Historically very little speech could be made without social consequences, the internet broke that paradigm

I think these two posts just about sum up the state of things and our disagreements at this time in history as succinctly as I could imagine.

The question I keep asking is, how do we add those social consequences back into internet speech, without massive regulation, this I do not know the answer to yet.

Yep, agreed.

You can hide behind a username and say hateful things without any consequences.

Historically they put on white hoods and gathered in person, the internet only changed the game for relatively small but geographically dispersed groups. I wouldn't be surprised if this type of person still met predominantly IRL and 8chan is mostly a few loners, it tends to net be the most tech literate bunch of people.

The 'only' there is doing a lot of work.

I don't have a citation for this, but my feeling is that historically, the majority of the people posting hate on social media aired their fringe views in much smaller and more direct social settings (the family dinner table, the pub, their barber/hairdresser) where instead of the reinforcement and gratification of many random upvotes from people in a similar situation or a vitriolic internet argument, they received either a fairly awkward smile and nod, a face-to-face rebuttal, genuine confirmation or (more likely) a mixture of the three.

Or you call up talkback radio and blabber into the void, often being shut down by the host.

A quick thought experiment:

Imagine you're pissed off because you've become disenfranchised for whatever reason and you're looking for someone to blame and lash out towards.

You don't have access to the internet. How much more effort would you have to put in to locate a similarly sized group of like-minded people who vehemently confirm and reinforce your views than you would now? How much more effective would the social filter which you encounter on the way be, remembering that every step of the way would mean real, rapport-inducing, face to face discussions with people who may disagree?

I think you've got the causation backwards, most people don't start off with extreme views, they start off far more moderate until they account their extremist group. Once they're in that group the become part of the self reinforcing bubble.

> How much more effort would you have to put in to locate a similarly sized group of like-minded people who vehemently confirm and reinforce your views than you would now?

That will be highly variable, but IME not too hard. The punk/metal scene used to have a lot of overlap with neo nazis so exposure was easy. I've twice been invited to migtow groups from people at my local drinking hole (a progressive club in a progressive inner city area), not to mention some other fringe but less violent groups. If your a social type of person that enjoys chatting with a wide range of people your often only one or two steps away.

You can say whatever you want, but I am under no obligation to (a) listen to it or (b) help deliver it to the masses. That is why I agree that providers such as CloudFlare (should) have the ability to refuse to host content such as this.

I agree, but I'm still surprised at cloudflares decision.

If I'm hosting some content, I now have to worry about if my content might violate their opinions of 'tastelessness', and if so, I might be given 24 hours to leave.

If I were a customer, that's a small risk but a big impact. I'd prefer a provider that didn't do that.

In the two cases where CloudFlare has done this to date they seem to draw the line at murder. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Do you think any other provider you may do business with has a more liberal policy than CloudFlare? Have you actually read the terms of service for any of them?

If this is the thing that changes how you view CloudFlare then you are already on shaky ground.

Did you call for Comedy Central to be shut down after Larry Wilmore said:“I don’t want to give [Trump] any more oxygen. That’s not a euphemism, by the way. I mean it literally."

Or after the shootings of Congresspeople, arguably inspired by all the celebrities calling for violence?

Or is your outrage (and CloudFlare's) partisan?

Huh? I'm not calling for anything. Simply stating CloudFlare is well within their rights to tell 8chan to fuck off and nobody should be surprised by this.