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Never thought I'd see the Left trying to weaponize corporations to suppress speech they dislike. Reminds me a LOT of Evangelicals in the 2000s - I know that com

Never thought I'd see the Left trying to weaponize corporations to suppress speech they dislike. Reminds me a LOT of Evangelicals in the 2000s - I know that comparison has been made frequently but that's the last group that made a serious censorship push. I wonder how all of this will end? I support CloudFlare here - they should act as a utility, not as an arbiter of content. This ends poorly and one day will bite the people that are pushing for this.

seneca 4y ago
> Reminds me a LOT of Evangelicals in the 2000s - I know that comparison has been made frequently but that's the last group that made a serious censorship push. It's the exact same pattern: Zealots trying to use censorship to suppress those that don't adhere to their ideology. The reason it's confusing is because you're looking at it as a left/right issue when it's not. It's an authoritarian/libertine or extremists vs everyone else issue.
- mort96 4y ago
ryandv 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological/political/religious battle. That's not what this site is for, regardless of which ideologies or religions you prefer. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
RichardCNormos 4y ago
- pjc50 4y ago
  > you can't project violence over the internet You absolutely can, and that's how CloudFlare got into this situation: by posting people's location on the internet they can be made vulnerable to SWATting. > we've shifted away from violence as a means of enforcing social order The intent of KF and similar absolutely is to use violence as a means of enforcing social order, by encouraging stochastic and opportunistic terrorism against trans people.
  - yanderekko 4y ago
    - greyface- 4y ago
      The purpose of a system is what it does.
      - yanderekko 4y ago
        No one actually believes this outside of brain-rotted partisan contexts. eg. The fact that I'm not donating all my money to combat malaria in developing nations does not make me pro-malaria.
        pseudalopex 4y ago
        > No one actually believes this outside of brain-rotted partisan contexts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha... > The fact that I'm not donating all my money to combat malaria in developing nations does not make me pro-malaria. Are you a system?
        yanderekko 4y ago
        Is this forum a system? Is ycombinator's failure to delete the posts of me and others in this thread also indicative of an intent to "use violence as a means of enforcing social order, by encouraging stochastic and opportunistic terrorism against trans people"?
yanderekko 4y ago
Yeah, I remember when "net neutrality" was something that the left was demanding. Once they realized that they had a systematic advantage in petitioning hosting companies to deplatform disfavored content without due process, however, all of the underlying arguments for net neutrality were quietly discarded.
- zanecodes 4y ago
  Net neutrality was never about deplatforming, due process, or censorship. It was about ISPs prioritizing traffic or providing free bandwidth for their own services and throttling or charging extra fees for third party services (e.g. Time Warner providing access to their own streaming service without counting towards your bandwidth cap, but not doing the same for Netflix). It was an economic issue, not a political one.
  - yanderekko 4y ago
    >It was an economic issue, not a political one. The two can't be disentangled. Woke censorship is often justified through economic self-interest nowadays. Do you really believe activists 20 years ago would be placated if ISPs had simply promised to throttle only based on politics rather than economics?
    - sealeck 4y ago
      Hosting content and distributing it are different things (in the same way that printing letters for someone is very different to operating a mail service carrying everyone's letters).
      - gunapologist99 4y ago
        This is the point that Cloudflare is making in TFA.
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    You are correct. It should have had bipartisan support. But, of course, it had to be politicized. And few understood the issue, so they made up their own straw men.
pjc50 4y ago
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  This is why the left also needs a gun rights and ownership culture
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Possibly, but as soon as it became a thing it would be raided by the police, as per what happened to the Black Panthers.
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      Police are also a reason the left need a strong gun culture (I mean we are talking about the same groups of people, police and right wing extremists, terrorist groups, white supremacist gangs etc). BP didn’t go far enough and were hamstrung by lack of support from the left due to racial division within working class and those in poverty
      - colpabar 4y ago
        Good thing the left is so supportive of the working class now lol
        wahnfrieden 4y ago
        It’s bad as ever, I’m not suggesting we’ve reversed those divisions. And now the left have gained an anti-gun stance on top of it, and in typical liberal fashion, have started with giving up their own individual gun ownership before addressing ownership at large in society
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      btw BP were raided when they started taking direct action to support their communities through programs like the free breakfast service. guns didn’t do BP in, socialism did
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
phillipcarter 4y ago
> I support ButtFlare here - they should act as a utility, not as an arbiter of content. So then advocate for them to actually be a utility. Right now they get to benefit from being treated like one, but not being held to the same legal standard of an actual utility.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Left your cloud2butt extension on by any chance?
  - phillipcarter 4y ago
    Always.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  Being a utility doesn't make them any less of a de facto arbiter or any better of a company. Utilities can suck too. And, worse, they do it with the political backing of the state.
  - phillipcarter 4y ago
    Indeed, it doesn't! But having much stricter legal obligations means there are more tools to hold their feet to the fire.
    - abigail95 4y ago
      hold their feet to the fire to do what? provide more network protection to objectionable websites? i'm not getting the idea, reading this thread, that is what people here want.
causi 4y ago
Never thought I'd see the Left trying to weaponize corporations to suppress speech they dislike. It is a terrible fact of human psychology that being abused in a particular manner make you much more likely to abuse others in the same manner, not less.
anotherrandom 4y ago
Big turn of the tables. Back in the 2000s Bush administration we had pornography site raids and suppression, now we have ideologically-motivated censorship of a different form.
ladyattis 4y ago
It's nothing like the evangelicals by any stretch of the imagination. The fact of the matter is that Kiwi Farms is a cesspit full of people who revel in obsessing over people and then harassing them not only at their jobs but even through their private communications (phone numbers, personal email addresses, etc). How you react if dozens of people just started calling you at all hours because you're trans and are visible in a social network? How would you react to having to explain to your employer that it's just "some kids" constantly badgering you and them when you're busy doing work? How would handle the act of them calling the police with false reports that result in a SWAT raid? This isn't hypothetical, it's happened many times due to Kiwi Farms and other forums.
- Cyberdog 4y ago
  It's nothing like the SJWs by any stretch of the imagination. The fact of the matter is that Reddit/ResetERA/Twitter/DailyKos is a cesspit full of people who revel in obsessing over people and then harassing them not only at their jobs but even through their private communications (phone numbers, personal email addresses, etc). How you react if dozens of people just started calling you at all hours because you're Christian and are visible in a social network? How would you react to having to explain to your employer that it's just "some kids" constantly badgering you and them when you're busy doing work? How would handle the act of them calling the police with false reports that result in a SWAT raid? This isn't hypothetical, it's happened many times due to Reddit and other forums. Yes, I remember the "Moral Majority" era. I remember the religious right, the fundies, the evangelicals, and the grasp they had on speech. I remember how they tried to ban porn in the late '90s and the courts had to smack it down. And I saw how the left has taken over institutional power since then, still crying about victimhood status while holding government majorities, running education and the media, and so on. It looks like the pendulum has started swinging back in recent years. I don't really want to go back to the late '90s in terms of culture and government (especially culture) but I won't be at all surprised if it happens and the right shows the same lack of magnanimity as they were shown this past quarter century. And a good way to make sure that happens is to continue to stifle their speech and give them every opportunity to cry victim and wish revenge. The left made hay from these opportunities and the right has been watching. A lot of their activists have read Rules for Radicals too.
schleck8 4y ago
The irony of using a throwaway account to advocate for a site that doxxes people. You guys are the ones undermining the legitimacy of freedom of speech by passing doxxing off as merely being an opinion while it in fact surpresses actually bipartisan discussion. Disgusting.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

