Citing 'Censorship' Concerns, North Idaho ISP Blocks Facebook and Twitter (newsweek.com) 250
jasonbuechler writes: A North Idaho internet provider, Your T1 WIFI, emailed customers to say customers would need to opt-in to access Facebook and Twitter from its service. They wisely seem to have changed their mind on that after it started garnering attention on social media. The ISP says it decided to restrict service this way after receiving numerous calls from customers concerned about censorship. "They could do this themselves but some do not have the technical knowledge to do so and it would be very tiresome for us to do it for them and it would be expensive to visit each customer that wants this done," the company wrote in an email.
The customers' requests for firewalls preventing access to these sites followed the tech giants' decisions to close down Donald Trump's accounts and suspend his activity. After the decision started attracting attention on social media, the owner of the company said the websites would only be blocked for customers who asked.
KREM.com notes that Your T1 WIFI "may violate Washington state's Net Neutrality law, which states that internet providers may not manipulate access to content."
The customers' requests for firewalls preventing access to these sites followed the tech giants' decisions to close down Donald Trump's accounts and suspend his activity. After the decision started attracting attention on social media, the owner of the company said the websites would only be blocked for customers who asked.
KREM.com notes that Your T1 WIFI "may violate Washington state's Net Neutrality law, which states that internet providers may not manipulate access to content."
An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:5, Funny)
It's far worse than that. Look at the reason why:
The customers' requests for firewalls preventing access to these sites followed the tech giants' decisions to close down Donald Trump's accounts and suspend his activity.
So Karen who doesn't understand what censorship is, freaks out and rather than just not using Facebook calls her service provider and the service provider implements a block for all other customers at Karen's request with opt out.
The level of dumb here goes so deep that some of my braincells died on me while reading TFS.
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Yet another reason why you should use a VPN all the time. Bypasses this kind of blockade. Well, I imagine changing your DNS servers does as well, but there are other advantages to using a VPN.
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Actually more of a reason why ISPs should be treated as a utility and be barred from content filtering.
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The level of dumb here goes so deep that some of my braincells died on me while reading TFS.
Remember: These people get the exact same number of votes as you do.
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So Karen who doesn't understand what censorship is, freaks out and rather than just not using Facebook calls her service provider and the service provider implements a block for all other customers at Karen's request with opt out.
What the ISP is doing is giving us an object lesson in what a secondary boycott is and why it should be illegal, as it already is in the context of labor law.
In this case those customers who really want Facebook can still get it by opting in. This option was not provided in the Parler case.
Re: An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:3)
Parler violated their vendors ToS. Amazon has plenty of evidence. Their TOS and the violations are available on line. Parkerâ(TM)s lawyers dropped them at the same time.
Conservatives have plenty of voice. Theyâ(TM)ve been driving the country for the last 4 years from their minority position. Now they want to abandon their states rights positions to throw out millions of votes. They planned, on Parler, to hang the VP and kidnap congress critters who disagree with them.
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" rather than just not using Facebook"
It's already common knowledge that Facebook tracks people who don't have an account as they browse thousands (millions?) of other websites. The real way to block this kind of traffic is through setting up appropriate firewall rules, which the average internet user has no experience in.
we'll show you (Score:2)
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Karen has been burning books for 100's of years, I don't think she needed a liberal to learn censorship from.
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Are you equating Facebook (a voluntary social network) with an ISP (an essential utility) and supporting the right for both of them to blindly filter content equally?
*twitch*. Fuck there goes another brain cell.
Re:An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
So the hypocrites over in the conservative camp are all for deregulation, unless it hurts them personally.
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Not half the country, in fact not even half the people who voted. That is your real issue, isn't it? You want your minority to be able dictate what the majority can and can't do. Sorry, people here fought a war against just that 245 years ago and set down the basics of how this new country was to be run a decade later. Your attempt to change that will fail just as badly as the last attempt 89 years later did.
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I haven't heard of any of those on conservatives, because I don't think conservatives are actually targeted. Conservatism is supposed to hold the status quo for the long haul, rather than driving everything into the ground, allowing other countries to economically corner the USA, or even ignoring the
Re:An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Say it with me now: in the US, "Freedom of the Press" also extends to the freedom to NOT publish sedition, white nationalism, racism, violence incitation, and hate speech.
