8chan's Original Founder Is Now Urging ISPs To Keep The Site Offline (dailydot.com) 261
8chan's current owner is still having trouble getting the site back online -- and that's due at least partly to lobbying against 8chan by the site's original founder:
In early August, web security company Cloudflare stopped protecting the board, and 8chan was immediately swamped with denial of service attacks that crashed it. At first, 8chan found a new home with another security site, Bitmitigate. But in a long and complex chain of events, the new web service company turned out to be renting servers from a different infrastructure firm, Voxility, which wanted nothing to do with 8chan. They kicked Bitmitigate off its equipment, deplatforming not only 8chan, but also the neo-Nazi forum The Daily Stormer, which shared the same server.
It looked like 8chan would jump from host to host, like an unwelcome guest crashing on an endless series of digital couches. But that didn't happen. The last real attempt until earlier this month was some 8chan users trying to revive it through peer-to-peer sharing, only for it to fall apart when users began getting swamped with malware... So far, multiple attempts to get the board back up as anything other than a test version have failed -- and original 8chan creator Fredrick Brennan couldn't be happier...
Brennan has been contacting service providers urging them not to work with 8chan's current owner, Jim Watkins. And the article notes that "Because few companies own the servers that could host a site, the security software to protect it, and the infrastructure to get it out to the world, Watkins has to deal with multiple firms..."
Brennan tells their reporter that "the more [internet service providers] I get to say 'no thanks'... the more they'll have to rely on expensive 'bulletproof' providers who charge more to cover [the] costs of police raids and high powered attorneys."
It looked like 8chan would jump from host to host, like an unwelcome guest crashing on an endless series of digital couches. But that didn't happen. The last real attempt until earlier this month was some 8chan users trying to revive it through peer-to-peer sharing, only for it to fall apart when users began getting swamped with malware... So far, multiple attempts to get the board back up as anything other than a test version have failed -- and original 8chan creator Fredrick Brennan couldn't be happier...
Brennan has been contacting service providers urging them not to work with 8chan's current owner, Jim Watkins. And the article notes that "Because few companies own the servers that could host a site, the security software to protect it, and the infrastructure to get it out to the world, Watkins has to deal with multiple firms..."
Brennan tells their reporter that "the more [internet service providers] I get to say 'no thanks'... the more they'll have to rely on expensive 'bulletproof' providers who charge more to cover [the] costs of police raids and high powered attorneys."
We have a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether you like it or not, being unable to pay for a platform with perfectly good money should indicate that our current model of free speech has dangerously broken corner cases that didn't exist at the time our government was created. (Like multinational corporations being a dominant, state-level player in politics.)
It's not "censorship", I hear you cry. No, legally it isn't, but that's very much an argument for the letter of the law over the spirit, given that the primary limiting factor on speech is now more likely to be a corporation (who is Person with political power and money).
Re:We have a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
That's basically the takeaway from this.
Don't get me wrong. I don't even know too well what 8chan is, and I can't help but being not too unhappy with the Daily Stormer gone, but I'd have to ask what's next. At some point it might hit something I consider important that goes against the interest of large corporations, which is actually pretty likely since our interests usually clash face on.
Re:We have a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech battles have to be fought on distasteful grounds, because meaningful grounds are the only place for censorship to go next.
There is some value in it, if only to demonstrate government pressure (to say nothing of laws) is not fully successful.
Think this is a joke and not an issue? We had presidential candidates threatening to harm twitter for not censoring their political opponent in the White House.
Now maybe he is an idiot who deserves it in some cosmic sense, but pressure and threats to use government to hurt twitter, from someone else who wants to be president, is utterly obscene in America.
The value in free speech isn't that there's value in every burbling from someone's mouth. The value is in denying demagogues another dictatorial tool -- censorship.
