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The game Alpha Centauri had the most hard hitting quote that I think applies now. "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of

The game Alpha Centauri had the most hard hitting quote that I think applies now. "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny...Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. Commissioner Pravin Lal, 'U.N. Declaration of Rights' "

phatfish 1y ago
[flagged]
- inemesitaffia 1y ago
  Their parent can apply blocks on their devices is what I'd tell you. Because these are ultimately excuses for spying on adults
  - _Algernon_ 1y ago
    This argument is basically the same as saying that stores should be allowed to sell alcohol to kids because it's the parents' responsibility to guard the store so their kids don't buy it. Kids do not only have access to their own devices (for one, these days schools provide them with devices that parents have little say over often with only trivial filtering). And that is assuming the best case scenario where parents have the technical know-how to put in place non-trivial limits. Most don't.
    - shit_game 1y ago
      People under age can obtain fake IDs, all over the world. This is illegal, but it still happens. At some point, it is ultimatey a parents responsibility to prevent their children from doing so by acting as a parent to their child and preventing them from engaging in destructive behavior. This is established law, even, in many countries, where a parent can be held accountable for the criminal actions of their children for failing to prevent it. And frankly, I don't give enough of a shit about other peoples' kids to believe that internet usage should require identification like is being pushed by major governments. I want good things for these kids, I want them to grow up in a good society and a good world, and I dont want harm to come to them. But I recognize that a "good society" and a "good world" and one that minimizes harm to people is one where information is available without restrictions and without censorship and without the risk of a government that might decide it wants to commit genocide against you in the not-so-distant future using your search history to persecute you. Pardon my riffing off Flowbots' Handlebars there, but this really is the world that people live in today; powerful world-stage governments want to restrict information about topics they do not like, and are persecuting people who posess this information; the next steps are very, very well documented. Creating the monster we are watching grow is not worth anything anyone could ever promise you.
  - antihero 1y ago
    Perhaps a better implementation of the law would be requiring all sites to mark content as NSFW if it is, and having opt-in device level toggles, so parents could protect their kids more easily, but anyone who’s actively seeking the content is able to. Teenagers will get around this ridiculous verification with ease either way.
    - inemesitaffia 1y ago
      We had this in Internet Explorer
- yapyap 1y ago
  You ate the “save the children” koolaid. Children can also be groomed over text messages, should we let the government read all our text messages now? Children can also be depicted wrong in photos, should we let the governments of the world have access to our photos so they can check for themselves if that is happening or not? (both are hypothetical questions, the answer is no of course not. This is the responsibility of the caretaker in their life to guide them safely through the world.)
  - 14 1y ago
    I also remind people that laws change over time and that perfect crime prevention is actually a bad thing. The easiest example one can point to homosexuality. We now accept that people attracted to the same sex. But at one point in time in many places that was illegal. The last person in Canada to go to jail for being gay was in 1965, charged with gross indecency. But times and morals change so imagine if we had perfect police and everyone had to wear a camera at all times and every single thing you did was monitored and reported back to the police. No gays, no abortions, no alcohol, no speaking against governments or police, so many ways we would be oppressed. I am not saying people who harm children should free to break the law but the solution can not be to monitor everything every person does. The solution for me would be to teach people how to better set parental controls for their kids and to educate both parents and kids about dangers and online safety.
  - nickslaughter02 1y ago
    Both are included in EU's chat control proposal. Reading text because "grooming" and searching of storage. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
- woodpanel 1y ago
  When you want to grant the very state, that actively protected ethnically targeted organized gang-rapes-to-prostitution-rings, with enough trust to even remotely care about children having unlimited access to pornography, maybe you are part of the problem.
- noduerme 1y ago
  I don't think your comment should be downvoted. Children viewing porn is a legitimate problem. The other problem is that adults should not be forced to share their identity to view content - particularly that which might be used to blackmail them. I don't have children. And I don't think your children outweigh my right to privacy.
  - dijit 1y ago
    It’s really not though. It’s not like the internet was censored when I was coming up, and I don’t think less of kids today than I do of myself. Kids stumbling across something when browsing innocently isn’t really a major issue, and if they seek it out: they will find it, you won’t stop them, kids are smarter than you think (just, immature and unwise). The best method, honestly, is for parents to be forethcoming.. however you have now successfully reframed the discussion into “what about the kids”, when in reality it’s about getting everyone’s ID so that they can better enforce their draconian internet comment laws… the government even outright said this. https://archive.is/3pave https://archive.is/3pave if the government really cared about protecting children, they would’ve made a freely available child protection software that anyone can install in their home network, or subsidised its deployment at ISPs as an advertised opt-in.