We don't have state-run media, so stop acting like we do. There's literally a billion people that manage to not get kicked off social media platforms every day, so it's really not that hard to stay within the terms of service - just don't be a repugnant piece of shit and you get to go on tweeting and liking shit on Facebook.
Re:An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I'm proposing that you pull your head out of your ass and understand this is no longer a "private" matter when you attempt to censor and discredit half a fucking country.
So, let me get this straight... Karen can refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple, refuse to rent her wedding chapel to them, refuse to officiate their wedding or even issue them a marriage license and that's perfectly ok and acceptable, but lock the president out of twitter and you've gone a step too far?
First, you're not half the country. If half the country wanted to take part in sedition, then we'd have civil war. We don't have that regardless of what flag you think represents you. What we have is a vocal minority that attempted a failed coup and are now whining because they did fail and are facing consequences for doing so.
You better believe that there are a lot of people in the country who believe it shouldn't stop with removing the platform that helped foment the violence (Inciting violence is not protected free speech and there is legal precedent to that. Even the government can clamp down on that.) Everyone that took part in this or incited others to do so should face charges. These people attacked the seat of the US government, attempted to stop the counting of the democratic vote and instead install their leader by fiat. That is treason.
Now remember, it is the conservative movement that has pushed for corporations to be counted as people and for their actions to be counted as free speech - not to mention free speech to include denying someone else their rights or freedoms (as in issuing a marriage license). No, Twitter isn't Hobby Lobby, but it does have rights granted to individuals thanks to the conservative movement. It's ironic that the Trumpers now want to take on "Big Tech" aka big corporations in technology, when they've spent years giving them more and more rights/control ranging from individual rights to dissolving net neutrality. This doesn't even take into account the clear violations of Terms of Service.... just the fact you've put these corporations in a very enviable position then started a fight with them.
Re:An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop being hateful shitbags and we can resume talks, until then DIAF.
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HUR HUR PRIVATE COMPANY
Hurr durr COMMON CARRIER, hurr durr Idaho State net neutrality laws.
Dumbass.
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But shouldn't twitter also be considered a "common carrier" then, in all fairness?
(not trying to troll here, just being curious)
Maybe it could, maybe it should. Right now it's not. As such, they are well within their authority to boot people off the platform for TOS violations, or any reason at all.
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Calling someone a dumbass while equating violent, seditious, racist, or just plain false statements with "conservative" is just more irony than I can take this morning. You are basically admitting that the modern "conservative" movement is filled with bad-faith actors, white nationalists, and violent insurrectionists.
Most of us are smart enough to know that while there are extremist elements within the GOP, it does not make up the whole. Just like how there are extreme left views within the Democratic Par
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Obviously, yes.
I only can explain it in a way that either people do not get how the internet works or they completly lost their marbles.
An ISP setting up Firewalls/access/deny-lists according to customer request is nothing to call "censorship" on or get mad at the ISP who offers that service. Phishing-, parental or Ad-Filtering are legitimate reasons. Because there is stuff you don't want to have on your computer because there are actual risks or (bandwidth) costs.
But why block Twitter and facebook? For con
Re:An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
I can see that someone who doesn't know much about tech but has heard that Facebook tracks you everywhere and suddenly turns against Facebook would want their ISP to block Facebook tracking on third-party sites. Whether blacklisting connect.facebook.com is still enough, I'm not sure.
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It was a direct response to a direct question made in the post I replied to.
Re:An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Did they vow to stay abstinent to "punish" social networks for removing Trump and are afraid they relapse and still would frequent them because they are addicts? Or do they think if their ISP puts them on their personal blacklist, ist is blocked for all internet users?
What's the difference between putting a site on a blacklist vs. just not using it?
It's way down in the article but they mention the user didn't want their kids to access the sites.
It's typical authoritarian response to information they don't like, not only do they not want to hear it, they don't want others to hear it, especially their kids, because if they're hearing alternative viewpoints, it might cause them to question what they've been taught.
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OK. so it's the wrong reasons, but at least there is a reason.
Re: An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:3)
It's typical authoritarian response to information they don't like, not only do they not want to hear it, they don't want others to hear it, especially their kids
You sound like a child. Parenting is authoritarianism, and so are house rules, there's no two ways about it. Argue about definitions all you want, then eat your broccoli and go to bed or I will take your internet away for a week.
Next up: centralized planning and from each his according to his ability, to each according to his need. Communism, or your workplace. /sarcasm
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I'm in support of both. I support Twitter and Facebook's freedom of association. I support an ISP that takes feedback from their customers and creates an offering that they find useful. None of this is against the law nor bad.
