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Endless reminder that having multiple layers of moderation protects free speech, it doesn't restrict it. You do not want the government to be the sole arbitrat

Endless reminder that having multiple layers of moderation protects free speech, it doesn't restrict it. You do not want the government to be the sole arbitrator of what content should be online. That is exactly how you end up with laws like SESTA/FOSTA. Our government exists to set a baseline of unacceptable speech that private services can build on top of. As we move futher up the stack to the network level, and then the hosting level, and then the forum level, we allow more moderation -- each level refines its definition of acceptable content a little, and then the next level builds on top of that. In this case, I actually do agree that Kiwi Farms probably crossed that government baseline; it was such an egregious case that it probably should be addressed in law in some way. But in general it is a bad idea to say that we're going to solve every decision about what content is and isn't acceptable by hauling someone in front of a judge. That's a recipe for chilling speech, not expanding it.

mlyle 4y ago
> Endless reminder that having multiple layers of moderation protects free speech, it doesn't restrict it. Perhaps. I'm skeptical of concentrations of power wherever it is: government, Cloudflare, Facebook, etc. At least the former is theoretically accountable for choices. Also, Cloudflare asserts their position is that they largely do not want to restrict speech beyond that government baseline and they won't act themselves against speech. Here they claim they are forced to (and they probably were).
- danShumway 4y ago
  > I'm skeptical of concentrations of power wherever it is: government, Cloudflare, Facebook, etc. Not to hammer the point to hard, but de-concentrating power is the exact reason why it is better to have moderation decisions across multiple layers of the network stack rather than in level 0 (the government). Forum messes up on moderation? Not a big deal. Web host starts making bad decisions? Tons of options. Clouldflare banning you? Tougher, but there are multiple CDN services, if Cloudflare becomes evil it's not necessarily the end of the world. ISP banning you? Now we start getting pretty dangerous, there are fewer options available to services and if moderation decisions are made poorly, that can have effects across the entire network for everyone. The government prosecuting you? This is level 0 of the network stack. The way that we guard against concentration of power is by de-concentrating it. Cloudflare (and to be fair, other large Internet companies too) are arguing for the opposite of that. In the specific case of Kiwi Farms, maybe this example is so egregious that it does make sense to have some new laws. I kind of agree with that. But no good law will be enough on its own to get rid of Cloudflare's responsibility, the only law responsive enough and fast enough to do that would be one that violated free speech rights.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    > Not to hammer the point to hard, but de-concentrating power is the exact reason why it is better to have moderation decisions across multiple layers of the network stack rather than in level 0 (the government). I'm not disagreeing with your entire argument, just that portion. Multiple layers of moderation are only safer for free speech to the extent that none of them have too central of a role and there's some degree of visibility as to what is happening. One of the things that has made social media so toxic to speech is that it has A) gathered so much of the "share" of being a conduit of speech at scale, and B) creates a false feeling of consensus by creating playing fields that are tilted in various ways without the tampering being obvious.
    - danShumway 4y ago
      I heavily agree with you that centralization on a single layer is problematic for free speech. I suspect where I differ from the CEOs of companies like Cloudflare/Facebook, is that I think the solution to that isn't to get rid of moderation, but rather to enforce antitrust and break up their companies. :) Facebook in particular has this problem; it's constantly asking the government to tell it what to do because it doesn't want to be in charge of speech, and yet it has no problem buying competitors and trying to take over markets. It makes me wonder how concerned about speech these companies actually are, since they had no problem growing their companies to this size and putting themselves into situations where their moderation decisions carry so much weight.
      - mlyle 4y ago
        > I suspect where I differ from the CEOs of companies like Cloudflare/Facebook, is that I think the solution to that isn't to get rid of moderation, but rather to enforce antitrust and break up their companies. :) I'm not sure whether Cloudflare deserves antitrust action. But, yes, Facebook is concerning. Of course, you've got to acknowledge the flip-side. Sometimes it should be left up to the government. If your internet service is a natural monopoly (perhaps augmented with protections of a franchise agreement from the government), it's especially problematic for them to be making moderation decisions. All in all, it's hard.
- mpyne 4y ago
