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Citing 'Censorship' Concerns, North Idaho ISP Blocks Facebook, Twitter

renewiltord 6y ago
> Initially, the company said too many customers had requested the sites be blocked, so it would block them for all customers except for those who called the company and requested access. However, the company backtracked on Monday and said those who didn't request the sites be blocked would still have access. Cool.
- mattigames 6y ago
  So it's only blocking for people who requested such blocking, then the title is just click bait, I guess "ISP let's it's users block websites they dislike" is not as catchy.
  - recursive 6y ago
    So why would they send out an email taking a position on these two sites? And why did that email say that the block applied to all customers? I think they are back-pedaling after seeing the public response.
  - mrzimmerman 6y ago
    The ISP backtracked after saying they'd block it for everyone, which is what the article actually says. I guess "reading the entire article" isn't as catchy as trying to get a quip in the the HN comments.
- dmode 6y ago
  I am super confused. If a user wants to "block" the site, can they not just visit the site ?
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    That requires you to learn about computers and only technocrats like bezos and Tim cook know that stuff.
  - permo-w 6y ago
    I could be completely wrong, I’m no expert on North Idaho corporate politics; however, my thoughts are that the confusion is arising from your assumption that this is a practical move, rather than a political one
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      Northern Idaho politics are decidedly right wing, white supremacist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Nations https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/america-by-the-numbers/episodes/episode-103/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/america-by-the-numbers/episodes/epi... https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/why-idahos-racist-history-matters-part-2#stream/0 https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/why-idahos-racist... https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2012/neo-nazi-builds-north-idaho-compound-replace-defunct-aryan-nations https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/... https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/legacy-hate-specter-north-idahos-past-still-haunts-region#stream/0 https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/legacy-hate-spect...
  - vlunkr 6y ago
    The email says users didn't want it in their internet "feed," so... this is a load of nonsense. I'm highly skeptical that anyone contacted them about blocking facebook in the first place.
  - paxys 6y ago
    The users in question likely wanted the site blocked for everyone, not just themselves.
  - PhaedrusV 6y ago
    It's like people have never heard the word "boycott"
- woadwarrior01 6y ago
  I wonder if the productivity of the people who requested the sites to be blocked went up significantly? :)
  - dna_polymerase 6y ago
    It's quite generous to attribute productivity to people who call their ISP to get a website blocked that they could just stop using.
azianmike 6y ago
Is it not ironic that the ISP is censoring Facebook and Twitter because of claims that Facebook and Twitter are censoring...?
- unstatusthequo 6y ago
  Amusing to me, really. Nobody stands up to Big Tech, so it’s nice to see them get theirs.
  - mrzimmerman 6y ago
    "BiG tEcH" People only use this term when they're mad that they can't call for the hanging of American citizens or the burning down of our government. Amazon, Twitter, FB, Apple, Google—none of them have to tolerate calling for murder and destruction and they aren't going to risk liability by ignoring it and letting people come to harm. If you feel like not being able to call for lynchings of left leaning Americans is curtailing your speech then you need to reflect on why you want Americans dead so badly.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  Considering the location, it seems likely that ideology trumps irony.
  - rwcarlsen 6y ago
    Northern Idaho actually has quite a lot of left-leaning politics/culture. Southern idaho is where all the conservatives live (and the vast majority of people generally).
    - Exmoor 6y ago
      "Northern Idaho" used to be shorthand for "extreme right wing" due to it being the location of the headquarters of the Aryan Nations and location of the Ruby Ridge standoff. Those references are over twenty years old now, so no idea how much that ideology survives there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Weaver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Weaver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge
newacct583 6y ago
Silly and retributory, and per the article a pretty clear violation of Washington State's net neutrality laws. But in context, probably not a bad thing for society.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  > But in context, probably not a bad thing for society. Why do you say that?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bsaul 6y ago
    I guess this way maybe someone in california will realize it's not a great idea to censor people for their political views ?
  - orthecreedence 6y ago
    Probably because Facebook and Twitter provide maybe about an ounce of utility for every ton of pure, unfiltered garbage.
- specto 6y ago
  Agreed! But an ISP should be a dumb pipe, so this is wrong.
  - postalrat 6y ago
    It's their property right? Same arguments I hear for twitter, google, etc censoring.
    - tayo42 6y ago
      It's not if you consider being an isp like a utility. If the power company had a way to shut your power off anytime you tried to access a web site. I also disagree with what the other companies did in the first place is censoring. They're removing rule breakers. You can still share your political views, just don't organize and call for the government to be other thrown because you believe everything you read online. You wouldn't freak out because a child porn distribution platform was turned off and claim it's censored.
recursive 6y ago
So is censoring good or bad? I'm confused.
- starkd 6y ago
  This is the pandora's box that has been opened up.
  - olliej 6y ago
    It really hasn’t been - Twitter, fb, etc have explicit tos disallowing calls for violence, harassment, etc and have just stopped letting prominent people get away with violating those rules.
- olliej 6y ago
  An ISP is a dumb pipe, that’s the other side of their having access to utility poles and use of people land for their cables. Also the suspension/bans of individual people and groups for violating well established ToS by a private company, vs banning entire sites out of petulance with no actual grounds. The obvious follow up is for FB, et al to block the ISP so everyone switches to a different ISP.
- j_m_b 6y ago
  It's all relative and very nuanced. It depends on which team you're on and whose being censored!
- jacobsenscott 6y ago
  Censoring is not good or bad. It is a tool. However, most people would consider this "bad".
- tfehring 6y ago
  I think mirroring free speech standards under the law is probably a good starting point - i.e., censoring is bad by default, but not all speech is protected, and calls for violence and insurrection are a relevant and timely example of non-protected speech. I'll reiterate that this should be a starting point, not necessarily a hard and fast rule - there may be more nuanced situations where the standards that are appropriate for the government are inappropriate for social networks. There's also the question of what levels of the stack it's appropriate for any censorship to occur at. Even if censorship of a particular class of speech is appropriate in general, it may not be appropriate for an ISP specifically to conduct that censorship.
lukewrites 6y ago
Back in the good old days of independent dial-up ISPs, the owner of one of our local ISPs (somehow a logging town had more than one local ISP...crazy to imagine now, isn't it?) found Jesus and decided to filter all traffic for objectionable/"adult" content. They went out of business within the year.
- Sargos 6y ago
  >They went out of business within the year. Ah the good old days where people actually had more than one choice of internet provider. I miss those days.
  - paxys 6y ago
    Yes, good old days of 28 kbps internet.
    - BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
      Back when all ISPs ran over the same shared lines maintained for public use.
l9k 6y ago
Are we starting to see Ajit Pai's dream for Net Neutrality coming to reality?
- PointyFluff 6y ago
  Sure are, Other Barry.
- adamredwoods 6y ago
  Reference: Ajit Pai and background on net neutrality Courts Mostly Back FCC Assault on Net Neutrality https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kx5a9/courts-mostly-back-fcc-assault-on-net-neutrality https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kx5a9/courts-mostly-back-fc...
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
IANAL, so I'm curious: would this count as a breach of contract with its customers? I.e., is an ISP implicitly contracted to route packets between its customers and the entire publicly visible Internet?
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I.e., is an ISP implicitly contracted to route packets between its customers and the entire publicly visible Internet? Plenty of ISPs block certain traffic. Anything from DDOS to torrents.
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    Good point. Still, I'm curious if that's been tested in court. My impression is that some commercial practices can be widespread, and still fail under eventual court challenge. I'm thinking of the U.S. case regarding the advertised-vs-visible diagonal sizes of CRT monitors back in the day.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Beyond existing censorship (i.e. ISPs already block stuff, sadly), there might be an implied contract along those lines e.g. statistically the vast majority of Twitter traffic is people arguing about nonsense not censorship.
- xenocyon 6y ago
  I can't speak to Idaho, but it appears this ISP also serves some areas in eastern Washington (which happens to be my state). As the article says, WA state net neutrality laws explicitly prohibit ISPs from selectively blocking websites so it is pretty slam-dunk illegal.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  Do you have the text of said contract? It's not even a worthwhile thought experiment without it. How can one comment on a possible breach of an unknown contract?
exabrial 6y ago
Good god. What next, I get my power cut off if I donate to the wrong political party?
- reaperducer 6y ago
  What next, I get my power cut off if I donate to the wrong political party? Not any crazier than losing your sponsorship because of something your father said before you were even born. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nascar-auto-racing/thatsracin/article217540295.html https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nascar-auto-racing/...
- dfxm12 6y ago
  As a utility, power is regulated differently from Internet service, so no. If you're genuinely worried about this with regards to your ISP, consider writing to your lawmakers that ISPs should be treated like utilities as well.
jonbronson 6y ago
"You can't censor us, we censor you!" - In all seriousness, this only hurts the ISP's customers. Interesting business tactic. We'll have to see how that plays out.
- Shared404 6y ago
  > Interesting business tactic. We'll have to see how that plays out. I'd be happy if every mainstream ISP does this. Not because I agree to be clear, but because we could use some more competition in the market.
ridaj 6y ago
I'm sure this will go well with their customers /s
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
karmasimida 6y ago
I am not following the logic here. Fighting censorship ... with more censorship ??????
- balozi 6y ago
  Works the same as fighting fascism with even more fascism.
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    Relevant Safely Endangered: https://me.me/i/youre-eating-liberal-ideology-safely-endangered-sweet-jesus-pooh4-thats-3442503 https://me.me/i/youre-eating-liberal-ideology-safely-endange...
- traveler01 6y ago
  Hm... It's the US, nothing makes sense anymore.
- elpocko 6y ago
  How is that censorship? It's a private company, they should be free to choose what kind of content they want to provide.
  - henriquez 6y ago
    Right, and if Facebook and Twitter don’t like it they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and start their own ISPs!
    - elpocko 6y ago
      Looks to me like this kind of reasoning will eventually go all the way up to "they can start their own society", and at some point, it will actually happen. surprised pikachu
  - karmasimida 6y ago
    > It's a private company, they should be free to choose what kind of content they want to provide Censorship is just a classification of what they are doing. In both cases, it is selectively application of blocking of contents based on one's political believes. Calling them censorship is not an assessment whether they have a legal/illegal/legit/reasonable/unreasonable cause to carry out such acts. I just find this approach somewhat ironic.
