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I agree, and I’m extremely far from a free speech absolutist - to a level that I’m sure most at HN would disagree with. I completely believe in limits to free s

by yashap 3y ago

I agree, and I’m extremely far from a free speech absolutist - to a level that I’m sure most at HN would disagree with. I completely believe in limits to free speech on a case by case basis, online and otherwise. For example, I think HN would be a worse place without moderation, same with Reddit, I think my home country Canada would be a worse place without hate speech laws, etc. Not against limits to free speech online, but I think ISPs are the wrong layer for them. Governments can go after specific sites carrying out illegal activities, online communities can moderate themselves to avoid devolving into 4chan, but ISPs shouldn’t make censorship decisions, it’s just too broad a reach/impact for a private company.

chonkerz 3y ago
Kiwifarms makes shell companies so the hosting provider is a confederate and the only way to terminate service is to go over their head and complain to the upstream. You can even see "their hosting provider" posting weird political astroturfing in this thread. Spammers do this trick all the time to buy some plausible deniability.
- richbell 3y ago
  > Kiwifarms makes shell companies Can you provide examples of shell companies they've used? As far as I'm aware, Kiwi Farms only had a single LLC which is based in the US.
  - chonkerz 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - richbell 3y ago
      > You know full well the series of companies Kiwifarms has gone through, because you are an obvious Kiwifarms user astroturfing this thread. I won't waste time on your bad faith questions. I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Kiwi Farms. I simply do not believe it is just that public pressure basic on dubious or false claims can completely kick a website off the Internet. Regardless, it's clear by your response that you are operating in bad faith.
      - chonkerz 3y ago
        Here's a thread where your admin openly speculates about how to bypass financial restrictions via shell companies because banks won't do business with him and it's harming his business model of taking donations to support harassment campaigns for entertainment. https://kiwifarms.st/threads/plan-in-motion-banking-and-fednow.168949/ https://kiwifarms.st/threads/plan-in-motion-banking-and-fedn... You already know about this activity, but you support it.
      - dang 3y ago
        Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like you've been posting a lot of flamewar comments too, and not just in this thread. Can you please not? As I explained to the other user above, it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
        richbell 3y ago
        Sorry, dang. Sometimes the undertow pulls you in.
    - Dan_Sylveste 3y ago
      There isn't a single comment I've seen you make in this thread which even vaguely qualifies as being in good faith.
      - dang 3y ago
        Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - dang 3y ago
      You posted 89 comments in this thread—that is over the top. We're not here for speedrage flamewars. We're here for thoughtful, curious, respectful conversation. If you can't do that or don't want to, please don't post until you do. The idea on HN is to value quality over quantity—regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. I realize several other commenters are also on the wrong side of this tradeoff, but your account has been standing out in this respect. You have also been repeatedly crossing into flamewar and in some cases egregiously breaking the site guidelines, as you did here. We ban accounts that post like this, regardless of how right they are or feel they are. If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not use HN primarily for flamewar and/or ideological battle, we'd appreciate it. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
raxxorraxor 3y ago
HN is moderated, but I cannot imagine many opinions that really would be outright banned or suppressed. It has strong requirements to the form, but not necessarily the content of the message itself. That is in essence not the topic people complain about, otherwise they probably wouldn't post. I am a free speech absolutist though, I tend to like the term too because I believe its intended derisiveness is mostly impotent. Overall I believe trying to enforce hate speech laws is fundamentally flawed. I think people should be free to express acceptance as they should be able to express rejections.
- kredd 3y ago
  Quite a lot of opinions get suppressed over here, and rightly so. You can see a lot of flagged comments in hot threads. I grew up with unrestricted access to internet as a child, browsed a lot of forums, and most of them were always heavily moderated as well. The thing is, the majority of audience (read-only people) don’t want to see extremely stupid content (subjective). Thus the mods, host and etc. have to play the balancing game. HN is one of those places, and they’re doing a terrific job, in my opinion. I’m not sure how to put it into words, but Internet is not the same as public free speech. Anonymity, physical distance, not seeing others’ faces contribute to the way people talk. I completely support the former kind, but not the latter. It just becomes a breeding ground for a lot of naive people who start thinking that’s tolerable to act that way in real world too (can’t cite any sources, just observations from my nephews and others kids I know). We like to tout how everyone forms their own opinions, but I’m a heavy believer of the “nurture” side of the debate. If you get sucked into one corner of the Internet, you will start hating the other corner, and that’s basically your nurturing. I guess, the major question is, should we keep fostering this behaviour or not? And I don’t know the answer, as there isn’t “one right corner” most of the time. The best I can do is to support the crackdown on extremely obvious shitty behaviour knowing that’s against the free speech ethos.
  - DharmaPolice 3y ago
    I've not done a thorough analysis but it seems like most flagging of posters/comments here seems to be done on the basis of conduct rather than opinion. And that's a different matter. The thought experiment is always; if this person behaved the same way but had a different viewpoint - would they still be banned/flagged/arrested? Mostly I think it's a yes here, which is a good thing. The problem with a lot of internet posters is they refuse to accept a distinction between conduct and opinion. If you're abusive to everyone and then get banned, it's not because they couldn't handle your radical opinions, it's because you were being a dick.
Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
Moderation and censorship are two very different things. Also, trusting the government is silly. It has a lot of opportunities to call any speech harmful to state policies as 'hate speech', 'misinformation', etc. - and before long you could find your country turned into a authoritarian failed state like Russia.
- vintermann 3y ago
  Right. To make it explicit: Moderation is when you take down material because the recipient doesn't want to see it. Censorship is when you take down content because you don't want the recipient to see it, regardless of how the recipient feels about it. If people think censorship is sometimes justified, they should argue that, and not muddle the picture with moderation.
lifthrasiir 3y ago
I'm on the same page, and I think the title could have been better because it overlooks the following sentence, which is in my opinion the most effective argument against HE: > Tier 1 ISPs don’t have the ability or the incentive to build content evaluation teams that are even as effective as those of the giant platforms who know far more about their end users and yet still engage in harmful censorship. HE should not do the "moderation" not because those sites are okay, but because HE can't do the effective moderation. The current title doesn't suggest that the subject ("ISPs") is very important.

