yes, and that entire article is about people trying to get them to take them down and the criminal statute they're using to force the issue, which is part of the GP's point. Not a lot of folks in the federal government hand wringing about deplatforming on that one.
This is relevant as the censorship here (whether justified or not, right or wrong it is censorship) is not done by CF, but by a faceless internet mob that is attacking both CF and 8chan.
CF has all the right to terminate its relationships with anyone. social media mobs should not force companies to exercise that right.
I think an appropriate qualifier here might be that they used to hold on as long as possible. I don't think that's universally true anymore.
> This is relevant as the censorship here (whether justified or not, right or wrong it is censorship) is not done by CF, but by a faceless internet mob that is attacking both CF and 8chan.
In the same sense that a mob outside the courthouse ensured a guilty verdict, perhaps. But it's still the jurors who actually acted.
I am not sure what you mean here... but I would find in both cases very problematic that a mob could wield such power. A mob is not a democratic representation.
The reason the mob has power is in the end that they do not get criticized by those they respect.
IMO the reason Cloudflare took down TDS and 8chan but not the Taliban or Hamas is simply outgroup vs fargroup. [0] The operators, users and targets of 8chan or TDS are all familiarly western but different enough to hate, while islamic terror organizations are so different it's hard to relate to them - sort of like that joke about how the more similar two religious denominations are, the more likely it is that they hate the other. [1]
0: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
1: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religio...
I don't see this working out well for them when it comes to total negative news. Would we have seen nearly as many requests to Cloudflare asking for 8chan to be cut off if they had not already done so for The Daily Stormer?
I do think cloudflare will be forced to be more palatable to enterprise customers if they go public. One biggest factors why I don’t use them is who they provide access to.
We used to, until quite recently. You could read Dabiq, the well-produced magazine of ISIL/ISIS.[1] They definitely glorified their terrorist incidents. With color pictures of their operations. All with religious justification. "Islam is the religion of the sword, not pacifism". (Dabiq, issue 7.)
Dabiq probably inspired enemies more than supporters. Dabiq says that there can be no compromise until the followers of Allah rule the earth. So ISIS could never have a peaceful border with anybody. On March 23, 2019, the last territory controlled by ISIS was captured.
8Chan is a minor annoyance in comparison. I'd let them blither and look foolish.
[1] https://clarionproject.org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propagand...
Speak for yourself, I would. I've downloaded and distributed ISIS propaganda videos before out of sheer intrigue.
Just because someone says something you don't like doesn't mean you should ban it. Of course, this will be downvoted to hell because this is a hot topic at the moment, but we shouldn't let that too-near emotion influence out policies. We've seen that lead to stuff like the PATRIOT act in the past and we surely don't need another one of those.
It will be downvoted because it's INSANE, not because it's a hot topic.
ISIS propaganda isn't banned for the fun of it or because "too near emotions influencing policies", it's banned for the effect that it casuses, the intention it has, and the attorcities it shows.
There's a difference between supporting free speech and you spreading around videos of murders, executions of innocent people who have families, and calls for more murders of innocent people all over the world. Just because those things don't make you want to kill someone, doesn't change the fact that they do help radicalize other people.
You seem strongly opinionated on this one though, I'm curious, what do you think of Tor or BitTorrent? Should such services be banned as they aid in the distribution of this type of thing too? If you're running a Tor middle node you're part of the distribution of not just all sorts of propaganda like this, but far, far worse things.
Do you think banning these services, reigning in control of information to "help prevent radicalization" in a China-esque way would be a good decision? In my view this is just part of living in a free society, freedom sometimes costs security.
Platforms that can, but do not, enforce rules to remove such content should also be punished and forbidden.
I would not sacrifice the lives of the ones I love in the name of free speech. Promoting terrorist content increases ever so slightly the chances of your loved ones and your family being hurt by those who get radicalized due to such content.
If "China-esque way" is what it takes then so be it.
Tor operators in doing so are making a choice: they feel the freedom of anonymity and speech are more important than human lives, even the lives of children.
I'd argue that running a Tor node is explicitly making that choice and that statement, so then it confuses me why you seem to be okay with Tor but more questioning of 8chan and similar services where the choice is made less directly. Is it a matter of having the ability to discern "good" uses from "evil"? You're surely accepting both uses by operating a Tor node and knowingly doing so, so I don't see how that makes sense.
If you want to look at gun laws on the other hand, that's a freedom for security trade that seems more debatable given that other countries have the same access to information, but not nearly the same gun violence problems.
What rational person will see an ISIS video and go: "Hmm this looks good, guess I should join ISIS".
They didn't get the ideas to do that out of the blue, without seeing or hearing any of the propaganda content.
OK
and distributed ISIS propaganda videos
Do elaborate on your motives for and style of distribution.
More Americans should read the writings of Osama bin Laden too.
It's not that this material isn't horrendous, but it's very different from what you'd expect -- the people behind it are not dumb, and like all good propaganda the rationale is selectively built on compelling facts.
Personal attacks, in particular, will get you banned here, so please don't do that again.
Are you a moderator?
The point was downvotes. That's how the HN community shows someone the door. HN itself shows someone the door by banning them.
Speaking for the whole site like that comes off as rather pompous. Not to mention the comment is now "in the black" on points, so it's not even clear that the community even agrees with you.
Yea, I wouldn't pretend to speak for the community - for some reason our OP insinuated I do by asking if I'm a moderator.