lxeiqr 6y ago
How ironic. On the serious side, in my opinion fighting censorship with even more censorship is a really terrible idea. BTW, is anyone else getting "You don't have permission to access <URL> on this server" on that page too?
downandout 6y ago
This obviously isn’t the answer. But this is the year that decentralized social media will become mainstream, as a direct consequence of the actions of Facebook, Twitter, and all of the big tech providers that are currently trying to destroy Parler. Telling 150 million people to sit down and shut up because their party happened to lose an election is a really, really bad idea that has no possible good ending for those doing it.
- the_drunkard 6y ago
  > Telling 150 million people to sit down and shut up because their party happened to lose an election is a really, really bad idea that has no possible good ending for those doing it. i do think you mean 74M? anyways i agree with you, it's a recipe for disaster. (and i'm not sure why you're being down-voted here.) it'd be much more healthy to actively engage this cohort of people; allow them to present "facts" as they see fit and offer evidence to either support or refute their views.
- mrlala 6y ago
  >Telling 150 million people to sit down and shut up because their party happened to lose an election is a really, really bad idea How deep are you into things? foxnews crazy, oann crazy, thedonald crazy, or all the way to Q crazy? It's not too far to go back. Your above statement has no basis in reality. If you really want me to take the time to describe why, I'll be glad to.
- orthecreedence 6y ago
  > this is the year that decentralized social media will become mainstream I really hope you're right, but I am also very skeptical. For every centralized platform that a community is cut off from, another centralized platform opens to accept them. And then you have decentralized platforms that specifically build in censorship in the stupidest places [0] in an effort to stave off "rightoids." It seems most of the people building the decentralized platforms aren't actually interested in the merits of open communication or free thought, but rather pushing their inconsistent, amorphous identity politics bullshit down everyone's throats (and I'm saying this as a communist). They bring their ruling-class-approved "us vs them" mentality into the platforms they are building and try to force participants to "bend the knee" or be banished. Sure, you can run your own instance, but why would you on a platform where you're not sure where you stand? Decentralized social media platforms will need to exercise a bit more tolerance before they see mass adoption. I'm excited for things like Holochain though, which might help to turn everything on its head. [0]: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816
BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
> "Our company does not believe a [snip] site has the authority to censor what you see [snip]. This is why [snip] we have made this decision to block these two websites from being accessed" I can't tell if this announcement is parody.
- chrisacky 6y ago
  Do you want more parody... Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/idaho-internet-provider-blocks-facebook-and-twitter/293-867cc22b-fb90-4142-a296-8d800d2a03fb http://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/idaho-internet-provide..." on this server. Reference #18.6e8e7b5c.1610406044.d4bc76a
  - deno 6y ago
    This happens with many US-exclusive websites since GDPR[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17154971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17154971
    - sgtfrankieboy 6y ago
      Which is pretty dumb because the law doesn't apply to them as they are US-exclusive.
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        Do they not claim jurisdiction though? I understand a site not wanting to get involved and just deciding to block off the EU.
      - jtbayly 6y ago
        Lol. I mean, you’re right. The EU can’t make laws that apply to the entire universe like they wish they could and claim they do, but that was the whole point of GDPR. They claim that any company that has dealings with an EU citizen has to follow their laws. Of course they can’t do that. They could have passed a law forbidding their citizens from interacting with businesses that didn’t follow certain rules, since they have the ability to make rules for their citizens, but for some odd reason they decided not to.
pengaru 6y ago
I definitely don't have enough popcorn for the next two weeks.
- balozi 6y ago
  Two weeks? Unfortunately this is now the new normal. All day. Every day.
  - mrlala 6y ago
    Does anyone remember a day when we weren't bombarded by constant insanity? I fucking can't!
paxys 6y ago
These are probably the kind of people Facebook and Twitter are trying to keep off anyways.
fullstop 6y ago
Soon they will all be routing their traffic through a VPN and, without blocking that, they will be unable to block anything else in the future.
yalogin 6y ago
Wy not block google's servers too? They should try that and see what their users say. These enablers of authoritarianism are entrenched in every facet of society. Its sad that we are living in times where lies are so strongly believed.
PointyFluff 6y ago
uhh...
slantedview 6y ago
"Due to censorship, we're going to censor"
boxmonster 6y ago
Pornhub dropped a bunch of content at the behest of MasterCard, so they don't mind their porn being curated. "Recent studies have found that state-level religious and political conservatism is positively associated with various aggregate indicators of interest in pornography. " https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023120908472 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231209084...
- bduerst 6y ago
  I believe pornhub was under fire for not moderating user-submitted content, which was allowing child pornography and other exploitive content to get through. No matter stance you take on it, the CESTA amendment to 230 protections holds pornhub accountable, meaning they nuked all their non-verified user content.
wnevets 6y ago
This will end well for this ISP
devindotcom 6y ago
FYI if you read on in the twitter thread cited by the story, this has been walked back as bad communication by the company. They say they intended to allow any customer who wants FB and Twitter to be blocked by the ISP to reply to that email and that's what would happen. Not that it would be universally blocked for all customers. Owner does not seem to be the best communicator, he admits this and says in his defense it has been three days of nonstop emails and calls that he answers even in the middle of the night. So maybe he's not thinking clearly. Still, pretty ridiculous.
- hundchenkatze 6y ago
  Sure, they can try to claim that now. It's pretty clear that they blocked it for everyone and people have email them to be whitelisted. "So we have a solution if you or your family would still like to be able to connect to Facebook or Twitter please let us know and we can add you to the allowed list to be able to not be blocked [...]"
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    That isn't a miscommunication. There are two phrases in that sentence with the same intent.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- bawolff 6y ago
  Lol, that makes even less sense
- munificent 6y ago
  No, their initial email is clear that they will be blocking the sites for all customers unless the customer asks it to be unblocked.
  - godshatter 6y ago
    From what I gather, they apparently blocked FB and Twitter because they were getting too many customers asking them to block those sites. It was presumably less time consuming to block them all than to handle all those requests individually. Until it blew up, anyway. Suddenly they are losing business and scrambling to enable it for those that want it, so they backtracked on it. They could have saved a lot of time and anguish if they had simply said "no" to those who originally wanted them blocked.
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
Haha. Censor the censors. Classic stupidity.
afrcnc 6y ago
Rednecks at their racist best
ajarmst 6y ago
Serious question if there's anyone with an appropriate background in the relevant law: how does this play with net neutrality and FCC regulation if the ISP is blocking Facebook and Twitter but not their competitors? It's not a free speech issue, but are there any fair dealing and business regulations that would come into play? In Canada, where ISPs are usually treated like public utilities, I believe that this would not be permitted, but I don't know the current state of Net neutrality in the US.
- 20after4 6y ago
  Net neutrality isn't a thing anymore in the USA.
johnchristopher 6y ago
> Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/idaho-internet-provider-blocks-facebook-and-twitter/293-867cc22b-fb90-4142-a296-8d800d2a03fb http://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/idaho-internet-provide..." on this server. Reference #18.4c4fXXXXXXXXXXX Eh, from Europe.
- samizdis 6y ago
  You should be able to read it here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/citing-censorship-concerns-north-idaho-internet-provider-blocks-facebook-twitter/ar-BB1cEPdE https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/citing-censorship-...
  - johnchristopher 6y ago
    Thanks.
syntaxing 6y ago
Uhh aside from the censorship topic, I’m not sure if you can argue that ISP == some website. To be honest, I’m not sure why ISP aren’t regulated as utilities.
LeicaLatte 6y ago
Curious to know if ISPs inspect user agent. Can they block iPhones and Androids from accessing their internet?
- jimktrains2 6y ago
  For non-tls connections they could. Some examples of isps meddling with unencrypted connections: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh https://thenextweb.com/insights/2017/12/11/comcast-continues-to-inject-its-own-code-into-websites-you-visit/ https://thenextweb.com/insights/2017/12/11/comcast-continues...
duxup 6y ago
I honestly think when many people talk about censorship being bad...they only worry if their own ideas are censored.
soledades 6y ago
How will everybody know what to be angry about??
sonotmyname 6y ago
FTA - way down toward the bottom: >In a phone call with KREM, the owner of the company, Brett Fink, again said the websites would only be blocked for customers who asked. >"We've had customers asked to be blocked by it. That is what the email was about, so no we are not blocking anybody, only the ones that have asked for it," Fink said. So the entire premise of the article up to that point, as well as the article's subtitle are based on a non-event. -- edited for formatting
- mrzimmerman 6y ago
  > Initially, the company said too many customers had requested the sites be blocked, so it would block them for all customers except for those who called the company and requested access. However, the company backtracked on Monday and said those who didn't request the sites be blocked would still have access. They have a screen shot of the email that says they'd block it for everyone and if you want it unblocked you'd have to call and ask for that. It's a report of an entire event, from start to finish, not just the part where the ISP realized they were making a mistake and decided to change their mind.
tamaharbor 6y ago
The United States is now Communist China.
an-allen 6y ago
I can imagine every single business in North Idaho that engages, markets, and even sells items online via Facebook and/or Twitter called them and said - (a) I don't believe that two-thirds of your customers called you asking to ban Twitter and Facebook (b) At no point would we have ever signed a contract with you if you had the right to eliminate our right to do business for no cause or fault of our own and (c) we would like to cancel our service.
javajosh 6y ago
Scopes monkey trial, part 2.
oraphalous 6y ago
Can I challenge the argument of self-contradiction being made by many here? (disclaimer - I'm not advocating for / against the action either way). In civisilised society / discourse one must assume rules of engagement in order for co-operative interaction between agents to take place. To take an extreme demonstration - if you club me over the head and steal my meat while I approach you to trade, then a co-operative interaction cannot take place; physically so. If we impose the additional rule that we must continue to observe those rules of engagement with agents who themselves have ignored them - then it's pretty clear (at least in the extreme example) that we expose ourselves to exploitation. And many philosophies and cultures do impose this rule (Christianity - for example). In the process of discourse - it's plausible to argue that the ability to express oneself is one such rule of engagement. So, this ISP might feel that FB etc have broken the rules of engagment, and they might feel that they are under no obligation to adhere to those rules for agents that themselves aren't playing ball. Now you can challenge this line of thinking on all sorts of interesting grounds - and I encourage folks to do so. However - the discussion gets nuanced fast... I don't think you can just claim this action as prima-facie self contradictory - and to do so, I feel exposes the bias and lack of generosity in those attempting understand this action.
