan might be akin to fighting one symptom of a larger disease. I fear we're ignoring the causes.

throw7 7y ago

The few always screw it up for the rest.

briantakita 7y ago
It's also inexpensive to cultivate or hire agent provocateurs to screw it up for the rest. Given the emotion of the situation & conversation, it's a low risk endeavor, as critical thinking is reduced in mass crisis scenarios.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  I know this smells a bit too much like conspiracy bacon for many, but you have a valuable point here. At the end of the day, we're talking about an anonymous discussion forum accessible over Tor at the end of the day. It's not just low risk, it's zero risk. There is literally not one single downside for a provocateur. The worst case scenario for them is that they fail. That being said, this was not a case of a provocateur. The author went on a murder spree.
  - briantakita 7y ago
    > but you have a valuable point here Thank you. I appreciate the acknowledgement. > That being said, this was not a case of a provocateur. The author went on a murder spree. People don't just randomly go on murder sprees. I mentioned "cultivate" as somebody can be groomed or espouse a certain form of ethics & ideology that creates this behavior. This can be done with psychological manipulation, propaganda, etc. These manipulated (e.g. "brain-washed") individuals are far more effective at creating panic & division than recruited agent provocateurs, as it apparently places the blame at whatever group of people hold any philosophical position (reasonable or unreasonable) similar to the murderer. While the manifesto mentioned politics, there have been people from different political persuasions that have committed acts of carnage including Dayton, OH or knife/truck attacks in the UK. There's something(s) underlying this & it's more complicated, profound, philosophical, psychological, & (dare I say) spiritual than being "far-right" or "far-left" or "jihadist" or any hasty label that oversimplifies what is occurring.

daenz 7y ago

Thank the Constitution that some of those "nice things" (freedom of speech, for example) are acknowledged as intrinsic rights and not granted to us by the government. So yes, we can have still them, because they cannot be taken away, only infringed upon, regardless of who is spoiling them.