I personally think that opt-in would be frustrating, but maybe that better met the needs of their customers. The motivation doesn't concern me. Ultimately market forces will solve the problem.
Re:An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:4, Interesting)
Ultimately market forces will solve the problem.
Market forces usually have a lot of problems dealing with ISPs with a local monopoly. Not sure if that's the case here, but often these local ISPs are the only game in town. The only way to drop them is to move. You often can't even start your own competing ISP because the town's agreements with the existing ISP somehow make it illegal for you to do so. I suppose all of the up and coming LEO satellite Internet services could be considered market forces coming up with a solution. Of course, it's literally been decades of waiting for an alternative for some people. So that's basically enough time to grow old and die in.
Re:An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:4, Interesting)
Private corporation, right? If Amazon can decide to not host someone, then an ISP can decide to not allow access to Facebook.
Sounds like everything is okay because private corporation, right?
Y'all didn't have a problem yesterday with private corporations deciding on who gets to post on their platform, so why can't another corporation decide how it's services are to be used? Same thing.
So what we really need is a law that makes either websites (nah), hosting companies (maybe) or ISPs (definitely) to become common carriers so that anyone can actually setup their own website and say what they want. At that point, if they break the law, it's on them and their website, and no one else. That's fair for all.
Re:An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you accidentally reply to the wrong post? I hadn't actually made any comment about the rights of private corporations to ban people from their platforms, etc. I was making a comment about how market forces don't really apply to local ISPs in underserved areas and the bizarre legal situation many of them operate in where competition ends up being forbidden.
Since you seem to want to get into this though, your point is nonsense. They are, indeed, a private corporation. However, they are a common carrier, beholden to laws governing common carriers. They actually don't get to choose these things. They provide a pipe to the Internet itself. There is a lot of grey area there, of course. Generally speaking, an ISP should not be picking and choosing for its customers.
Organizations like Facebook and Twitter are not considered common carriers, however. They aren't providing a pipe, they are providing access to their servers operating on the Internet. They grant accounts to users, who are subject to Terms of Service and users have to abide by those Terms of Service, or they could lose access to their accounts. These sites have been operating like that since they were started. People violate the terms of service, and they get banned, either temporarily or permanently.
This does seem to create an interesting quandary for free speech. At what point do services like this become a virtual public square where people have free speech rights and right of assembly, free association, etc.? An analogue to real world public spaces might be useful. Do you have free speech rights and right to assembly inside your local indoor mall? Or in the parking lot of your supermarket? Not really. Those are private spaces. If they don't like what you have to say, they can make you leave. A trickier one might be, for example, a cafe with tables out on the sidewalk. Some of them actually own the land that they put the tables out on, but others just have a permit to put their tables on the public sidewalk. What are your free speech rights in those spaces? It's actually hard to say. It would seem pretty likely though that courts would probably side with the private business in forcing you off the premises for speech the business objects to on the grounds that you have free speech on the adjacent open area of sidewalk. Ditto for a public park with, for example, a permitted private carnival, etc. In general, while some private property seems to end up treated as de facto public space in many respects, I don't think it typically becomes de jure public space where all of your rights are in effect without danger of eviction unless it's seized by eminent domain. It even seems like, over time, the public spaces where you have 1st amendment rights are actually dwindling.
Honestly, this state of affairs is less than ideal. We really do need to have standards for free speech online. Consider the real world again. As I mentioned, public spaces where you have free speech are dwindling. What happens if your town ends up selling, renting, or otherwise permitting away all of the public spaces away to a private management company. Can the management company then impose rules on your free speech in what had been a public space? Can the municipality even use this as a way to do an end run around the constitution by putting a private company in charge and then mandating rules through their contract with the private company? After all, we've seen that police can get away with violating the 4th amendment like crazy by simply contracting the violations out to private companies and individuals, so why couldn't it happen with the 1st amendment (2nd as well, for those for whom that's the only important amendment). That would leave inside their own homes as the only place people have free speech. Except that their landlord, mortgage company, HOA, etc. might be able to take those away as well through lease and mortgage agreements and whatever demonic blood pact is required by the HOA.
So, yes, we do need to have some laws that provide for people's sp
What about a Christian ISP (Score:3)
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That's pretty hard-core. Is this really what people want?
