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> So, yeah, many of us get a bit worked up when people are kicked off platforms, because they are being silenced, sometimes to the point of being shut out of th

> So, yeah, many of us get a bit worked up when people are kicked off platforms, because they are being silenced, sometimes to the point of being shut out of the modern internet entirely (when their rights to a DNS address are comprehensively removed). Why is it bad that were refusing to let something like stormfront operate in polite society? Your free speech absolutism is dangerous. You can't debate an inherently bad-faith interlocutor, so dealing with Nazis points "out in the open," "in the marketplace of ideas," will not work. It will only legitimize their viewpoint as one worthy of consideration, thus debate. It's cool and good what happened to them.

kortex 6y ago
Such a tough subject. The problem is this tactic is consistently agaisnt many dissident publications, often on pro-democratic ones by autocratic countries. So what/where do you draw the line for "this speech is unacceptable so we won't propagate DNS entries for it", and who draws it? USA? ICANN? The host country? Each DNS gets to pick and choose? Going in the other direction, if this speech is so bad, why don't ISP's just ban the IP? We could do like Youtube automated takedowns, only it's a packet blackhole. At the expense of pushing the satire, what we really need is Deep Packet Free Speech Inspection (tm). All packets are inspected by a blockchain-powered AI in the cloud for acceptibility and lack of Nazi content. All servers which respond to HTTPS must escrow TLS keys to enable Freedom Audits. If allowing an operator to have DNS records or an IP address "legitimizes" them, then we need some full-blown worldwide consortium which determines the (il)legitimacy of each and every domain. Who has votes in this consortium? What if China wants to put the kabash on some Uyghurs because of "Terrorism" but Netherlands want to keep it up. Sounds like a beaurocratic nightmare.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  There's an extremely easy line to draw: "if you run the server, you make the rules". If you run a DNS server, you're free to refuse to carry any record you want. And people are free to use or not use your DNS server, based on its policies. (There are various DNS servers that purport to block ads and malware, for instance.) If you run a blog, you can choose to not allow comments at all, or moderate them as you see fit. If someone wants to reply in a way you don't want to host, they can respond via their own blog. If you run a hosting company, you can (and should) refuse to host spammers, malware, people launching DDoS attacks, and so on. If you run an email server, you can choose to reject spam. Many interesting and desirable policies happen at the meta-level, based on that fundamental principle along with freedom of association. People will choose which servers to use based on the nature and quality of moderation; it's one of the defining aspects of a service.
  - kortex 6y ago
    > People will choose which servers to use based on the nature and quality of moderation; That was literally my entire point. The broader issue is can entity X force entity Y to shut down a service, eg shutting down Stormfront. If one country allows them to stay up, they stay up. This is how the internet is supposed to work. The alternative I pointed out was deliberately dystopian for the point of satire, apparently that was lost.
- ianleeclark 6y ago
  > Sounds like a beaurocratic nightmare Okay, give me the keys and Ill do it.
- AgentME 6y ago
  Domains do get taken down sometimes already without that international bureaucratic nightmare consortium that you're proposing. I'm not sure your solution sounds good.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
You debate an inherently bad-faith interlocutor, not to win the debate with them, but to win the audience. The thing is, something like stormfront is out there, whether twitter or whoever carries them or not. I'd like their drivel to be clearly exposed as drivel, and clearly understood to be drivel by everyone, so that when they get exposed to it in some unexpected way (they follow an innocent-looking link or whatever), then they take one look, think "Oh yeah, that garbage. Yeah, they make it sound good, but it's still trash." That happens when the stuff is publicly challenged and refuted, not when it's hidden away.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  Jean-Paul Sartre called this out half a century ago when faced with the alt-right of his time: >Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
  - magicalist 6y ago
    This is the opposite of what your parent comment is arguing...
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Not entirely. I think you can interact with people doing what Sartre describes, and do so in a way that other people can see what is going on - can see the phoniness and gamesmanship of the anti-Semite. You're not going to persuade people who are playing that game. They're just going to keep playing the game, and enjoy the fact that they're "winning" (in their own terms). But I think you can make it so that they lose in the battle for hearts and minds.

kortex 6y ago

Such a tough subject. The problem is this tactic is consistently agaisnt many dissident publications, often on pro-democratic ones by autocratic countries. So what/where do you draw the line for "this speech is unacceptable so we won't propagate DNS entries for it", and who draws it? USA? ICANN? The host country? Each DNS gets to pick and choose? Going in the other direction, if this speech is so bad, why don't ISP's just ban the IP? We could do like Youtube automated takedowns, only it's a packet blackhole. At the expense of pushing the satire, what we really need is Deep Packet Free Speech Inspection (tm). All packets are inspected by a blockchain-powered AI in the cloud for acceptibility and lack of Nazi content. All servers which respond to HTTPS must escrow TLS keys to enable Freedom Audits. If allowing an operator to have DNS records or an IP address "legitimizes" them, then we need some full-blown worldwide consortium which determines the (il)legitimacy of each and every domain. Who has votes in this consortium? What if China wants to put the kabash on some Uyghurs because of "Terrorism" but Netherlands want to keep it up. Sounds like a beaurocratic nightmare.

JoshTriplett 6y ago
There's an extremely easy line to draw: "if you run the server, you make the rules". If you run a DNS server, you're free to refuse to carry any record you want. And people are free to use or not use your DNS server, based on its policies. (There are various DNS servers that purport to block ads and malware, for instance.) If you run a blog, you can choose to not allow comments at all, or moderate them as you see fit. If someone wants to reply in a way you don't want to host, they can respond via their own blog. If you run a hosting company, you can (and should) refuse to host spammers, malware, people launching DDoS attacks, and so on. If you run an email server, you can choose to reject spam. Many interesting and desirable policies happen at the meta-level, based on that fundamental principle along with freedom of association. People will choose which servers to use based on the nature and quality of moderation; it's one of the defining aspects of a service.
- kortex 6y ago
  > People will choose which servers to use based on the nature and quality of moderation; That was literally my entire point. The broader issue is can entity X force entity Y to shut down a service, eg shutting down Stormfront. If one country allows them to stay up, they stay up. This is how the internet is supposed to work. The alternative I pointed out was deliberately dystopian for the point of satire, apparently that was lost.
ianleeclark 6y ago
> Sounds like a beaurocratic nightmare Okay, give me the keys and Ill do it.
AgentME 6y ago
Domains do get taken down sometimes already without that international bureaucratic nightmare consortium that you're proposing. I'm not sure your solution sounds good.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

You debate an inherently bad-faith interlocutor, not to win the debate with them, but to win the audience. The thing is, something like stormfront is out there, whether twitter or whoever carries them or not. I'd like their drivel to be clearly exposed as drivel, and clearly understood to be drivel by everyone, so that when they get exposed to it in some unexpected way (they follow an innocent-looking link or whatever), then they take one look, think "Oh yeah, that garbage. Yeah, they make it sound good, but it's still trash." That happens when the stuff is publicly challenged and refuted, not when it's hidden away.

three_seagrass 6y ago
Jean-Paul Sartre called this out half a century ago when faced with the alt-right of his time: >Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
- magicalist 6y ago
  This is the opposite of what your parent comment is arguing...
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Not entirely. I think you can interact with people doing what Sartre describes, and do so in a way that other people can see what is going on - can see the phoniness and gamesmanship of the anti-Semite. You're not going to persuade people who are playing that game. They're just going to keep playing the game, and enjoy the fact that they're "winning" (in their own terms). But I think you can make it so that they lose in the battle for hearts and minds.