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Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by devmunchies on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @05:14PM (#21010291)
>But Mr Graham argued that simply removing false information or offensive content isn’t necessarily the answer. Hateful material need not remain publicly available, he said, but certain researchers and politicians should be able to study it.

They're planting the seed and seeing how the public reacts. This is ridiculous! Mark something "controversial", "possibly fake", but don't memory-hole us. An archive only archiving history they agree with is not worth the funding.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by est31 on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:23PM (#21012643)
Archives are reflections of the societies that build and curate them, and the Internet Archive is no exception. Over the curse of centuries, every society is undergoing cultural changes and archives do adapt to those. The Internet Archive's practice of immediately and almost indiscriminately publishing everything they just archived on the internet very much reflects the spirit of the early internet of making everything accessible to everyone everywhere but it has become too radical in an US that is increasingly pro-censorship. It's only a matter of time before they implement means to at least hide content that is offending select incredibly powerful groups. Had the archive existed 100 years ago, it would have had to bow before the National Legion of Decency. Now it has to bow to others. Bowing to different kings as their rules sprout, blossom and wither is just the business archives are in.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by wahern on Thursday September 19, 2019 @02:10AM (#21013737)
I like the "different kings" metaphor. An archive has to think long-term. To do its job unimpeded it has to remain inconspicuous and unobjectionable, otherwise it may lose access to information altogether. Kings and cultures will come and go, but as long as they have the data then their mission is substantially fulfilled. At some point in the future even the most radical material will become innocuous and safe to publish.

For example, this is why the archive obeys robots.txt policies retrospectively. I can't access my personal web pages from 20+ years because at some point the university changed it's robots.txt policy. (The domain no longer exists, freezing that policy quasi-permanently.) But at least they're archived. Maybe at some point before I die I'll get to see them again, but at least it's a possibility. More importantly, my "sacrifice" (such as it is) is a small price to pay to help ensure that archive.org preserved access to material that would have been cut off if websites felt that they didn't have control of availability once archived.

We can't expect archive.org to fight our battles for us, whether regarding censorship, copyright overreach, or other issues. It's great that they do to the extent that they do, but their success is partly a consequence of them picking their fights and emphasizing their character of being a quiet, harmless archiver. It would be counter-productive to ask them to risk that credibility and power. And it's entirely unnecessary.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by Roritharr on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:21AM (#21014058)
My gut reaction was also:"oh no, not them, why don't they take a stand?" but your logic is completely valid, they shouldn't, for the futures sake. I just hope they ensure their source data stays untouched.

What surprised me was that you say they respect the robots.txt, but the data is archived anyway, so they are crawling anyway, but only publish according the rules defined in the robots.txt?

If so that is news to me.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by Retric on Thursday September 19, 2019 @06:10AM (#21014849)
The robots.txt changed and they applied the new robots.txt to the old data.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by emilfihlman on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @05:30PM (#21010432)
>An archive only archiving history they agree with is not worth the funding.

100%. It reduces the entire point to just voluntarily donating to your favourite think tank or political party, not an "archive".

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @09:19PM (#21012274)
> Since the 2016 US election, as fears about the power of fake news have intensified, the archive has stepped up its efforts to combat misinformation.

I hate language like this. I mean, propaganda is not a new thing. And opinions about "misinformation" are extremely subjective. It's not at all uncommon for mainstream media to reflect mainstream biases. Or even biases of governments in power, media owners, etc.

For example, when I first heard of the NSA's Enigma program, mainstream media (if it even mentioned it) discounted it as "conspiracy theory". Or the CIA's Mk Ultra project.

> At a time when false and ultra-partisan content is rapidly created and spread, and social media pages are constantly updated, the importance of having an unalterable record of who said what, when has been magnified.

This I agree with. But access should not be restricted.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by JauntyHatAngle on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:24AM (#21014374)
There is a difference between bias and factual error. The suggestion being made is that articles are being spread with gross factual inaccuracies (intentional or not) at a higher rate than previously.

No one is suggesting that misinformation and bias didn't exist previously, the suggestion is that it is spreading at a greater rate.

To conflate bias with misinformation to the extent of exclusion as you are suggesting seems unnecessarily harsh to me. MSM had it's problems always, but it is incomparable to the basic factual inaccuracy prevalent in social media and the internet pundits that exist today. That can be argued, but it is a separate point.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by viridian on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:54AM (#21014762)
The MSM people are most likely to consume (cable news, and random articles from large, reputable sources) are at a low in the US that hasn't been seen since at least the days following 9/11. I'm sure the modern political shock jocks are worse than their counterparts a decade ago as well, but media as a whole has a huge problem with forming high ROI narratives, and finding the facts that back that story.

I think the problem is bigger than just media though, it's a downstream problem from the war on the attention of average person. When people suggest trying to solve for Cambodian clickbait mills, it seems to me that they are just treating the small symptoms of a worse problem.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by ntzm on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @05:34PM (#21010472)
I'd rather not have a manual for starting a neo-nazi race war archived to be honest
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by refurb on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @09:24PM (#21012310)
This argument is the same used by authoritarian countries like China.

They don’t say criticism of the govt is prohibited, they say that it’s necessary for the security of state. Doesn’t everyone want a secure state?

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by claudiawerner on Thursday September 19, 2019 @06:01AM (#21014803)
It is only superficially the same argument, which is to say, if you ignore the qualitative content of the two matters; the fact that they both reduce to opinion is irrelevant, since society is built upon general consensus on particular opinions rather than general principles everywhere. Just as not every action is alike (and we prohibit the expression of some actions), not all speech is alike (and, just as with action, we may decide to prohibit its expression).
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by DuskStar on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:16PM (#21010921)
You mean you don't want to be able to point at what an organization used to post and perhaps now wants to hide?
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by ppseafield on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @07:51PM (#21011790)
I think it's worth discussing this comment instead of downvoting it.

There was a lot of controversy around the copyright expiration of Mein Kampf in Germany a few years ago. The Bavarian government owned the copyright and refused to allow it to be printed. When the copyright expired, annotated versions were released, putting the book in context. There are certain disadvantages that not printing had: making the book more mysterious and taboo, and leaving the text to stand on its own when it was acquired (thus having no space for rebuttals, historical comments, etc.).

Personally I lean toward keeping these kinds of things but annotating them and providing ample context - the equivalent of a study on history or a museum exhibit. Maybe we as a species can learn from our mistakes. It's not like forgetting these texts will prevent the same conditions that created the rise of fascism and genocide.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by goatinaboat on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:21AM (#21014061)
Mein Kampf is a unique example in the sense that far, far more harmful books, by any objective measure, have remained freely available. As such it cannot be used as a general template on how to handle such material.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by raxxorrax on Thursday September 19, 2019 @02:47AM (#21013901)
I think Germany is no good role model when it comes to content restrictions, since too many measures are based on fear or shame, while adherence to arbitrary content rules isn't examined critically.