  > Also, Cloudflare asserts their position is that they largely do not want to restrict speech beyond that government baseline and they won't act themselves against speech. Here they claim they are forced to (and they probably were). CloudFlare acts against speech all the time. They'll sell you a service to screen the speech of others and then pass it onto you or not, at their decision. CloudFlare's own terms of use for their Email Forwarding product is very clear that they will squelch your speech as well, in many conditions that don't come anywhere approaching "organizing an international manhunt to intimidate a minority": https://www.cloudflare.com/supplemental-terms/#email-routing https://www.cloudflare.com/supplemental-terms/#email-routing They should stop talking about this like it's "pure speech" because it's not that at all, and even to the extent that it is, they already limit actual "pure speech" in many other scenarios not nearly as threatening as this.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    OK, you're willfully missing the point because we're talking about the position relating to Cloudflare's security services, not hosting or other products that have have a more restrictive TOS.
    - mpyne 4y ago
      If what you say is true, Cloudflare's security service would be freely made available to email spammers. Is that the case?
      - mlyle 4y ago
        They laid out their position rather clearly: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-approach/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...
        mpyne 4y ago
        This refers mostly to content, not activity. As far as they do mention activity, they do say they ban content related to activity that is, for example, "libelous". So they'll block you for publishing insults about someone, without any further malicious activity. They also say that they ban content used as part of malware command and control, which seems to cover spamming, meaning that they should have no problem blocking spammers trying to use their "security protection" service. Of course it turns out I don't even have to use the analogy with spam because CloudFlare's own post that you linked to clearly states they can remove access to content that is "... harmful, or violates the rights of others, including content that discloses sensitive personal information, incites or exploits violence against people or animals ...". That's literally been KF's modus operandi for years now. Unless CF changed their terms very recently, that behavior of KF has always been proscribed. Yet CF saw fit in their discretion to make a conscious choice to continue aiding and abetting KF in its campaign of doxxing and incitement of violence, something far worse than libel or C2.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  If you don't like what Cloudflare or Facebook are doing, feel free to start your own alternative.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    "Go start your own" is not a great response to someone being concerned about corrosive effects of the concentration of market power -- especially when those concentrations are brokering critical speech and political discourse.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      Whoops you started your own, now I see all the methods of payment you use have been shut off by their various vendors. Oh you used crypto? Hope you know every single address that has interacted with a sanctioned address and never accidently accept payment from them...
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      Have you ever considered that if nobody wants to touch your content - nobody wants to even consider allowing it over their network - then it might actually be your content that is the problem?
      - mlyle 4y ago
        Have you ever considered that you're straw-manning and not engaging with what I've actually said? I'm not supporting Kiwifarms having a platform. I'm saying speech being effectively squelched by a small number of powerful parties is problematic. If the small party is the government, this is obviously problematic. If Facebook is a huge part of people's discourse, and subtly tilts the playing field in various ways, this is problematic, too. I can insulate myself (mostly) from the effects of Facebook's curation. But there are still profound social costs.
        Gordonjcp 4y ago
        But free speech is not being "squelched" in any way. Can you explain why you think it is?
smsm42 4y ago
> You do not want the government to be the sole arbitrator of what content should be online. No, we want the government to clandestinely meet every week with representatives of major internet companies and instruct them who to ban and what information to suppress, while pretending it's independent action of the same companies driven by their love of free speech. Or maybe we don't want that, but who cares - it's what we've got.
- archagon 4y ago
  As far as I’m aware, the government has little to no power to force a company to suppress information.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    If you think US federal government has "little to no power" over the company whose main business, headquarters and most of the workers are all located in the US - you really misunderstand just how vast US federal government powers are.
    - archagon 4y ago
      Be specific. What did the US government tell companies en masse to redact, and what consequences did they threaten them with if they didn't? (Just as a reminder, we do not live in the USSR.)
      - smsm42 4y ago
        > What did the US government tell companies en masse to redact https://reclaimthenet.org/emails-facebook-coordinating-with-cdc-censorship-policy/ https://reclaimthenet.org/emails-facebook-coordinating-with-... https://www.zerohedge.com/political/over-50-biden-administration-employees-12-us-agencies-involved-social-media-censorship https://www.zerohedge.com/political/over-50-biden-administra... I trust you can find many more links about this topic. As a side note, this is the part we have just learned. Is that all of it? FBI just told us it routinely instructs social media companies about which content they'd like suppressed. And, as we know, they get their wishes. > what consequences did they threaten them with if they didn't How would I know? I wasn't there. I know which consequences US Federal Government can visit on you if it really hates you, and that's a real lot of bad consequences. How it went on those meetings - I have no idea. Maybe they didn't even need to threaten - though they certainly did in public - the President accused Facebook of "killing people". Do you thing if the Supreme Commander of the US Army and the head of US Federal Executive tells you you're killing people and need to stop it - it's not something you need to think really really hard about? > Just as a reminder, we do not live in the USSR I know, I've been there. We're not. But we're inching closer and closer to there. When it'd become obvious, it'd be too late to complain - by then, any complaint outside of the boundaries of your private kitchen will land you is a big trouble. Better complain while it's still allowed.