    - Nursie 1y ago
      Honest question - when were you "coming up" and are you sure it didn't do anyone any harm then? I'm mid-late 40s and the internet was not really there when I was growing up. Someone ten years younger than me would have much more porn available to them, easily, in the home during their formative years. But even since then it's likely become more pervasive and present by an order of magnitude, and people have connected devices with them all the time in a way they wouldn't have back then. We also have lots of academics saying that porn is changing attitudes to sex and what is acceptable behaviour (the rise of choking, for instance). So it seems reasonable to ask the question, not whether today's kids are vulnerable to harms we weren't vulnerable to, but have things changed significantly in the intervening years? Note - I'm not defending the clusterfuck that is the OSA. But the world is not always as it was.
- dev0p 1y ago
  Have you considered parenting your children instead of letting the state do it for you? The latter means they can use the good old “for the children” rhetoric to control what adults can and cannot see: for example, they can choose that homosexuality is a sin and bad therefore any LGBT friendly website is bad. Apply freely as your government dictates, such as pro-Palestine content. We must protect our kids from terrorists, after all. :) Meanwhile your children are absolutely going to find a way to get that content regardless, likely in darker corners of the internet, exposing them to much, MUCH worse content than if they would have just gone on the good old hub (plus actual predators) while also making it basically impossible for you to control instead of just making it a firewall rule away from locking it yourself instead of letting the government do it.
  - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    I don't understand why you see these as either-or propositions. It's important that I parent my children to understand the dangers of alcohol, and it's also a good idea that it's illegal for my local grocery store to sell them any, and neither of these are contradicted by the fact that they'll be able to find some if they really want to. Norms and friction matter.
    - KoolKat23 1y ago
      Plenty of friction exists. Access to devices being banned at schools, ISP parental controls, selective DNS blocking, Google/Apple child accounts. For the most part it's just carelessness. Before the Internet children that were persistent enough and that had apathetic parents still found a way (perhaps less volumes and less extreme though)
    - dev0p 1y ago
      It’s a good idea for grocery stores to not sell children alchohol. It’s a bad idea for grocery stores to not sell alcohol to ANYONE, adults included, because children might buy it by faking their IDs. That’s the difference here. Alcohol is a perfect example as well, because I personally drink it only occasionally but would very much rather see it completely banned, as I think it would solve a lot of problems with society. In reality it likely wouldn’t, but the gut feeling is there. If I were to blindly follow my instinct and not know history, I would call for a total ban on it to protect the children. The same is happening here, but at a much more dangerous level.
- yupyupyups 1y ago
  Pretty much. Everytime they mention porn, they are poisoning the discussion. If porn was the only thing getting affected, I would gladly support all these surveillance tactics, every single one of them. Porn and prostitution in general is riddled with trafficking, drug addiction and other forms of exploitation. The reality is that what's at stake here are things that (unlike porn) are not harmful to us, but very important to us. Like the ability to have a free space for thought and information sharing without the oversight of anybody else, not least a potential adversary. This defence is very important against a tyrannical state. But let's ignore all that and instead make it about children's right to "explore their gender and sexuality" on the internet. This is what I saw some guy arguing a few days ago.
  - shazbotter 1y ago
    You realize that being gay or being non binary are considered pornography to some legislators? Until we can decouple those things, banning porn has the effect of criminalizing LGBTQ lives.
awesome_dude 1y ago
[flagged]
- cobbzilla 1y ago
  The above acts either carry no intrinsic information content and/or very few people apart of free-speech absolutists would be OK with them. They’re not evocative of the controversy at hand, and I can’t find anyone defending them. Perhaps more appropriate: * Instructions for making an illegal firearm * Unpopular political opinions * Instructions for engaging in illicit speech without detection * Silently standing still with head bowed and hands folded in public * Using a VPN * Holding a sign at a protest There are probably many more examples like the above, which would engender a more nuanced discussion.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > above acts either carry no intrinsic information content This is an exercise in censorship, in a sense. So is blocking spam. OP’s point stands. Information flow requires regulation in any society. I’ve been something of a free-speech absolutist most of my life, but I’m strongly re-thinking that after seeing Europe and America fall to what can only be described as populist stupidity.
    - frostyel 1y ago
      [dead]
    - DrSiemer 1y ago