- twelfthnight 6y ago
  Sadly I think this is at the heart of all of the recent political debates. That is, many folks on each side believe the other has broken the rules of engagement. Many years ago I knew a congressperson who was deathly afraid of this happening (they pointed out a few "nuclear options" each party had for consolidating power). We're at a critical juncture where change is inevitable, let's hope we wind up in a better place than we were before.
  - dfxm12 6y ago
    Can you elaborate on your understanding of all the sides involved and which rules they felt were broken?
    - twelfthnight 6y ago
whatsmyusername 6y ago
I'm sure both their customers will be highly upset.
salawat 6y ago
Game theory mode: Tit-for-Tat Welp, it's a race to the bottom of the tech stack now.
im3w1l 6y ago
I have a philsophical defence of this not being censorship: The essence of censorship is to restrict access to information. This is harmful and dangeroues when powerful people use it to hide inconvinient information. Blocking a website is not necessarily censorship. Blocking an online casino, or a place to buy drugs, this is not censorship. Now where does blocking facebook fall in this distinction. If you block it to hide information, then it is censorship. If you block it because of privacy reasons it is not censorship. This case is not as clear cut as either of those examples, but I would still say the motivation is not to hide information, and so not call it censorship. But having said that, this is an action by a small isolated ISP. They are completely powerless compared to facebook or twitter. They only thing this amounts to is a symbolic statement of disapproval. It is not surprising that they are now backtracking as if they kept it up, they would have started losing customers. Finally if ISP's start blocking websites it will quickly turn ugly, and I hope this does not happen.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  The timing to me makes this clearly playing a political game of chicken. I wonder how many more people threaten to take their ball and go home, and who blinks and walks this back first. Edit: it seems the ISP is walking this back already.
- tqi 6y ago
  > But having said that, this is an action by a small isolated ISP. They are completely powerless compared to facebook or twitter. While true on a global scale, internet access is not exactly a super competitive market. I think any one ISP likely has significant local power over individuals who live in their service area.
bawolff 6y ago
Who'd of thunk that this would be why we need net neutrality
imgabe 6y ago
Well why should they be forced to carry content they disagree with, right? And if they're the only ISP in town, well I guess that's just too bad. As a corporation they have unlimited freedom to censor what their customers see.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Likely not the only ISP in town. T-mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc.
KorematsuFred 6y ago
Did you put a hole in your boat ? I will teach you a lesson by putting an even bigger hole in my own boat.
PhaedrusV 6y ago
Aaaaand moral high ground: lost
rhplus 6y ago
The difference here is that an ISP is common carrier (or whatever the equivalent term is in telecoms) and Facebook/Twitter are publication platforms.
- LordFast 6y ago
  Utilities vs. Media
zermelo 6y ago
The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance. c/o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance my comment: There is no automated way to define justice and tolerance. You can't take a shortcut from thinking.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
twelfthnight 6y ago
In the book "Moral Tribes", Joshua Greene outlines a great point that rights are not arguments. I think the Facebook/Twitter censorship issue demonstrates this pretty clearly. Rights always have some context and without specifying that context, they can be used to justify almost anything. For example, depending on whether I'm under oath or not reasonably determines whether I can be persecuted for lying or not. Personally I think it makes sense for Twitter and Facebook to use their power to prevent Trump's false claims about election fraud, especially given the harm it appears to be fostering [1]. That said, I believe there are many good faith arguments about why censorship in this instance could be harmful to the aims of a free society. However, I don't believe "right of free speech" or "censorship is always bad" are good arguments, instead I would like to see arguments about the purported benefits/harms to society of this censorship. [1] I'm not the arbiter of truth here, there are many court cases affirming no voter fraud and the recent Capitol Building invasion is demonstration of the potential harm.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
loosetypes 6y ago
Curious about some of the would be logistics here. This would’ve just been for web browsers pointing directly to facebook’s website, right? Not necessarily other Facebook-owned companies? What about Facebook ads/tracking on the pages of Facebook customers?
beached_whale 6y ago
Oh nice, their contract locks you in too. I suspect they will be in court soon to stop this policy
psadauskas 6y ago
Can I get my ISP (Comcast) to do the same? I think we'd all be better off.
jjflamingo 6y ago
Interesting to see the mental gymnastics here from people that praised AWS/Google/Apple pulling Parler and it's servers down now decrying the move by this ISP while maintaining some sense of objectivity or at least trying not to appear hypocritical. An ISP is only slightly upstream from being a cloud provider. An ISP is another private company with its own ToS; for example, your ISP does not allow you to distribute copyrighted material on torrent services (am I only the only one that's ever gotten that letter/email?). I'll try to preemptively address some points I think people will try to make: - AWS booted Parler because of calls to violence, Twitter moderates its content There are still endless violence inciting tweets on Twitter and they, too, are an AWS customer. AWS arbitrarily drew a line over what is enough moderation and what isn't, and then invoked its ToS. You can be on whatever side you like, but you can't say that it isn't still some human decision. AWS could boot Twitter off or it could keep Parler. They are a private company and they made a choice. This ISP should be afforded the same rights. - Internet is more like a utility, it should be treated like a water pipe Then the government can come in and socialize it. Until then its just another private service. I agree that the internet is now more important than it was 25 years ago, but we as a society haven't made that determination yet. At what point do we include cloud providers as a utility that should be managed by the state for the public's interest? AWS is over half of the cloud market share and cloud hosting is an increasingly more important service for innovation than it was 25 years ago (if it even existed at all in 1996). - Parler can just go spin up there own servers Ok, great. What is stopping Facebook or Twitter from running their own internet service? - Internet infrastructure was partially publicly subsidized and/or funded Still privately held and operated. Furthermore, its not like Facebook/Twitter/AWS were not without their own government grants, subsidies, etc. The mayor of San Francisco gave Twitter huge tax breaks to be HQ'd within the city. They are still at their discretion to boot people off of their platforms.
annoyingnoob 6y ago
Our public schools need to do a better job of teaching critical thinking skills. American society really seems to lack in critical thinking.
punnerud 6y ago
From Karl Popper (1945): “(..) we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.“ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
jeppesen-io 6y ago
> the company states that two-thirds of customers asked for Twitter and Facebook to be blocked. I really don't see how that's possible
throwawa3495 6y ago
isnt the irony here that with net neutrality in place an ISP wouldnt be able to block FB, TWTR?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
permo-w 6y ago
I’m starting to get a bit tired of so many posts at the top of HN being in some way tangentially related to this question of “should social media companies have the power to censor politicians?” I know it’s a hugely important question that’ll have repercussions for years to come, and I know if you want an intelligent debate on the matter, HN is probably the best place for it, but politics sincerely gives me stress, and I use Hacker News because it is (or was) one of the few places that generally avoids it I’m of the position that the human brain isn’t really geared for dealing with dangers on a geopolitical level This is a little amateur psychologyish, but when you perceive danger, the brain releases chemicals that won’t let you rest until you’re convinced you’re free of that danger - the fight or flight response. So far this is essentially common wisdom, but - and here’s where I stray into the region of am-psych - I suspect that our unconscious mind finds it difficult to distinguish between immediate dangers and threats to our life, and geopolitical dangers that, while important, are rarely a threat to your life The problem, for me, lies in the fact that in the news media, with a few exceptions (Reuters, BBC News), and social media, with almost no exceptions, the political content which rises to the top is the content that is most capable of triggering that response in you If this wasn’t the case, then it would be okay, as the content would be easy to avoid, but I am weak to it, most of us are. The news media has what’s getting on for centuries of practice in triggering these emotions, triggering your unconscious mind to chemically scream at you to fight or run. Who am I to withstand that? What I think this means is that if you keep up with politics consistently, and allow it in, you will either be in a near constant state of fight or flight, or you will become numb. Either state, while both useful in certain circumstances, is not pleasant. It’s not conducive to a happy life. It’s stress or jade So this is my impassioned plea to the mods: Please prune back the constant political content. It’s unhealthy, it’s not what I’m here for, and, I suspect, although I may be wrong, that others feel the same way. Of course, if this comment gets heavily downvoted, (assuming people even read it) then I accept that I am simply in the minority, and that’s okay
smsm42 6y ago
People: Twitter/Amazon/Google is a private company, they are free to act as they please and nothing can (or should) be done about it! Same people: ISP blocking Twitter is not acceptable, regulatory action must be taken immediately! Please Net Neutrality regulators, come save us and ensure equal playing field (but only at the ISP level, ignore all the rest!)
annoyingnoob 6y ago
You can stand on public property and say whatever you want. You can stand on your own property and say whatever you want. You cannot stand on my property and say whatever you want. No need to confuse public and private property. There is no law that protects you from the social consequences of your speech.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Unless they have liberal (hah...) TOS, this is straightforward breach of contract. No one pays money to post or read FB and Twitter and participation is voluntary. But if I pay money to an ISP and the ISP decides that I can't access certain web services for what are essentially random (political) reasons with no legal justification beyond "We don't like them" - there's a good chance that's not going to end well if it gets to court.
julianmarq 6y ago
The comments here confuse me. Over the past months/years, I've read many a comment here insisting that whatever Facebook/Twitter/etcetera allow or don't allow in their platforms is absolutely not censorship[1]... But a significant amount of the comments in this post are saying that this move is "fighting censorship with more censorship", which is, by itself, tacitly saying that what the social media companies do is indeed censorship. For the record, I don't think that twitter or facebook banning/blocking whatever they want is censorship[2], legally speaking... And neither is this, for the same reasons. [1]: And some others who don't care and go as far as to say that censorship is okay and free speech doesn't work, among other things. [2]: Unethical, manipulative, a betrayal of the spirit if not the law of "free speech"? Totally, but still not censorship.
greyhair 6y ago
So some contingent of customers demands that their ISP block some sites, for all customers, or they are going to boycott. SO basically, your fucktard neighbors decide to censor what you are allowed to see on the internet. Until the blocked customers get all up in arms, and the ISP backtracks and says "whoa, will add you to a white list". How about the fucktards just install pihole at home and block Facebook and Twitter themselves? You could always subscribe to a VPN service and bypass the shitshow.