Re: We have a problem (Score:2)
Dunno about that, I have been out of tech for a long time, but back when I did it, a computer running Apache with a static IP in your living room was enough to host a site, provided you threw down a hundred a month for fast Internet. Now that wont handle gigs of throughput of pics of nazi lolis, but it should be enough to keep the free speech part of 8chan going, yet it is not happening. That implies government action.
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No government action is required or implied.
In the summary, it points out that some of the 8chan users attempted to set up a peer-to-peer version of the site. It collapsed under a flood of malware...and no, not government-issued malware; cryptocurrency miners, adclick fraud, identity theft and a few cases of ransomware... the usual range of shit that you get from an unsecured system connected to the internet.
Go ahead and try to set up a server and site of your own. If it gets even a modicum of popularity,
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This. Posters have neat ideas but they are not willing to step up to the plate and fix the problem.
Those who want a completely uncensored platform that supports any goddam thing at all can do that.
Pay up or shut up.
Re:We have a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that what you suggest is in fact forcing people to provide publishing and IT services.
Someone will compare this to being forced to bake a cake, but it's actually a lot more burdensome. It's an on-going service and there are legitimate grounds to cease providing it, e.g. 8chan was plagued by child pornography, DMCA take downs, law enforcement data requests etc. All service providers have terms that prohibit illegal material and on the free/cheap tiers there are often usage caps.
8chan couldn't pay it's bills a lot of the time. Being forced to provide a service for it is extremely burdensome.
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The difference is maybe that there are many bakeries. Thousands. If you don't want to bake my cake, the chance is pretty good that there is someone else right across the street that will. It will eventually be more a problem to you than to me.
The amount of hosting providers that can shield you from a serious DDoS is much lower.
Re:We have a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody's stopping Watkins from getting on a literal soapbox at the town corner of his choice and speeching as freely as he wants.
But if he wants private companies to amplify that speech, he's gonna have to convince them first. He cannot compel their speech, and they owe him no more than he owes them.
Re:We have a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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Censoring "moderate" voidces is not the problem (Score:2)
Environments where private entities are given genuine freedom to express and amplify whatever views they want do not generally censor moderate voices.
Censoring "moderate" voices is not the problem. It's censoring voices outside the mainstream.
Yes, some of them are repugnant, and following their ideas would be a disaster. But some are where beneficial change comes from, whether alarms of how the powers that be are causing harm, or ideas for making things better.
Those currently in power have an incentive to
Re:We have a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine?
Twitter already allows politicians to violate the terms of service with posts that would get anyone else banned. They've acknowledged it as well, saying "Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate."
Facebook has stated for the record that they will allow politicians to blatantly lie in their ads and won't fact check their posts. If you try the same things, you'll be banned.
We're already past the point where you get the soapbox and politicians have free rein to post anything they damned well want to.
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I agree with you.
There's an easy solution that I've implemented, but I leave it to others to do what they feel is best for them.
I de-platformed Facebook and Twitter on my devices.
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The situation you describe would make Twitter into the new 4chan and it would quickly be replaced. For once the market would actually work.
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He's free to talk on his soapbox as long as he can survive all the incoming sniper round.
If nobody is able to own an APC and all the APC companies won't lease him any armored vehicle protection why that's not the same as limiting his speech.
Of course the fact that our law enforcement won't effectively address the sniper problem means nothing. It's not our fault he's not a huge political donor.
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The analogy is flawed. ISPs are carriers, transporters, and they are private. They can kick anyone off the bus.
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Nobody's stopping Watkins from getting on a literal soapbox at the town corner of his choice and speeching as freely as he wants.
But if he wants private companies to amplify that speech, he's gonna have to convince them first. He cannot compel their speech, and they owe him no more than he owes them.
This isn't as innocent as all that. This is people colluding and hounding someone so they can have no effective speech at all.
Something tells that if it were your politics or proclivities or whatever that were being disappeared, you wouldn't have the same opinion about this.
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There's more than one dog in the fight. All have different strengths to try and make the world suit them. This dog fixed Facebook and Twitter where those others won't hunt on my property.