      You can't stop online stupidity and misinformation with censorship. It would at best create an echo chamber of government supported online stupidity and misinformation.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > You can't stop online stupidity and misinformation with censorship Shame and ostracisation handled this through antiquity. There is no evidence introducing those elements online cannot work. > would at best create an echo chamber of government supported online stupidity and misinformation But that’s what we got anyway. It’s just as clearly the case that a lack of regulation amplifies people willing to be stupid online. Taking that amplification away takes us back, per your worst case, to what we have now.
brap 1y ago
I mean, yes, but also… Not specifically related to this “child protection” thing, but you can’t deny that the free flow of information also leads to some pretty terrible things, driven by actors such as states, magnified x1000 by social media, and now also AI. Every platform these days is full to the brim with misinformation and propaganda (which ends up in mainstream media as well), deliberately making many of us hateful and sometimes violent. The free flow of information is undoubtedly being used for harm. I’m 100% for personal liberty and accountability, and admittedly I don’t have a solution for this. I do think the Elon Musk approach (“just let people decide for themselves”) is very naive at best. Again just to be clear this has nothing to do with the UK thing which I strongly disagree with.
- hnhg 1y ago
  Look at the positives: now you are aware that every channel is full of misinformation and propaganda and treat it all as such. That gives you better media literacy than previous generations who tended to trust everything that was given to them "from above" - it enables us to be more intellectually mature and honest with ourselves about the nature and history of news media, even if you might not actually find that pleasant or convenient to deal with.
  - considerdevs 1y ago
    True, awareness of misinformation is higher today. But, being aware that all channels are polluted with misinformation doesn’t automatically make someone better at distinguish the truth. Also older generation automatically are not buying everything they see https://www.mpg.de/24132917/0205-bild-online-misinformation-149835-x1 https://www.mpg.de/24132917/0205-bild-online-misinformation-... Actually, having "misinfo everywhere" goggles can push people think that everything is propaganda or nothing can be trusted. This is also one way Russia and China is using its propaganda: give so much multi meaning information that normal governance information is also considered as something that cannot be trusted. Or atleast trying.
    - hnhg 1y ago
      I concede that but awareness is a better starting position for potential improvement rather than ignorance. I guess we are agreeing on the substance but I am taking an optimistic view rather than a pessimistic one. I accept that I might be very misguided.
zapnuk 1y ago
Do you think absolutely all content should be allowed to be accessible? If you wouldn't allow child porn (which 4chan deletes/doesn't allow), where exactly do you draw the line between blocking sites with cp, and allowing sites like 4chan which host porn without consent (voyeur/spy/revenge)?
- moritonal 1y ago
  There's a difference between prosecuting a crime, and restricting people to prevent it from even happening. Both have a place but only the former retains your liberty.
  - zapnuk 1y ago
    Yes, thats the problem. Prosecuting crimes on the internet is near impossible due to the restrictions and often anonymity. Thats why we rely on platform providers to help us, the public. Facebook, Youtube and others put in effort to take down illegal content. 4chan only does the bare minimum such that they don't gain too much relevancy in the public eye. UK or other countries may decide that 4chan doesn't to enough and ban it because of the help of 4chan in faciliating the spreading of illegal content. So again, where is the difference between 4chan which hosts/spread illegal content and other sites where we're fine with banning them?
    - throwaway2037 1y ago
      > Prosecuting crimes on the internet is near impossible due to the restrictions and often anonymity. The US does it quite well. The FBI has a near endless number of court cases where they subpoena ISPs and content hosting platforms to de-anon and gather evidence to build cases. My biggest concern about the movement of crime from the streets to "cyberspace" is that almost all Internet crime is considered Federal (across state lines), thus carries much harsher penalties that state-only crimes.
amelius 1y ago
> As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. This had until recently been only tested for top-down information. Nowadays, everyone can be a broadcaster and we're seeing quite different results.
- api 1y ago
  I feel like totalitarians are learning to hack and exploit the free flow of information using sophisticated propaganda techniques. Doesn’t mean a locked down system is better though. With that they don’t have to bother.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    Those are two independent problems. If you have a centralized system, you're screwed, because they just capture it. If you have a decentralized system vulnerable to propaganda techniques then they do that. What you need is a decentralized system resistant to propaganda techniques.
    - amelius 1y ago
      Yes, the question is what such a system would look like. E.g. would there be limitations of free speech?
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        Of course not. That shouldn't even be possible in a properly designed system. Rather what you need is a means for propaganda to be rapidly identified and refuted with counterarguments in a way that its would-be victims can see it.
        amelius 1y ago
        I think the problem with such an approach is that the majority of people will stop reading if the arguments become too complicated. This is how populism works.
iamacyborg 1y ago
Fuckin’ Lal was always a warmonger. Time to send in the mind worms to teach him a lesson.
WastedCucumber 1y ago
Honestly in Alpha Centauri the person who really dreams himself your master is the one nerve stapling drones left right and center.

