5 ms·

> "Build your own website" "Build your own payment processor" "Build your own hosting system" "Build your own DDOS protection" "Build your own IP system" Yea,

by lovich 3y ago

> "Build your own website" "Build your own payment processor" "Build your own hosting system" "Build your own DDOS protection" "Build your own IP system" Yea, these are all private companies/actors and it turns out that as you have more and more reprehensible behavior then more and more groups no longer want to do business with you. As a question for all the free speech absolutists who come out crying whenever some group doing absolutely shit behavior like this gets “silenced” via private groups dropping them as a client, what is your solution to letting them still project their voice on private property without infringing on the property owners rights? The only solution I can see would be for the government to nationalize these “public squares” so that they are actually public and have the normal free speech protections(per your specific nations view of free speech). The problem there is that the group of free speech absolutists and the group of people who have a stroke at the idea of the government controlling any sort of infrastructure like these seem like a Venn diagram. I also understand this was a government action in the article but I am replying to a comment referencing private property in terms of “build your own X”

sickofparadox 3y ago
My solution would probably be to encourage societal shame upon the people begging companies to become arbiters of morality. Companies generally don't care enough about these things unless some moral crusade comes along and they kneejerk do whatever they are being brigaded to do. It happened with Cloudflare in this article.
- lovich 3y ago
  So use the same techniques you’re decrying? If you’re suggestion for a moral quandary is to fight fire with fire then most people are going to choose the side they find more morally “good” and you’re going to find that free speech gets limited more and more as you hold up groups like kiwi farms as someone to protect from non government infrastructure and services. You’re not solving the fundamental mismatch between letting people/orgs do as they please with their property and simultaneously wanting to let other private actors do as they please on the same property. “Free Speech” as a concept only aligns with “Free Speech” as a right when it comes to interactions between the government and private actors. It doesn’t line up with private-private interactions because you are inherently infringing on others rights when you want to use their property in a way they don’t want it to be used
  - sickofparadox 3y ago
    It's not the techniques I am against, mass protest or popular action are both time-tested foundations of modern democracy. I am against people demanding that companies be exact mirrors of their morality, and that they only associate with those within their specific societal whitelist. Edit: In fact, there are many things that I think should not be illegal but should be socially shameful for people to do.
    - lovich 3y ago
      I don’t get what you’re complaining about then. Social pressure is shaming people into not doing actions like host the type of content that kiwifarms produces. I can’t come to any interpretation other than you’re just mad that your camp of ideals lost in the public sphere of ideas.
      - sickofparadox 3y ago
        >I am against people demanding that companies be exact mirrors of their morality, and that they only associate with those within their specific societal whitelist.
  - DetroitThrow 3y ago
    > So use the same techniques you’re decrying? ..But who cancels the, err, cancel-ers? Jokes aside, I'm always surprised by people who manage to conflate "freedom of speech" rights with the idea all speech should be given every single megaphone that exists for every other type of speech. Yes, the government shouldn't hunt you down for using racial slurs on your homestead far away from society, but society shouldn't have to give people who hurl racial slurs their primetime news slots. It's usually much easier for normal people to reason about NBC and a racist than the slightly more abstracted and much more online idea of "[private internet infrastructure] should always be made available for every person, because speech!!"
    - sickofparadox 3y ago
      I don't think I've said anything of the sort, your company generally should not be forced to provide service to people. Your company should also not be pressured to stop doing business with people because someone does not like that person. That is all I have said.
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  If that's your solution, fine, but be aware that you're also authorizing people to wield societal shame against you for having the wrong opinion. And those people are probably a lot louder and more powerful, or this wouldn't be an issue in the first place.
  - sickofparadox 3y ago
    I am absolutely aware, and that is partially why I do my best to remain anonymous while I advocate for these things.
    - DetroitThrow 3y ago
      It's worth mentioning that as a company, I'd be much more inclined to listen to people with real names, faces, and reputations rather than anonymous internet profiles when an issue comes about regarding "Did I do a socially unacceptable thing?" Grappling with others in society does seem like a losing battle for those who support actions that society deems as socially unacceptable
naasking 3y ago
> what is your solution to letting them still project their voice on private property without infringing on the property owners rights? Presumably these people expect the same sort of regulation as utilities: unless you're directly impeding the power company's ability to provide service to others, then they can't just refuse to serve you. Edit: edit for clarity per the below discussion.
- lovich 3y ago
  It’s not a utility though. That’s a very specific word for a type of quasi nationalized entity that is allowed to get set profit for specific performance. They have specific regulation and laws around them that go above and beyond what private corporations have. Complaining that your electric utility dropped service to your data center for hosting certain speech is a much different claim than complaining that a hosting provider dropped your website because of certain speech
