Once they realized that they had a systematic advantage in petitioning hosting companies to deplatform disfavored content without due process, however, all of the underlying arguments for net neutrality were quietly discarded.
It was an economic issue, not a political one.
The two can't be disentangled. Woke censorship is often justified through economic self-interest nowadays. Do you really believe activists 20 years ago would be placated if ISPs had simply promised to throttle only based on politics rather than economics?
But, of course, it had to be politicized. And few understood the issue, so they made up their own straw men.
Yes, I remember the "Moral Majority" era. I remember the religious right, the fundies, the evangelicals, and the grasp they had on speech. I remember how they tried to ban porn in the late '90s and the courts had to smack it down. And I saw how the left has taken over institutional power since then, still crying about victimhood status while holding government majorities, running education and the media, and so on.
It looks like the pendulum has started swinging back in recent years. I don't really want to go back to the late '90s in terms of culture and government (especially culture) but I won't be at all surprised if it happens and the right shows the same lack of magnanimity as they were shown this past quarter century. And a good way to make sure that happens is to continue to stifle their speech and give them every opportunity to cry victim and wish revenge. The left made hay from these opportunities and the right has been watching. A lot of their activists have read Rules for Radicals too.
A great deal of what gets called "cancel culture" is people reacting to someone behaving in a way that harms others, including but not limited to...
- Discrimination (gender, orientation, religion, race, whatever) - Harassment - Threats, ranging from the subtle to the overt - Actual violence
Quite often, the targets of this behavior have done nothing beyond exist and be honest about who they are and how they see themselves. Their harassers swung first.
To take your porn example (I too am old enough to remember the 90s), the moral majority was swinging first. They were offended by porn, but no one was forcing them to consume it. No one was threatening or harassing them.
Maybe the right wing (which is where the moral majority centered as well) should consider why they keep swinging first instead of why sometimes people swing back.
this is not a solution for untangling disagreement.
i've not seen any conflict solved by doing this
At some point you have to start addressing the people who are actively trying to make others' lives worse through harassment, discrimination, and violence.
If doxing and criticizing people for their beliefs and practices is not okay for the right to do, then it's not okay for the left to do either.
Small correction, this doesn't happen on Kiwi Farms. Kiwi Farms is focused on discussing much more mundane, public drama. Just interactions between people, mostly on public social media like Twitter, Youtube and others. Things like hacking, private financial information, DDoSing, swatting, are all heavily policed on Kiwi Farms. Additionally, directly interacting with the subject of a thread on Kiwi Farms is also bannable.
Their ethos is watching monkeys in the zoo, not going out and poking them themselves.
There's actual shady forums out there that do those illegal things, generally hosted in foreign countries or behind Tor.
But before you do, you should make sure that a crime was actually committed, and mere criticism, or sharing information you posted yourself, or sharing information which can be found via the 21st-century equivalent of a phone book, is not criminal in the United States. And that's usually what a "dox" is; very rarely does it involve hacking into government databases or something like that.
"Beliefs and practices" is, again, leaving aside the "who swung first" aspect. Have all the beliefs and practices you want that don't involve harassing others. If your beliefs are homophobic/transphobic/racist/sexist/etc and you choose to then "practice" those beliefs by harassing people you don't like, you swung first and you shouldn't be surprised if society looks down on you for it.
>Yes, I remember the "Moral Majority" era. I remember the religious right, the fundies, the evangelicals, and the grasp they had on speech.
They still do, where you been? In cryo?
>I remember how they tried to ban porn in the late '90s and the courts had to smack it down.
Again, where have you been? Max Hardcore was sentenced for 4 years in prison (I think he got out sooner but still). And that was around the early 2000s. The fact you ignore that even the current government treats even OnlyFans like content creators as the same as sex traffickers (see EFF's FOSTA articles) is amusing to me.
> And I saw how the left has taken over institutional power since then, still crying about victimhood status while holding government majorities, running education and the media, and so on.
Exactly where has this happened? The left does not exist in the United States. The CIA knocked us out during the 60s (COINTELPRO). The fact you seem to not know this means you're probably under 35, so I'm not sure I should bother discussing this with you.
>It looks like the pendulum has started swinging back in recent years.