phatfish 1y ago

[flagged]

inemesitaffia 1y ago
Their parent can apply blocks on their devices is what I'd tell you. Because these are ultimately excuses for spying on adults
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  This argument is basically the same as saying that stores should be allowed to sell alcohol to kids because it's the parents' responsibility to guard the store so their kids don't buy it. Kids do not only have access to their own devices (for one, these days schools provide them with devices that parents have little say over often with only trivial filtering). And that is assuming the best case scenario where parents have the technical know-how to put in place non-trivial limits. Most don't.
  - shit_game 1y ago
    People under age can obtain fake IDs, all over the world. This is illegal, but it still happens. At some point, it is ultimatey a parents responsibility to prevent their children from doing so by acting as a parent to their child and preventing them from engaging in destructive behavior. This is established law, even, in many countries, where a parent can be held accountable for the criminal actions of their children for failing to prevent it. And frankly, I don't give enough of a shit about other peoples' kids to believe that internet usage should require identification like is being pushed by major governments. I want good things for these kids, I want them to grow up in a good society and a good world, and I dont want harm to come to them. But I recognize that a "good society" and a "good world" and one that minimizes harm to people is one where information is available without restrictions and without censorship and without the risk of a government that might decide it wants to commit genocide against you in the not-so-distant future using your search history to persecute you. Pardon my riffing off Flowbots' Handlebars there, but this really is the world that people live in today; powerful world-stage governments want to restrict information about topics they do not like, and are persecuting people who posess this information; the next steps are very, very well documented. Creating the monster we are watching grow is not worth anything anyone could ever promise you.
- antihero 1y ago
  Perhaps a better implementation of the law would be requiring all sites to mark content as NSFW if it is, and having opt-in device level toggles, so parents could protect their kids more easily, but anyone who’s actively seeking the content is able to. Teenagers will get around this ridiculous verification with ease either way.
  - inemesitaffia 1y ago
    We had this in Internet Explorer
yapyap 1y ago
You ate the “save the children” koolaid. Children can also be groomed over text messages, should we let the government read all our text messages now? Children can also be depicted wrong in photos, should we let the governments of the world have access to our photos so they can check for themselves if that is happening or not? (both are hypothetical questions, the answer is no of course not. This is the responsibility of the caretaker in their life to guide them safely through the world.)
- 14 1y ago
  I also remind people that laws change over time and that perfect crime prevention is actually a bad thing. The easiest example one can point to homosexuality. We now accept that people attracted to the same sex. But at one point in time in many places that was illegal. The last person in Canada to go to jail for being gay was in 1965, charged with gross indecency. But times and morals change so imagine if we had perfect police and everyone had to wear a camera at all times and every single thing you did was monitored and reported back to the police. No gays, no abortions, no alcohol, no speaking against governments or police, so many ways we would be oppressed. I am not saying people who harm children should free to break the law but the solution can not be to monitor everything every person does. The solution for me would be to teach people how to better set parental controls for their kids and to educate both parents and kids about dangers and online safety.
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  Both are included in EU's chat control proposal. Reading text because "grooming" and searching of storage. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
woodpanel 1y ago
When you want to grant the very state, that actively protected ethnically targeted organized gang-rapes-to-prostitution-rings, with enough trust to even remotely care about children having unlimited access to pornography, maybe you are part of the problem.
noduerme 1y ago
I don't think your comment should be downvoted. Children viewing porn is a legitimate problem. The other problem is that adults should not be forced to share their identity to view content - particularly that which might be used to blackmail them. I don't have children. And I don't think your children outweigh my right to privacy.
- dijit 1y ago