> Initially, the company said too many customers had requested the sites be blocked, so it would block them for all customers except for those who called the company and requested access. However, the company backtracked on Monday and said those who didn't request the sites be blocked would still have access. Cool.

mattigames 6y ago
So it's only blocking for people who requested such blocking, then the title is just click bait, I guess "ISP let's it's users block websites they dislike" is not as catchy.
- recursive 6y ago
  So why would they send out an email taking a position on these two sites? And why did that email say that the block applied to all customers? I think they are back-pedaling after seeing the public response.
- mrzimmerman 6y ago
  The ISP backtracked after saying they'd block it for everyone, which is what the article actually says. I guess "reading the entire article" isn't as catchy as trying to get a quip in the the HN comments.
dmode 6y ago
I am super confused. If a user wants to "block" the site, can they not just visit the site ?
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  That requires you to learn about computers and only technocrats like bezos and Tim cook know that stuff.
- permo-w 6y ago
  I could be completely wrong, I’m no expert on North Idaho corporate politics; however, my thoughts are that the confusion is arising from your assumption that this is a practical move, rather than a political one
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    Northern Idaho politics are decidedly right wing, white supremacist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Nations https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/america-by-the-numbers/episodes/episode-103/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/america-by-the-numbers/episodes/epi... https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/why-idahos-racist-history-matters-part-2#stream/0 https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/why-idahos-racist... https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2012/neo-nazi-builds-north-idaho-compound-replace-defunct-aryan-nations https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/... https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/legacy-hate-specter-north-idahos-past-still-haunts-region#stream/0 https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/legacy-hate-spect...
- vlunkr 6y ago
  The email says users didn't want it in their internet "feed," so... this is a load of nonsense. I'm highly skeptical that anyone contacted them about blocking facebook in the first place.
- paxys 6y ago
  The users in question likely wanted the site blocked for everyone, not just themselves.
- PhaedrusV 6y ago
  It's like people have never heard the word "boycott"
woadwarrior01 6y ago
I wonder if the productivity of the people who requested the sites to be blocked went up significantly? :)
- dna_polymerase 6y ago
  It's quite generous to attribute productivity to people who call their ISP to get a website blocked that they could just stop using.