BrainVirus 4y ago
>Endless reminder that having multiple layers of moderation protects free speech, it doesn't restrict it. Cloudfalre claims to be an infrastructure company. Now we're somehow discussing "multiple layers of moderation". This was fast. No limiting principles in sight either.
- danShumway 4y ago
  > Cloudfalre claims to be an infrastructure company. Very obviously Cloudflare is operating at a higher level of infrastructure than ISPs or the government. If they actually believe that they are infrastructure that people have a human right to access and that is so fundamental to the Internet that they should be treated as level 0 infrastructure, then they should consider dissolving the company and forming a public org instead. Otherwise, yes, of course Cloudflare should have stricter standards. Even under Net Neutrality (which I support) ISPs have more moderation power than the government does. Banks arguably have far too much moderation power (I do think people should have a right to banking access), but I don't know anyone who would argue that banks should have no moderation powers at all, it would make it impossible for them to prevent fraud or abuse if that was the case. Cloudflare obviously should not have as strict moderation as a web forum, but this isn't a binary choice. The limiting principle here is having multiple layers of infrastructure. It's choosing not to have a single company in charge of DDOS protection for 20% of the web.
trafficante 4y ago
>Endless reminder that having multiple layers of moderation protects free speech, it doesn't restrict it. My issue is that the Kiwi post in question - which (to my reading) was a very VERY stupid bomb “joke” obliquely referencing the Belfast Troubles - appears to have been quickly moderated and the user banned. Which is, I thought, how this was all supposed to work. The screenshot going around Twitter of the idiotic post was tweeted out within literal minutes of said post being made. I have no idea how long it took the KF moderators to delete the post and ban the user but, from a perusal of the following pages in that thread, it doesn’t seem like it was up very long. So is moderation an issue? It doesn’t seem to be. Perhaps that post was the final straw, but CloudFlare is framing their action as having to step in and “moderate” specifically because of THAT post - and yet the post in question had already been (correctly) nuked from orbit by the KF mods. Edit: here’s where I do the obligatory “I didn’t vote for Trump, however” mea culpa: I do not have a KiwiFarms account and honestly I find it to be fairly distasteful in a 2004 FYAD sort of way.
- vintermann 4y ago
  One thing I don't understand: if Kiwifarms is subject to very big, very expensive DDoS attacks - and I've seen no one denying that it is, that's the whole thing Cloudflare is needed for, after all - why would we even think an illegal threat on Kiwifarms originated with a regular Kiwifarms user? It seems a lot cheaper to make an account and post the illegal comment than to run a DDoS operation. No Kiwifarms account here either, but I have read it and I do appreciate that some of the people wanting them shut down are... not very nice people themselves.
  - clove 4y ago
    You might be right. Posted by a KF user regarding the threat: "It's a 2020 account that wasn't active till a month ago with 1 post in the CWC forum and the other 42 in the keffals thread. The post was deletedly nearly instantly, yet within 10 minutes of it being posted Keffals had contacted CF, CF pulled the plug, and articles (which you can find in A&N right now) were being posted. Also it's notable that Keffals removed the quote/reply portion of the post which he accidently revealed before indicating he has an account here. This was so obviously coordinated, it glows more than nuclear blast."
ianai 4y ago
Do we still call it “speech” if it’s a threat for physical violence? This seems even more clear when an established past of threats being actualized exists. Edit-Maybe I’ll make this personal. I’ve been a victim of both verbal and physical bullying. At some point words cross a boundary from speech to violence. You could even see this with the audio simulations used to simulate schizophrenia. I’d say speech crosses the boundary into violence when it hurts another person and cannot be “muted” by the other. Ie doxxing someone-once it’s on the internet it’s out there for all time. Etc.
- HereIGoAgain 4y ago
  Ok but where were the threat for physical violence here and why did they need to take away protections against illegal attacks in order to stop it?
derangedHorse 4y ago
“ You do not want the government to be the sole arbitrator of what content should be online” That’s exactly what I think should be the case. The US government is supposed to reflect the will of the people and having a representative democracy is a way to achieve that decentralization. If the power structures that arise from this model threaten this process then the first goal should be fixing it rather than introducing a new process where a smaller ideological group gets to harass those within companies into acquiescing to their moral guidelines.