That is one factor why I believe Germany to be more likely to succumb to fascism again compared to the US for example. Luckily, the 21st century doesn't allow for much content control anymore.

Mein Kampf can reasonably fail on itself. There is need for context, of course, that education can and has to provide.

If you allow people to use their own judgement, perhaps that would have served as an incentive to use it in times of dire need.

The current idea that fascism rose because of too few content control is a grave mistake.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by tastroder on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:02AM (#21013971)
> That is one factor why I believe Germany to be more likely to succumb to fascism again compared to the US for example.

Citation needed? From the view of my filter bubble it looks like white supremacy and it's racist ideologies seem to be on an alarming rise in both countries regardless of their approach on free speech.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by raxxorrax on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:02AM (#21014262)
A citation for my believes?

Unfortunately freedom of information has come under attack in the US as well lately, so yes, the rise of some circles is no surprise or contradiction. Unfortunately that aligns fascist groups with people that see value in these freedoms. Although to those it is mostly no secret that fascists are just temporary passengers with other ambitions.

Fascism needs the antagonist, it is an essential piece of the puzzle. Only through that people are able to strip their conscience, elevate themselves above others and commit atrocities against people they see as threats. It is their personal victim role.

"White supremacy" was a laughing stock 10 years ago. And I mean really a laughing stock. Their last hope was to sweep up some anime weaboos that didn't really buy into it in any significant number, but it was their goto strategy to groom these groups in hope someone a litte too full of himself would randomly condemn them as the root of evil or just plainly associate them with facsism.

You can fight fascism with giving people more freedoms and more access to information. That collapses their victim narrative and has the positive side effect from the measures itself. Censoring a book, banning people perceived to align with fascism, or pointing out moral imperatives doesn't achieve anything. On the contrary and I believe this behavior to be a main factor to current developments.

But since the US has basic and fundamental protections to freedom of speech and against overreaching government, it is in a far better state compared to Germany, which is partly on the road to make the same mistakes again.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by Kaiyou on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:03AM (#21014266)
You're looking at the wrong thing. The new fascism won't be as the old fascism. He will introduce himself as the anti-fascism.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by concordDance on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:42AM (#21014176)
Rant: Racist idealogies wouldn't be on the rise if it were easy to Google actual arguments against racism, but despite trying various search terms Google keeps failing. >:(
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by Kaiyou on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:33AM (#21014412)
On the other hand, it is extremely easy to find arguments for racism, which is probably part of the reason racism is on the rise.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by joe_the_user on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:44PM (#21012102)
I think it's worth discussing this comment instead of downvoting it.

Fortunately, we can do both. Despite being nearly white, you can read the comment by highlighting it and it is still high the page, so it can be discussed. Seems like a model of how strongly oppositions should be treated.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by lacampbell on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:04AM (#21013440)
I never understood the big deal about Mein Kampf. It's incredibly dull. If the premise is you're worried about people becoming Nazis, then his speeches are what you ought to be worried about. He rose to popularity through his speeches, not writing.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Thursday September 19, 2019 @02:16AM (#21013763)
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by pdkl95 on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:07AM (#21013994)
"Triumph of the Will and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ1Qm1Z_D7w

The propaganda was incredibly successful. To this day "Triumph of the Will" continues to be used as a reference point for the mental construct of the Nazi regime. The modern understanding of the Nazis is deeply informed by a propaganda film produced by the Nazis for the explicit purpose of creating that mental construct. "Triumph of the Will"'s endless lines of soldiers marching in formation is exactly the image they wanted you to think of when you thought of them.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:41AM (#21014173)
Not just that. There's a long sequence on life in the young men's camp. The feeling is a lot like Woodstock. Or maybe a mix of summer camp and an idyllic version of basic training.

And the light show! Camp fires and torchlight! Huge insignia, and huge billowing banners. Very moving.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by not_a_cop75 on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @05:45PM (#21010587)
How about a Communist manifesto or other authoritarian literature? Why are we only really concerned about one type of authoritarian?
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by vidarh on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:47AM (#21014728)
I'm curious which specific paragraphs of the Communist Manifesto is it you consider authoritarian? It's a very short text, and only chapter 2 really makes any argument of what Marx and Engels saw as the goal of communist movements, so I presume it must be something in chapter 2 you consider authoritarian.

There are certainly plenty of things in there that implies too much concentration in the power of the state (e.g. monopoly on communication and banking) for someone of more liberal or libertarian (whether left or right) bent if one considers a modern interpretation of the state. Which is why even many Marxists, especially libertarians, look to works like Marx writings on the Paris Commune for more specific details.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by not_a_cop75 on Thursday September 19, 2019 @11:46AM (#21017311)
As it's still utilized to justify mass genocide by the state of its own citizens, and has happened multiple times and in greater numbers, let's just count this as the more dangerous book.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by vidarh on Thursday September 19, 2019 @12:04PM (#21017524)
Which part exactly is it that is used to justify genocide? And how?

This response suggests to me it is quite likely you haven't read it.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by not_a_cop75 on Thursday September 19, 2019 @06:31PM (#21021407)
Playboy seldom ever directly suggests the exploitation of women, and yet somehow people who enjoy exploiting women read it.

Perhaps someone is not so adept at reading between the lines. Just a guess.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by vidarh on Friday September 20, 2019 @01:32AM (#21023558)
Ok, so which paragraphs is it we should read what between the lines from,then?
[dead]
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by tracker1 on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @07:18PM (#21011525)
And people completely forget history... there were several popular variants of totalitarian socialism in europe. Russia in particular had civil-war like conflicts between the main 3 factions (iirc, red, green, white) and facism was definitely in the mix, but after WWII fell out and for some weird reason no longer considered socialist.

After WWII, there were definite anti-communist movements, though McCarthyism took things way too far. You cannot combat ideas with censorship, they'll fester.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by dragonwriter on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:27PM (#21011996)
Fascism was pretty much never considered socialist by much of anyone outside of the Nazi flavor trying to coopt the label, and the American Right engaging in revisionism in the last couple decades.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by tracker1 on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:51PM (#21018698)
Hasn't most of the "American Right" distanced themselves from the white-nationalist/neo-nazi organizations as well as the Left? It bugs me that the associations are constantly made, but the groups themselves don't actually align with, get support from, or considered part of the American Right outside of straw-man narratives putting them together.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by dragonwriter on Thursday September 19, 2019 @02:05PM (#21018827)
> Hasn't most of the "American Right" distanced themselves from the white-nationalist/neo-nazi organizations as well as the Left?