  It’s really not though. It’s not like the internet was censored when I was coming up, and I don’t think less of kids today than I do of myself. Kids stumbling across something when browsing innocently isn’t really a major issue, and if they seek it out: they will find it, you won’t stop them, kids are smarter than you think (just, immature and unwise). The best method, honestly, is for parents to be forethcoming.. however you have now successfully reframed the discussion into “what about the kids”, when in reality it’s about getting everyone’s ID so that they can better enforce their draconian internet comment laws… the government even outright said this. https://archive.is/3pave https://archive.is/3pave if the government really cared about protecting children, they would’ve made a freely available child protection software that anyone can install in their home network, or subsidised its deployment at ISPs as an advertised opt-in.
  - Nursie 1y ago
    Honest question - when were you "coming up" and are you sure it didn't do anyone any harm then? I'm mid-late 40s and the internet was not really there when I was growing up. Someone ten years younger than me would have much more porn available to them, easily, in the home during their formative years. But even since then it's likely become more pervasive and present by an order of magnitude, and people have connected devices with them all the time in a way they wouldn't have back then. We also have lots of academics saying that porn is changing attitudes to sex and what is acceptable behaviour (the rise of choking, for instance). So it seems reasonable to ask the question, not whether today's kids are vulnerable to harms we weren't vulnerable to, but have things changed significantly in the intervening years? Note - I'm not defending the clusterfuck that is the OSA. But the world is not always as it was.
dev0p 1y ago
Have you considered parenting your children instead of letting the state do it for you? The latter means they can use the good old “for the children” rhetoric to control what adults can and cannot see: for example, they can choose that homosexuality is a sin and bad therefore any LGBT friendly website is bad. Apply freely as your government dictates, such as pro-Palestine content. We must protect our kids from terrorists, after all. :) Meanwhile your children are absolutely going to find a way to get that content regardless, likely in darker corners of the internet, exposing them to much, MUCH worse content than if they would have just gone on the good old hub (plus actual predators) while also making it basically impossible for you to control instead of just making it a firewall rule away from locking it yourself instead of letting the government do it.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  I don't understand why you see these as either-or propositions. It's important that I parent my children to understand the dangers of alcohol, and it's also a good idea that it's illegal for my local grocery store to sell them any, and neither of these are contradicted by the fact that they'll be able to find some if they really want to. Norms and friction matter.
  - KoolKat23 1y ago
    Plenty of friction exists. Access to devices being banned at schools, ISP parental controls, selective DNS blocking, Google/Apple child accounts. For the most part it's just carelessness. Before the Internet children that were persistent enough and that had apathetic parents still found a way (perhaps less volumes and less extreme though)
  - dev0p 1y ago
    It’s a good idea for grocery stores to not sell children alchohol. It’s a bad idea for grocery stores to not sell alcohol to ANYONE, adults included, because children might buy it by faking their IDs. That’s the difference here. Alcohol is a perfect example as well, because I personally drink it only occasionally but would very much rather see it completely banned, as I think it would solve a lot of problems with society. In reality it likely wouldn’t, but the gut feeling is there. If I were to blindly follow my instinct and not know history, I would call for a total ban on it to protect the children. The same is happening here, but at a much more dangerous level.
yupyupyups 1y ago
Pretty much. Everytime they mention porn, they are poisoning the discussion. If porn was the only thing getting affected, I would gladly support all these surveillance tactics, every single one of them. Porn and prostitution in general is riddled with trafficking, drug addiction and other forms of exploitation. The reality is that what's at stake here are things that (unlike porn) are not harmful to us, but very important to us. Like the ability to have a free space for thought and information sharing without the oversight of anybody else, not least a potential adversary. This defence is very important against a tyrannical state. But let's ignore all that and instead make it about children's right to "explore their gender and sexuality" on the internet. This is what I saw some guy arguing a few days ago.
- shazbotter 1y ago
  You realize that being gay or being non binary are considered pornography to some legislators? Until we can decouple those things, banning porn has the effect of criminalizing LGBTQ lives.