azianmike 6y ago

Is it not ironic that the ISP is censoring Facebook and Twitter because of claims that Facebook and Twitter are censoring...?

unstatusthequo 6y ago
Amusing to me, really. Nobody stands up to Big Tech, so it’s nice to see them get theirs.
- mrzimmerman 6y ago
  "BiG tEcH" People only use this term when they're mad that they can't call for the hanging of American citizens or the burning down of our government. Amazon, Twitter, FB, Apple, Google—none of them have to tolerate calling for murder and destruction and they aren't going to risk liability by ignoring it and letting people come to harm. If you feel like not being able to call for lynchings of left leaning Americans is curtailing your speech then you need to reflect on why you want Americans dead so badly.
rootusrootus 6y ago
Considering the location, it seems likely that ideology trumps irony.
- rwcarlsen 6y ago
  Northern Idaho actually has quite a lot of left-leaning politics/culture. Southern idaho is where all the conservatives live (and the vast majority of people generally).
  - Exmoor 6y ago
    "Northern Idaho" used to be shorthand for "extreme right wing" due to it being the location of the headquarters of the Aryan Nations and location of the Ruby Ridge standoff. Those references are over twenty years old now, so no idea how much that ideology survives there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Weaver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Weaver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge

newacct583 6y ago

Silly and retributory, and per the article a pretty clear violation of Washington State's net neutrality laws. But in context, probably not a bad thing for society.

X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
> But in context, probably not a bad thing for society. Why do you say that?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bsaul 6y ago
  I guess this way maybe someone in california will realize it's not a great idea to censor people for their political views ?
- orthecreedence 6y ago
  Probably because Facebook and Twitter provide maybe about an ounce of utility for every ton of pure, unfiltered garbage.
specto 6y ago
Agreed! But an ISP should be a dumb pipe, so this is wrong.
- postalrat 6y ago
  It's their property right? Same arguments I hear for twitter, google, etc censoring.
  - tayo42 6y ago
    It's not if you consider being an isp like a utility. If the power company had a way to shut your power off anytime you tried to access a web site. I also disagree with what the other companies did in the first place is censoring. They're removing rule breakers. You can still share your political views, just don't organize and call for the government to be other thrown because you believe everything you read online. You wouldn't freak out because a child porn distribution platform was turned off and claim it's censored.

recursive 6y ago

So is censoring good or bad? I'm confused.

starkd 6y ago
This is the pandora's box that has been opened up.
- olliej 6y ago
  It really hasn’t been - Twitter, fb, etc have explicit tos disallowing calls for violence, harassment, etc and have just stopped letting prominent people get away with violating those rules.
olliej 6y ago
An ISP is a dumb pipe, that’s the other side of their having access to utility poles and use of people land for their cables. Also the suspension/bans of individual people and groups for violating well established ToS by a private company, vs banning entire sites out of petulance with no actual grounds. The obvious follow up is for FB, et al to block the ISP so everyone switches to a different ISP.
j_m_b 6y ago
It's all relative and very nuanced. It depends on which team you're on and whose being censored!
jacobsenscott 6y ago
Censoring is not good or bad. It is a tool. However, most people would consider this "bad".
tfehring 6y ago
I think mirroring free speech standards under the law is probably a good starting point - i.e., censoring is bad by default, but not all speech is protected, and calls for violence and insurrection are a relevant and timely example of non-protected speech. I'll reiterate that this should be a starting point, not necessarily a hard and fast rule - there may be more nuanced situations where the standards that are appropriate for the government are inappropriate for social networks. There's also the question of what levels of the stack it's appropriate for any censorship to occur at. Even if censorship of a particular class of speech is appropriate in general, it may not be appropriate for an ISP specifically to conduct that censorship.

lukewrites 6y ago

Back in the good old days of independent dial-up ISPs, the owner of one of our local ISPs (somehow a logging town had more than one local ISP...crazy to imagine now, isn't it?) found Jesus and decided to filter all traffic for objectionable/"adult" content. They went out of business within the year.

Sargos 6y ago
>They went out of business within the year. Ah the good old days where people actually had more than one choice of internet provider. I miss those days.
- paxys 6y ago
  Yes, good old days of 28 kbps internet.
  - BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
    Back when all ISPs ran over the same shared lines maintained for public use.

l9k 6y ago

Are we starting to see Ajit Pai's dream for Net Neutrality coming to reality?

PointyFluff 6y ago
Sure are, Other Barry.
adamredwoods 6y ago
Reference: Ajit Pai and background on net neutrality Courts Mostly Back FCC Assault on Net Neutrality https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kx5a9/courts-mostly-back-fcc-assault-on-net-neutrality https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kx5a9/courts-mostly-back-fc...