What I'm trying to say is that a negative karma post has been shown the door by the community. That statement remains true from my perspective regardless if I upvoted, downvoted, or did not engage with that comment.
I certainly would tolerate those sites. Free speech arguments aside, you can't kill the hydra, but you can severely degrade intelligence operations watching that hydra. Best case the bad guys all end up on sites already being surveilled, worst case they slip under the radar.
We had this problem years ago, hacktivists targeting ISIS channels. They scatter to the winds, intelligence ends up doing more work for less rewards.
Feel good outrage made things worse.
I'll be quite honest, I don't know what a "good" solution here is, but I really don't think this is it.
In war, degrading your enemy's communications and lines of supply is often more effective than engaging in battle.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321955758_End_of_th...
While we need to wait for more detail to fully understand the path of radicalization, I am moderately confident in predicting the El Paso shooter visited 8ch regularly for at least 6 months, probably much longer, but posted infrequently if at all.
At the very least a good post-mortem analysis would be nice.
I guess I'll settle for watching the finger-pointing dumpster fire.
IOW, mission accomplished.
Yet sometimes in a mosque some evil islamic imam or something preaches radicalisation.
Yet we tolerate and welcome mosques. Then why shouldn’t we tolerate and welcome sites like 8chan?
Also please keep in mind that now that 8chan has been basically shut down, we have no way of make an opinion of our own.
"Monteilh eventually so unnerved Orange County's Muslim community that that they got a restraining order against him. [T]hey also reported Monteilh to the FBI"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/20/fbi-informant
You do know that Homeland is a TV show and not real life, right?
A mosque that openly fostered extremism like 8chan did would of course get shut down. By contrast, 8chan has not been shut down. Its operations have been disrupted, but it hasn't shut down, anymore than Cloudflare has shut down just because they had a site outage last month.
Indeed, you arrest the single imam, you don't shut down the whole mosque. That's the point.
I completely disagree. I've read Dabiq[1] and similar publications because I want to know why people believe the things they believe. It is a good thing that such horrible ideas are available to the public, and for the same reason that it's good that flat earth sites are available to the public. JS Mill puts it best[2]:
> But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.
> If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
It is for these same reasons that I also read /pol/ and /leftypol/ on 8chan.
These aren't exactly organized bands of people funneling in millions of dollars for carrying out actual training and misson planning/execution. They're watering holes where disaffected elements of society hyperbolically play up various happenings.
Just take a step back for a moment. We have an increasing population and increasing saturation of that population with streams of data. When something happens, we know with a speed that is uncommon in human history (to be euphemistic about it).
More population = more happenings = more things to emotionally charge people in the same 24 hour frame. Even if population increases by a bajillion, we still only have 24 hours in a media cycle.
Even if the per capita incidence of violence decreases, a rising population means more slices of highly charged emotional manipulation within the same media cycle.
Edit: So instead of increasing population, resultant increasing pop density, increasing information density, and a myriad of clusterf* systems running haywire (even in an era where we're safer than even 20 years ago)...4chan and 8chan are the devil and satan for allowing people to shitpost in a hyperbolic hyperironic manner?
4chan and 8chan didn't create hyperirony (although they certainly cultivate massive gardens of it) or densensitization. Our media cycle has created it in tandem with a feedback loop that synergizes with the principle of "more people + same time amount = more hyperslices of emotion eliciting news that distort mental maps of larger-than-self situations"
You're safer at a wal-mart than prior 4chan and 8chan. But if you combine higher population density and information density, you'll get more raw events of violence even if the chance of experiencing violence has gone down.
Imo, there's a more insidious risk in allotting more powers of censorship to entities who are far less subject to reciprocal investigation. Think of 9/11. If we had done nothing, we would be safer and more prosperous today. We let the fleas provoke us into gouging untold amounts of flesh to stop itches.
Edit: A more simple way to phrase it is that hyperirony and the lack of "proper affect", which is really what people seem to be most horrified about, is a defense against the 24/7 atrocity exhibition which turns emotion into banality.
* - Note that more people, especially younger folks with their hyperbolic tendencies, and anonymity means more raw sociopathy and psychopathy being displayed in relation to those events. It's at least partially a function of the numbers game.
Why? Think about what you're saying. Imagine equivalents:
1. We wouldn't allow cell phones that let terrorists communicate
2. We wouldn't allow roads that allow anyone to carry whatever contra-ban they want down them.
3. We wouldn't allow trains that allow just anyone to carry books on whatever topic they want.
4. We can't allow for air that allows two willing participants to communicate using sound waves.
The hubris to imagine that we dare have a say in whether a group of adults date to communicate with each other.
Nobody depends on 8chan. 8chan is not comparable to "air".
This point is so incredibly banal that I'm surprised to find myself making it.
Why is that a remotely controversial statement? Nobody is suggesting that chan-tards should be rounded up for unamerican activities, and I'd be the first to speak against that, but CF don't need to tarnish their brand with 8chans bullshit.
They're free to withhold their support and so express an opinion.
Because Cloudflare used to say that they would never take anyone down, and now they have. I think it's valid to wonder if they'll be more willing to take down other content, and perhaps become a target by groups looking to restrict the spread of certain information now that they've shown that this is something they're willing to do. This also brings up the point of why Cloudflare thought this specific website was worth taking down, and not the other horrible things that they do support.
These people are trying to kill as many of us as possible. In no way should society accept it. It's simple societal self-defense. Root out the terrorists wherever they may congregate, regardless of whichever flavor of terrorist they happen to be.