Maybe, but I was referencing that the notion of a substantive association between Nazis/fascists and socialism (or the left more generally) was never taken seriously by any significant group until the last couple of years, where the American Right decided that their existing pejorative labels were losing their sting and they needed to label everything they disagreed with “fascism” and seriously try to sell the connections; Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism was a notable point in this trend.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by vidarh on Thursday September 19, 2019 @06:03AM (#21014818)
Notably the NSDAP originally was early on a total hodgepodge of ideological strands mostly united by nationalism. Some of those included left-wing economic views. Hitler systematically targeted those groups, and most were excluded or left long before the NSDAP got any influence.

Hitler eventually had the last remaining "left wing" faction of the NSDAP (the Strasserists) arrested and/or murdered - this purge was a large part of the purpose of the Night of the Long Knives. But even the Strasserists, despite wanting to borrow some left wing economic policies were staunchly ultranationalist and anti-socialist.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:24PM (#21012652)
Well, it's "socialist" in the sense that the society (OK, the state, but whatever) matters far more than the individual. But I do agree that they used the term to confuse people.

Amusing factoid: Hitler honed his public speaking skills while working as a government mole in the socialist party.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by dragonwriter on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @11:48PM (#21013109)
> Well, it's "socialist" in the sense that the society (OK, the state, but whatever) matters far more than the individual.

It's corporatist, but not socialist (you can probably make an argument that non-libertarian socialism is also corporatist, but not vice versa.)

But, yeah, the cult of manichean capitalism tends to use “socialism” as the generic label for “opposed to capitalism”.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @11:57PM (#21013146)
Good point. Corporatist, in that the state is basically a "bundle" (fasces, from which we also get fascia) of corporations.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by dragonwriter on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:13AM (#21014312)
Corporatism actually refers to the government, businesses, unions, church, and other institutions (the exact institutions included varying between forms of corporatism) working together as parts of a body; it is not derived from the use of “corporation” for a business entity.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:30PM (#21018485)
Ah, thanks.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by dragonwriter on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:05PM (#21011879)
> It's currently in-vogue to be scared of and hate nazi's. For some reason though that sentiment never took root against communists.

Er, what now?

It really took root against communists (and socialists), even those of both of the those groups that weren't Leninists, in the US almost immediately after the Russian Revolution and only started to fade a bit after the fall of the Soviet Union 70+ years later, and even now a full century later it has significant, though less, pull in the US.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:27PM (#21012674)
Indeed. Remember the McCarthy hearings?
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by krapp on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @07:25PM (#21011586)
> It's currently in-vogue to be scared of and hate nazi's. For some reason though that sentiment never took root against communists.

It did, there was plenty of paranoia and hatred of communists during the Cold War days, we just never fought an actual war against communists (edit: except in Vietnam and Korea, I forgot that for some reason...) Of course, a lot of that Red Scare stuff was just a thin coat of patriotic paint over anti-semitism and anti-gay bigotry, but I digress.

Also, it's not in-vogue to hate Nazis. Everyone other than Nazis has hated Nazis consistently ever since Nazis were a thing.

What is in-vogue, however, is to be a nazi (little n, colloquial meaning, because I know sometimes people like to be pedantic) amongst the American right and alt-right, as the current American President's election has coincided with a revival of right-wing populism and white supremacist identity politics. No, I am not calling Trump a nazi nor am I calling all Trump supporters nazis so they can stop clutching their pearls ... that white supremacists decided to turn the populist movement that brought him into power into a narrative of racial identity and purity has been well documented, and it actually depends little whether Trump has sympathy for them, or is just their dark horse.

And that is why America is currently concerned about nazis (little n) and not communists. Because the nazis (little n) managed to meme a President into office, and the communists did not.

>It's almost like that type of political ideology took root in american institutions thus paving the way for this new narrative to take hold that communism is good and facism is bad.

There is no such "new narrative." Communism has never been trusted in the US, and fascism has always been "bad."

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by gwright on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:48PM (#21012125)
> What is in-vogue, however, is to be a nazi (little n, colloquial meaning, because I know sometimes people like to be pedantic) amongst the American right and alt-right, as the current American President's election has coincided with a revival of right-wing populism and white supremacist identity politics.

Can I offer a different perspective?

A vocal minority on the left likes to assert that everyone on the right is a bunch of nazis but that doesn't make it true nor does it make it "in-vogue". If you move past that broad group ("the right") and just consider the more vocal/visible/strident right-wing activists, they are almost all promoting western civ cultural values, which is not the same thing as "white-supremacy" but irks the multi-cultural crowd quite a bit as it requires making value judgements on other cultures and ideologies (which is not the same thing as making a value judgement on other races or people with particular skin colors). I think the visibility/growth of this group is more of a reaction to the identity politics, multi-culturalism, and intersectionality ideas of the left than to Trump's election.

And if you move past both of those groups to the remaining folks who are indeed advocating for some sort of race or blood based supremacy theory you are talking about a insignificantly small group that has no support anywhere, certainly isn't in-vogue, isn't being "revived" in any substantial way, and mainly serves as the bogeyman that the left uses to smear anyone who disagrees with them.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by Bendingo on Thursday September 19, 2019 @12:43AM (#21013357)
Upvoted for insight, accuracy and conciseness.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by pyrale on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:34AM (#21014421)
As an european, seeing the american far right make a hold-up on so-called "western civ" is deeply unsettling.

The thing they promote as rooted in "western civ" and say is shared among "westerners" is not related to anything I know here. It is also surprising to hear about the opposition to "multi-culturalism" when Europe has never had one single culture.

So please if you want to promote that thing of yours, stop calling it "western". Call it american, or what you want that doesn't represent it as rooted in some thing we'd share in your imagination.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by gwright on Thursday September 19, 2019 @08:49AM (#21015642)
You aren't clear in what things you claim the "far right" is advocating but I'm guessing it isn't the things that I think the right is advocating like:

    * individual rights
    * equality for women
    * limited government (especially at the national level)
    * free market economics
    * personal responsibility
    * separation of church and state
You are probably right that there are some things that are more American than European (expansive free speech rights, gun ownership), but I was trying to keep things simple by saying "western civ". The right wants to welcome people who support these ideas and shun people who don't support these ideas.