by yashap 3y ago

chonkerz 3y ago

Kiwifarms makes shell companies so the hosting provider is a confederate and the only way to terminate service is to go over their head and complain to the upstream. You can even see "their hosting provider" posting weird political astroturfing in this thread. Spammers do this trick all the time to buy some plausible deniability.

richbell 3y ago
> Kiwifarms makes shell companies Can you provide examples of shell companies they've used? As far as I'm aware, Kiwi Farms only had a single LLC which is based in the US.
- chonkerz 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - richbell 3y ago
    > You know full well the series of companies Kiwifarms has gone through, because you are an obvious Kiwifarms user astroturfing this thread. I won't waste time on your bad faith questions. I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Kiwi Farms. I simply do not believe it is just that public pressure basic on dubious or false claims can completely kick a website off the Internet. Regardless, it's clear by your response that you are operating in bad faith.
    - chonkerz 3y ago
      Here's a thread where your admin openly speculates about how to bypass financial restrictions via shell companies because banks won't do business with him and it's harming his business model of taking donations to support harassment campaigns for entertainment. https://kiwifarms.st/threads/plan-in-motion-banking-and-fednow.168949/ https://kiwifarms.st/threads/plan-in-motion-banking-and-fedn... You already know about this activity, but you support it.
    - dang 3y ago
      Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like you've been posting a lot of flamewar comments too, and not just in this thread. Can you please not? As I explained to the other user above, it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
      - richbell 3y ago
        Sorry, dang. Sometimes the undertow pulls you in.
  - Dan_Sylveste 3y ago
    There isn't a single comment I've seen you make in this thread which even vaguely qualifies as being in good faith.
    - dang 3y ago
      Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dang 3y ago
    You posted 89 comments in this thread—that is over the top. We're not here for speedrage flamewars. We're here for thoughtful, curious, respectful conversation. If you can't do that or don't want to, please don't post until you do. The idea on HN is to value quality over quantity—regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. I realize several other commenters are also on the wrong side of this tradeoff, but your account has been standing out in this respect. You have also been repeatedly crossing into flamewar and in some cases egregiously breaking the site guidelines, as you did here. We ban accounts that post like this, regardless of how right they are or feel they are. If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not use HN primarily for flamewar and/or ideological battle, we'd appreciate it. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