It is into eye for an eye phase, so yes MAGA wants Twitter banned everywhere and the next GOP leader will be running on "screw over Twitter" platform. They have 4 years to move thier servers to Russia and corporation to Cyprus. I would start the work now.
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It's going to happen.
Once the platforms, used by those told that they could create their own, are denied hosting, they'll go outside the US. Then the US will start requiring to filter those sites.
Re: An ISP blocking websites in the US (Score:3)
The alternative is to just block conversations that talk about killing government officials and people MAGA consider traitors.
Amazonâ(TM)s complaints about TOS violations could easily be solve by Parler without jeopardizing their core mission of being a Q-crowd echo chamber.
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Hint: Trumpists and 'liberals' are real people. With flesh and blood and problems and tears. And they are your citizens. Like your family, you look after them. You understand what brought them there. (No need to agree.) You work it out. Or you can dump you citizenship right now, right here, as it means nothing anymore.
I would agree. Unfortunately, the last time our country was this divided a Civil War broke out because General Common F. Sense stepped on the battlefield and threatened to end slavery. (Rather pathetic that mentality was merely outsourced in the 21st Century as liberal mega-corps dominating the planet abuse slave labor to rake in massive profits.)
Because we never actually learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Sadly, I look at simple things like obesity and laziness as the only things holding ba
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You want dead honesty? I am not totally sure. I'd like to have a good, open discussion, but that seems to be impossible online. I do believe the platforms kicking Trump off have every right to do so. They are private companies and he's violated their TOS many times over for years. His attack on America is just treasonous, pure and simple. He doesn't see it because he's the emperor with no clothes. IMO, spreading false and mis-information is NOT freedom of speech. You can discuss those lies, but you
Addressing censorship concerns by... censoring (Score:4, Funny)
America has serious issues.
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Don't be a fucking idiot. This is not an ISP dropping eliminating someone's service, but unilaterally changing the terms for it.
Indiscriminated internet content is one of the cornerstones of Net Neutrality. Bah, used to at least, before the Trump days.
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Neither does your strawman, bub.
Though, having said that, i'm willing to bet money Net Neutrality would not be under attack if we had a different administration.
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Lisandro, ISPs and website owners are both private corporations. Hence they both get to decide how their services are used.
It's very telling that you think it's okay for one corporation to ban someone but not another. I'm fairly certain you were telling other people to go build their own platform just the other day when AWS kicked Parler off.
Well, go launch your own satellite and start your own ISP. Then you can say what you want.
This is precisely why ISPs should be common carrier and maybe hosting companie
Re:Addressing censorship concerns by... censoring (Score:4, Insightful)
Lisandro, ISPs and website owners are both private corporations. Hence they both get to decide how their services are used.
No, not quite. There're contracts involved - and regulatory frames in place.
The comparison with the Parler/AWS scenario is actually quite apt, but not for the reasons you think: they both involve ToS violations. In the case of AWS, Parler violated the terms of service on the very contract they signed, so they got their service terminated. In this case, the ISP is the one violating terms of service. And i'm 100% certain they had no issue on charging end users the same for a crippled service.
On top of that, ISPs are, very much, still bound by FCC regulations.
As a side note, i see many people here framing this entire thing (and Parler/AWS, while we're at it) as free speech issue. It is arguably not.
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Apparently, it's not censorship. Nothing wrong with a private company eliminating someone from their service. They should just build their own internet provider, right?
Yes and No.
1. If it based on a listed protected characteristic from the anti-discrimination legislation and the customer can prove it, the company is in hot water.
2. If the company is a monopoly, it is in hot water regardless of is this discriminatory or not. There are things which mom and pop shops can do which are not allowed to Global monopolies like Facebook. Any such ban can be construed as abuse of monopoly power and should be construed as such.
3. If a company is a public utility and operates unde
Re:Addressing censorship concerns by... censoring (Score:4, Interesting)
You're missing the detail that Twitter and Facebook have TOS that Trump agreed to adhere to when he signed up and that they say he violated.
This is not a censorship case but a contractual dispute. And I would say there is a good chance that a court would uphold Twitters and Facebooks right to block a user that violated their TOS, even if he happened to be the POTUS in his day job. Then again, IANAL.
Re: Addressing censorship concerns by... censoring (Score:3)
This isnâ(TM)t a censorship case. This is a violation of pretty clear Terms of Service. Amazon has a clause in the contract that Parler signed that talks about encouraging violence as a violation.