Re: We have a problem (Score:3)
And when people used literal corner soapboxes, they had to deal with boos and jeers downing them out, and the occasional tomato thrown at then as well.
You have the freedom of speech, it doesn't give you a platform where people are mandated to agree with you, or not protest your speech.
Re: We have a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Speech is protested with speech. DDoS attacks taking down websites isn't responding to anything, it's silencing it. It's also a crime, just like physically attacking a speaker because you don't like what they have to say is a crime.
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Speech is protested with speech. DDoS attacks taking down websites isn't responding to anything, it's silencing it. It's also a crime, just like physically attacking a speaker because you don't like what they have to say is a crime.
It's also temporary. DDoS is a form of expression as well. It's a sock in a megaphone.
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Women, homosexuals and black people weren't advocating for the genocide of other races and religions. They just wanted the same rights as others.
Nazis, on the other hand, do advocate for the genocide of other races and religions. They don't want the same rights as others. They want to strip everyone else of their rights.
And before you make a fool of yourself; don't fucking pretend that they don't want those things. There is no reason for them to adopt that particular brand of white supremacy other than
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No, fuck people who equate supporting socialized healthcare with genocide despite there being plenty of examples of modern countries using socialized healthcare having better results than the US's current system. Without violence and genocide.
If you call people Nazis for a 37 page long list of reasons, dont expect anyone to take you seriously when you start foaming at the mouth about shit.
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Umm.. No (Score:2)
During the founding years & early decades of this country, there were very few printing presses & newspapers. And even fewer that distributed beyond the local city. Those newspaper owners were well within their rights to choose which parties they did business with. This isn't much different.
The equivalent of this back then would be the print press mfg, paper mfg, carriage/train operator, and landlord not willing to do business with you. Or to stretch it a little, someone yells FIRE in a football
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During the founding years & early decades of this country, there were very few printing presses & newspapers. And even fewer that distributed beyond the local city. Those newspaper owners were well within their rights to choose which parties they did business with. This isn't much different.
Just a few short years ago the left was howling about the censorship by the right via the Pat Robertson, Moral Majority and Family Research Council types. Oh how the roles have changed. Unfortunately, the left seems to have literally no self awareness nor any concept of how these intractable positions will affect them when the pendulum swings the other way.
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I think that this is one of the most insightful comments of the morning.
If you bought a printing press and some land, you could log trees, make paper, print your paper (you've already got turpentine, so you're 1/3 of the way to a decent ink), and distribute it yourself. And you could expect some reasonable distribution by the scale of the day. That's an investment that might take a relatively well-off person to accomplish (or some serious dedication), but you could do it by yourself.
Now, you can buy servers
Yeah, it's censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether you like it or not, being unable to pay for a platform with perfectly good money should indicate that our current model of free speech has dangerously broken corner cases that didn't exist at the time our government was created. (Like multinational corporations being a dominant, state-level player in politics.)
It's not "censorship", I hear you cry. No, legally it isn't, but that's very much an argument for the letter of the law over the spirit, given that the primary limiting factor on speech is now more likely to be a corporation (who is Person with political power and money).
Just because it isn't government censorship doesn't mean that it isn't censorship at all.
Look, when corporations essentially collude to deny someone a service, then that's actually WORSE than government censorship. You can fight your government in the courts. It's much harder to fight corporations in the courts on these kinds of issues. In these cases, the tech sector is basically acting like a medieval guild, and becoming a gatekeeper for who can and can't operate a website. And if they don't like your politics, then hey, no website for you.
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The problem here is that the 8chan users can't get their distributed site working. That's the solution, take commercial hosts out of the picture.
Unfortunately a site made entirely of trolls finds it hard to work together.
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Whether you like it or not, being unable to pay for a platform with perfectly good money should indicate that our current model of free speech has dangerously broken corner cases that didn't exist at the time our government was created. (Like multinational corporations being a dominant, state-level player in politics.)
