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I think you misunderstand the EFF's position here if you think this is some kind of enlightened centrist "I may not agree with what you say but I will fight to

by hnbad 3y ago

I think you misunderstand the EFF's position here if you think this is some kind of enlightened centrist "I may not agree with what you say but I will fight to death for your right to say it": the EFF is opposed to ISPs filtering content because that is not the job of an ISP and not a level of analysis an ISP should be allowed (much less required) to do. The EFF very much promotes progressive values, more consistently so than the ACLU which has supported "free speech" cases by undesirable folks before and which seems to have led to this supposed "betrayal" when it turned out not to go out of its way to do so in every case. The problem with "free speech" absolutist organizations is the same as with "free speech" absolutist social media platforms: if your distinguishing feature is to allow everyone to say almost anything, you'll primarily attract those people who want to say things they can't say elsewhere. And this inevitably means you get an overrepresentation of open white supremacists, CSAM enjoyers, teenage edgelords and trolls. And most people don't want to be associated with these kinds of people, so having enough of them around drives out everyone else. It's the Nazi Bar problem: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar Either you put in effort to make your organization unattractive to nazis, or you become a nazi organization.

leetcrew 3y ago
the "nazi bar" concept does accurately describe the problem with sites like parlor today, but I'd argue it's only true now because heavy moderation has become the default. most of the internet was not like this 10-15 years ago. forums and even large social media platforms were moderated lightly, if at all. you would commonly see edgelords dropping slurs, but it did not dominate the discussion. I don't think the entire internet would turn into kiwifarms if everyone just decided to relax a bit.
- digging 3y ago
  > most of the internet was not like this 10-15 years ago. forums and even large social media platforms were moderated lightly, if at all. you would commonly see edgelords dropping slurs, but it did not dominate the discussion. Either you're thinking of a time much further back than 10-15 years (that is, 2008-2013), or you're wrong. Or - could be you were just in the Nazi bars at the time, also. My experience in a variety of online places at that time was that "edgelords" got told off or kicked out in most. A few places didn't, and they were already or became the Nazi bars. Alternately, the Nazis would be herded into a smaller subset of the platform, which became the Nazi bar.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    He is right, your assertions about alleged Nazi bars are obviously false.
    - digging 3y ago
      I can't tell if this is sarcasm.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  You're right - there's an extra step. Most of the worst, most toxic shitholes on the Internet are not just unmoderated Nazi Bars, but actively moderated to silence the people telling the Nazis off. Nazi Bar explains the decay of USENET and 4chan, but not, say, Parler. Parler editorializes the shit out of their algorithm and website and actively bans left-wingers that might interrupt the perfect far-right echo chamber they want. Major social networks don't do this, but they do actively boost things that create engagement, which is something right-wingers are very good at manufacturing. They use sockpuppet accounts to do that. This means that the underlying amount of toxicity on the Internet is not fixed - i.e. these forums not toxic purely because everyone else kicked them out and concentrated the toxicity, and we can't just disperse the toxicity. Dispersing the toxicity creates more toxicity. Also, the forums you remember from decades ago were likely way more moderated than you remember, and probably run by people powertripping as hard as Elon Musk or Spez. The difference was that you could just leave without consequence and never come back. You don't have that luxury with Facebook or Twitter.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    I think you're mostly being downvoted for tone but I agree with you to some extent. To be clear, sites like Twitter actively went out of their way NOT to ban people for espousing far right talking points. Infamously there's the story about how auto-moderation would have resulted in the ban of a number of major profiles including GOP politicians and they had to give special treatment to Donald Trump while he was in office because he blatantly violated the terms of service all the time. Arguably more leftist accounts were banned than right-wing (if you exclude bans for active harassment like calling people slurs) but this is because leftists are generally outside the political spectrum so far right accounts tend to not be compared to leftists but to liberals, who of course tend to be more within the bounds of the terms of service. The Nazi Bar is easily observable in real time with Elon Musk's Xitter. Elon Musk unbanned a number of far right accounts while actively engaging with a number of far right influencers. Additionally bans for slurs and targeted harassment have gone down. In Germany the only way to report an account is via a special flow that tries to implement the requirements of the NetzDG law (with malicious compliance in my opinion) and it's an open secret that ever since the layoffs any NetzDG reports sent via this system now get rejected by default whereas any sent by physical mail get approved by default. A German research project has also demonstrated that German-speaking left-leaning and far left "bubbles" have dwindled since the takeover whereas far right bubbles have gone into overdrive. All German-speaking tweets (xeets?) I've seen from leftist or moderately popular left-leaning accounts are now flooded with replies from right-wing trolls (or worse) with blue checkmarks, often posting