As for multiculturalism, your comments suggest that your use of that term is not the same as mine. Multiculturalism from the left is not about assimilating people from disparate cultures but instead is about insisting that the ideas I listed above aren't to be valued and instead all cultures and ideologies are to be accepted as is, leading to balkanization, discord, and the devaluation of the ideas that have made the "West" and America successful.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by pyrale on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:13PM (#21018285)
Half of the the things you cite are not core components of european societies. France has historically implemented colbertism, Germany is ordoliberal, both things which are at odds with free markets. Limited govt has never been a thing in Europe, e.g. most european countries have a government-run social system including healthcare. Personal responsibility is a major rift between american liberals (in its actual meaning) and european liberals, since europe mostly defends a positive enforcement of liberties, while the US goes the other way.

Promoting your ideas as "western civ" in order to give them polish is an unfounded appeal to authority. The fact that Europe succeeded despite not sharing your views shows why this appeal is wrong.

Please keep your internal politics at home, and don't get us involved.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by gwright on Thursday September 19, 2019 @02:44PM (#21019246)
I'm pretty surprised at the hostility you have in your comments and your effort to convince me that there is little in common between the ideas I listed and your understanding of European sensibilities in these areas. You almost go as far as too say that there is nothing in common.

I'm not willing to accept your pushback on its face, but it certainly has me thinking a bit more about my own assumptions about what we share with Europe.

I'm still in the dark about what has made you hostile to whatever you think the American "far-right" is advocating. If it is some of the ideas I listed that would be good to know. If it is some mistaken understanding about what the "far right" is in America, that would also be good to know but I can't really tell from your comments.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by johnchristopher on Monday September 23, 2019 @05:08AM (#21047179)
Well... yeah... but now we have a Commissioner for the "European way of life". Last time I checked that same person ought to be the commissioner for immigration.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by apostacy on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @07:41PM (#21011708)
Who gets to decide who is a neo-nazi though?

I've heard Jordan Peterson and Steven Pinker called neo-nazis.

Maybe you're a neo-nazi. Since neo-nazis always deny being neo-nazis, then your denials are further proof that you are a neo-nazi. B&

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by toofy on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:36PM (#21012057)
> Who gets to decide who is a neo-nazi though?

> I’ve heard jordan peterson and steven pinker called neo-nazis.

It still isn’t clear to me what this brings to a discussion. It seems like such a strange question.

Are any of us under the impression that label misapplication somehow means a label is no longer used? Of course not. After 30 years in the same house, my partners mother still calls the tree in her front yard an oak tree despite the fact it has always been and will remain a maple. Her misapplication of the label doesn’t mean oak trees no longer exist. Tree experts, dendrologists and arborists aren’t throwing their arms up and declaring their entire fields deprecated because a random person, in a casual setting, uses the wrong term.

My father still calls disk storage, RAM.

My partner still calls the serrano peppers she grows, jalapeños.

I regularly see politicians who lean to the right call obvious capitalist liberals, commies.

I still sometimes call giant ships, boats.

None of these misapplications matter, there are still an awful lot of people who rely on what words actually describe, despite a random old lady calling a maple tree an oak.

As always, casual conversations with casual people will at some point lead to casual use of words. It will continue to happen, for as long as we’re a species.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by apostacy on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @09:31PM (#21012351)
> After 30 years in the same house, my partners mother still calls the tree in her front yard an oak tree despite the fact it has always been and will remain a maple. Her misapplication of the label doesn’t mean oak trees no longer exist.

What if your partners mothers mom was put in charge of a maple tree conservation arboretum, and decided to cull all the oak trees, but she kept confusing maples for oak trees?

I'm not arguing that neo-nazis don't exist. I'm arguing that we shouldn't arbitrarily censor stuff just because some people call it nazi propaganda.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by toofy on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:27PM (#21012666)
> What if your partners mothers mom was put in charge of a maple tree conservation arboretum, and decided to cull all the oak trees, but she kept confusing maples for oak trees?

> I'm not arguing that neo-nazis don't exist. I'm arguing that we shouldn't arbitrarily censor stuff just because some people call it nazi propaganda.

She’s not in charge of any arboretum, that’s the point I’m attempting to get across.

We have reached a point where the collective We are treating random people having random casual conversations as if these random casuals have the same weight as experts in their fields. We have collectively started to treat what used to be completely understood as casual forum discussions and casual opinion pieces as if these hold the same weight as an authority in their field publishing a well documented, far more rigorous, and well cited paper. We’ve allowed a fogging in the ability to distinguish between casual people and rigorous experts and this is the outcome. An intelligent collective should never hold these two opinions at the same weight.

My idiot cousin by marriage, who has a very real lack of critical thinking, who has a degree in “google research” from “the school of hard knocks” however, she does have a knack for writing in such a way which absolutely resonates with uneducated mothers. She writes as if she’s an authority in child vaccinations, she regularly goes into her closed facebook group and convinces other mothers why they should ignore their doctors and not vaccinate their children. Her words have more weight than medical research and medical professionals.

She seems to pull the card which almost always seems to work on a certain segment of the population – the “narrative” card. The target of this “narrative” charge is for some reason automatically assumed to be nefarious and the person who spotted this so-called “narrative”, their words now hold more weight than the actual expert in their field who had a “narrative.

We need to get back to a point where my words regarding the best methods to pick coffee beans mean little when compared to an actual coffee bean farmer, because my field of expertise lies elsewhere. I can read an article or three on coffee beans, but there is no rational universe where my words should hold the same weight as actual experts in coffee bean farming.

Until the collective We are able to say, “I don’t know.” or “I can give you my opinion, but you’d be far better off listening to Jill, she has far more knowledge on the subject.” until we get back to a rational discourse, we’re going to continue to find someone who is outraged because some idiot on a forum or some idiot made a video, used the wrong term and falsely labeled someone.

We need to get back to a point where the smartest people in the room are the people who say “I’m not sure. I’m not an expert. I don’t know. I don’t know the nuances of that vast field. I don’t know.”

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by concordDance on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:00AM (#21014249)
The problem comes when the terms spread enough that miscommunication happens. When someone says "Bob is a neo-nazi" meaning "right wing", but the person they are talking to hears "wants to kill jews and blacks and gays". And then Bob gets lynched/ostracized/fired.

When the meaning of a word isn't likely to have a big impact on people's lives we can be a bit more forgiving (though personally I still want to move towards a clearer thinking population).

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by krapp on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @07:55PM (#21011822)
I've never understood why people make this argument, or what they think it proves.

Yes, the term "neo-nazi" is sometimes misapplied. That misapplication doesn't mean that neo-nazis don't exist, or that the term has no meaning. If the term didn't have an established, commonly agreed upon meaning that referred to a specific ideology and movement in the real world, then there would be no reason to quibble about its misuse, because calling someone a neo-nazi would be as meaningless as calling them a flarndingle.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by apostacy on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:44PM (#21012103)
But people aren't usually quibbling about it's misuse. They are objecting to unjust censorship, regardless of whether someone is called a neo-nazi or a flarndingle.