mlyle 4y ago

> Endless reminder that having multiple layers of moderation protects free speech, it doesn't restrict it. Perhaps. I'm skeptical of concentrations of power wherever it is: government, Cloudflare, Facebook, etc. At least the former is theoretically accountable for choices. Also, Cloudflare asserts their position is that they largely do not want to restrict speech beyond that government baseline and they won't act themselves against speech. Here they claim they are forced to (and they probably were).

danShumway 4y ago
> I'm skeptical of concentrations of power wherever it is: government, Cloudflare, Facebook, etc. Not to hammer the point to hard, but de-concentrating power is the exact reason why it is better to have moderation decisions across multiple layers of the network stack rather than in level 0 (the government). Forum messes up on moderation? Not a big deal. Web host starts making bad decisions? Tons of options. Clouldflare banning you? Tougher, but there are multiple CDN services, if Cloudflare becomes evil it's not necessarily the end of the world. ISP banning you? Now we start getting pretty dangerous, there are fewer options available to services and if moderation decisions are made poorly, that can have effects across the entire network for everyone. The government prosecuting you? This is level 0 of the network stack. The way that we guard against concentration of power is by de-concentrating it. Cloudflare (and to be fair, other large Internet companies too) are arguing for the opposite of that. In the specific case of Kiwi Farms, maybe this example is so egregious that it does make sense to have some new laws. I kind of agree with that. But no good law will be enough on its own to get rid of Cloudflare's responsibility, the only law responsive enough and fast enough to do that would be one that violated free speech rights.
- mlyle 4y ago
  > Not to hammer the point to hard, but de-concentrating power is the exact reason why it is better to have moderation decisions across multiple layers of the network stack rather than in level 0 (the government). I'm not disagreeing with your entire argument, just that portion. Multiple layers of moderation are only safer for free speech to the extent that none of them have too central of a role and there's some degree of visibility as to what is happening. One of the things that has made social media so toxic to speech is that it has A) gathered so much of the "share" of being a conduit of speech at scale, and B) creates a false feeling of consensus by creating playing fields that are tilted in various ways without the tampering being obvious.
  - danShumway 4y ago
    I heavily agree with you that centralization on a single layer is problematic for free speech. I suspect where I differ from the CEOs of companies like Cloudflare/Facebook, is that I think the solution to that isn't to get rid of moderation, but rather to enforce antitrust and break up their companies. :) Facebook in particular has this problem; it's constantly asking the government to tell it what to do because it doesn't want to be in charge of speech, and yet it has no problem buying competitors and trying to take over markets. It makes me wonder how concerned about speech these companies actually are, since they had no problem growing their companies to this size and putting themselves into situations where their moderation decisions carry so much weight.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      > I suspect where I differ from the CEOs of companies like Cloudflare/Facebook, is that I think the solution to that isn't to get rid of moderation, but rather to enforce antitrust and break up their companies. :) I'm not sure whether Cloudflare deserves antitrust action. But, yes, Facebook is concerning. Of course, you've got to acknowledge the flip-side. Sometimes it should be left up to the government. If your internet service is a natural monopoly (perhaps augmented with protections of a franchise agreement from the government), it's especially problematic for them to be making moderation decisions. All in all, it's hard.
mpyne 4y ago
> Also, Cloudflare asserts their position is that they largely do not want to restrict speech beyond that government baseline and they won't act themselves against speech. Here they claim they are forced to (and they probably were). CloudFlare acts against speech all the time. They'll sell you a service to screen the speech of others and then pass it onto you or not, at their decision. CloudFlare's own terms of use for their Email Forwarding product is very clear that they will squelch your speech as well, in many conditions that don't come anywhere approaching "organizing an international manhunt to intimidate a minority": https://www.cloudflare.com/supplemental-terms/#email-routing https://www.cloudflare.com/supplemental-terms/#email-routing They should stop talking about this like it's "pure speech" because it's not that at all, and even to the extent that it is, they already limit actual "pure speech" in many other scenarios not nearly as threatening as this.
- mlyle 4y ago
  OK, you're willfully missing the point because we're talking about the position relating to Cloudflare's security services, not hosting or other products that have have a more restrictive TOS.
  - mpyne 4y ago
    If what you say is true, Cloudflare's security service would be freely made available to email spammers. Is that the case?
    - mlyle 4y ago
      They laid out their position rather clearly: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-approach/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...
      - mpyne 4y ago
        This refers mostly to content, not activity. As far as they do mention activity, they do say they ban content related to activity that is, for example, "libelous". So they'll block you for publishing insults about someone, without any further malicious activity. They also say that they ban content used as part of malware command and control, which seems to cover spamming, meaning that they should have no problem blocking spammers trying to use their "security protection" service. Of course it turns out I don't even have to use the analogy with spam because CloudFlare's own post that you linked to clearly states they can remove access to content that is "... harmful, or violates the rights of others, including content that discloses sensitive personal information, incites or exploits violence against people or animals ...". That's literally been KF's modus operandi for years now. Unless CF changed their terms very recently, that behavior of KF has always been proscribed. Yet CF saw fit in their discretion to make a conscious choice to continue aiding and abetting KF in its campaign of doxxing and incitement of violence, something far worse than libel or C2.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
If you don't like what Cloudflare or Facebook are doing, feel free to start your own alternative.
- mlyle 4y ago
  "Go start your own" is not a great response to someone being concerned about corrosive effects of the concentration of market power -- especially when those concentrations are brokering critical speech and political discourse.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    Whoops you started your own, now I see all the methods of payment you use have been shut off by their various vendors. Oh you used crypto? Hope you know every single address that has interacted with a sanctioned address and never accidently accept payment from them...
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Have you ever considered that if nobody wants to touch your content - nobody wants to even consider allowing it over their network - then it might actually be your content that is the problem?
    - mlyle 4y ago
      Have you ever considered that you're straw-manning and not engaging with what I've actually said? I'm not supporting Kiwifarms having a platform. I'm saying speech being effectively squelched by a small number of powerful parties is problematic. If the small party is the government, this is obviously problematic. If Facebook is a huge part of people's discourse, and subtly tilts the playing field in various ways, this is problematic, too. I can insulate myself (mostly) from the effects of Facebook's curation. But there are still profound social costs.
      - Gordonjcp 4y ago
        But free speech is not being "squelched" in any way. Can you explain why you think it is?

