If something is not safe for child porn and terrorism, it is not really safe for everything else. Only as safe as someone lets you be. Alternatively, if something has means to censor “just” child porn and terrorism, they WILL be used for something else one day.

Federated platforms are pretty good with getting rid of public objectionable material. I thought that ever since encryption became a thing, we had pretty much forfeit the possibility of preventing the sharing of CSAM? Hence why Facebook is where the overwhelming majority of CSAM is found on the internet.

>Hence why Facebook is where the overwhelming majority of CSAM is found on the internet.

It's not that. It's because fb is huge. CSAM and it's purveyors will determinedly find a way to share digitally, eventually, on every platform. Only regularly shutting down/restarting anew, wholesale, disrupts; that or censorship.

Do Facebook and Freenet have the same number of users?

There're plenty of locations where censorship is much broader topic. And, unfortunately, the list seems to be growing.

Do you disagree with that view or are you supporting it?

I think this comment is sensational but generally true. Replace CSAM with “right leaning” politics and you are just as fucked.

I’m thinking about leaving the US and getting a EU work visa to avoid the shitshow. There are a lot of people who think censorship is good - in the name of fighting misinformation - and generally hold a negative opinion of opposing viewpoints.

You do realize the EU is further down the path of enabling censorship than the US?

What are you talking about?

There is no near-absolute right to free speech in the EU. Countless people have been successfilly prosecuted for what would be covered under the 1st amendment in the EU.

ECHR contains the freedom of speech as a human right and so do most EU countries in their own constitutions. "Countless people have been successfully prosecuted for what would be covered under the 1st amendment" (and the ECHR) in the US too. The constitution only has value as long as it's enforced.

Let's talk about Germany, to give one example. In that country, the top court can outright declare political parties illegal, if it believes that they constitute a threat to the democratic order. This was used against the Nazis, of course - but also against the Communist party.

So, ironically, under the current interpretation of 1A, communists have more freedom of speech and association in US than they do in Germany.

> Let's talk about Germany, to give one example. In that country, the top court can outright declare political parties illegal, if it believes that they constitute a threat to the democratic order.

So what? Which country can't declare organisations illegal, if it determines them to be terrorist organisations? I'm pretty sure the USA can. So what does it matter if a terrorist organisation calls itself a "party"? (Didn't the Symbionese Liberation Army try exactly that?)

The USA can't declare a party to be a "terrorist organization" solely on the basis of their political platform. It requires, at the very least, explicit incitement to terrorism. German law allows a party to be banned e.g. because it advocates replacing the Basic Law (via free and fair elections!), with no violence in the picture at all.

In the US, an idea can't be a "terrorist organization". In Germany, it can be. I much prefer the US model of free speech. Free speech only for ideas that the government doesn't consider dangerous isn't free speech at all.

> In the US, an idea can't be a "terrorist organization". In Germany, it can be

This is false.

What ideas are listed as terrorist organizations in the US?

Did anyone say there are any? Seems more plausible that it's the other half of the statement that's being denied.

> That said it's also true that Germany is, in practice, a freer country than the USA [citation needed]

Freer by what standard?

I’m a European living in Europe, but if I could move to the United States, I’d do it overnight.

Don't. In addition to the fact that our police are intrusive, our criminal legal system is optimized for tallying high numbers of convictions rather than justice, everything is dependent on your credit score, you get effectively no vacation and very little in the way of labor protection compared to back home, and you're fucked if you get sick or injured without adequate employer health care -- according to various European Hackernews who came here, our food is terrible.

As for how Germany is freer than the USA... it consistently scores higher on various press freedom indices and on Cato's Human Freedom Index. Social mobility and legal protection of privacy are both higher in Germany.

Trump was an asshole and awful public speaker but his policies were good for the country. The current administration is further diving the US and pushing the limits of what’s acceptable. I fear this is only the beginning of much worse policies to come.

> which got us Trump and the current antivax movement

I think that you are stretching it a bit here. Claiming that individualism is responsible for that seems unsubstantiated.