seneca 4y ago

> Reminds me a LOT of Evangelicals in the 2000s - I know that comparison has been made frequently but that's the last group that made a serious censorship push. It's the exact same pattern: Zealots trying to use censorship to suppress those that don't adhere to their ideology. The reason it's confusing is because you're looking at it as a left/right issue when it's not. It's an authoritarian/libertine or extremists vs everyone else issue.

mort96 4y ago

ryandv 4y ago

dang 4y ago
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological/political/religious battle. That's not what this site is for, regardless of which ideologies or religions you prefer. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

RichardCNormos 4y ago

pjc50 4y ago
> you can't project violence over the internet You absolutely can, and that's how CloudFlare got into this situation: by posting people's location on the internet they can be made vulnerable to SWATting. > we've shifted away from violence as a means of enforcing social order The intent of KF and similar absolutely is to use violence as a means of enforcing social order, by encouraging stochastic and opportunistic terrorism against trans people.
- yanderekko 4y ago
  - greyface- 4y ago
    The purpose of a system is what it does.
    - yanderekko 4y ago
      No one actually believes this outside of brain-rotted partisan contexts. eg. The fact that I'm not donating all my money to combat malaria in developing nations does not make me pro-malaria.
      - pseudalopex 4y ago
        > No one actually believes this outside of brain-rotted partisan contexts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha... > The fact that I'm not donating all my money to combat malaria in developing nations does not make me pro-malaria. Are you a system?
        yanderekko 4y ago
        Is this forum a system? Is ycombinator's failure to delete the posts of me and others in this thread also indicative of an intent to "use violence as a means of enforcing social order, by encouraging stochastic and opportunistic terrorism against trans people"?

yanderekko 4y ago

Yeah, I remember when "net neutrality" was something that the left was demanding. Once they realized that they had a systematic advantage in petitioning hosting companies to deplatform disfavored content without due process, however, all of the underlying arguments for net neutrality were quietly discarded.

