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There are people here who seem to take the view that businesses hosting the content of others ought to absolutely protect their "freedom of speech", no matter t

There are people here who seem to take the view that businesses hosting the content of others ought to absolutely protect their "freedom of speech", no matter the content. I disagree. Some things are harmful to the lives of those around us, and just as the private individual can cast a social/cultural vote against this harmful thing by refusing to engage with it and support it, a business can cast a vote in the same way against the thing its maintainers see as harmful. Inaction is also political, and I think acting according to your values is better than pretending to be a bystander. Put yourself in the maintainers' shoes — would you be happy to idly stand by when you know your service is being used to actively harm others' lives? [^1] Perhaps you would, and if so, I would be interested in hearing your view. Let's also not forget that, even if you disagree with sr.ht's stance, you can still freely benefit from the thousands of hours of work put into SourceHut by self-hosting it for whatever project you want. Therefore, I think the maintainers' work should be applauded regardless of your take on this post. [^1]: This is, of course, assuming the view that cryptocurrency nearly universally causes societal harm; some people may disagree with this, but this is a separate question.

junofan 4y ago
It’s a political statement. I don’t think declaring “inaction is political” makes it so. Sounds like sloganeering.
- ddevault 4y ago
  Inaction is a political position in support of the status quo. It is the equivalent of saying "I am fine with this".
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mwcampbell 4y ago
    I disagree with this. Inaction is merely an acknowledgement that we can't be informed, effective activists on everything. I'm pretty much disengaged from political activism these days, because I don't want to be manipulated into joining the human equivalent of a botnet. Instead I focus on the one area (accessibility for disabled people) where I'm actually knowledgeable enough to have an informed opinion, and where I can actually do something meaningful. Edit to add: Also, accepting the status quo on some things, even if one doesn't think it's ideal, may be necessary to be maximally effective in one's primary area. So my main open-source project in the area of accessibility is maximally permissively licensed (the MIT/Apache dual license typical in the Rust community), is hosted on GitHub, and targets proprietary platforms first, because I care more about accessibility than any of these other things. I have no problem with this specific decision though.
    - vladharbuz 4y ago
      It seems to me like the disagreement isn't as big as you make it out to be. This is an instance where the maintainer of a business has strong views that they consider well-informed on the social impact of an issue, and there is no pragmatic barrier to taking action according to their values, so they are doing this. Inaction in this case might be reprimandable, but I am not saying that I reprimand them or you for neglecting other social issues or anything like that. I am sympathetic with the idea that we cannot all have well-informed views on everything, and that we might not want to act based on half-baked views. I think there is a subtle and interesting discussion to be had there. Thank you for your work on accessibility! :)
      - mwcampbell 4y ago
        Fair enough. I think Drew is right to value issues such as environmental impact and global wealth inequality to the extent that his company turns away some software projects, even free software projects. I mainly replied to his comment because, taken out of context, that kind of argument can be used (and IMO sometimes is used) to pressure people into taking a stand on a particular issue of the moment.
    - em-bee 4y ago
      adding to that it is difficult to engage in political activism without getting into partisan politics which is undesirable to some.
  - xigoi 4y ago
    There are billions of political issues on Earth. Do you think if someone isn't protesting against water spoilage in some random village on the opposite side of the planst, then they support it?
    - ddevault 4y ago
      To clarify, I would narrow my statement, perhaps, to something like this: "inaction [regarding a subject with which you are familiar and are in a position to act on] is a political position".
      - xigoi 4y ago
        I'd say issues which meet this definition are still way too numerous to be active about all of them.
rvz 4y ago
> Put yourself in the maintainers' shoes — would you be happy to idly stand by when you know your service is being used to actively harm others' lives? [^1] Perhaps you would, and if so, I would be interested in hearing your view. Yeah, just like Tor, which is also heavily associated and almost exclusively used for illicit and illegal activities; especially by fraudsters, criminals, scammers, tax / sanctions evasion and illegal drug dealers. If Tornado Cash is not welcome on SourceHut due to the same association of illicit activity, then I should see no exception to the Tor Project hence it's extremely negative enablement of illegal activity going on there should it attempt to get its source code hosted on SourceHut.
- Herbstluft 4y ago
  The difference is that projects like Tor were certainly not created with any devious purpose in mind. Arguments and use cases for anonymity are very easy to come up with. Blockchain related projects cause damage on two fronts: - They are commonly created with the explicit goal to scam most people while making very few people rich. - The tech around blockchains (almost) qualifies as snakeoil. The use cases are nonexistent in the way they are portrayed. This perpetuates some pseudoscience equivalent in the realm of technology. Which is dangerous on its own. Blockchain is like Homeopathy. No other use case has come up, and any blockchain related project has to simply lie from the get go to even justify its existence. (NFTs; "block chain in gaming" which is total bs from start to finish, portrayed as if they magically make assets appear in other games, which makes no sense whatsoever; block chains where they offer 0 advantages over databases, because a single company keeps ownership and administrative privilege; et cetera)
  - gruez 4y ago
    >- They are commonly created with the explicit goal to scam most people while making very few people rich. Examples? I'm struggling to come up with examples outside of something like "ponzicoin". The typical token/ICO project has some plausible business model (ie. you're investing in a token that allows you to use this smart contract, which presumably will have demand if the smart contract becomes popular) which makes it hard to call it an "explicit" scam, even if it does turn out to be effectively a ponzi.
naasking 4y ago
> There are people here who seem to take the view that businesses hosting the content of others ought to absolutely protect their "freedom of speech", no matter the content. I disagree. I also disagree, so long as competitors that disagree with such decisions are also permitted, and so long as the entity in question is not monopolistic or is acting as some kind of widely used utilities for speech. On some issues dissent isn't permitted, and there are many cases where some platforms are arguably acting as utilities.
- vladharbuz 4y ago
  I agree with you! There's an interesting discussion to be had there in the general case. SourceHut being easily self-hostable means this isn't an issue in this case.
kamikazechaser 4y ago
Terrorists cause far more physical harm than all of crypto will ever do. Do we ban Signal and Telegram repos so that we can "protect the people"? Drew has the absolute right to ban crypto from his platform, but it is a piss take to try and justify it as being a societal harm.
- vladharbuz 4y ago
  I'd like to hear more about your view, but I don't quite see how what you said applies. My point is that, _if_ you considered cryptocurrencies to be nothing other than a scam, it makes sense to ban them on account of the harm they cause to others. Your examples of Signal and Telegram are not the same thing at all, as they are general communication platforms also used for many things other than terrorism. If there was such a chat app specifically made for and exclusively used for terrorism, then yes, I think banning it is the way to go on the grounds I mentioned above. Can you elaborate more on the details you think we disagree on?