things that are clearly illegal speech under German law (e.g. glorifying criminal violence or directly insulting people to a criminal degree) but are not taken down even when reported. To be clear: this is illegal behavior on the part of X and will eventually result in them being fined. Musk just doesn't seem to care as presumably the fine won't be any more ruinous than what the company already owes. You can however leave Twitter without consequence. Major influences, brands and others have already done so any many "normies" have stopped going because they experience the same toxicity and look elsewhere. Twitter hasn't been that large to begin with, certainly not on par with Facebook. Twitter's success came from it being the place where celebrities and journalists and influencers can be interacted with directly and you'd get a glimpse into the mind of your favorite famous person or be able to see witness reports of major tragedies first-hand (which of course became increasingly attractive for people trying to spread misinformation for fun or profit).
Dan_Sylveste 3y ago
> And this inevitably means you get an overrepresentation of Why do you assume this very consistent pattern of 'new forum overrun by [the material you've mentioned]' is anything other than a transparent attack on free discourse? I mean, it's very consistent, isn't it? Everyone knows it happens, and it's a good way to scare people off even thinking about visiting those forums if they think that any day they could go there and have their browser history full of ick.
gameman144 3y ago
> And this inevitably means you get an overrepresentation of open white supremacists, CSAM enjoyers, teenage edgelords and trolls. This is not a problem for free speech organizations, though, since they have the ability to choose which cases they represent. They can (and do, I'm sure) often weigh the perception of bias in which cases they take on next.
nvm0n2 3y ago
The Nazi Bar "problem" is just a way to justify imposing censorship universally: 1. We ban people we don't like. They aren't actually Nazis, but we don't like them so we pretend they are. 2. They go to some other place where we don't yet dominate. 3. Now we assert that everyone in that other place is also a Nazi, because they aren't doing the same thing we're doing. If the Nazi Bar was really a real concept then every left wing political party in the world would be a Bar and therefore everyone voting for them would be a Nazi. Because, recall, they were the National Socialists, and every left wing party has a whole lot of committed socialists. Luckily for political harmony, other people don't use this type of reasoning to eliminate their enemies so left and right parties can compete fairly for votes. Which is why it needs to be stamped out amongst those who do use it.
- barfingclouds 3y ago
  Yeah this is a fear mongering tactic, and an intentional overreach. The Nazi bar problem is not even hard in concept. If someone is not a Nazi, let them in. If someone is edgy, let them in. If someone is a Nazi, kick them out. Not rocket science. Nazis will not accumulate if done this way. But people get looser and looser about their definition of Nazis, which ends up being “people I don’t like or who have different politics agendas than me” and pre emptively kick out tons of people in the name of keeping themselves safe
- hnbad 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    Here's a quick quiz. For the entire set considered together, which government is being referred to, the USSR or the Third Reich? 1. They set up a network of forced labor camps. 2. They discriminated against Jews, justifying this by claiming that as rich capitalists they were enemies of socialism. 3. They claimed to represent the working class. 4. They invaded and captured other countries. 5. They were a dictatorship. 6. They were famous for their high levels of propaganda. 7. In their printed materials they stated explicitly "We are socialists", demanded a program of nationalization and stated that all citizens were equal. 8. They imprisoned, exiled or killed their political opponents. 9. Most importantly for this thread, they aggressively censored their opponents and directly controlled the media. You can't tell what the answer is, because every point is correct for both of them. The differences were much smaller than their similarities. This matters because it leads to people using NSDAP/USSR ideological tactics like censorship of their political opponents, whilst claiming to be fighting the very same. This obvious comparison has been suppressed by systematic and vicious attacks on anyone who points it out for a very long time, so I doubt this post will get good reactions and unfortunately HN isn't a good forum for pointing this out because it tends to blame people for the reactions of others regardless of how polite or intellectually curious they may actually be, giving a kind of hecklers veto to discussions. But the confusion here leads to people repeating the mistakes of the past and trying to fight fire with fire, so it's really important to point out. That's why Germany is now punishing an American author for using a swastika in his criticism of politicians: the whole point of studying history is to be able to say "wait, that behaviour looks like something we've seen before" and yet the people doing that are now being attacked as Nazis themselves. This upside-down sort of behaviour is inevitable for as long as people keep insisting on upside-down interpretations of history. You can't claim to be fighting Nazi-ism whilst simultaneously using their tactics!
johnnyanmac 3y ago
I'd normally agree, but a large public organization is a bit different from a small local bar. the Nazi bar problem usually "works" because of an "apple poisons the barrel" deal. But when we're talking about a lake, it just dissipates. It's the physical analouge to how Twitter can still be the most used social media website despite also having years of accusations about every kind of bad content under the sun. So if a group is large enough, I wouldn't be worried about that kind of inflitration.