awesome_dude 1y ago

[flagged]

cobbzilla 1y ago
The above acts either carry no intrinsic information content and/or very few people apart of free-speech absolutists would be OK with them. They’re not evocative of the controversy at hand, and I can’t find anyone defending them. Perhaps more appropriate: * Instructions for making an illegal firearm * Unpopular political opinions * Instructions for engaging in illicit speech without detection * Silently standing still with head bowed and hands folded in public * Using a VPN * Holding a sign at a protest There are probably many more examples like the above, which would engender a more nuanced discussion.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > above acts either carry no intrinsic information content This is an exercise in censorship, in a sense. So is blocking spam. OP’s point stands. Information flow requires regulation in any society. I’ve been something of a free-speech absolutist most of my life, but I’m strongly re-thinking that after seeing Europe and America fall to what can only be described as populist stupidity.
  - frostyel 1y ago
    [dead]
  - DrSiemer 1y ago
    You can't stop online stupidity and misinformation with censorship. It would at best create an echo chamber of government supported online stupidity and misinformation.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > You can't stop online stupidity and misinformation with censorship Shame and ostracisation handled this through antiquity. There is no evidence introducing those elements online cannot work. > would at best create an echo chamber of government supported online stupidity and misinformation But that’s what we got anyway. It’s just as clearly the case that a lack of regulation amplifies people willing to be stupid online. Taking that amplification away takes us back, per your worst case, to what we have now.

brap 1y ago

I mean, yes, but also… Not specifically related to this “child protection” thing, but you can’t deny that the free flow of information also leads to some pretty terrible things, driven by actors such as states, magnified x1000 by social media, and now also AI. Every platform these days is full to the brim with misinformation and propaganda (which ends up in mainstream media as well), deliberately making many of us hateful and sometimes violent. The free flow of information is undoubtedly being used for harm. I’m 100% for personal liberty and accountability, and admittedly I don’t have a solution for this. I do think the Elon Musk approach (“just let people decide for themselves”) is very naive at best. Again just to be clear this has nothing to do with the UK thing which I strongly disagree with.