zanecodes 4y ago
Net neutrality was never about deplatforming, due process, or censorship. It was about ISPs prioritizing traffic or providing free bandwidth for their own services and throttling or charging extra fees for third party services (e.g. Time Warner providing access to their own streaming service without counting towards your bandwidth cap, but not doing the same for Netflix). It was an economic issue, not a political one.
- yanderekko 4y ago
  >It was an economic issue, not a political one. The two can't be disentangled. Woke censorship is often justified through economic self-interest nowadays. Do you really believe activists 20 years ago would be placated if ISPs had simply promised to throttle only based on politics rather than economics?
  - sealeck 4y ago
    Hosting content and distributing it are different things (in the same way that printing letters for someone is very different to operating a mail service carrying everyone's letters).
    - gunapologist99 4y ago
      This is the point that Cloudflare is making in TFA.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  You are correct. It should have had bipartisan support. But, of course, it had to be politicized. And few understood the issue, so they made up their own straw men.

pjc50 4y ago

wahnfrieden 4y ago
This is why the left also needs a gun rights and ownership culture
- pjc50 4y ago
  Possibly, but as soon as it became a thing it would be raided by the police, as per what happened to the Black Panthers.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    Police are also a reason the left need a strong gun culture (I mean we are talking about the same groups of people, police and right wing extremists, terrorist groups, white supremacist gangs etc). BP didn’t go far enough and were hamstrung by lack of support from the left due to racial division within working class and those in poverty
    - colpabar 4y ago
      Good thing the left is so supportive of the working class now lol
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago
        It’s bad as ever, I’m not suggesting we’ve reversed those divisions. And now the left have gained an anti-gun stance on top of it, and in typical liberal fashion, have started with giving up their own individual gun ownership before addressing ownership at large in society
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    btw BP were raided when they started taking direct action to support their communities through programs like the free breakfast service. guns didn’t do BP in, socialism did

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

phillipcarter 4y ago

> I support ButtFlare here - they should act as a utility, not as an arbiter of content. So then advocate for them to actually be a utility. Right now they get to benefit from being treated like one, but not being held to the same legal standard of an actual utility.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
Left your cloud2butt extension on by any chance?
- phillipcarter 4y ago
  Always.
Dracophoenix 4y ago
Being a utility doesn't make them any less of a de facto arbiter or any better of a company. Utilities can suck too. And, worse, they do it with the political backing of the state.
- phillipcarter 4y ago
  Indeed, it doesn't! But having much stricter legal obligations means there are more tools to hold their feet to the fire.
  - abigail95 4y ago
    hold their feet to the fire to do what? provide more network protection to objectionable websites? i'm not getting the idea, reading this thread, that is what people here want.

causi 4y ago

Never thought I'd see the Left trying to weaponize corporations to suppress speech they dislike. It is a terrible fact of human psychology that being abused in a particular manner make you much more likely to abuse others in the same manner, not less.

anotherrandom 4y ago

Big turn of the tables. Back in the 2000s Bush administration we had pornography site raids and suppression, now we have ideologically-motivated censorship of a different form.

ladyattis 4y ago

It's nothing like the evangelicals by any stretch of the imagination. The fact of the matter is that Kiwi Farms is a cesspit full of people who revel in obsessing over people and then harassing them not only at their jobs but even through their private communications (phone numbers, personal email addresses, etc). How you react if dozens of people just started calling you at all hours because you're trans and are visible in a social network? How would you react to having to explain to your employer that it's just "some kids" constantly badgering you and them when you're busy doing work? How would handle the act of them calling the police with false reports that result in a SWAT raid? This isn't hypothetical, it's happened many times due to Kiwi Farms and other forums.

Cyberdog 4y ago
It's nothing like the SJWs by any stretch of the imagination. The fact of the matter is that Reddit/ResetERA/Twitter/DailyKos is a cesspit full of people who revel in obsessing over people and then harassing them not only at their jobs but even through their private communications (phone numbers, personal email addresses, etc). How you react if dozens of people just started calling you at all hours because you're Christian and are visible in a social network? How would you react to having to explain to your employer that it's just "some kids" constantly badgering you and them when you're busy doing work? How would handle the act of them calling the police with false reports that result in a SWAT raid? This isn't hypothetical, it's happened many times due to Reddit and other forums. Yes, I remember the "Moral Majority" era. I remember the religious right, the fundies, the evangelicals, and the grasp they had on speech. I remember how they tried to ban porn in the late '90s and the courts had to smack it down. And I saw how the left has taken over institutional power since then, still crying about victimhood status while holding government majorities, running education and the media, and so on. It looks like the pendulum has started swinging back in recent years. I don't really want to go back to the late '90s in terms of culture and government (especially culture) but I won't be at all surprised if it happens and the right shows the same lack of magnanimity as they were shown this past quarter century. And a good way to make sure that happens is to continue to stifle their speech and give them every opportunity to cry victim and wish revenge. The left made hay from these opportunities and the right has been watching. A lot of their activists have read Rules for Radicals too.

schleck8 4y ago

The irony of using a throwaway account to advocate for a site that doxxes people. You guys are the ones undermining the legitimacy of freedom of speech by passing doxxing off as merely being an opinion while it in fact surpresses actually bipartisan discussion. Disgusting.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]