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago

IANAL, so I'm curious: would this count as a breach of contract with its customers? I.e., is an ISP implicitly contracted to route packets between its customers and the entire publicly visible Internet?

reaperducer 6y ago
I.e., is an ISP implicitly contracted to route packets between its customers and the entire publicly visible Internet? Plenty of ISPs block certain traffic. Anything from DDOS to torrents.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  Good point. Still, I'm curious if that's been tested in court. My impression is that some commercial practices can be widespread, and still fail under eventual court challenge. I'm thinking of the U.S. case regarding the advertised-vs-visible diagonal sizes of CRT monitors back in the day.
mhh__ 6y ago
Beyond existing censorship (i.e. ISPs already block stuff, sadly), there might be an implied contract along those lines e.g. statistically the vast majority of Twitter traffic is people arguing about nonsense not censorship.
xenocyon 6y ago
I can't speak to Idaho, but it appears this ISP also serves some areas in eastern Washington (which happens to be my state). As the article says, WA state net neutrality laws explicitly prohibit ISPs from selectively blocking websites so it is pretty slam-dunk illegal.
dfxm12 6y ago
Do you have the text of said contract? It's not even a worthwhile thought experiment without it. How can one comment on a possible breach of an unknown contract?

exabrial 6y ago

Good god. What next, I get my power cut off if I donate to the wrong political party?

reaperducer 6y ago
What next, I get my power cut off if I donate to the wrong political party? Not any crazier than losing your sponsorship because of something your father said before you were even born. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nascar-auto-racing/thatsracin/article217540295.html https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nascar-auto-racing/...
dfxm12 6y ago
As a utility, power is regulated differently from Internet service, so no. If you're genuinely worried about this with regards to your ISP, consider writing to your lawmakers that ISPs should be treated like utilities as well.

jonbronson 6y ago

"You can't censor us, we censor you!" - In all seriousness, this only hurts the ISP's customers. Interesting business tactic. We'll have to see how that plays out.

Shared404 6y ago
> Interesting business tactic. We'll have to see how that plays out. I'd be happy if every mainstream ISP does this. Not because I agree to be clear, but because we could use some more competition in the market.

ridaj 6y ago

I'm sure this will go well with their customers /s

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

karmasimida 6y ago

I am not following the logic here. Fighting censorship ... with more censorship ??????

balozi 6y ago
Works the same as fighting fascism with even more fascism.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Relevant Safely Endangered: https://me.me/i/youre-eating-liberal-ideology-safely-endangered-sweet-jesus-pooh4-thats-3442503 https://me.me/i/youre-eating-liberal-ideology-safely-endange...
traveler01 6y ago
Hm... It's the US, nothing makes sense anymore.
elpocko 6y ago
How is that censorship? It's a private company, they should be free to choose what kind of content they want to provide.
- henriquez 6y ago
  Right, and if Facebook and Twitter don’t like it they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and start their own ISPs!
  - elpocko 6y ago
    Looks to me like this kind of reasoning will eventually go all the way up to "they can start their own society", and at some point, it will actually happen. surprised pikachu
- karmasimida 6y ago
  > It's a private company, they should be free to choose what kind of content they want to provide Censorship is just a classification of what they are doing. In both cases, it is selectively application of blocking of contents based on one's political believes. Calling them censorship is not an assessment whether they have a legal/illegal/legit/reasonable/unreasonable cause to carry out such acts. I just find this approach somewhat ironic.

lxeiqr 6y ago

How ironic. On the serious side, in my opinion fighting censorship with even more censorship is a really terrible idea. BTW, is anyone else getting "You don't have permission to access <URL> on this server" on that page too?

downandout 6y ago

This obviously isn’t the answer. But this is the year that decentralized social media will become mainstream, as a direct consequence of the actions of Facebook, Twitter, and all of the big tech providers that are currently trying to destroy Parler. Telling 150 million people to sit down and shut up because their party happened to lose an election is a really, really bad idea that has no possible good ending for those doing it.

the_drunkard 6y ago
> Telling 150 million people to sit down and shut up because their party happened to lose an election is a really, really bad idea that has no possible good ending for those doing it. i do think you mean 74M? anyways i agree with you, it's a recipe for disaster. (and i'm not sure why you're being down-voted here.) it'd be much more healthy to actively engage this cohort of people; allow them to present "facts" as they see fit and offer evidence to either support or refute their views.
mrlala 6y ago
>Telling 150 million people to sit down and shut up because their party happened to lose an election is a really, really bad idea How deep are you into things? foxnews crazy, oann crazy, thedonald crazy, or all the way to Q crazy? It's not too far to go back. Your above statement has no basis in reality. If you really want me to take the time to describe why, I'll be glad to.
orthecreedence 6y ago
> this is the year that decentralized social media will become mainstream I really hope you're right, but I am also very skeptical. For every centralized platform that a community is cut off from, another centralized platform opens to accept them. And then you have decentralized platforms that specifically build in censorship in the stupidest places [0] in an effort to stave off "rightoids." It seems most of the people building the decentralized platforms aren't actually interested in the merits of open communication or free thought, but rather pushing their inconsistent, amorphous identity politics bullshit down everyone's throats (and I'm saying this as a communist). They bring their ruling-class-approved "us vs them" mentality into the platforms they are building and try to force participants to "bend the knee" or be banished. Sure, you can run your own instance, but why would you on a platform where you're not sure where you stand? Decentralized social media platforms will need to exercise a bit more tolerance before they see mass adoption. I'm excited for things like Holochain though, which might help to turn everything on its head. [0]: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816

BugsJustFindMe 6y ago

> "Our company does not believe a [snip] site has the authority to censor what you see [snip]. This is why [snip] we have made this decision to block these two websites from being accessed" I can't tell if this announcement is parody.

chrisacky 6y ago
Do you want more parody... Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/idaho-internet-provider-blocks-facebook-and-twitter/293-867cc22b-fb90-4142-a296-8d800d2a03fb http://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/idaho-internet-provide..." on this server. Reference #18.6e8e7b5c.1610406044.d4bc76a
- deno 6y ago
  This happens with many US-exclusive websites since GDPR[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17154971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17154971
  - sgtfrankieboy 6y ago
    Which is pretty dumb because the law doesn't apply to them as they are US-exclusive.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      Do they not claim jurisdiction though? I understand a site not wanting to get involved and just deciding to block off the EU.
    - jtbayly 6y ago
      Lol. I mean, you’re right. The EU can’t make laws that apply to the entire universe like they wish they could and claim they do, but that was the whole point of GDPR. They claim that any company that has dealings with an EU citizen has to follow their laws. Of course they can’t do that. They could have passed a law forbidding their citizens from interacting with businesses that didn’t follow certain rules, since they have the ability to make rules for their citizens, but for some odd reason they decided not to.

pengaru 6y ago

I definitely don't have enough popcorn for the next two weeks.

balozi 6y ago
Two weeks? Unfortunately this is now the new normal. All day. Every day.
- mrlala 6y ago
  Does anyone remember a day when we weren't bombarded by constant insanity? I fucking can't!

paxys 6y ago

These are probably the kind of people Facebook and Twitter are trying to keep off anyways.

fullstop 6y ago

Soon they will all be routing their traffic through a VPN and, without blocking that, they will be unable to block anything else in the future.

yalogin 6y ago

Wy not block google's servers too? They should try that and see what their users say. These enablers of authoritarianism are entrenched in every facet of society. Its sad that we are living in times where lies are so strongly believed.

PointyFluff 6y ago

uhh...

slantedview 6y ago

"Due to censorship, we're going to censor"

boxmonster 6y ago

Pornhub dropped a bunch of content at the behest of MasterCard, so they don't mind their porn being curated. "Recent studies have found that state-level religious and political conservatism is positively associated with various aggregate indicators of interest in pornography. " https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023120908472 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231209084...

bduerst 6y ago
I believe pornhub was under fire for not moderating user-submitted content, which was allowing child pornography and other exploitive content to get through. No matter stance you take on it, the CESTA amendment to 230 protections holds pornhub accountable, meaning they nuked all their non-verified user content.

wnevets 6y ago

This will end well for this ISP

devindotcom 6y ago

FYI if you read on in the twitter thread cited by the story, this has been walked back as bad communication by the company. They say they intended to allow any customer who wants FB and Twitter to be blocked by the ISP to reply to that email and that's what would happen. Not that it would be universally blocked for all customers. Owner does not seem to be the best communicator, he admits this and says in his defense it has been three days of nonstop emails and calls that he answers even in the middle of the night. So maybe he's not thinking clearly. Still, pretty ridiculous.

hundchenkatze 6y ago
Sure, they can try to claim that now. It's pretty clear that they blocked it for everyone and people have email them to be whitelisted. "So we have a solution if you or your family would still like to be able to connect to Facebook or Twitter please let us know and we can add you to the allowed list to be able to not be blocked [...]"
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  That isn't a miscommunication. There are two phrases in that sentence with the same intent.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bawolff 6y ago
Lol, that makes even less sense
munificent 6y ago
No, their initial email is clear that they will be blocking the sites for all customers unless the customer asks it to be unblocked.
- godshatter 6y ago
  From what I gather, they apparently blocked FB and Twitter because they were getting too many customers asking them to block those sites. It was presumably less time consuming to block them all than to handle all those requests individually. Until it blew up, anyway. Suddenly they are losing business and scrambling to enable it for those that want it, so they backtracked on it. They could have saved a lot of time and anguish if they had simply said "no" to those who originally wanted them blocked.