If someone was being harassed and censored because they were accused of being a flarndingle, I would have a problem with that. If corporate America were calling for mass censorship of "flarndingle" literature, I would be opposed to that.

I would not like being called a flarndingle if I knew it would mean that I would be censored. It does not matter that flarndingle is a meaningless word.

The term neo-nazi is actually quite abstract. For many younger people and activists, it has just become a synonym for "person I do not agree with".

It has become a catch-all insult that can be applied to anyone. There is nobody who that insult won't stick to. You can be a Jewish academic with controversial opinions about society and have "anti-fascist" activists target you for being a neo-nazi.

So, obviously we can't ban anyone that is called a neo-nazi.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by afiori on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:48AM (#21014733)
My observation here is that it is not used as a representation of someone's ideas but as an insult.

The same way that the right call liberal capitalist "commies" as an insult.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:16PM (#21012599)
Now that I think about it, I lost faith in the Internet Archive some years ago. During the rise of ISIS (or whatever we're calling it now) I occasionally came across Internet Archive links for their English publications. But whenever I clicked, I found that stuff had been taken down. And I'm pretty sure that the publishers hadn't requested it.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by smudgymcscmudge on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:36PM (#21012716)
I won’t fault them for obeying a court order. I just hope the beheading videos are archived somewhere so future generations won’t believe we were just that offended by brown skin.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:58PM (#21012830)
This wasn't beheading video. It was verbal propaganda. Their monthly magazine, more or less.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by concordDance on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:39AM (#21014156)
That's a shame.

I've often wanted to know what viewpoints enemies of state have so I can get another opinion on things. Particularly a world-view as different to mine as ISIS would have been interesting. :(

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:43AM (#21014180)
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by collyw on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:49AM (#21014203)
I am curious to see what ISIS propaganda is like, but I am scared to dig about looking for it for fear of being put on a watch list.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:06AM (#21014281)
That's one reason to use Tor. Or VPN services. Or Tor via VPN services, so your ISP and friends won't see you using Tor.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by collyw on Thursday September 19, 2019 @06:11AM (#21014858)
I started paying with Tor a week or two before the Edward Snowden stuff broke. Read that using Tor gets you on a watchlist as well....
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mirimir on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:33PM (#21018527)
Sure, it probably does.

That's why I never use Tor, except through nested VPN chains. And I use the same VPN setup for torrenting, rate limited, in the background. So to the ISP, I just look like someone who torrents. It's not until you'd trace out the chain that you'd see connections to Tor entry guards.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by OrgNet on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:08PM (#21010807)
Apparently, we need a storage capacity breakthrough so that everyone can store everything so that we do not have to relay on what someone else say is acceptable.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by kd3 on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:21PM (#21011967)
What we need is good p2p tech that will enable distributed storage that is impossible to censor while also automatically providing gazillion terabytes of storage distributed over all peers. Problem solved.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by OrgNet on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @09:31PM (#21012355)
I would like that too but the government will make laws and all the peers from the p2p network will get scared
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by kd3 on Thursday September 19, 2019 @12:02PM (#21017489)
Making laws is one thing, enforcing them is a completely different story. The government has no chance to survive and should make their time.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by afiori on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:56AM (#21014776)
There is an argument to be made that archival and distribution are two different things.

There are justifiable cases where you might want to remove something from the public internet. Some problems of p2p distributed proposals is that the only way to take down a single bit is to dismantle the entire network.

In this sense a federated system is objectively better.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by OrgNet on Thursday September 19, 2019 @09:28PM (#21022498)
> There is an argument to be made that archival and distribution are two different things.

of course download and upload are 2 different things...

which is why Torrent users often get emails about their download activities...

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by afiori on Friday September 20, 2019 @06:36AM (#21025125)
This meaning that a closed archive is still a valuable archive.

(For torrents I believe that there is (in many jurisdictions) a presumption that if you are downloading torrents then you are automatically guilty of distributions; similarly how in many places being drunk in a turned off car can be sufficient for a DUI)

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by chongli on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:15PM (#21010905)
That will never work. Data will always expand to use up all available storage. It's like trying to build more roads when your city has a traffic problem. You build roads to reduce traffic and improve commute times, and then more people start commuting from further away.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by cousin_it on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:55AM (#21013668)
How about archiving all text written by everyone? Napkin calc: if every person in the world (10 billion people) types for 8 hours every day, at 200 characters per minute, 4 bytes per character, we need 10000000000 * 365 * 8 * 60 * 200 * 4 = on the order of 1 exabyte per year. That's a huge overestimate, but the world's storage capacity is growing much faster than even that.

Or think of it this way: the lifetime output of George R.R. Martin is <10MB. The output of 100000 writers like him could fit in a 1TB drive ($50). If everyone in the US was as prolific as GRRM, you could archive their lifetime output for $150000. Everyone in the world, $5 million. That's 1/20th of the investment that Juicero got.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by afiori on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:50AM (#21014742)
I present to you: 24/7 4k 3D 360 degree vlogging
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by OrgNet on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:22PM (#21010989)
you are probably right... but what if it was like IPV6 where there are so many IPs that they should never run out... the unlimited storage dream.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by eukaryote31 on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:37PM (#21011158)
Unlike IP addresses where you get exponentially more of them per unit cost (i.e size), storage space costs 1 bit per bit.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by OrgNet on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:01PM (#21011855)
I don't think that you understand what I said... I don't mean that IP addresses have anything to do with physical space. I only mean it in the sense that IPv6 supposedly solved a problem and we need the same thing to happen to storage space.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by StavrosK on Thursday September 19, 2019 @12:23AM (#21013276)
He understands perfectly, it's theoretically impossible to get infinite storage in finite amounts of matter.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by OrgNet on Thursday September 19, 2019 @12:20PM (#21017699)
What I was thinking is that maybe we can use the 4th or maybe 5th dimension to hide all that matter. /s
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by c3534l on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @09:39PM (#21012406)
It reminds me of the famous photo that Stalin had altered to remove a person from, so as to erase them from history entirely. I don't think the practice magically becomes acceptable just because you promise to keep the original copy locked away in a vault somewhere for an elite class of special people to access (who both happen to be members of deep institutional structures with a long history of abusing their power). This idea shouldn't even be entertained. Everything about it is a deeply awful idea.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by natmaka on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:39AM (#21013587)
Such "editing" was common practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So... Hence the "In the Soviet Union, the future is known with certainty. It's the past that keeps changing." joke.