hnhg 1y ago
Look at the positives: now you are aware that every channel is full of misinformation and propaganda and treat it all as such. That gives you better media literacy than previous generations who tended to trust everything that was given to them "from above" - it enables us to be more intellectually mature and honest with ourselves about the nature and history of news media, even if you might not actually find that pleasant or convenient to deal with.
- considerdevs 1y ago
  True, awareness of misinformation is higher today. But, being aware that all channels are polluted with misinformation doesn’t automatically make someone better at distinguish the truth. Also older generation automatically are not buying everything they see https://www.mpg.de/24132917/0205-bild-online-misinformation-149835-x1 https://www.mpg.de/24132917/0205-bild-online-misinformation-... Actually, having "misinfo everywhere" goggles can push people think that everything is propaganda or nothing can be trusted. This is also one way Russia and China is using its propaganda: give so much multi meaning information that normal governance information is also considered as something that cannot be trusted. Or atleast trying.
  - hnhg 1y ago
    I concede that but awareness is a better starting position for potential improvement rather than ignorance. I guess we are agreeing on the substance but I am taking an optimistic view rather than a pessimistic one. I accept that I might be very misguided.

zapnuk 1y ago

Do you think absolutely all content should be allowed to be accessible? If you wouldn't allow child porn (which 4chan deletes/doesn't allow), where exactly do you draw the line between blocking sites with cp, and allowing sites like 4chan which host porn without consent (voyeur/spy/revenge)?

moritonal 1y ago
There's a difference between prosecuting a crime, and restricting people to prevent it from even happening. Both have a place but only the former retains your liberty.
- zapnuk 1y ago
  Yes, thats the problem. Prosecuting crimes on the internet is near impossible due to the restrictions and often anonymity. Thats why we rely on platform providers to help us, the public. Facebook, Youtube and others put in effort to take down illegal content. 4chan only does the bare minimum such that they don't gain too much relevancy in the public eye. UK or other countries may decide that 4chan doesn't to enough and ban it because of the help of 4chan in faciliating the spreading of illegal content. So again, where is the difference between 4chan which hosts/spread illegal content and other sites where we're fine with banning them?
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    > Prosecuting crimes on the internet is near impossible due to the restrictions and often anonymity. The US does it quite well. The FBI has a near endless number of court cases where they subpoena ISPs and content hosting platforms to de-anon and gather evidence to build cases. My biggest concern about the movement of crime from the streets to "cyberspace" is that almost all Internet crime is considered Federal (across state lines), thus carries much harsher penalties that state-only crimes.

amelius 1y ago

> As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. This had until recently been only tested for top-down information. Nowadays, everyone can be a broadcaster and we're seeing quite different results.

api 1y ago
I feel like totalitarians are learning to hack and exploit the free flow of information using sophisticated propaganda techniques. Doesn’t mean a locked down system is better though. With that they don’t have to bother.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Those are two independent problems. If you have a centralized system, you're screwed, because they just capture it. If you have a decentralized system vulnerable to propaganda techniques then they do that. What you need is a decentralized system resistant to propaganda techniques.
  - amelius 1y ago
    Yes, the question is what such a system would look like. E.g. would there be limitations of free speech?
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      Of course not. That shouldn't even be possible in a properly designed system. Rather what you need is a means for propaganda to be rapidly identified and refuted with counterarguments in a way that its would-be victims can see it.
      - amelius 1y ago
        I think the problem with such an approach is that the majority of people will stop reading if the arguments become too complicated. This is how populism works.

iamacyborg 1y ago

Fuckin’ Lal was always a warmonger. Time to send in the mind worms to teach him a lesson.

WastedCucumber 1y ago

Honestly in Alpha Centauri the person who really dreams himself your master is the one nerve stapling drones left right and center.