by hnbad 3y ago

leetcrew 3y ago

the "nazi bar" concept does accurately describe the problem with sites like parlor today, but I'd argue it's only true now because heavy moderation has become the default. most of the internet was not like this 10-15 years ago. forums and even large social media platforms were moderated lightly, if at all. you would commonly see edgelords dropping slurs, but it did not dominate the discussion. I don't think the entire internet would turn into kiwifarms if everyone just decided to relax a bit.

digging 3y ago
> most of the internet was not like this 10-15 years ago. forums and even large social media platforms were moderated lightly, if at all. you would commonly see edgelords dropping slurs, but it did not dominate the discussion. Either you're thinking of a time much further back than 10-15 years (that is, 2008-2013), or you're wrong. Or - could be you were just in the Nazi bars at the time, also. My experience in a variety of online places at that time was that "edgelords" got told off or kicked out in most. A few places didn't, and they were already or became the Nazi bars. Alternately, the Nazis would be herded into a smaller subset of the platform, which became the Nazi bar.
- cubefox 3y ago
  He is right, your assertions about alleged Nazi bars are obviously false.
  - digging 3y ago
    I can't tell if this is sarcasm.
kmeisthax 3y ago
You're right - there's an extra step. Most of the worst, most toxic shitholes on the Internet are not just unmoderated Nazi Bars, but actively moderated to silence the people telling the Nazis off. Nazi Bar explains the decay of USENET and 4chan, but not, say, Parler. Parler editorializes the shit out of their algorithm and website and actively bans left-wingers that might interrupt the perfect far-right echo chamber they want. Major social networks don't do this, but they do actively boost things that create engagement, which is something right-wingers are very good at manufacturing. They use sockpuppet accounts to do that. This means that the underlying amount of toxicity on the Internet is not fixed - i.e. these forums not toxic purely because everyone else kicked them out and concentrated the toxicity, and we can't just disperse the toxicity. Dispersing the toxicity creates more toxicity. Also, the forums you remember from decades ago were likely way more moderated than you remember, and probably run by people powertripping as hard as Elon Musk or Spez. The difference was that you could just leave without consequence and never come back. You don't have that luxury with Facebook or Twitter.
- hnbad 3y ago
  I think you're mostly being downvoted for tone but I agree with you to some extent. To be clear, sites like Twitter actively went out of their way NOT to ban people for espousing far right talking points. Infamously there's the story about how auto-moderation would have resulted in the ban of a number of major profiles including GOP politicians and they had to give special treatment to Donald Trump while he was in office because he blatantly violated the terms of service all the time. Arguably more leftist accounts were banned than right-wing (if you exclude bans for active harassment like calling people slurs) but this is because leftists are generally outside the political spectrum so far right accounts tend to not be compared to leftists but to liberals, who of course tend to be more within the bounds of the terms of service. The Nazi Bar is easily observable in real time with Elon Musk's Xitter. Elon Musk unbanned a number of far right accounts while actively engaging with a number of far right influencers. Additionally bans for slurs and targeted harassment have gone down. In Germany the only way to report an account is via a special flow that tries to implement the requirements of the NetzDG law (with malicious compliance in my opinion) and it's an open secret that ever since the layoffs any NetzDG reports sent via this system now get rejected by default whereas any sent by physical mail get approved by default. A German research project has also demonstrated that German-speaking left-leaning and far left "bubbles" have dwindled since the takeover whereas far right bubbles have gone into overdrive. All German-speaking tweets (xeets?) I've seen from leftist or moderately popular left-leaning accounts are now flooded with replies from right-wing trolls (or worse) with blue checkmarks, often posting things that are clearly illegal speech under German law (e.g. glorifying criminal violence or directly insulting people to a criminal degree) but are not taken down even when reported. To be clear: this is illegal behavior on the part of X and will eventually result in them being fined. Musk just doesn't seem to care as presumably the fine won't be any more ruinous than what the company already owes. You can however leave Twitter without consequence. Major influences, brands and others have already done so any many "normies" have stopped going because they experience the same toxicity and look elsewhere. Twitter hasn't been that large to begin with, certainly not on par with Facebook. Twitter's success came from it being the place where celebrities and journalists and influencers can be interacted with directly and you'd get a glimpse into the mind of your favorite famous person or be able to see witness reports of major tragedies first-hand (which of course became increasingly attractive for people trying to spread misinformation for fun or profit).