  - naasking 3y ago
    > It’s not a utility though The parent asked, "what is your solution to letting them still project their voice on private property without infringing on the property owners rights?" I answered: regulate them like any other utility. The fact that they are not regulated as utilities is "the problem", assuming you have a problem with the status quo.
    - lovich 3y ago
      Ah, that makes sense and is actually something I agree with. I had misinterpreted your original comments phrasing to mean you thought they were already utilities
- dfxm12 3y ago
  Where are you that Internet hosting, payment processing, etc., is a utility?
  - naasking 3y ago
LightHugger 3y ago
Currently widespread censorship against people supporting the people of palestine is being conducted because the corporations you trust to police so called "reprehensible" behavior just happen to support the israeli government. So i guess you need to support israel's apartheid and genocide or else. Oops. So much for it only being reprehensible behavior that's getting nailed. This has been predicted by literally every proponent of free speech since the concept was. No amount of nonsense "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" (it does, by definition) anti-free speech people (fascists for this comment's purposes) will ever change the reality here.
- lovich 3y ago
  Re: the question I asked in another sub thread How do you solve the fundamental mismatch of violating the private entities right to their private property and you’re ability to say what you want on their property against their wishes? If you don’t want the government getting involved then whose right gets to lose here? There is no magical hand wavy answer here where you are infringing on one group or the other because they are fundamentally opppsed
  - LightHugger 3y ago
    Large public platforms that have immunity of responsibility from what people post should also require a degree of hands off. Moderation vs responsibility should be the choice. You can have your tightly moderated small community, or you can have a huge public space. I think this is the best approach i've seen in recent times. Welcome to hear other suggestions, but i think it's obvious that large public backbone services like tier 1 isps or also things like cloudflare should not be policing speech. I would extend that to services on the scale of facebook, twitter, reddit, etc, but probably not individual subreddits. The only reasoning i see from people disagreeing with this is that they happy with what's getting policed at that moment and would immediately flip their lid if anything they like starts getting censored.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  No amount of nonsense "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" (it does, by definition) fascists will ever change the reality here. A business dropping a customer because they'll lose more business if they don't isn't fascism, that's capitalism...
motohagiography 3y ago
This argument falls over as soon as you recognize it's not engaged in the discourse it is criticizing, but "working the ref," and going upstream to destroy the discourse itself instead. While speech is not violence, political action outside of it to suppress it is necessarily bringing to bear the upstream providers local monopoly on force and ultimately the state's monopoloy violence on speech. It demoralizes violence by using it in tiny increments, and then affects shock when it escalates. This style of argument needs more of the ridicule it earns. In any conversation, the parties are free to walk away, but when one returns with a bunch of their friends to make sure the conversation doesn't continue, it is no longer a conversation.
- lovich 3y ago
  Skipping over my question which is divorced from the court ruling and referring back to the article then. Wouldn’t that make this ruling completely ok? Kiwifarms was a coordinated group of friends making sure others couldn’t have their own speech
- lovich 3y ago
  Continuing the response to my question separate from the article. Where does the line get drawn on the spectrum of “everyone involved in this pressure campaign is part of a coordinated group” and “everyone involved in this pressure campaign is acting completely independently on their own views”? Is it the coordination? Does 20% of your customer base dropping you as their vendor all independently because of another client of yours not allow you to drop said client because they all responded similarly? Some other metric?
- bitwize 3y ago
  All Liz is doing is holding ISPs' feet to the fire, getting them to enforce their own ToS and crack down on sites that violate them (and the law in many jurisdictions, including U.S. states with anti-doxxing laws).
  - neonsunset 3y ago
    [flagged]
FireBeyond 3y ago
> I also understand this was a government action in the article but I am replying to a comment referencing private property in terms of “build your own X” Also w.r.t. to this as a government action, it was acknowledged that the government could not seize servers, seize IP addresses, or similar, as a part of this suit. "You are not being stopped from saying more things, but this thing, you're paying for". Now, if they refuse to or are unable to pay, and the plaintiff files another action to seize assets or other garnishments, that's a separate matter.
renewiltord 3y ago
Ultimately, my experience has been that a lot of free-speech absolutists rapidly lose their belief in absolutism the moment it's something that affects them. Suddenly, people are being pressured to fire folks who released statements on Palestine that were pro-Hamas. Now, I'm not pro-Hamas myself, but it's telling to me that so-called anti-cancel-culture people are very pro-cancel-culture now. It's a pretty big warning signal about who one chooses to be in bed with. You may think the guy standing next to you is for free speech until you find out that his absolutism is somewhat less than absolute. Ultimately, I suppose one has the right to lobby other people to shun someone and one has the right to shun someone. Free association is important. But to discover and undiscover that depending on the outcome means it's not a true principle, which is just useful to know about others.