Conservatives that are trying to ban minorities from voting donâ(TM)t get to play the âoewhite people victimâ card.
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Is this even legal?
I haven't kept track of FCC regulations ever since that moron Ajit Pai took over but, last time i checked, ISPs were not allowed to tamper with online content.
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It's not exactly "tampering" if customers request it. Setting up an option for user defined blocklists and opt-in/opt-out is different from messing with data the user requested.
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Good question. I was wondering about that already in another post. But doesn't change the fact that they requested it.
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Is this even legal?
I haven't kept track of FCC regulations ever since that moron Ajit Pai took over but, last time i checked, ISPs were not allowed to tamper with online content.
They are on behalf of the customer. In the article - customer requests.
Re:Addressing censorship concerns by... censoring (Score:4, Informative)
The same article mentions they went ahead and blocked those sites for everyone, and had to undo it after the unsurprising backlash it generated.
I haven't read the contract users signed with Your T1 WIFI, but that's quite likely a violation of their own ToS. Users were no longer receiving the service they are charged for.
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Funny how the voting laws are only a problem when Trump lost. The laws are better than ever now with voting by mail.
Re:Addressing censorship concerns by... censoring (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, we should remember the real reason this happened - a corrupt lying scumbag shitheel of a President decided to be the sorest loser in history and lied for two fucking months straight about "winning in a landslide" and "having it stolen from him".
And his disciples took it as gospel and had a nice little riot in the seat of government in an attempt to overthrow that legitimate election during the joint session of Congress meant to certify it as per the law.
Why do we need to have voting law reform, when the system worked exactly as designed, in an election that Trump's own Departments of Justice and Homeland Security declared to be largely fraud-free and secure? How about instead of attacking the voting system and the voters, you come up with policies and programs that people actually want to vote for?
Seems like you've bought into The Gospel of Trump too.
block the bastards, I dare ya (Score:3)
The best thing for the Trumpanista at this point could be a break from socmed. The irony is that Facebook and YouTube's algorithms directed their attention towards all this bullshit in the first place. Watch The Social Dilemma, browse and read more reputable sources and delete your Facebook account. Do it for your country.
Look at their website, all you need to know.. (Score:3, Informative)
Just take a look at this ISP's website and you'll learn everything you need to know about them. Started in 1996 they say, and they haven't moved on since then. Spelling errors, grammar errors, and a flash logo at the top right hand side.
The sooner Starlink comes to town and replaces useless outfits like this, the better.
The stupidity of this shines like a bright bright light.
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Sounds like they do a lot of business in an area where word of mouth and perhaps an ad in the local paper will get 10x the ROI of a flashy website and Facebook ads and most of their customers don't use their website.
If its like where some friends in that general area live in, most of their customer base probably has to choose between dial up, satellite, flaky cell service and them.
If is so, why bother spending money to make a nicer website. I could see removing the flash logo, making the font styles match b
Re:Look at their website, all you need to know.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, like many ISPs outside large urban areas, they do business in an area where there is no competition, so they get to have a de facto Internet Fiefdom where it's their way or no highway.
Quite some bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Even their excuse does not make sense. They claim "numerous calls from customers" asking for this, and going on to say those customers are not tech savvy to do it themselves (presumably even with an instruction page). So, we are talking about non-tech savvy people... that somehow know that facebook has access to 3rd party sites so not visiting facebook is not enough and hence the need to block it. Anyway, I will allow for that. But the ISP's solution instead of "visiting each customer" (???) is to implement it as an option on their side (so, yes, they can obviously do it without visiting the customer, why was the visit even mentioned), which is all fine up to here, but instead of making it opt-in for the users that purportedly asked, they apply it to everyone and make it opt-out.
They were just just making a statement, I doubt they even got requests for it, and they were just stupid enough to not expect the amount of backlash.
Re:Quite some bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
They claim "numerous calls from customers" asking for this
Since when has an ISP ever responded to a customer request?
Opt In vs Opt Out (Score:2)
If I get it correctly they didn't ban, they changed the settings from opt out to opt in. This is typical throttling behavior where hurdles are introduced but you can still have access if you really want it.
Policies of delisting, deranking , demonetizing, making inconvenient are the softer alternatives to outright censorship , and that lowers the threshold of introduction so much there are already the rule.
And it is not just to control traffic. A serious article should be written about all tricks sites use t
Uh-huh. (Score:3, Insightful)
The ISP says it decided to restrict service this way after receiving numerous calls from customers concerned about censorship.