It never swung. We've still a solidly right wing neoliberal society. Just because you might see a gay couple kiss each other's cheeks and hold hands on prime time TV don't mean we're some kind of social democracy or a socialist state.
>The left made hay from these opportunities and the right has been watching.
Again, what Left? Don't say the Democrats who literally have millionaires among their ranks like most of the currently seated party members (Pelosi has a net worth in the tens of millions) and have many of the most well known capital owning members of society on their quick dial.
It baffles me how someone like you can exist when history of the United States is well documented for the last century but all you seem to say is talking points from Mises.org or some other right wing claptrap. And you even think DailyKos is far left which amuses me. Wake me up when DailyKos and company support the abolition of intellectual property like an anarchist does (hint: I'm a mutualist anarchist).
As for my age, I'm 40, which means I went to college between 2000 and 2004 - and was awash in leftist propaganda there, to the extent that I did not feel comfortable in some classrooms doing anything other than regurgitating what the professors were telling us despite what I actually believed. I've heard the situation has not improved since then. To say that leftists do not have institutional power at least in academia is ridiculous, but of course it goes far beyond that.
Some are socialists, but in terms of actual politically power individuals? No. Seriously, no. There's no socialist or social democratic institution that has power in DC or even a state government within the United States.
>If there's no solid leftist base in America and western society as a whole, where is this opposition to supposedly alt-right fortress coming from?
Liberals, seriously go study some political history. Liberalism is not left and it's not anti-capitalist. I don't think you really understand political history and theory which is surprising since I barely crack open political theory works by anyone since I find the subject boring.
>As for my age, I'm 40, which means I went to college between 2000 and 2004 - and was awash in leftist propaganda there
Same here, I'm 42. I'll say there's not much in the way of any leftist positions or professors beyond a few colleges here and there. Most have aged out and been replaced by social liberals (again liberalism is not left nor socialist).
>to the extent that I did not feel comfortable in some classrooms doing anything other than regurgitating what the professors were telling us despite what I actually believed.
That's probably because your views are further right than you want to divulge here. I won't press or bully you but I'll say that maybe you should ask yourself why you see socialists everywhere when everyone else who is a leftist or comes from a leftist position (I come from Mutualism but I use to be into Syndicalism) doesn't?
>To say that leftists do not have institutional power at least in academia is ridiculous, but of course it goes far beyond that.
Having a couple college departments is not having the commanding heights (I love FA Hayek's use of phrases). These aren't people who shake hands with Pelosi, Schumer, Hoyer, McCarthy, or McConnell. These aren't the people that get their proposals even into the hands of Biden's undersecretaries of any department. They don't get much play at billionaire retreats either. So, I'm absolutely confused as to what you define as power because it sure doesn't seem like it.
You have your perspective about reality, I guess, and I'll have mine.
I'm not mad, I just don't buy your anecdotes as solid proof of some kind of Marxist vanguard dominating media, education, and the like. That kind of John Birch Society stuff isn't factual. And I speak as a former ditto head from the 1990s, even then I didn't buy the Bircher nonsense.
>You have your perspective about reality, I guess, and I'll have mine.
I'd have it no other way but I don't brook arguments that border on the conspiratorial, sorry.
It's the exact same pattern: Zealots trying to use censorship to suppress those that don't adhere to their ideology. The reason it's confusing is because you're looking at it as a left/right issue when it's not. It's an authoritarian/libertine or extremists vs everyone else issue.
It is a terrible fact of human psychology that being abused in a particular manner make you much more likely to abuse others in the same manner, not less.
So then advocate for them to actually be a utility. Right now they get to benefit from being treated like one, but not being held to the same legal standard of an actual utility.
provide more network protection to objectionable websites?
i'm not getting the idea, reading this thread, that is what people here want.
You guys are the ones undermining the legitimacy of freedom of speech by passing doxxing off as merely being an opinion while it in fact surpresses actually bipartisan discussion. Disgusting.
This is _not_ about that - these people are building their own siloes; Cloudflare are hosting them. If Cloudflare stop providing services to them it will reduce their ability to host their own siloes.