The problem with the 1st Amendment is that it protects all speech (in general, and if you quote yelling "fire" in a crowded theater you have not read the case law) no matter how stupid that speech is. The issue is that anything else could be a slippery slope to authoritarianism. Drawing that line is hard. Education is the key here however some people seems to be to stupid to be educated.

It’s a stretch to blame “absolute rights” for Trump’s election. That can be placed pretty solidly on xenophobia.

The anti-maskers? The only reason those guys think they have a case is exactly because they think bodily autonomy has no limits.

> ...they think bodily autonomy has no limits.

...they think THEIR bodily autonomy has no limits -- not even where sane people would see that it has to be limited to not encroach on OTHER PEOPLE'S bodily autonomy.

There, FTFY.

This also seems to be bi-partisan sadly.

I'm not so sure about that. Stands to reason, AFAICS, that "MY freedoms (and screw yours)!" ideologically resonates more on the right than the left: The whole left-right dichotomy is one of ~ "my freedoms above all" vs "freedoms for all, balanced with responsibility for all".

I think that this is extremely simplistic. For example it does not account for individualist anarchism or the collectivist "for our country/nation/race" pushed by various fascist governments.

I can't see how "doesn't cover absolutely all corner cases" equals "extremely simplistic". I'm fairly sure that in broad terms, "left / right" covers the political spectrum the absolute majority of people inhabit. Your objection feels like futile quibbling to me.

These are not really corner cases but whatever man, you believe what you want.

> That can be placed pretty solidly on xenophobia.

It can be, but it probably shouldn't be.

Makes no sense, Trump is pro vaccine and has been from the beginning.

It has been incredibly interesting how the antivax movement has suddenly become a right wing thing after years of festering on the left (including not so long ago with our own VP). I mean... I used to live in Marin county, one of the bluest in the country and one of the least vaccinated. Then COVID comes around and suddenly everyone's pro-COVID-vax, but anti every other vax. Robert Kennedy JR was also instrumental in the 'normal' anti-vax movement, but now it's suddenly a partisan and 'conservative' thing.

(Actually, I don't think it's 'conservative' at all. Living in Portland now, I know a lot of old hippie liberals that are anti-covid-vax, and I know few conservatives here, but it's certainly more mixed in that crowd than the hippies).

Doesn't all this just go to show that anti-vaxxery[§] is not really a partisan political issue in the first place?

Plain old lunacy in itself is politically neutral. The distribution, some shades at some times being more popular on one side of the political spectrum only to sometimes migrate to the other or spread all over it... That seems to be influenced by fashion, by world events like COVID-19, etc, etc -- but basically, mainly, more or less random.

___

[§]: Like, say, spiritualism, crystal healing, homeopathy, flat-eartherism, past lives, shoving rocks up your vajazzle...

I don't believe anti-vaxxing is a political issue, yes. WHile conservatives are maligned for being anti-vax, in reality, groups like Hispanics and Blacks (not historically conservative or republican in huge amounts) have the highest rates of unvaxxedness.

Its not right or left or conservative its anti-authoritarian it makes perfect sense that "hippies" are now considered anti-vaxer. They want to decide what "drug" they inject and no gov should decide what isn't allowed and also no gov should decide whats mandated to inject. If its voluntary they likely dont care at all. The whole term "antivaxxer" is biased anyway. Most people now pushed in that group are not against vaccines they are against mandating, pushing, incentivizing, shaming etc. people into getting it especially if the gov is behind it.

I love how obvious the narrative on this angle now is, and how even on a very normie place like hn you are seen right through. Blaming individualism is a favorite past time of oligarchs and totalitarians.

Ursula Haverbeck is currently in a German prison at the age of 92 for the "crime" of verbal holocaust denial aka for speech.

There is no free speech anywhere in Europe. And there is no doubt she would be free in every state in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Haverbeck

> There is no free speech anywhere in Europe

This is a bold and unsubstantiated claim.

> And there is no doubt she would be free in every state in the US.

For this specific action? Sure. For other actions that are protected under the 1st amendment? Depends on whether there is a law against it and if she pissed off someone "important" or enough people. There are various such cases.

edit: will respond to the replies after the rate-limit expires

There aren't any cases I know of for anyone being jailed for expressing their beliefs. Can you name several?