Just like when GOG got comments from "concerned gamers": https://twitter.com/GOGcom/sta... [twitter.com] (meaning chinks)
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The ISP says it decided to restrict service this way after receiving numerous calls from customers concerned about censorship.
Just like when GOG got comments from "concerned gamers": https://twitter.com/GOGcom/sta... [twitter.com] (meaning chinks)
Just like when Trump says that someone called him or came up to him and says, "Sir, I...."
Doggone it, North Idaho. (Score:2)
"may not manipulate access to content" (Score:2)
I'm concerned about censorship (Score:2)
Dear ISP, please censor some stuff for me too.
Shame on the ISP (Score:2)
Sometimes the public is stupid. All it takes is a few loud voices to make enough trouble for a business that some lilly-livered yellow mid-level manager feels the need to react and "give the public what they want.
In this case the ISP is the weakling. They should have said a polite "no"
Now the screaming mob will feel empowered and go on to harass others. Maybe they'll take on the local movie theatre next. Maybe they will stop certain magazines, object to certain TV shows. Appeasement never works.
Is this even effective? (Score:2)
Forget about the litany of litigation that's about to come raining down on this ISP. Is this even an effective solution? It seems like this is something that would be easily circumvented with a VPN.
Is this even effective? (Score:2)
This is what happens when we use cancel culture (Score:3)
This ISP is being the same as twitter and facebook. Apparently everyone is okay with this because free market capitalism. The Internet is not a need, right? I guess they should build their own Internet, right?
At some point, regulations will need to explicitly state which tier of the Internet is the utility part that can't be "canceled". I imagine this will have to be at the ISP or hosting stage.
I would say if you offer website hosting you should have to be treated as a common carrier. That means you don't get to decide what your users webpages are displaying and that you have zero liability as well. If a website owner breaks the law, that's on the website owner, not the hosting company.
I'm also okay with the common carrier status being set at the ISP level. If they are the gateway to the Internet, then they should have to let everyone have access to the Internet. At this point, you can setup your own server and do as you wish. If you break the law, it's on you, not the ISP.
The Internet should not be owned by the corporations. The government needs to make ISPs and hosting companies common carriers. Bakeries as well. If you offer services to the public, you need to offer services to everyone. Common carrier status. Government gets to decide who gets to be a corporation, so get to work government.
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I'm strongly against social media companies whose stance on whom to ban and whom not to ban, and whom to apply their TOS strictly or loosely to, changes to please the administration du jour.
For that reason, this ISP gets my money - although they blocked Facebook and Twitter for all the wrong reasons.
Also, as a nice side effect, they might raise the average IQ by a few points in those areas.
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I'm strongly against social media companies whose stance on whom to ban and whom not to ban, and whom to apply their TOS strictly or loosely to, changes to please the administration du jour.
Then... don't use those? Not sure why you'd want your will imposed on people who think different otherwise.
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Yeah, from a personal standpoint, FB and Twitter are totally foreign to me. No problem there.
And yes, I'm usually against forcing my own point of view upon others. But I regard social media as a drug: it's harmful to those who consume it, and it's harmful to society - as brilliantly demonstrated in DC recently. Drugs are outlawed for those reasons, and so should social media. Or at least severely regulated.
That ISP is doing society good, whether or not you like the style of what they did.
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Yea, regretting a choice is simply not what people do, especially not when it comes to relationships.
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Well I do agree that it should be up to the courts to decide who broke the law, etc.
However, Trump's account should've been deactivated long before all of this happened, since it is not compliant with their terms of service. Do you think that you would be able to post the same stuff he posted and get away with it ? No, your account will be blocked almost immediately. Trump got away with it simply by being the president.
So if you are to force social media platforms to accept all forms of speech, you have to
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Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter had given the guy a ridiculous number of second chances because he was the president. Then they invented a whole new way to let him break the rules without banning him (the fact checking stuff), all he had to do was not jump the shark into using the site for criminal purposes (Inciting riots and insurrection), and he couldn't even do that.
It's amazing just how biased towards trump Twitter has historically been. Nobody else would get that amount of lenience. He just figured out a way to sink so low that even the lowest standard couldn't contain his Avalanche of bad behaviour.
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https://mobile.twitter.com/sla... [twitter.com]
Slate: "Non-violence is an important tool for protests, but so is violence."