It's not "censorship", I hear you cry. No, legally it isn't, but that's very much an argument for the letter of the law over the spirit, given that the primary limiting factor on speech is now more likely to be a corporation (who is Person with political power and money).
Just because it isn't government censorship doesn't mean that it isn't censorship at all.
Look, when corporations essentially collude to deny someone a service, then that's actually WORSE than government censorship. You can fight your government in the courts. It's much harder to fight corporations in the courts on these kinds of issues. In these cases, the tech sector is basically acting like a medieval guild, and becoming a gatekeeper for who can and can't operate a website. And if they don't like your politics, then hey, no website for you.
This doesn't work as a valid example because there's a loophole: Let he who objects to private censorship build out their own private uncensored site.
It really is that easy.
Not suggesting it's inexpensive, but ...
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Freedom of speech is not freedom from repercussions. If your speech is so fucking unpopular that it causes people to launch a malware attack against you, you're an asshole and people are showing you the door - like that XKCD comic said.
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Yeah. like those Taiwanese protesters. How dare they speak out? It is very "unpopular" in Beijing - so unpopular that they have been launching malware attacks against them. You are dumb. Since when does "unpopular" mean "wrong"? I have no idea what 8chan is, but the thought that only "popular" speech should be protected is dangerous.
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Ever since voting was invented.
This is also how Slashdot operates. Popular is true, Insightful and Informative, unpopular is false and Troll or Flamebait. And all you can hope for is that those with mod points to spend are a sample group that represents all opinions, which might result in the truth (wisdom of the crowd).
And as far as free speech goes, you can't just shit all over the right to free speech of those privately owned corporations. They have the same r
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Um, no "unpopular" never meant "wrong". Scary stuff.
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You're not the sharpest tool in the shed, or are you?
Grow up little boy. The notion of popular and unpopular change constantly.
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And there's also your difference in these cases. With Taiwan and Hong Kong it's not private corporations that do the censoring.
Like Blizzard, the NBA, ESPN...
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If we can't follow through with that and still throw money at them, it's us failing to vote with our wallets.
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I am against that government part. Which brings me to the underlying problem here: China's state capitalism.
While here in the West a private corporation usually can afford to alienate some parts of the potential customer base while appealing to the other one, because here we're all individuals. With China however there's officially only one supreme customer that represents over a billion other potential customers - the government. And they don't want to alie
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However, you can still browse /. on -1 and see everything.
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However, you can still browse /. on -1 and see everything.
This is a good point. I like to get +5 on all my comments (hardly ever) and I like to read the +5 comments.
However, I may not agree with +5 and I may agree with -1. Moderation is a thing but it's not the only thing.
We on /. can browse at any level we like. I run at -1 because I want to see everything. It's a choice.
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Ever since voting was invented.
This is also how Slashdot operates. Popular is true, Insightful and Informative, unpopular is false and Troll or Flamebait. And all you can hope for is that those with mod points to spend are a sample group that represents all opinions, which might result in the truth (wisdom of the crowd).
And as far as free speech goes, you can't just shit all over the right to free speech of those privately owned corporations. They have the same rights, and since it's their turf where these interests are clashing their's supersedes that of their guest's, just like you don't have to let anyone you don't agree with use your property to spread their opinions.
So if you can't find someone who's going to stand for your opinions even if you pay them money, though luck. That's how the market we all love so much has to work. Because if it doesn't and we start to force private entities to stand for opinions they don't like this rhetoric also applies here: Where does it stop?
You can't just force them to spread your just any opinion via their private properties.
What you can do however is looking for official support from the government, since they don't enjoy the same rights as private corporations do. They have to protect your speech.
And there's also your difference in these cases. With Taiwan and Hong Kong it's not private corporations that do the censoring. It's the Chinese government. And if you want to prevent private corporations from exercising their right to free speech this is exactly how it would have to be accomplished, by having the government step in and deprive them of their rights by declaring their opinion "wrong".