Archiving everything published by any institution as immediately-and-systematically as possible, in a cryptographically sealed and timestamped (blockchain!) publicly accessible form, may prove precious when it comes to fight such behavior. However, as usual, somebody has to fund this effort, and most institutions may not be willing to do so.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by vidarh on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:16AM (#21014578)
The problem would be how you guarantee the release of the keys at a time in the future.

If it was possible to create a "time-locked" blockchain vault would be interesting.

I can't see any way of doing that which wouldn't boil down to taking bets on the speed of advances in computing, though. But that might be good enough if the goal is just to ensure it takes "long enough" rather than guarantee a specific amount of time has passed.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by natmaka on Thursday September 19, 2019 @10:36AM (#21016579)
As the archiver I first have to publish (once) the public part (key) of a Bitcoin address I own.

To archive something I keep a copy (file) of it (it may be an archive storing many files), calculate some digest (let's say SHA512) of the file, then immediately publish the file on my archive-webserver, and its size (amount of octets) and digest an the existing and active blockchain (in this case: Bitcoin).

As a courtesy I can let the source know that I archived.

At publishing time everyone can check that I (and no one else) archived the exact material published by the source. If I distorted the published material I cannot deny it, thanks to the timestamped digest stored in the blockchain.

Later everyone can be quite sure of the publication date and integrity of the archive, once again thanks to the timestamped digest.

Doesn't this method cover all needs? Is releasing another key necessary, which one and why?

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by vidarh on Friday September 20, 2019 @08:36AM (#21025981)
I think this illustrates that there are many reasons to do this:

1. Your suggested approach handles provenance for data you yourself arranges to "open up" in the future.

2. Additionally people may want to ensure the longevity of the data - this is "easily" done by simply archiving all referenced archives multiple places.

3. Some people wants to ensure important data eventually will get released, but don't dare / can release it now and/or worry that they will be prevented from releasing it in the future (be that for a nefarious reason, or simply because you might die of natural causes before you get a chance).

The last case is what I meant by a "time locked" system. Being able to archive something now even though you're not prepared to publish it now in a way that doesn't require you to take complicated steps to guarantee that "someone" is trusted to release the right keys would be powerful.

What you suggest also have value, it just covers a different set of use cases.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by natmaka on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:27AM (#21048699)
Case 3 is indeed a non trivial one.

1/ put all those important to-be-published-later data in an archive

2/ obtain the archive SHA512 hash

3/ cypher the archive, using a symmetric-key algorithm and a a random key

4/ use secret sharing, with the key being the secret, with the adequate amount of redundancy (this is the most tricky part). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing

5/ give each part of the secret to some notary, and pay him to have it delivered to each member of a group of tech-savvy friends of yours. Chose unrelated notaries installed in different countries

6/ give the cyphered archive along with detailed instructions to each member of the group, in order for him to be able to rebuild the secret and then decrypt the archive. If they will have to act this way more than 10 years after receiving the instructions give them full "image systems" (a real machine!) storing all required software, ready to run

7/ publish the SHA512 hash (on archive.org?), sealed-signed by you, along with some explanation "At date X I, John Smith, created the archive whose digest is...". You may also publish the cyphered archive (this is not very useful and raises the risk)

8/ pray. The symmetrical cypher has to resist attacks during the timelapse, enough groupmembers have to survive long enough, image systems must be usable when time comes...

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by AlecSchueler on Thursday September 19, 2019 @09:27AM (#21015925)
There's an interesting contemporary case of this going on regarding tobacco advertising. Because it's illegal in certain jurisdictions to distribute tobacco advertisements, some historical photographs have to be doctored for distribution there.

Take a look at the MP4/4 F1 race car shown on McLaren's website for an example: https://www.mclaren.com/racing/heritage/cars/1988-formula-1-...

Compared to an unedited version of the car: https://www.motorsport.com/f1/photos/ayrton-senna-mclaren-mp...

They even do this to videos of old races.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by commandlinefan on Thursday September 19, 2019 @09:40AM (#21016029)
There are old Looney Tunes (Bugs Bunny) cartoons from the 1940's, when America was at war with Japan - there's an episode titled "Bugs nips the Nips" that includes some very politically incorrect Japanese caricatures. They're working overtime to make this one disappear as though it had never existed.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by quotemstr on Thursday September 19, 2019 @10:55AM (#21016755)
This censorious mentality seems most deeply rooted in the Bay Area, and Archive.org, being based in San Francisco, is in the heart of it. People in other parts of the US and other parts of the world don't think like this.

Some geographic and viewpoint diversity would help IA not fall into the trap of thinking radical views like the one you quoted are actually ideas most people support.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by JulianMorrison on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @05:44PM (#21010574)
There is no public-interest benefit in hate screeds. Those are memetic viruses with established body counts and should be studied, if at all, in the manner one studies smallpox.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by justcorrect on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:11PM (#21010852)
Yep, that's why I want to ban all anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-freedom speech and literature in America. These hate viruses have no place in our Democratic Republic, nor in a civil society.

Or do you have a different OPINION on what's hateful?

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by jumpman500 on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:03PM (#21010744)
Well this is a super elitist point of view. I'm okay with the public understanding and misunderstanding information. There's value in their interpretation. Civilization goes on and history should be preserved as accurately as we can. We should protect children, but adults have the right to know what other adults think and say.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by narrator on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @05:57PM (#21010697)
So... people are stupid and easily manipulated. Democracy is just a skinner box run by all the god like people who know better than all the stupid sheep, right?
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by JulianMorrison on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:10PM (#21010836)
People are smart but there's a problem with smarts - it's surprisingly easy to talk yourself into something you can't talk yourself out of. High intelligence makes this worse, if anything. Some ideas need to be quarantined because by the time you start doing the "are we the baddies" skit, you've already built Dachau.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by narrator on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:19PM (#21010951)
So the smart people or the dumb people need to make the determination as to what are the bad ideas? Or the REALLY SMART PEOPLE like you make that determination? Face it, you're never going to get away from the "benevolent" overseer who figures the truth out for everyone else.

The fundamental flaw is that you're always trying to put everyone on different levels of intellectual responsibility and whenever you do that you fall into an elitist model of governance, which is what the first amendment was specifically designed to prevent.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by concordDance on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:12AM (#21014303)
You have a point. I once talked myself into a pretty racist view and have been struggling ever since to get out. :(
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by dragonwriter on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:41PM (#21011210)
> There is no public-interest benefit in hate screeds.

Sure there is.

If you can't read Mein Kampf, you can't recognize when a new work is following in its footprints.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by tastroder on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:12AM (#21014020)
> If you can't read Mein Kampf, you can't recognize when a new work is following in its footprints.