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

Haha. Censor the censors. Classic stupidity.

afrcnc 6y ago

Rednecks at their racist best

ajarmst 6y ago

Serious question if there's anyone with an appropriate background in the relevant law: how does this play with net neutrality and FCC regulation if the ISP is blocking Facebook and Twitter but not their competitors? It's not a free speech issue, but are there any fair dealing and business regulations that would come into play? In Canada, where ISPs are usually treated like public utilities, I believe that this would not be permitted, but I don't know the current state of Net neutrality in the US.

20after4 6y ago
Net neutrality isn't a thing anymore in the USA.

johnchristopher 6y ago

> Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/idaho-internet-provider-blocks-facebook-and-twitter/293-867cc22b-fb90-4142-a296-8d800d2a03fb http://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/idaho-internet-provide..." on this server. Reference #18.4c4fXXXXXXXXXXX Eh, from Europe.

samizdis 6y ago
You should be able to read it here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/citing-censorship-concerns-north-idaho-internet-provider-blocks-facebook-twitter/ar-BB1cEPdE https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/citing-censorship-...
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  Thanks.

syntaxing 6y ago

Uhh aside from the censorship topic, I’m not sure if you can argue that ISP == some website. To be honest, I’m not sure why ISP aren’t regulated as utilities.

LeicaLatte 6y ago

Curious to know if ISPs inspect user agent. Can they block iPhones and Androids from accessing their internet?

jimktrains2 6y ago
For non-tls connections they could. Some examples of isps meddling with unencrypted connections: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh https://thenextweb.com/insights/2017/12/11/comcast-continues-to-inject-its-own-code-into-websites-you-visit/ https://thenextweb.com/insights/2017/12/11/comcast-continues...

duxup 6y ago

I honestly think when many people talk about censorship being bad...they only worry if their own ideas are censored.

soledades 6y ago

How will everybody know what to be angry about??

sonotmyname 6y ago

FTA - way down toward the bottom: >In a phone call with KREM, the owner of the company, Brett Fink, again said the websites would only be blocked for customers who asked. >"We've had customers asked to be blocked by it. That is what the email was about, so no we are not blocking anybody, only the ones that have asked for it," Fink said. So the entire premise of the article up to that point, as well as the article's subtitle are based on a non-event. -- edited for formatting

mrzimmerman 6y ago
> Initially, the company said too many customers had requested the sites be blocked, so it would block them for all customers except for those who called the company and requested access. However, the company backtracked on Monday and said those who didn't request the sites be blocked would still have access. They have a screen shot of the email that says they'd block it for everyone and if you want it unblocked you'd have to call and ask for that. It's a report of an entire event, from start to finish, not just the part where the ISP realized they were making a mistake and decided to change their mind.

tamaharbor 6y ago

The United States is now Communist China.

an-allen 6y ago

I can imagine every single business in North Idaho that engages, markets, and even sells items online via Facebook and/or Twitter called them and said - (a) I don't believe that two-thirds of your customers called you asking to ban Twitter and Facebook (b) At no point would we have ever signed a contract with you if you had the right to eliminate our right to do business for no cause or fault of our own and (c) we would like to cancel our service.

javajosh 6y ago

Scopes monkey trial, part 2.

oraphalous 6y ago

Can I challenge the argument of self-contradiction being made by many here? (disclaimer - I'm not advocating for / against the action either way). In civisilised society / discourse one must assume rules of engagement in order for co-operative interaction between agents to take place. To take an extreme demonstration - if you club me over the head and steal my meat while I approach you to trade, then a co-operative interaction cannot take place; physically so. If we impose the additional rule that we must continue to observe those rules of engagement with agents who themselves have ignored them - then it's pretty clear (at least in the extreme example) that we expose ourselves to exploitation. And many philosophies and cultures do impose this rule (Christianity - for example). In the process of discourse - it's plausible to argue that the ability to express oneself is one such rule of engagement. So, this ISP might feel that FB etc have broken the rules of engagment, and they might feel that they are under no obligation to adhere to those rules for agents that themselves aren't playing ball. Now you can challenge this line of thinking on all sorts of interesting grounds - and I encourage folks to do so. However - the discussion gets nuanced fast... I don't think you can just claim this action as prima-facie self contradictory - and to do so, I feel exposes the bias and lack of generosity in those attempting understand this action.

twelfthnight 6y ago
Sadly I think this is at the heart of all of the recent political debates. That is, many folks on each side believe the other has broken the rules of engagement. Many years ago I knew a congressperson who was deathly afraid of this happening (they pointed out a few "nuclear options" each party had for consolidating power). We're at a critical juncture where change is inevitable, let's hope we wind up in a better place than we were before.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on your understanding of all the sides involved and which rules they felt were broken?
  - twelfthnight 6y ago

whatsmyusername 6y ago

I'm sure both their customers will be highly upset.

salawat 6y ago

Game theory mode: Tit-for-Tat Welp, it's a race to the bottom of the tech stack now.

im3w1l 6y ago

I have a philsophical defence of this not being censorship: The essence of censorship is to restrict access to information. This is harmful and dangeroues when powerful people use it to hide inconvinient information. Blocking a website is not necessarily censorship. Blocking an online casino, or a place to buy drugs, this is not censorship. Now where does blocking facebook fall in this distinction. If you block it to hide information, then it is censorship. If you block it because of privacy reasons it is not censorship. This case is not as clear cut as either of those examples, but I would still say the motivation is not to hide information, and so not call it censorship. But having said that, this is an action by a small isolated ISP. They are completely powerless compared to facebook or twitter. They only thing this amounts to is a symbolic statement of disapproval. It is not surprising that they are now backtracking as if they kept it up, they would have started losing customers. Finally if ISP's start blocking websites it will quickly turn ugly, and I hope this does not happen.

mattnewton 6y ago
The timing to me makes this clearly playing a political game of chicken. I wonder how many more people threaten to take their ball and go home, and who blinks and walks this back first. Edit: it seems the ISP is walking this back already.
tqi 6y ago
> But having said that, this is an action by a small isolated ISP. They are completely powerless compared to facebook or twitter. While true on a global scale, internet access is not exactly a super competitive market. I think any one ISP likely has significant local power over individuals who live in their service area.

bawolff 6y ago

Who'd of thunk that this would be why we need net neutrality

imgabe 6y ago

Well why should they be forced to carry content they disagree with, right? And if they're the only ISP in town, well I guess that's just too bad. As a corporation they have unlimited freedom to censor what their customers see.

ketamine__ 6y ago
Likely not the only ISP in town. T-mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc.

KorematsuFred 6y ago

Did you put a hole in your boat ? I will teach you a lesson by putting an even bigger hole in my own boat.