So why isn't Slate kicked off Twitter?
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/facepalm
"Violence can be good" is speech. "Go over there and whoop their asses for taking my election away from me" is a call to violence.
Something about context, him being president, these people talking specifically about storming the capitol beforehand, the president lying for months about reality, and so on.
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Because one violation doesn't result in a ban for anybody.
Repeated violation, after warnings and temporary suspension, does.
Nice whataboutism, by the way. -1 + -1 != 0
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It's amazing just how biased towards trump Twitter has historically been. Nobody else would get that amount of lenience. He just figured out a way to sink so low that even the lowest standard couldn't contain his Avalanche of bad behaviour.
Like I said in another thread, the outrage shouldn't be that Twitter banned a sitting US president. The outrage should be that a sitting US president repeatedly said things bad enough to get banned from Twitter.
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From XKCD': "I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express."
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It is one thing being banned from personal blog comment section / private discussion board / blocked by ordinary users inside social media. It is totally another thing when one is being banned from a general-purpose social media sites that act like a neutral service providers most of the time and gain effective monopoly / oligarchy status, then suddenly show their claws for opinions they don't like. We use freedom of speech to restrict government, not because government is called government, but because go
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No. Not if they are paid to give their users access to these services.
Yes, I pay my newspaper to go through everything that happens in the world, sort it and throw out the stuff that's probably not interesting and especially mark the interesting stuff with bold letters on the front page. I also pay them to paraphrase or summarize content delivered by the news agencies.
But I pay UPS and the postal service to deliver the stuff I ordered UNCHANGED in exactly the condition that the sender handed it over to them
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No. Not if they are paid to give their users access to these services.
You mean like Parler and AWS?
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ISPs are private businesses so they have every right to remove access to services that violate their terms of service or just tick them off
Legally, that's correct today, in the absence of net neutrality, which we lefties very much did not want (that is, we wanted net neutrality.) Logically, ISPs should be considered utilities and as telecoms utilities, also as common carriers, and they should not be permitted to block you from anything without your express and explicit permission.
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If you don't want to go to Facebook, why don't you just... not type facebook.com into your browser? Are these people idiots?
C'mon everybody knows that by the law of double negation, censoring the censors by censoring any speech that makes it through the censor's censorship apparatus equals freedom of speech.
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It won't stop Facebook from tracking you.
Presumably, that ISP is blocking every request from Facebook domains, the kind of things you can do with a pi-hole.
And to be honest, I think an ISP offering a pi-hole-like feature is great. But make it opt-in instead of opt-out and not politically loaded.
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Then make sure there are laws. Democrats would be happy to regulate and treat Twitter & social media as Publishers. Of course, if Twitter was treated as a publisher, they would have HAD to ban trump months/years ago. And not being allowed to ban Trump, or make exceptions for lawmakers is basically endorsing state media. I've seen a lot of complaining about free speech and stuff, but I don't see any proposed solutions, just some vague references to the slippery slope fallacy.
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None of you actually believe this. Your faux libertarianism is just a ploy to put a fig leaf over your support for big tech when it's censoring people you want off the Internet. When someone else does it in part of the stack you think it sacred and inviolable, you reveal the truth about your "principles."
Agreed. The stench of hypocrisy on this is unbearable. It is one thing to be wrong but principled, but it is another to be wrong and a shameless hypocrite.
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Facebook and Twitter are two companies in a vast field of communication options.
Considering how quickly digital warlords managed to take down Parlor for refusing to follow through with deplatforming of MAGA, I don't think "vast field" argument holds any water. It isn't just "Facebook and Twitter", it is also hosting, payment processing, advertising networks and everyone else is associated with it. This is modern equivalent of Hollywood blacklist [wikipedia.org], if you are on that list you won't be able to get a job in a modern digital society.
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To further complicate this situation vast majority of people do not access services
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Re:This is not the responsibility of a ISP (Score:4, Insightful)
But the whole idea of the right is to force people to do what they wan't. You can't have an abortion. You can't get gay married. It's not enough for them to not do it for themselves. They have to try and stop others doing it too.
Who is "the right" and you don't think this applies to the left just for other policy areas? Do people want to pay more in taxes by themselves or do you want to force them to do it?
Taxation is for the common good - roads, schools, public services, etc. Preventing gay marriage, abortion, mandating prayer in school, etc are all just things to make their own version of an invisible guy in the sky happy.