I'm not disagreeing with you, and I'd like to add an important element:
"Corporate rights," are irrelevant regarding free speech and whether to support it or not. I say that because what matters is the freedom to make money.
Certain content is harmful to certain business' revenue streams. Businesses have diversity in employees, customers, and public-facing practices.
Most businesses celebrate diversity and disassociate themselves with speech that is offensive to their demographic.
That's what's happening here.
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Where I live I can choose between something like 50 ISPs. If one denies me services I can go to another one. Since there's so many competing corporations it's unlikely that all of them will collude to suppress me. While it's not impossible, this is mostly something monolithic institutions and organizations do, like governments.
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Should a restaurant be able to kick out loud and obnoxious customers who are driving away other customers?
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Those unpopular hippies speaking out against war in the 60s.
The unpopular turn of the century folk droning on and on about a woman's right to vote.
The unpopular northerners with that crazy idea that a person couldnt own another person.
That unpopular black minister that led the civil rights movement.
The modern left is looking more and more like the WWII left as the days go by. It seems to be a fucking terminal illness in leftism.
Re: We have a problem (Score:2)
How would you say that the modern right looks? I think we're regressing on both sides, maybe due to too much comfort.
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Exactly. When the next recession hits a lot of nonsense will get tossed out the window.
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Are you somehow implying that the shit on 8chan represented some sort of societal progress?
We are saying your fucking disdain for 8chan, specifically due to it being "unpopular", is disgusting authoritarian nonsense that doesnt survive your hand waving bullshit about "popularity."
Its just your fucking excuse to censor shit you dont like, lefty cunt, and you just proved it.
You before anyone replied: "If your speech is so fucking unpopular that it causes people to..."
You after you got called out: "Are you somehow implying that the shit on 8chan represented some sort of societal progress?"
Wh
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You are aware that Beijing is in China, which is a country that does not actually have freedom of speech, so using it as an example of how private entities might censor "unpopular" opinions voluntarily is pretty fucking dumb?
Yeah, I hammer on this on as well. The West thinks every other country is not sovereign and America thinks the Constitution protects those in China.
China can do as it pleases. So can America.
If America gets to force China to change, then China gets to change America.
We can trade free speech in China for a ban on all guns in America.
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but the thought that only "popular" speech should be protected is dangerous.
But "The Science Is Settled" ... so anything not popular must be banned.
IGNORING it is the right way to go in a "marketplace of ideas". But apparently People must be protected from possibility conflicting and stupid ideas. After all, that's why we have
the List of Banned Books [ala.org],
or upset that The Da Vinci Code movie might make viewers lose their faith (Search for: "lost faith" [faith.org.uk]),
or even Ban Car Radios [mentalfloss.com]
After all, the general public is stupid and needs to be protected from their stupidity. (Ya' know,
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Yeah. like those Taiwanese protesters. How dare they speak out? It is very "unpopular" in Beijing - so unpopular that they have been launching malware attacks against them. You are dumb. Since when does "unpopular" mean "wrong"? I have no idea what 8chan is, but the thought that only "popular" speech should be protected is dangerous.
Find out what 8chan is. How can you intelligently address the subject when you won't take 60 seconds to at least get a definition?
Another thing:
China and others are sovereign countries. That means they get to do what they want. To be fair, how about America forces free speech on China and China forces America to grab all the civilian's guns?
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I'm not defending 8chan. I have no idea what it is. I am defending the rest of us against stupid people like you. It isn't a "straw man". You literally said "unpopular".
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So if you don't like what someone says, breaking the law to silence them is the appropriate reaction? That's what you're defending here.
Sure, free speech doesn't mean freedom from repercussions. That doesn't give anyone a free pass on breaking the law to silence ideas that they don't like. You fight words with words.
Re: We have a problem (Score:2)
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You use "government" a lot, but not "ISP." Relevancy?