by lovich 3y ago

sickofparadox 3y ago

My solution would probably be to encourage societal shame upon the people begging companies to become arbiters of morality. Companies generally don't care enough about these things unless some moral crusade comes along and they kneejerk do whatever they are being brigaded to do. It happened with Cloudflare in this article.

lovich 3y ago
So use the same techniques you’re decrying? If you’re suggestion for a moral quandary is to fight fire with fire then most people are going to choose the side they find more morally “good” and you’re going to find that free speech gets limited more and more as you hold up groups like kiwi farms as someone to protect from non government infrastructure and services. You’re not solving the fundamental mismatch between letting people/orgs do as they please with their property and simultaneously wanting to let other private actors do as they please on the same property. “Free Speech” as a concept only aligns with “Free Speech” as a right when it comes to interactions between the government and private actors. It doesn’t line up with private-private interactions because you are inherently infringing on others rights when you want to use their property in a way they don’t want it to be used
- sickofparadox 3y ago
  It's not the techniques I am against, mass protest or popular action are both time-tested foundations of modern democracy. I am against people demanding that companies be exact mirrors of their morality, and that they only associate with those within their specific societal whitelist. Edit: In fact, there are many things that I think should not be illegal but should be socially shameful for people to do.
  - lovich 3y ago
    I don’t get what you’re complaining about then. Social pressure is shaming people into not doing actions like host the type of content that kiwifarms produces. I can’t come to any interpretation other than you’re just mad that your camp of ideals lost in the public sphere of ideas.
    - sickofparadox 3y ago
      >I am against people demanding that companies be exact mirrors of their morality, and that they only associate with those within their specific societal whitelist.
- DetroitThrow 3y ago
  > So use the same techniques you’re decrying? ..But who cancels the, err, cancel-ers? Jokes aside, I'm always surprised by people who manage to conflate "freedom of speech" rights with the idea all speech should be given every single megaphone that exists for every other type of speech. Yes, the government shouldn't hunt you down for using racial slurs on your homestead far away from society, but society shouldn't have to give people who hurl racial slurs their primetime news slots. It's usually much easier for normal people to reason about NBC and a racist than the slightly more abstracted and much more online idea of "[private internet infrastructure] should always be made available for every person, because speech!!"
  - sickofparadox 3y ago
    I don't think I've said anything of the sort, your company generally should not be forced to provide service to people. Your company should also not be pressured to stop doing business with people because someone does not like that person. That is all I have said.
Analemma_ 3y ago
If that's your solution, fine, but be aware that you're also authorizing people to wield societal shame against you for having the wrong opinion. And those people are probably a lot louder and more powerful, or this wouldn't be an issue in the first place.
- sickofparadox 3y ago
  I am absolutely aware, and that is partially why I do my best to remain anonymous while I advocate for these things.
  - DetroitThrow 3y ago
    It's worth mentioning that as a company, I'd be much more inclined to listen to people with real names, faces, and reputations rather than anonymous internet profiles when an issue comes about regarding "Did I do a socially unacceptable thing?" Grappling with others in society does seem like a losing battle for those who support actions that society deems as socially unacceptable

naasking 3y ago

> what is your solution to letting them still project their voice on private property without infringing on the property owners rights? Presumably these people expect the same sort of regulation as utilities: unless you're directly impeding the power company's ability to provide service to others, then they can't just refuse to serve you. Edit: edit for clarity per the below discussion.

lovich 3y ago
It’s not a utility though. That’s a very specific word for a type of quasi nationalized entity that is allowed to get set profit for specific performance. They have specific regulation and laws around them that go above and beyond what private corporations have. Complaining that your electric utility dropped service to your data center for hosting certain speech is a much different claim than complaining that a hosting provider dropped your website because of certain speech
- naasking 3y ago
  > It’s not a utility though The parent asked, "what is your solution to letting them still project their voice on private property without infringing on the property owners rights?" I answered: regulate them like any other utility. The fact that they are not regulated as utilities is "the problem", assuming you have a problem with the status quo.
  - lovich 3y ago
    Ah, that makes sense and is actually something I agree with. I had misinterpreted your original comments phrasing to mean you thought they were already utilities
dfxm12 3y ago
Where are you that Internet hosting, payment processing, etc., is a utility?
- naasking 3y ago