junofan 4y ago

It’s a political statement. I don’t think declaring “inaction is political” makes it so. Sounds like sloganeering.

ddevault 4y ago
Inaction is a political position in support of the status quo. It is the equivalent of saying "I am fine with this".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mwcampbell 4y ago
  I disagree with this. Inaction is merely an acknowledgement that we can't be informed, effective activists on everything. I'm pretty much disengaged from political activism these days, because I don't want to be manipulated into joining the human equivalent of a botnet. Instead I focus on the one area (accessibility for disabled people) where I'm actually knowledgeable enough to have an informed opinion, and where I can actually do something meaningful. Edit to add: Also, accepting the status quo on some things, even if one doesn't think it's ideal, may be necessary to be maximally effective in one's primary area. So my main open-source project in the area of accessibility is maximally permissively licensed (the MIT/Apache dual license typical in the Rust community), is hosted on GitHub, and targets proprietary platforms first, because I care more about accessibility than any of these other things. I have no problem with this specific decision though.
  - vladharbuz 4y ago
    It seems to me like the disagreement isn't as big as you make it out to be. This is an instance where the maintainer of a business has strong views that they consider well-informed on the social impact of an issue, and there is no pragmatic barrier to taking action according to their values, so they are doing this. Inaction in this case might be reprimandable, but I am not saying that I reprimand them or you for neglecting other social issues or anything like that. I am sympathetic with the idea that we cannot all have well-informed views on everything, and that we might not want to act based on half-baked views. I think there is a subtle and interesting discussion to be had there. Thank you for your work on accessibility! :)
    - mwcampbell 4y ago
      Fair enough. I think Drew is right to value issues such as environmental impact and global wealth inequality to the extent that his company turns away some software projects, even free software projects. I mainly replied to his comment because, taken out of context, that kind of argument can be used (and IMO sometimes is used) to pressure people into taking a stand on a particular issue of the moment.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    adding to that it is difficult to engage in political activism without getting into partisan politics which is undesirable to some.
- xigoi 4y ago
  There are billions of political issues on Earth. Do you think if someone isn't protesting against water spoilage in some random village on the opposite side of the planst, then they support it?
  - ddevault 4y ago
    To clarify, I would narrow my statement, perhaps, to something like this: "inaction [regarding a subject with which you are familiar and are in a position to act on] is a political position".
    - xigoi 4y ago
      I'd say issues which meet this definition are still way too numerous to be active about all of them.