PhaedrusV 6y ago

Aaaaand moral high ground: lost

rhplus 6y ago

The difference here is that an ISP is common carrier (or whatever the equivalent term is in telecoms) and Facebook/Twitter are publication platforms.

LordFast 6y ago
Utilities vs. Media

zermelo 6y ago

The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance. c/o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance my comment: There is no automated way to define justice and tolerance. You can't take a shortcut from thinking.

deleted 6y ago

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twelfthnight 6y ago

In the book "Moral Tribes", Joshua Greene outlines a great point that rights are not arguments. I think the Facebook/Twitter censorship issue demonstrates this pretty clearly. Rights always have some context and without specifying that context, they can be used to justify almost anything. For example, depending on whether I'm under oath or not reasonably determines whether I can be persecuted for lying or not. Personally I think it makes sense for Twitter and Facebook to use their power to prevent Trump's false claims about election fraud, especially given the harm it appears to be fostering [1]. That said, I believe there are many good faith arguments about why censorship in this instance could be harmful to the aims of a free society. However, I don't believe "right of free speech" or "censorship is always bad" are good arguments, instead I would like to see arguments about the purported benefits/harms to society of this censorship. [1] I'm not the arbiter of truth here, there are many court cases affirming no voter fraud and the recent Capitol Building invasion is demonstration of the potential harm.

deleted 6y ago

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loosetypes 6y ago

Curious about some of the would be logistics here. This would’ve just been for web browsers pointing directly to facebook’s website, right? Not necessarily other Facebook-owned companies? What about Facebook ads/tracking on the pages of Facebook customers?

beached_whale 6y ago

Oh nice, their contract locks you in too. I suspect they will be in court soon to stop this policy

psadauskas 6y ago

Can I get my ISP (Comcast) to do the same? I think we'd all be better off.

jjflamingo 6y ago

Interesting to see the mental gymnastics here from people that praised AWS/Google/Apple pulling Parler and it's servers down now decrying the move by this ISP while maintaining some sense of objectivity or at least trying not to appear hypocritical. An ISP is only slightly upstream from being a cloud provider. An ISP is another private company with its own ToS; for example, your ISP does not allow you to distribute copyrighted material on torrent services (am I only the only one that's ever gotten that letter/email?). I'll try to preemptively address some points I think people will try to make: - AWS booted Parler because of calls to violence, Twitter moderates its content There are still endless violence inciting tweets on Twitter and they, too, are an AWS customer. AWS arbitrarily drew a line over what is enough moderation and what isn't, and then invoked its ToS. You can be on whatever side you like, but you can't say that it isn't still some human decision. AWS could boot Twitter off or it could keep Parler. They are a private company and they made a choice. This ISP should be afforded the same rights. - Internet is more like a utility, it should be treated like a water pipe Then the government can come in and socialize it. Until then its just another private service. I agree that the internet is now more important than it was 25 years ago, but we as a society haven't made that determination yet. At what point do we include cloud providers as a utility that should be managed by the state for the public's interest? AWS is over half of the cloud market share and cloud hosting is an increasingly more important service for innovation than it was 25 years ago (if it even existed at all in 1996). - Parler can just go spin up there own servers Ok, great. What is stopping Facebook or Twitter from running their own internet service? - Internet infrastructure was partially publicly subsidized and/or funded Still privately held and operated. Furthermore, its not like Facebook/Twitter/AWS were not without their own government grants, subsidies, etc. The mayor of San Francisco gave Twitter huge tax breaks to be HQ'd within the city. They are still at their discretion to boot people off of their platforms.

annoyingnoob 6y ago

Our public schools need to do a better job of teaching critical thinking skills. American society really seems to lack in critical thinking.

punnerud 6y ago

From Karl Popper (1945): “(..) we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.“ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

jeppesen-io 6y ago

> the company states that two-thirds of customers asked for Twitter and Facebook to be blocked. I really don't see how that's possible

throwawa3495 6y ago

isnt the irony here that with net neutrality in place an ISP wouldnt be able to block FB, TWTR?

deleted 6y ago

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permo-w 6y ago

I’m starting to get a bit tired of so many posts at the top of HN being in some way tangentially related to this question of “should social media companies have the power to censor politicians?” I know it’s a hugely important question that’ll have repercussions for years to come, and I know if you want an intelligent debate on the matter, HN is probably the best place for it, but politics sincerely gives me stress, and I use Hacker News because it is (or was) one of the few places that generally avoids it I’m of the position that the human brain isn’t really geared for dealing with dangers on a geopolitical level This is a little amateur psychologyish, but when you perceive danger, the brain releases chemicals that won’t let you rest until you’re convinced you’re free of that danger - the fight or flight response. So far this is essentially common wisdom, but - and here’s where I stray into the region of am-psych - I suspect that our unconscious mind finds it difficult to distinguish between immediate dangers and threats to our life, and geopolitical dangers that, while important, are rarely a threat to your life The problem, for me, lies in the fact that in the news media, with a few exceptions (Reuters, BBC News), and social media, with almost no exceptions, the political content which rises to the top is the content that is most capable of triggering that response in you If this wasn’t the case, then it would be okay, as the content would be easy to avoid, but I am weak to it, most of us are. The news media has what’s getting on for centuries of practice in triggering these emotions, triggering your unconscious mind to chemically scream at you to fight or run. Who am I to withstand that? What I think this means is that if you keep up with politics consistently, and allow it in, you will either be in a near constant state of fight or flight, or you will become numb. Either state, while both useful in certain circumstances, is not pleasant. It’s not conducive to a happy life. It’s stress or jade So this is my impassioned plea to the mods: Please prune back the constant political content. It’s unhealthy, it’s not what I’m here for, and, I suspect, although I may be wrong, that others feel the same way. Of course, if this comment gets heavily downvoted, (assuming people even read it) then I accept that I am simply in the minority, and that’s okay

smsm42 6y ago

People: Twitter/Amazon/Google is a private company, they are free to act as they please and nothing can (or should) be done about it! Same people: ISP blocking Twitter is not acceptable, regulatory action must be taken immediately! Please Net Neutrality regulators, come save us and ensure equal playing field (but only at the ISP level, ignore all the rest!)

annoyingnoob 6y ago

You can stand on public property and say whatever you want. You can stand on your own property and say whatever you want. You cannot stand on my property and say whatever you want. No need to confuse public and private property. There is no law that protects you from the social consequences of your speech.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Unless they have liberal (hah...) TOS, this is straightforward breach of contract. No one pays money to post or read FB and Twitter and participation is voluntary. But if I pay money to an ISP and the ISP decides that I can't access certain web services for what are essentially random (political) reasons with no legal justification beyond "We don't like them" - there's a good chance that's not going to end well if it gets to court.

julianmarq 6y ago

The comments here confuse me. Over the past months/years, I've read many a comment here insisting that whatever Facebook/Twitter/etcetera allow or don't allow in their platforms is absolutely not censorship[1]... But a significant amount of the comments in this post are saying that this move is "fighting censorship with more censorship", which is, by itself, tacitly saying that what the social media companies do is indeed censorship. For the record, I don't think that twitter or facebook banning/blocking whatever they want is censorship[2], legally speaking... And neither is this, for the same reasons. [1]: And some others who don't care and go as far as to say that censorship is okay and free speech doesn't work, among other things. [2]: Unethical, manipulative, a betrayal of the spirit if not the law of "free speech"? Totally, but still not censorship.

greyhair 6y ago

So some contingent of customers demands that their ISP block some sites, for all customers, or they are going to boycott. SO basically, your fucktard neighbors decide to censor what you are allowed to see on the internet. Until the blocked customers get all up in arms, and the ISP backtracks and says "whoa, will add you to a white list". How about the fucktards just install pihole at home and block Facebook and Twitter themselves? You could always subscribe to a VPN service and bypass the shitshow.