smsm42 4y ago

> You do not want the government to be the sole arbitrator of what content should be online. No, we want the government to clandestinely meet every week with representatives of major internet companies and instruct them who to ban and what information to suppress, while pretending it's independent action of the same companies driven by their love of free speech. Or maybe we don't want that, but who cares - it's what we've got.

archagon 4y ago
As far as I’m aware, the government has little to no power to force a company to suppress information.
- smsm42 4y ago
  If you think US federal government has "little to no power" over the company whose main business, headquarters and most of the workers are all located in the US - you really misunderstand just how vast US federal government powers are.
  - archagon 4y ago
    Be specific. What did the US government tell companies en masse to redact, and what consequences did they threaten them with if they didn't? (Just as a reminder, we do not live in the USSR.)
    - smsm42 4y ago
      > What did the US government tell companies en masse to redact https://reclaimthenet.org/emails-facebook-coordinating-with-cdc-censorship-policy/ https://reclaimthenet.org/emails-facebook-coordinating-with-... https://www.zerohedge.com/political/over-50-biden-administration-employees-12-us-agencies-involved-social-media-censorship https://www.zerohedge.com/political/over-50-biden-administra... I trust you can find many more links about this topic. As a side note, this is the part we have just learned. Is that all of it? FBI just told us it routinely instructs social media companies about which content they'd like suppressed. And, as we know, they get their wishes. > what consequences did they threaten them with if they didn't How would I know? I wasn't there. I know which consequences US Federal Government can visit on you if it really hates you, and that's a real lot of bad consequences. How it went on those meetings - I have no idea. Maybe they didn't even need to threaten - though they certainly did in public - the President accused Facebook of "killing people". Do you thing if the Supreme Commander of the US Army and the head of US Federal Executive tells you you're killing people and need to stop it - it's not something you need to think really really hard about? > Just as a reminder, we do not live in the USSR I know, I've been there. We're not. But we're inching closer and closer to there. When it'd become obvious, it'd be too late to complain - by then, any complaint outside of the boundaries of your private kitchen will land you is a big trouble. Better complain while it's still allowed.