raxxorraxor 3y ago

HN is moderated, but I cannot imagine many opinions that really would be outright banned or suppressed. It has strong requirements to the form, but not necessarily the content of the message itself. That is in essence not the topic people complain about, otherwise they probably wouldn't post. I am a free speech absolutist though, I tend to like the term too because I believe its intended derisiveness is mostly impotent. Overall I believe trying to enforce hate speech laws is fundamentally flawed. I think people should be free to express acceptance as they should be able to express rejections.

kredd 3y ago
Quite a lot of opinions get suppressed over here, and rightly so. You can see a lot of flagged comments in hot threads. I grew up with unrestricted access to internet as a child, browsed a lot of forums, and most of them were always heavily moderated as well. The thing is, the majority of audience (read-only people) don’t want to see extremely stupid content (subjective). Thus the mods, host and etc. have to play the balancing game. HN is one of those places, and they’re doing a terrific job, in my opinion. I’m not sure how to put it into words, but Internet is not the same as public free speech. Anonymity, physical distance, not seeing others’ faces contribute to the way people talk. I completely support the former kind, but not the latter. It just becomes a breeding ground for a lot of naive people who start thinking that’s tolerable to act that way in real world too (can’t cite any sources, just observations from my nephews and others kids I know). We like to tout how everyone forms their own opinions, but I’m a heavy believer of the “nurture” side of the debate. If you get sucked into one corner of the Internet, you will start hating the other corner, and that’s basically your nurturing. I guess, the major question is, should we keep fostering this behaviour or not? And I don’t know the answer, as there isn’t “one right corner” most of the time. The best I can do is to support the crackdown on extremely obvious shitty behaviour knowing that’s against the free speech ethos.
- DharmaPolice 3y ago
  I've not done a thorough analysis but it seems like most flagging of posters/comments here seems to be done on the basis of conduct rather than opinion. And that's a different matter. The thought experiment is always; if this person behaved the same way but had a different viewpoint - would they still be banned/flagged/arrested? Mostly I think it's a yes here, which is a good thing. The problem with a lot of internet posters is they refuse to accept a distinction between conduct and opinion. If you're abusive to everyone and then get banned, it's not because they couldn't handle your radical opinions, it's because you were being a dick.

Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago

Moderation and censorship are two very different things. Also, trusting the government is silly. It has a lot of opportunities to call any speech harmful to state policies as 'hate speech', 'misinformation', etc. - and before long you could find your country turned into a authoritarian failed state like Russia.

vintermann 3y ago
Right. To make it explicit: Moderation is when you take down material because the recipient doesn't want to see it. Censorship is when you take down content because you don't want the recipient to see it, regardless of how the recipient feels about it. If people think censorship is sometimes justified, they should argue that, and not muddle the picture with moderation.

lifthrasiir 3y ago

I'm on the same page, and I think the title could have been better because it overlooks the following sentence, which is in my opinion the most effective argument against HE: > Tier 1 ISPs don’t have the ability or the incentive to build content evaluation teams that are even as effective as those of the giant platforms who know far more about their end users and yet still engage in harmful censorship. HE should not do the "moderation" not because those sites are okay, but because HE can't do the effective moderation. The current title doesn't suggest that the subject ("ISPs") is very important.