Yeah no it won't, well at least not in the long run. If anything good comes from all of this, it is that the internet by necessity will become more resilient. Unfortunately, enhanced resiliency will come at the cost of bifurcation. We told the exiled to just 'build your own platform' and 'build your own bank' but we didn't think that they would listen.
The police/FBI raid you because you are a threat to them. Become enough of a threat, and they will think twice about raiding you.
Of course you won't win against the military, but that becomes an issue of popular support - the BP didn't have enough political power at the time. I expect this is the reason the response to the Capitol raid was muted - As much as a military response could be justified, doing so against a reasonably well supported group would escalate the situation.
also bear in mind the military doesn’t operate with nearly as much ease on america’s own population, when you’re comparing pig threat to movements or peoples in the US. there’s also your neighbor to worry about
namely, the conflation of a terrible, deliberate act with clear and consenting, perpetrators (terrorism); with that accusation that the wrong kind of free speech might lead to terrible consequences, and the implied accusation of malicious intent.
Lets approach this as if ST was literally a crime - do the recipient communities of said terrorism bear no responsibility e.g. those that choose to be provocative? Will they also be accused of ST and be told to shut up? Or just those with no stake in the matter?
Just imagine if we knew who he was and he couldn't hide like that, wouldn't that be great? I recommend you all go look up his posts. That's Chris2048 on HackerNews, have a really good look at the things he's said. People shouldn't be able to get away with saying stuff like that, you know? One day he'll slip up and I bet someone will do something about it.
So tell me Chris2048, do you think the last two paragraphs, maybe said by a speaker to a large audience, show no malicious intent?
I see this all the time - journalists critique pseudononymous internet writers. All through these pieces there's references to "who they really are" and "could they get away with saying this in public with their real name".
Why is this a bad thing? I know the NYTimes isn't the most moral upstanding institution, but they are hardly stochastic terrorists?
But you're also conflating terms: criticism is not an incitement to violence. An incitement to violence is specific: "I think it would be great if some implied violence happened to that group I don't like".
It's specifically not considered ST to say something like "I hope some legal consequences happen to this person who I think is committing crimes" because amongst other things, that's a call to the application of the justice system, not terrorism.
It's also worth noting that other incitements, like encouraging someone to commit suicide has been found to be a punishable crime - and this is the sort of action Kiwi Farms specializes in and openly supports against their targets.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_te...
Plus, the "terrorism" aspect seems to apply to a wider group, or who else is terrorised? Presumably, individuals or groups with similar principles.
Your example also doesn't incite violence, just heavily implies it.
If someone gets in front of a big crowd and says "Donald Trump is a fascist, he's the next Hitler", and then one of those people takes the matter into his own hands - do you think the speaker should be found guilty of a crime?
What if I launched a sustained campaign across multiple media against that HN user? What if that user starts receiving harassment and death threats? I am running a sustained campaign of making specific, targeted references to how desirable "doing something" about that user is with specific violent imagery, but stopping short of directly declaring that I want something to happen.
You're far too comfortable pretending this can't be a crime, or shouldn't be a crime, because in reality you're pretty comfortable it won't happen to you.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
You absolutely can, and that's how CloudFlare got into this situation: by posting people's location on the internet they can be made vulnerable to SWATting.
> we've shifted away from violence as a means of enforcing social order
The intent of KF and similar absolutely is to use violence as a means of enforcing social order, by encouraging stochastic and opportunistic terrorism against trans people.
> The use of mass public communication, usually against a particular individual or group, which incites or inspires acts of terrorism which are statistically probable but happen seemingly at random.
[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stochastic_terrorism
Only very loose connection to the stochastic processes of mathematics.
What other use has come from posting home addresses on Kiwi Farms?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
> The fact that I'm not donating all my money to combat malaria in developing nations does not make me pro-malaria.
Are you a system?
Is ycombinator's failure to delete the posts of me and others in this thread also indicative of an intent to "use violence as a means of enforcing social order, by encouraging stochastic and opportunistic terrorism against trans people"?
Do you think your comments and this forum increase stochastic and opportunistic terrorism against trans people? Probably you don't think Kiwi Farms does either. But you chose a different argument.
I wonder how all of this will end? I support CloudFlare here - they should act as a utility, not as an arbiter of content. This ends poorly and one day will bite the people that are pushing for this.