BrainVirus 4y ago

>Endless reminder that having multiple layers of moderation protects free speech, it doesn't restrict it. Cloudfalre claims to be an infrastructure company. Now we're somehow discussing "multiple layers of moderation". This was fast. No limiting principles in sight either.

danShumway 4y ago
> Cloudfalre claims to be an infrastructure company. Very obviously Cloudflare is operating at a higher level of infrastructure than ISPs or the government. If they actually believe that they are infrastructure that people have a human right to access and that is so fundamental to the Internet that they should be treated as level 0 infrastructure, then they should consider dissolving the company and forming a public org instead. Otherwise, yes, of course Cloudflare should have stricter standards. Even under Net Neutrality (which I support) ISPs have more moderation power than the government does. Banks arguably have far too much moderation power (I do think people should have a right to banking access), but I don't know anyone who would argue that banks should have no moderation powers at all, it would make it impossible for them to prevent fraud or abuse if that was the case. Cloudflare obviously should not have as strict moderation as a web forum, but this isn't a binary choice. The limiting principle here is having multiple layers of infrastructure. It's choosing not to have a single company in charge of DDOS protection for 20% of the web.

trafficante 4y ago

>Endless reminder that having multiple layers of moderation protects free speech, it doesn't restrict it. My issue is that the Kiwi post in question - which (to my reading) was a very VERY stupid bomb “joke” obliquely referencing the Belfast Troubles - appears to have been quickly moderated and the user banned. Which is, I thought, how this was all supposed to work. The screenshot going around Twitter of the idiotic post was tweeted out within literal minutes of said post being made. I have no idea how long it took the KF moderators to delete the post and ban the user but, from a perusal of the following pages in that thread, it doesn’t seem like it was up very long. So is moderation an issue? It doesn’t seem to be. Perhaps that post was the final straw, but CloudFlare is framing their action as having to step in and “moderate” specifically because of THAT post - and yet the post in question had already been (correctly) nuked from orbit by the KF mods. Edit: here’s where I do the obligatory “I didn’t vote for Trump, however” mea culpa: I do not have a KiwiFarms account and honestly I find it to be fairly distasteful in a 2004 FYAD sort of way.

vintermann 4y ago
One thing I don't understand: if Kiwifarms is subject to very big, very expensive DDoS attacks - and I've seen no one denying that it is, that's the whole thing Cloudflare is needed for, after all - why would we even think an illegal threat on Kiwifarms originated with a regular Kiwifarms user? It seems a lot cheaper to make an account and post the illegal comment than to run a DDoS operation. No Kiwifarms account here either, but I have read it and I do appreciate that some of the people wanting them shut down are... not very nice people themselves.
- clove 4y ago
  You might be right. Posted by a KF user regarding the threat: "It's a 2020 account that wasn't active till a month ago with 1 post in the CWC forum and the other 42 in the keffals thread. The post was deletedly nearly instantly, yet within 10 minutes of it being posted Keffals had contacted CF, CF pulled the plug, and articles (which you can find in A&N right now) were being posted. Also it's notable that Keffals removed the quote/reply portion of the post which he accidently revealed before indicating he has an account here. This was so obviously coordinated, it glows more than nuclear blast."

ianai 4y ago

Do we still call it “speech” if it’s a threat for physical violence? This seems even more clear when an established past of threats being actualized exists. Edit-Maybe I’ll make this personal. I’ve been a victim of both verbal and physical bullying. At some point words cross a boundary from speech to violence. You could even see this with the audio simulations used to simulate schizophrenia. I’d say speech crosses the boundary into violence when it hurts another person and cannot be “muted” by the other. Ie doxxing someone-once it’s on the internet it’s out there for all time. Etc.

HereIGoAgain 4y ago
Ok but where were the threat for physical violence here and why did they need to take away protections against illegal attacks in order to stop it?

derangedHorse 4y ago

“ You do not want the government to be the sole arbitrator of what content should be online” That’s exactly what I think should be the case. The US government is supposed to reflect the will of the people and having a representative democracy is a way to achieve that decentralization. If the power structures that arise from this model threaten this process then the first goal should be fixing it rather than introducing a new process where a smaller ideological group gets to harass those within companies into acquiescing to their moral guidelines.