LightHugger 3y ago

Currently widespread censorship against people supporting the people of palestine is being conducted because the corporations you trust to police so called "reprehensible" behavior just happen to support the israeli government. So i guess you need to support israel's apartheid and genocide or else. Oops. So much for it only being reprehensible behavior that's getting nailed. This has been predicted by literally every proponent of free speech since the concept was. No amount of nonsense "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" (it does, by definition) anti-free speech people (fascists for this comment's purposes) will ever change the reality here.

lovich 3y ago
Re: the question I asked in another sub thread How do you solve the fundamental mismatch of violating the private entities right to their private property and you’re ability to say what you want on their property against their wishes? If you don’t want the government getting involved then whose right gets to lose here? There is no magical hand wavy answer here where you are infringing on one group or the other because they are fundamentally opppsed
- LightHugger 3y ago
  Large public platforms that have immunity of responsibility from what people post should also require a degree of hands off. Moderation vs responsibility should be the choice. You can have your tightly moderated small community, or you can have a huge public space. I think this is the best approach i've seen in recent times. Welcome to hear other suggestions, but i think it's obvious that large public backbone services like tier 1 isps or also things like cloudflare should not be policing speech. I would extend that to services on the scale of facebook, twitter, reddit, etc, but probably not individual subreddits. The only reasoning i see from people disagreeing with this is that they happy with what's getting policed at that moment and would immediately flip their lid if anything they like starts getting censored.
dfxm12 3y ago
No amount of nonsense "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" (it does, by definition) fascists will ever change the reality here. A business dropping a customer because they'll lose more business if they don't isn't fascism, that's capitalism...

motohagiography 3y ago

This argument falls over as soon as you recognize it's not engaged in the discourse it is criticizing, but "working the ref," and going upstream to destroy the discourse itself instead. While speech is not violence, political action outside of it to suppress it is necessarily bringing to bear the upstream providers local monopoly on force and ultimately the state's monopoloy violence on speech. It demoralizes violence by using it in tiny increments, and then affects shock when it escalates. This style of argument needs more of the ridicule it earns. In any conversation, the parties are free to walk away, but when one returns with a bunch of their friends to make sure the conversation doesn't continue, it is no longer a conversation.

lovich 3y ago
Skipping over my question which is divorced from the court ruling and referring back to the article then. Wouldn’t that make this ruling completely ok? Kiwifarms was a coordinated group of friends making sure others couldn’t have their own speech
lovich 3y ago
Continuing the response to my question separate from the article. Where does the line get drawn on the spectrum of “everyone involved in this pressure campaign is part of a coordinated group” and “everyone involved in this pressure campaign is acting completely independently on their own views”? Is it the coordination? Does 20% of your customer base dropping you as their vendor all independently because of another client of yours not allow you to drop said client because they all responded similarly? Some other metric?
bitwize 3y ago
All Liz is doing is holding ISPs' feet to the fire, getting them to enforce their own ToS and crack down on sites that violate them (and the law in many jurisdictions, including U.S. states with anti-doxxing laws).
- neonsunset 3y ago
  [flagged]

FireBeyond 3y ago

> I also understand this was a government action in the article but I am replying to a comment referencing private property in terms of “build your own X” Also w.r.t. to this as a government action, it was acknowledged that the government could not seize servers, seize IP addresses, or similar, as a part of this suit. "You are not being stopped from saying more things, but this thing, you're paying for". Now, if they refuse to or are unable to pay, and the plaintiff files another action to seize assets or other garnishments, that's a separate matter.

renewiltord 3y ago

Ultimately, my experience has been that a lot of free-speech absolutists rapidly lose their belief in absolutism the moment it's something that affects them. Suddenly, people are being pressured to fire folks who released statements on Palestine that were pro-Hamas. Now, I'm not pro-Hamas myself, but it's telling to me that so-called anti-cancel-culture people are very pro-cancel-culture now. It's a pretty big warning signal about who one chooses to be in bed with. You may think the guy standing next to you is for free speech until you find out that his absolutism is somewhat less than absolute. Ultimately, I suppose one has the right to lobby other people to shun someone and one has the right to shun someone. Free association is important. But to discover and undiscover that depending on the outcome means it's not a true principle, which is just useful to know about others.