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Freedom of speech is not freedom from repercussions. If your speech is so fucking unpopular that it causes people to launch a malware attack against you, you're an asshole and people are showing you the door - like that XKCD comic said.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from repercussions. If your speech is so fucking unpopular that it causes drug cartels to launch an assassination attack against you, you're an asshole and people are showing you the door to eternity.
You DO realize that malware and DDOS attacks are illegal as well, I presume. Or are you really just that fucking stupid?
Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Speech has always been free, but the means to distribute it to a broad audience never has been, since long before the US even existed. You're free to say anything you want but I don't have to willingly broadcast your message using a platform I own.
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Actually, yes. You do. Now go put my pro "whatever it is you don't like" message o my wedding cake and stfu because you have to serve me and promote my message even if you don't like it or in that case even if you easily could have found someone else to do it.
You don't now how that turned out, do you?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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So no, it's not violating the spirit of the principle of freedom of speech to force private entities
I'm not so sure that those ISPs can be considered to be private entities. They applied for business licenses. And in some cases licenses and permits to operate their systems in public right-of-ways. It's not the same as refusing to serve women or colored people (which is not allowed). But then those are 'protected classes' under the law. And the act of providing some groups protection and denying it to others is in effect censorship. It just moves the burden from the ISP onto the government.
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Claiming that a private website, or ISP, or any other entity must relay opinions that the people running it consider vile and beyond disgusting is directly interfering with the free speech rights of those people running it. It's one thing to demand the government "not stop" something, but it is another to require people express views they consider abhorrent.
Wedding cakes too?
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Your point isn't clear "it's not violating...to force...Far from it...it's violating to force (the same thing)" ??? Which is it?
The argument was once more easily divided, when there were common carriers bound to carry any speech without interference, and were then protected from the ramific
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So you support Christian bakers' rights not to put pro LGBTQ messages on cakes? Bakers are private entities.
Again, you don't know how that turned out.
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I would like to see how you can justify this position without infringing on private property rights.
k.
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Whether you like it or not, being unable to pay for a platform with perfectly good money should indicate that our current model of free speech has dangerously broken corner cases that didn't exist at the time our government was created. (Like multinational corporations being a dominant, state-level player in politics.)
It's not "censorship", I hear you cry. No, legally it isn't, but that's very much an argument for the letter of the law over the spirit, given that the primary limiting factor on speech is now more likely to be a corporation (who is Person with political power and money).
Have you considered hosting 8Chan yourself?
It ain't crying my good man. What free Speech is (in the American Constitution is that you can't be arrested for what you say.
Except for making threats of physical violence or intentionally causing panic.
And if that is too draconian for you, just remember that for all of the hate 'Murricans get - there are countries where it doesn't exist at all.
The problem is that you want to deny the ability of people to react to someone's speech. Yo want someone to sa
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You think it's important that people can pay for free speech?
I'd say it's more important that they can speak without having to pay.
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It's just that instead of the government doing it directly it's a team effort with the perpetrators of the DOS.
If the speaker were popular, would government law enforcement act?
If NPR were taken off line, would there be the same inaction? Of course not.
If it wouldn't be the same, then the protection of the law is unequal. Free speech is defined by what happens when the speech is unpopular.
I have another question? How will 4Chan convince media morons that Pepe and the OK sign
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(food for thought - allowing places like that to exist also identifies all those people, so the authorities know who they are and watch what they're saying)
Let the authorities provide the infrastructure to support your idea and let 8chan pay for it.
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In fact the 8chan owner could go and buy all the hardware and software necessary for a cloudflare-grade DDoS-Protection, go to datacenter and rent just some cages and put his servers in those cages and run his service there. I don't think any co-location provider would have a problem with that. But requiring Cloudflare or similar to provide a protection service for 8chan is way beyond anything to do with free speech.
It is like hiring bodyguards who you ask to accompany you to the Bronx where you start shout
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Especially, if it's a private oligopoly that has no right to legislative power, but de-facto *does* have legislative power.