Specifically for expressing beliefs? No. Only the one that I mentioned as a reply to the sibling post to yours.

>This is a bold and unsubstantiated claim.

I'm fine with that but its non the less the hard truth there is nothing like the 1st amendment in any other place.

>For other actions that are protected under the 1st amendment? Depends....

To be in the right doesn't mean you win the court case that's true but in the EU you dont have the 1st amendment, you dont have the right to free speech. If the court system does its job correct you go to jail not when the system fails because of "important" people and corruption. You go to jail because what you said is actually a crime to say. Needless to say that the list of "crime speech" only gets longer and longer over time.

> in the EU you dont have the 1st amendment, you dont have the right to free speech.

Most EU countries have some rather close analogue of the US First Amendment in their law or constitution. Sure, pretty much all of them have various exceptions, so there's no absolute free speech -- but then the US has such exceptions too, and thus also lacks absolute free speech.

On the whole, IMO your comment is much more wrong than right.

Name a single place and the law that is remotely comparable to the 1st amendment. It doesn't exist. There are some analogue yes but they all have exceptions like the one mentioned above where arbitrary the holocaust is excluded or certain other topic are excluded. Or the free speech only applies if your speech is considered satire or has some arctic value. etc. etc.

>but then the US has such exceptions too, and thus also lacks absolute free speech.

No, it does not the fist amendment is very clear and short enough to not have any loopholes in there. People just intentionally misinterpret it and then come around and say you can scream "bomb" in an airplane in US airspace therefore you dont have free speech in the US. This just shows the lack of understand what free speech means. Its not about having the right to make audible noises of any kind at any time and place. Similarly if you order a person to kill someone and do so with your voice trough the act of speaking, you are committing a crime.

Seems I don't need to contradict you:

> No, it does not the fist amendment is very clear and short enough to not have any loopholes in there.

> ...

> Similarly if you order a person to kill someone and do so with your voice trough the act of speaking, you are committing a crime.

You've already done it for me.

>This just shows the lack of understand what free speech means.

I showed that this is incorrect here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28587930

> You go to jail because what you said is actually a crime to say

Sounds like the US. Just look at all these people who went to jail for crimes related to illegal numbers (eg. piracy). Or people like Mildred Gillars. Or the various whistleblowers.

Complete nonsense. If you voluntarily agree to not leak secrets and do so anyway its not protected under free speech. You also dont get jailed for speech but for the act of breaching some agreement or other law.

> If you voluntarily agree to not leak secrets and do so anyway its not protected under free speech

Of course it is. Anyway, I mentioned more cases where there is no voluntarily agreement.

> You also dont get jailed for speech but for the act of breaching some agreement or other law.

You can claim that for everyone who got jailed for speech.

>You can claim that for everyone who got jailed for speech.

Name the case. The burden of proof lies with you if you clame people get jailed for speech.

I posted a case from Germany. So if you have one from the US post it. No one in the thread could post one so far.

> No one in the thread could post one so far.

This is false, I posted this before:

> Just look at all these people who went to jail for crimes related to illegal numbers (eg. piracy). Or people like Mildred Gillars. Or the various whistleblowers.

Not really sure leaving the US would do that much good (speaking as a european).

The subreddit was called /r/fatpeoplehate. That's not anti-obesity, that's anti-'obese people'

Everyone moved to telegram. They host your "offensive" memes and chats, they dont care. Right-wing, left-wing whatever you can post it there.

You cant call for violence or show violence, like gore content and terrorist videos do get removed. Everything else is fine (for now).

Download the app from the website not form the stores to avoid googles censorship.

How long would telegram keep that reputation? They will succumb to pressure one day.

Telegram has been succumbing to the pressure left and right for years now, from US and EU to Iran and Russia. Don't worry, it will always manage and find the compromise between its PR bullshit and corporate and state level requirements.

I can't even imagine how many secret services monitor what's going on right on Telegram servers.

hurr durr [insert basic telegram hate here] hurr durr

I don't hate it, I've said it was a hoax since the first presentation (which was… drum roll… about rolling their own crypto — soon found to be accidentally or intentionally broken). You had to be mad to believe that literal Russian Zuckerberg, who had been known for behind-the-scenes compliance while keeping the facade of uncompromising struggle for freedom, was caring about you and your privacy.