Really don't know how to make this sound nicer but... German here, we have schools. Reading the source material of a genocidal maniac would have added zero value to my education.

For some reason it's weird to see this free speech is a cure-all angle repeated time and again in a forum with US focus given the current administration's questionable stance on human rights, racism and a plethora of other issues like climate change.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by La1n on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:36AM (#21014142)
Exactly, people act like restricting access (or in this case voluntarily not storing something) will also remove all the surrounding information about it. I didn't need to read pro-slavery propaganda to know slavery is bad, and I didn't need to read every type of propaganda to know or learn how propaganda works.

Edit: Also this thread is full of people (including me to be fair) not providing any sources to whatever they feel is true.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by concordDance on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:09AM (#21014292)
And I didn't need to read pro-atheism propaganda to know that atheism was bad. Thankfully, at some point my "question everything" principles eventually lead to me investigating that.

(Unfortunately it also lead to me investigating other ideas which are far less popular than atheism in the modern day, so I guess you might have a point)

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by dragonwriter on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:58AM (#21014785)
> I didn't need to read pro-slavery propaganda to know slavery is bad

OTOH, one might need to read original pro-slavery propaganda to know that the myth, long adopted in many US states’ education systems as its own revisionist propaganda, that the Confederacy was not centrally about slavery and racism, was a lie.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by dragonwriter on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:55AM (#21014768)
> Really don't know how to make this sound nicer but... German here, we have schools. Reading the source material of a genocidal maniac would have added zero value to my education.

We have schools in America, and while reading Mein Kampf added negligibly to my education, no one being able to do so would have subtracted significantly from it.

More to the point, reading Kapital and the Communist Manifesto added significantly to my education, though many people on the US would see them as at least as worthy of suppression as Mein Kampf (which I wouldn't even be able to know was a bad idea if they—or Mein Kampf—were suppressed.)

> For some reason it's weird to see this free speech is a cure-all angle repeated time and again in a forum with US focus given the current administration's questionable stance on human rights, racism and a plethora of other issues like climate change.

First, a cure-all doesn't stop you from getting sick, it just makes it so you can get better. So, there's not even an inconsistency there.

Second, no one here (and virtually no one anywhere) describes it as a cure-all. A necessary element of a healthy society, perhaps, but not by itself sufficient even as a cure, much less a prevention, of bad government.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by raxxorrax on Thursday September 19, 2019 @06:33AM (#21014968)
Nowhere in the education you received was an argument that free speech enabled fascism. On the contrary. Censorship and propaganda were a foundation for the fascist state. I am sure you agree to that point.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by quotemstr on Thursday September 19, 2019 @11:04AM (#21016855)
Have you read that source material? If not, how can you be so sure?
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by tastroder on Thursday September 19, 2019 @11:29AM (#21017122)
Sure, at least partially, at some point. I don't live in Nazi Germany ;) there's a difference between the book not being published and being punished for reading it.

But that doesn't really change anything other than some centrist nonsense arguments. I was aware of his actions, philosophy, propaganda, and approach without reading it. I was also aware of the consequences, be it through visits to one of the old Konzentrationslager sites, museums, and other cultural and educational experiences. Or simply through the aftermath and it's presence of foreign military bases that are still here to this day. I'd expect most children even today having similar experiences around here and I'm honestly baffled how those kids grow up to be in their 20s and vote for far right parties regardless of the consequences. The book would have been nothing more than yet another propaganda tool of the, already pretty strongly organized, far right.

This whole thread is a weird hill to die on, the US has entire districts of schools that are forced to teach creation as fact, banning books containing scientific facts from their libraries, and people complain that we banned a book that was actively used for recruitment to the neo-nazi scene and authored by a genocidal madman?

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by lopmotr on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:21PM (#21011966)
You do realize you're describing quite a lot of popular books such as the Quran and the Communist Manifesto, right? You want to quarantine them to research labs only?

How is the world now so filled with people who are afraid of ideas? Have you run out of real problems to worry about? Or are you just too young and naive to realize that ideas aren't simply good and evil and that, alone, they don't cause people to do things? Nazism, for instance, came about because the people were being oppressed as a result of losing WWI and it was a rebellion against that oppression. It wouldn't work without the oppression. The idea itself is not the problem.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by fuzz4lyfe on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:17PM (#21012612)
>How is the world now so filled with people who are afraid of ideas?

Catholics used to attack Evangelicals. You see the Evangelicals had dangerous ideas that had to be eliminate lest the common folk would be lead astray.

People have always been afraid of ideas. This nonreligious religiosity is novel but we've seen this play before.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by tenaciousDaniel on Thursday September 19, 2019 @12:50AM (#21013385)
Yeah but for me, and probably many other people, it really felt like we were just on the verge of moving past all that. Up until about, say, 5-10 years ago. Now it feels like we took a sharp turn off a cliff, into some kind of feverish madness.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by lopmotr on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:50PM (#21019974)
I'd say so too. I somehow tuned out religious fear of ideas, perhaps because I didn't really think of those people as even pretending to pretending to be intellectually honest. But now non-religious people from my own generation and younger are behaving that way too. Even intelligent and supposedly non-nutty people like computer programmers.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by fromthestart on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @05:57PM (#21010695)
There are people who would put Das Kapital the same category of unacceptable speech as others would Mein Kampf.

You have no right to quarantine information like you would a virus, because there is no way to agree on which information is "bad". Further, even overall hateful or dangerous content can have meritful parts - not everything Hitler said or did, for example, was unreasonable or evil.

Another example, what about the Unabomber Manifesto? Yeah, he was a terrorist and he wrote some arguably hateful things about liberalism/leftism, but there was also a wealth of thoughtful observations regarding the human condition in his work.

All information should be free for study by anyone.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by TX-i on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:44PM (#21011235)
Agreed. We watched Google slowly change its search algorithms to condition certain information you receive, archive.org is the least problem in the age of "misinformation". Why is Trump mentioned in this article? Level 1 scapegoating right here. This is a vile attack on technology and your personal freedom.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by JulianMorrison on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:04PM (#21010764)
And they would be wrong. Liberation literature is not in the same category as hate screeds. I don't buy the moral abdication you're selling. You know what's evil - it's the stuff full of race hate and misogyny. There is no moral equivalence.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by DuskStar on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:20PM (#21010966)
> Liberation literature is not in the same category as hate screeds.

Just as one man's Freedom Fighter is another's Terrorist, this really depends on perspective.

Das Kapital is kinda negative about capital holders, after all.

> You know what's evil - it's the stuff full of race hate and misogyny. There is no moral equivalence.