If you are caught on camera in a restaurant with someone who is not your spouse and that video is broadcast, you cannot sue 60 Minutes or whoever on grounds it violated your right to privacy, because a restaurant is intended for public use. For the same reason, the restaurant cannot refuse service simply because someone is a member of a protected group--the restaurant is open to the public.
It seems to me that there are web sites are analogous to private business intended for public use, so ought not be abl
Re:Limiting "censorship" to governments never made (Score:4, Informative)
The Supreme Court has ruled multiple times, there is NO SUCH THING AS HATE SPEECH.
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What both of you are missing is that "free speech," does not apply to the private sector nor does it apply across the globe.
Provide a site that has no moderation whatsoever and you're good to go. Get 8chan and The Daily Stormer.
What's stopping you?
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What both of you are missing is that "free speech," does not apply to the private sector nor does it apply across the globe.
Free speech is a human right that applies to everyone, across the globe.
Private parties do not (generally) legally have to enable freedom of speech, but it is at least a reasonable position that our society should encourage free speech rather than abridge it.
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What both of you are missing is that "free speech," does not apply to the private sector nor does it apply across the globe.
Free speech is a human right that applies to everyone, across the globe.
Private parties do not (generally) legally have to enable freedom of speech, but it is at least a reasonable position that our society should encourage free speech rather than abridge it.
Free speech is not a human right.
That's kinda obvious when we look at China and Russia, right? Those sovereign countries, apparently you did not know this, are exempt from the American Constitution.
Your idealism is your private world view and is not embraced by some cultures.
Consider this: If you have the right to force China to embrace free speech, don't they have the right to ban guns in America?
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That's kinda obvious when we look at China and Russia, right?
This is an oxymoron.
Human rights as the term is defined are inherent to all members of the human race regardless of what country you live or whether the current government is willing or able to recognize or honor exercise of such rights.
Your idealism is your private world view and is not embraced by some cultures.
This is irrelevant with respect to the concept of a human right.
Consider this: If you have the right to force China to embrace free speech, don't they have the right to ban guns in America?
Human rights are expressions of subjective ideals and while laws may be based on such ideals they themselves do not have the force of law. They are not directly backed by violence or the threat thereof within o
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Human rights as the term is defined are inherent to all members of the human race regardless of what country you live or whether the current government is willing or able to recognize or honor exercise of such rights.
Human rights are imaginary. Without a government to protect them, they are meaningless. You've got to sleep sometime. That's why we have to defend one another's rights, even if we don't feel like people deserve them.
However, all the business we do with China proves conclusively that we don't actually believe in human rights. We fund abuse there. We are the oppressors.
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Free speech applies everywhere in public. Free speech is of great value to society - democracy cannot exist without it - and so the burden is on you to show why there's greater value in allowing someone to impede free speech.
I think it makes sense where you have a platform owned by one person, or a small group of like-minded individuals, to say that their rights as owners not to carry stuff they don't like wins out. But that does not apply to publicly held corporations, which have no rights.
Do the rights of shareholders to maximize advertising profits trump the individual rights to free speech? No, they don't.
Yes, they do.
The corporations (employees, CEOs, stakeholders, shareholders) have a right to create a business model that maximizes profits while complying with existing city, state, and federal laws.
In case after case, we see the Paula Dean effect wherein she had a show on the Food Network and was fired because she admitted to using the "N" word.
Think about about it: Employees, CEOs, stakeholders, shareholders and customers, are a diverse group and it's certainly bad for them to be associated with Dean's re
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And in the case of child porn and such: PROTIP: It is not the picture doing the harm. It is the HARM doing the harm! Catch the damn rapists, instead of sweeping *crimes* under the rug! Lest you want to be accused of collaboration!
Are you honestly arguing that free speech rights override the privacy rights of the victims?
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8chan and the Daily Stormer are free to say what they want, but they're not free from the consequences.
In this case the consequences are that if you are a completely unpleasant arsehole, nobody will want to do business with you.
The system is working fine.
How many watts is a high-powered attorney? (Score:2)
More than my server's nice rack?