I doubt that anyone can have any trust in “secure” and “private” communication service that got banned in Iran only to be unbanned 3 days later. They were not so soft on other big names they banned. The outcome? Telegram is the most popular messaging app in Iran, and no one is searching for anything better. Perfect place to oversee the public.

Complete nonsense, all of it and completely irrelevant if used as an alternative to reddit none of that crypto/security/privacy nonsense maters at all. You have zero of that on reddit or FB or any other social media and its completely useless anyway for public communities who aren't trying to do anything illegal.

The thread is about a place where your "offensive" community can be hosted without the owner overlords coming an declare it a hate-group, in case you missed that.

Given many past examples, it's only until “public demands” to get it removed.

Doesn't matter, people want a solution now and no one expects it to be forever. The user who asked is unlikely to waste time in such a community in 10 years anyway.

Maybe, but nonetheless OP is looking for a palace NOW and since it lasted for 8 years it may as well last for another few.

When the group was on reddit, I liked it because it was laser-focused. The moderators didn't tolerate racism, anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, antisemitism, sexism, etc.

On these other platforms, the users seem to think that, in the name of "free speech" everything is allowed everywhere. So on other platforms that tried to host it, it's full of off-topic posts. The don't respect the rights of a group of people to carve out an area for themselves.

Someone just needs to launch it on their own website, and hope the ISP doesn't pull it, or the DNS provider doesn't refuse to resolve it, etc.

Telegram is just like reddit in this regards. Its up to the user to make and enforce content rules in a closed community. If you want a channel/group with only very specific content then make it somewhat hard for stupid people to gain write permission and have a bunch of volunteer checking the content submitted. Every other platform would require similar strategies to get what you want.

The existence of other groups/channels on telegram with other rules is completely irrelevant. If people are unable to switch between communities and respect the different rules in each then that's their problem and you just remove them.

So you wanted to only hate one specific group, and you don't like it when people hate other groups as well.

Maybe you need to sit down and think about if that is entirely consistent.

That is because it was, in fact, a hate group, not an "anti-obesity" group.

Ok, I get it. You're against free speech.

But the point stands--it's difficult to find a place to host a forum that contains legal discussions that happen to offend the sensibilities of the type of people who run tech companies.

> Ok, I get it. You're against free speech.

Another day, another person confusing 'free speech' with a private publisher not wanting to publish hate speech.

You're entitled to print what you want, you're not entitled to force someone else to print anything.

>>you're not entitled to force someone else to print anything.

Unless you're the surgeon general. Then you can force private companies to publish compelled speech on their alcohol and tobacco products.

That was a very acceptable tradeoff for the makers of those products - I'm pretty sure they're rather print reasonable warnings than just have their products, which are indisputably health hazards, banned entirely.

No one is printing anything.

Yeah, because you're perfectly willing to accept that your "free speech!" can't compel someone else to operate their printing press for you... But a server on the Internet is such a totally different thing, for sure!

IOW: This ancient figure of speech is used precisely to show that the issue is exactly the same old one that has been thoroughly hashed out for centuries.

Would you like to try that again?

No, thanks, I'm good and done.

I said was I couldn’t find another place that would host it. I didn’t say that Reddit didn’t have a right to remove it.

The Dixie Chicks, the PMRC, and a host of other examples show this isn't a new phenomenon.

You can't find a hosting provider for an anti-obesity forum? I would think there are all types of servers you could find.

It might be because it is not actually an "anti-obesity forum" but actually a hate group that was kicked out for good reason.

No, I am against hate groups. They are the absolute worst of humanity, they destroy people, and they destroy societies.

Do not participate in them. Do not support them. Do everything you can to oppose them.

That's interesting. Can you elaborate on what this "anti-obesity" forum was like? How was it different from a hate group?

Well, it was named "fatpeoplehate", which is a tiny little bit of a giveaway. Funny the original poster forgot to mention that detail, I wonder why.

Maybe they meant a different anti-obesity forum.

No other one matches the details given. Also, OP pretty much confirmed it.