rvz 4y ago

> Put yourself in the maintainers' shoes — would you be happy to idly stand by when you know your service is being used to actively harm others' lives? [^1] Perhaps you would, and if so, I would be interested in hearing your view. Yeah, just like Tor, which is also heavily associated and almost exclusively used for illicit and illegal activities; especially by fraudsters, criminals, scammers, tax / sanctions evasion and illegal drug dealers. If Tornado Cash is not welcome on SourceHut due to the same association of illicit activity, then I should see no exception to the Tor Project hence it's extremely negative enablement of illegal activity going on there should it attempt to get its source code hosted on SourceHut.

Herbstluft 4y ago
The difference is that projects like Tor were certainly not created with any devious purpose in mind. Arguments and use cases for anonymity are very easy to come up with. Blockchain related projects cause damage on two fronts: - They are commonly created with the explicit goal to scam most people while making very few people rich. - The tech around blockchains (almost) qualifies as snakeoil. The use cases are nonexistent in the way they are portrayed. This perpetuates some pseudoscience equivalent in the realm of technology. Which is dangerous on its own. Blockchain is like Homeopathy. No other use case has come up, and any blockchain related project has to simply lie from the get go to even justify its existence. (NFTs; "block chain in gaming" which is total bs from start to finish, portrayed as if they magically make assets appear in other games, which makes no sense whatsoever; block chains where they offer 0 advantages over databases, because a single company keeps ownership and administrative privilege; et cetera)
- gruez 4y ago
  >- They are commonly created with the explicit goal to scam most people while making very few people rich. Examples? I'm struggling to come up with examples outside of something like "ponzicoin". The typical token/ICO project has some plausible business model (ie. you're investing in a token that allows you to use this smart contract, which presumably will have demand if the smart contract becomes popular) which makes it hard to call it an "explicit" scam, even if it does turn out to be effectively a ponzi.

naasking 4y ago

> There are people here who seem to take the view that businesses hosting the content of others ought to absolutely protect their "freedom of speech", no matter the content. I disagree. I also disagree, so long as competitors that disagree with such decisions are also permitted, and so long as the entity in question is not monopolistic or is acting as some kind of widely used utilities for speech. On some issues dissent isn't permitted, and there are many cases where some platforms are arguably acting as utilities.

vladharbuz 4y ago
I agree with you! There's an interesting discussion to be had there in the general case. SourceHut being easily self-hostable means this isn't an issue in this case.

kamikazechaser 4y ago

Terrorists cause far more physical harm than all of crypto will ever do. Do we ban Signal and Telegram repos so that we can "protect the people"? Drew has the absolute right to ban crypto from his platform, but it is a piss take to try and justify it as being a societal harm.

vladharbuz 4y ago
I'd like to hear more about your view, but I don't quite see how what you said applies. My point is that, _if_ you considered cryptocurrencies to be nothing other than a scam, it makes sense to ban them on account of the harm they cause to others. Your examples of Signal and Telegram are not the same thing at all, as they are general communication platforms also used for many things other than terrorism. If there was such a chat app specifically made for and exclusively used for terrorism, then yes, I think banning it is the way to go on the grounds I mentioned above. Can you elaborate more on the details you think we disagree on?