Mobs rule (Score:2)
Objectionable speech online (Score:3)
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That is of course the slippery slope argument, and one I believe also is rather true. One can find this in the Larry Flynt trial too. The state prefers to find the most objectionable speech to the public at large to establish precedence because then they will later be able to suppress speech that is only objectionable to the state, too. Freedom of speech does not exist to protect popular speech because by definition it is not under threat and hence requires no such protections; rather it is to protect th
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The article specifically talks about the fact that he's tried to put 8chan online without the major infrastructure of huge companies like Cloudflare to protect it, and it gets shut down by DDOS and malware. In fact, it's the very first line quoted in TFS.
The fact that he needs a major company is all due to criminal activity. There is no separating these issues. Criminals are trying to drive him offline, and the only way for him to protect himself is to hire the professional security and hosting companies
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Unless even objectionable speech can exist online, we have no free speech online. Once someone could decide that some speech doesn't deserve to exist, then an inevitable movement to broaden what is forbidden will start. Censoring 8chan will eventually lead to censoring other speech, as it won't stop at that.
The nibble theory is tiresome. It's the tactic that #2A uses to support bump stocks. Very few people know what a fucking bump stock is, but banning them will be the first step in all your base are belong to us.
Worry if they can't get an internet connection (Score:5, Funny)
That no hosting companies want to host them does not deny them free speech, only a soapbox.
If ATT or Sprint or whoever refuses to sell them an internet connection that they can use to do their own hosting, that is the point at which they've been denied free speech by corporations.
If they get such a connection and someone DDoSes them, then that person is denying them free speech, also not a corporation. And that's illegal, and law enforcement should track them down and punish them, protecting popular and unpopular speech alike. (And probably punish everyone being used to amplify the attack, too, but I see that as a whole separate argument.)
The whole argument that they're being denied speech because they're being denied hosting is a dumb one. That hosting platform belongs to someone else, and forcing that someone else to host content interferes with their freedom of association.
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You do realize that DDoS is temporary, right?
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All things are transient. So what?
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Failed pivot. You know the "so what."
Earning your nickname. I have no idea what is in your tiny little mind. It's dark in there.
Not a Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The root of the issue appears to be that Watkins wants to be able to pay people to work for him. However a bunch of persons have decided that they do not want to work for him for the amount of compensation on offer. This is fine.
Watkins is perfectly free to go rent/buy (or build) his own building. Buy his own computers. Connect those computers to the "Internet" by "buying" (for example) a fibre link to the nearest IX, paying the IX for a cross-connect, and then paying for transit. He can then hire persons to configure the servers and do whatever it is he pleases (assuming that he is able to offer sufficient compensation to get competent persons to work for him -- which is his present difficulty).
Until he gets turned down attempting to rent/buy a physical location, Dell refuses to sell him some servers, a LEC refuses to lease him some fibre, an IX refuses a cross-connect, or an Internet transit provider refuses to sell him transit because "8chan" I am simply not interested in this issue at all as it appears that it is really nothing more than individual decisions not to work for him -- and that is every individuals right.
Freedom of the Press belongs to He who owns the Press. He is perfectly free to go buy a press. Larry Flynt apparently understood this simple fact.
using freedom of speech against 8chan? (Score:2)
Interesting how Brennan's letter includes this info to leverage China's censorship engine against Watkins. It is as if 8chan's free speech is being used against itself. If so, that's bit fucked up, but i am ambivalent for now.
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Isn't The Daily Stormer the site where it's cowardly white owner fled the country to avoid being assassinated by the Southern Poverty Law Center when he was found guilty of setting up a harassment campaign against a Jewish family?
Succinct and to the point. Yes, Andrew Anglin ran like a scared pussy-faced chickenshit and tried to hide out in Cambodia.
If the locals there knew who he was they'd beat him to death and throw the body in the river. After Pol Pot, Cambodians are not big fans of anyone who preaches genocide (like scumbag Andrew Anglin).