Well, /r/fatpeoplehate was definitely a hate group. I wonder why they would go around claiming it wasn't.

Nobody ever thinks they are in a hate group.

I’d bet you and I both would agree that we don’t like people who recklessly put themselves in a situation where they are at extreme risk to catch or spread COVID. If we were to have a forum that criticized people who won’t vaccinate, won’t distance, won’t wear protective masks, and promote unproven treatments would that be a “hate group?”

Yes. I visited /r/hermancainaward the other day becsuse I wanted to check it out, and I was stunned at how hateful the comments were against people who, sadly, had opinions that lead to their death.

I was sad that people could be so misinformed/misled, but the subreddit seemed genuinely happy that these people died. That sounds very much like a hate group to me, and I'd like to see it as banned as fatpeoplehate (which has hate in the damn name) was.

It's not about the subject of the criticism, it's how you go about it. These subreddit are toxic hate-pools, they aren't a force for good. They're reveling in the misfortune of others instead of trying to somehow help, and that's what makes them hate groups, not whether or not being fat or an antivaxxer is bad.

> I was stunned at how hateful the comments were against people who, sadly, had opinions that lead to their death.

And yet Reddit management is ok with it.

Reddit management is fine with literally anything as long as it does not give them bad press.

For now.

>instead of trying to somehow help

The most popular winners of the hermancainaward that you're lamenting the loss of are the kinds of people who would aggressively decline such help, and probably shout at you for offering it.

You may call me a bad person, but I was quietly hoping that Trump died from the pandemic he exacerbated and Bezos' rocket exploded in a blaze of justice. Those people wouldn't shed a tear for you or your family, why would you for them?

There's way too many people on this planet as it is, a couple less loud selfish drains on society wouldn't be too unfortunate.

But that's not justice. It's just... hate.

I couldn't think of the best word to use. Actually poetic justice is what I was looking for.

Karma's probably pretty close to what I mean - for all the workers peeing in bottles toiling in his salt mines, and everybody's cumulative suffering because of the taxes he never paid.

Just because he's been involved in corrupting the system so much that those taxes aren't even demanded doesn't mean he gets out of a karmic obligation to all the people who's work he's built his incredibly narcissistic and tone-deaf space joyride empire on.

Imagine you're in a small tribe on a desert island with limited resources.

Do you think Mr hog-absolutely-everything-so-I-can-joyride-a-giant-dick-that-others-designed-for-me-into-what-can-only-just-be-technically-called-space-so-I-can-now-cringeworthily-call-myself-an-astronaut-without-having-any-actual-skills would be popular in the tribe, or not?

Well, we're all part of a larger tribe on a slightly bigger island with limited resources, and I have some ideas on who I wouldn't mind being seen thrown into the volcano.

And all the more satisfying if there's the added poetic justice of them falling into the volcano themselves because of their own incredibly loud stupidity. So call me a hater if you like.

> So call me a hater if you like.

I'd probably call it tribalism? 20th century had quite a lot of poorer people killing richer people in the name of same.

Yes, I'm in the 99.999999% population tribe.

The billionaires are clearly a hostile, rival tribe stealing our resources.

No, tribalistic thinking should go the way of the dodo. There's no "us".

There are just people, who can be convinced to do unspeakable things by media over a long period gradually activating their vestigial tribalism.

You see proved my point.

One man's hate group is another man's valuable discussion forum. Mocking people who won't take precautions against COVID is perfectly OK! Mocking people who won't take precautions against eating too much food is "hate."

FPH actively went after individuals who could be easily identified. And they weren't content to keep their opinions in their own sub. Instead they would pop up regularly in completely unrelated discussions. They also had a culture of harassment.

They made themselves rather unpopular. If they had stuck to their own sub, made an effort to hide the identities of their targets, and mostly just said: "boy, I really hate fat people. So disgusting", then they'd probably still be around today.

Those are some key differences between FPH and HCA. Not to mention HCA is a response to the ongoing pandemic. While fatness isn't contagious. The obese are only hurting themselves.

Obesity isn't contagious so these things aren't remotely comparable.

It was just a hate group, stop digging man.

> It was just a hate group, stop digging man

I like your ironic username.