Is it all the stuff full of racial hatred and mistreatment of women? Because you're going to have a hell of a time banning the Torah, Bible and Koran - to say nothing of other religious texts.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by hnaccy on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:18PM (#21010938)
Would a pamphlet against immigration be allowed?

Would a pamphlet against abortion be allowed?

Would a pamphlet against [Islam|Christianity| Judaism|Hinduism] be allowed?

Would a pamphlet against Israel be allowed?

Would a pamphlet against affirmative action be allowed?

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by journalctl on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:51PM (#21011297)
It’s amazing how if you try to make a progressive political point here, you tend to get criticized. But when it comes time to judge the morality of things like racism or misogyny, suddenly it’s impossible to know the morality of any idea ever.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by lolinder on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:34PM (#21012043)
People aren't arguing that racism and misogyny are moral, they're arguing that if you allow any censorship at all, then someone must be appointed censor, and you may not agree with that someone. The only way to be sure that your ideas can be freely expressed is to allow everyone, no matter how immoral, to freely express their ideas.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by cameronbrown on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @05:49PM (#21010624)
Banning Nazi content is easily the most obvious way to create real Nazis amongst the youth, who being young are attracted to anything taboo, or who may believe that there's some big conspiracy to cover something up so "it must be true, they don't want us to know". This is a dark line of thinking.
Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by orf on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:04PM (#21010757)
Ahh yes, of course, the large monolithic monoculture called "the youth" is naturally stupid enough to be "attracted to anything taboo" without thinking or questioning it. That's why they sure are attracted to other taboo things like incest and necrophilia.

No. Banning Nazi content won't suddenly make it appealing to young people. Things are a lot more nuanced than "banning bad, because kids dumb".

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by cameronbrown on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @07:26PM (#21011600)
Political ideology is NOT like incest and necrophilia at all. It is our history and needs preservation.

I never said kids were dumb, but they absolutely are curious, and forbidden knowledge is an incredible lure. The absolute majority will realise it's messed up, but there will always be that few who become radicalised from what they see.

Rather than burying our past we should and need to teach them why it's wrong. This trend of rewriting history is extremely worrisome.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by fromthestart on Thursday September 19, 2019 @12:06PM (#21017536)
You think the archtype of the edgy, rebelious youth is fictional? If you were too far removed from those groups of kids in high school, perhaps you should spend some time on 4chan.

>No. Banning Nazi content won't suddenly make it appealing to young people.

It absolutely does, because edginess is appealing to many teenagers/young adults. Not only that, but laws to this effect against blanket "hate speech" are regularly used by white supremacists and the like as evidence of, for example, Jewish people using laws to unfairly elevate themselves with the priveleges of a protected class while simultaneously suppressing thought that can lead to dissent.

Holocaust denial laws lead to increased suspicion with the justification that scepticism is banned to preserve a false narrative and prevent the lie from being discovered. It's easy to see how preposterous this is while the atrocity is relatively fresh in our collective consciousness, but what happens in 10, 20, 30 years when all survivors have been dead for some time and people rightly start to wonder why investigation of an event is illegal?

This is a weird form of puritanical censorship and the unintented consequences to society are far worse than any imagined benefits. You have no right to control thought in your image.

Edit: also, your hyperbolic mention of incest and necrophilia doesn't quite support your claims, as sexual arousal is quite strongly linked with taboo for many people, as evidenced by the wealth of voyeur, BDSM, and even incest pornography. It seems like these kinds of authoritarian proposals tend to come from sheltered minds.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by JulianMorrison on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @05:56PM (#21010676)
Honestly, no it's not. When society doesn't just ban, but abhor Nazis, then Nazi groups are small. There's people who are into rejection, but it's not a lot.

When Society sees Nazi things as forbidden fruit and makes them widely available, then you get the bully types dabbling in it, and it's more widespread.

And when society permits it to be mainstream politics, you're one solid resistance movement away from genocide.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by 4ntonius8lock on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:08PM (#21010803)
> Honestly, no it's not. When society doesn't just ban, but abhor Nazis, then Nazi groups are small. There's people who are into rejection, but it's not a lot. > When Society sees Nazi things as forbidden fruit and makes them widely available, then you get the bully types dabbling in it, and it's more widespread.

There's a lot of certainty in the way you are saying it.

I'm not saying you are wrong, but do you have any references? Truly curious, I always see these things as hard to measure/understand, so super interested to know info that would help remove that for me.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by mola on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:27AM (#21013539)
Science won't help you here. Ofcourse his argument is no more than a hypothesis, but you can't really disprove it because of scale. You might find a model that shows this dynamic, but it won't be a proof, And vice versa. Because we already witnessed major genocide, and a huge bloody war caused by such extreme ideologies, some people think we can't just let it play out again so we can gather more data for our scientific accuracy.

I don't know if censorship is the answer. But because our current climate of discourse doesn't enable a true honest dialog* we are edging close to no other choice.

*By true honest dialog I mean actual dialogs between people that try to convince each other with the goal of understanding where there is agreememt. And where there isn't one, where it stems from, and how it can be mitigated by some synthesis of opinions. This, as opposed to one sided commentary that it's goal is only to discredit the other side by focusing on disagreements and inducing fear and radicalization in your intended audience.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by 4ntonius8lock on Thursday September 19, 2019 @12:44PM (#21017963)
I'm not asking for double blind control studies.

I'm just asking anything to provide evidence. Well rounded arguments with lots of accurate and well thought out examples (i.e. statistics, objective trends, etc) maybe books or theories supported by certain segments of the social sciences, etc.

Same goes for your statement: > our current climate of discourse doesn't enable a true honest dialog* we are edging close to no other choice. (censorhip)

Can you please tell me why this time it is so different than say the election between Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine? I'm truly interested in hearing the concrete reasons for censorship being the 'no other choice' option.

Again, not saying anyone is wrong, just interested to hear how much of what is stated is based on subjective truth vs objective truths.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by cameronbrown on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @07:31PM (#21011635)
> There's people who are into rejection, but it's not a lot.

You're missing my point.

Those most likely to be radicalised are already isolated.

If we scrub content about Nazi ideology from Internet Archive (and everywhere else), these people will find it elsewhere and likely be even more radicalised than they otherwise would be.

Nobody is arguing it should be mainstream politics, only that it should be archived and preserved as lessons to the future generations.

Re:The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation by concordDance on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:17AM (#21014337)
Importantly: if you scrub it almost everywhere then you can't argue against it, because you'd need to actually articulate the WtongThink in order to argue against it. So when an impressionable young thing like my past self happens to stumble across well articulated arguments (as opposed to straw arguments) for the bad thing, they will have no where to go to be set straight.