Dan_Sylveste 3y ago

> And this inevitably means you get an overrepresentation of Why do you assume this very consistent pattern of 'new forum overrun by [the material you've mentioned]' is anything other than a transparent attack on free discourse? I mean, it's very consistent, isn't it? Everyone knows it happens, and it's a good way to scare people off even thinking about visiting those forums if they think that any day they could go there and have their browser history full of ick.

gameman144 3y ago

> And this inevitably means you get an overrepresentation of open white supremacists, CSAM enjoyers, teenage edgelords and trolls. This is not a problem for free speech organizations, though, since they have the ability to choose which cases they represent. They can (and do, I'm sure) often weigh the perception of bias in which cases they take on next.

nvm0n2 3y ago

The Nazi Bar "problem" is just a way to justify imposing censorship universally: 1. We ban people we don't like. They aren't actually Nazis, but we don't like them so we pretend they are. 2. They go to some other place where we don't yet dominate. 3. Now we assert that everyone in that other place is also a Nazi, because they aren't doing the same thing we're doing. If the Nazi Bar was really a real concept then every left wing political party in the world would be a Bar and therefore everyone voting for them would be a Nazi. Because, recall, they were the National Socialists, and every left wing party has a whole lot of committed socialists. Luckily for political harmony, other people don't use this type of reasoning to eliminate their enemies so left and right parties can compete fairly for votes. Which is why it needs to be stamped out amongst those who do use it.

barfingclouds 3y ago
Yeah this is a fear mongering tactic, and an intentional overreach. The Nazi bar problem is not even hard in concept. If someone is not a Nazi, let them in. If someone is edgy, let them in. If someone is a Nazi, kick them out. Not rocket science. Nazis will not accumulate if done this way. But people get looser and looser about their definition of Nazis, which ends up being “people I don’t like or who have different politics agendas than me” and pre emptively kick out tons of people in the name of keeping themselves safe
hnbad 3y ago
[flagged]
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  Here's a quick quiz. For the entire set considered together, which government is being referred to, the USSR or the Third Reich? 1. They set up a network of forced labor camps. 2. They discriminated against Jews, justifying this by claiming that as rich capitalists they were enemies of socialism. 3. They claimed to represent the working class. 4. They invaded and captured other countries. 5. They were a dictatorship. 6. They were famous for their high levels of propaganda. 7. In their printed materials they stated explicitly "We are socialists", demanded a program of nationalization and stated that all citizens were equal. 8. They imprisoned, exiled or killed their political opponents. 9. Most importantly for this thread, they aggressively censored their opponents and directly controlled the media. You can't tell what the answer is, because every point is correct for both of them. The differences were much smaller than their similarities. This matters because it leads to people using NSDAP/USSR ideological tactics like censorship of their political opponents, whilst claiming to be fighting the very same. This obvious comparison has been suppressed by systematic and vicious attacks on anyone who points it out for a very long time, so I doubt this post will get good reactions and unfortunately HN isn't a good forum for pointing this out because it tends to blame people for the reactions of others regardless of how polite or intellectually curious they may actually be, giving a kind of hecklers veto to discussions. But the confusion here leads to people repeating the mistakes of the past and trying to fight fire with fire, so it's really important to point out. That's why Germany is now punishing an American author for using a swastika in his criticism of politicians: the whole point of studying history is to be able to say "wait, that behaviour looks like something we've seen before" and yet the people doing that are now being attacked as Nazis themselves. This upside-down sort of behaviour is inevitable for as long as people keep insisting on upside-down interpretations of history. You can't claim to be fighting Nazi-ism whilst simultaneously using their tactics!

johnnyanmac 3y ago

I'd normally agree, but a large public organization is a bit different from a small local bar. the Nazi bar problem usually "works" because of an "apple poisons the barrel" deal. But when we're talking about a lake, it just dissipates. It's the physical analouge to how Twitter can still be the most used social media website despite also having years of accusations about every kind of bad content under the sun. So if a group is large enough, I wouldn't be worried about that kind of inflitration.