The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. The push to platform everyone you don't like is accelerating radicalization. Instead of just existing as a small number of weirdos on mainstream platforms with millions of users, they are now building their own silos. Forced from internet infrastructure and payment networks, they are forced to build their own platforms and banks. This is happening now. The end game is an entirely segregated society. As the bar of allowed speech continues to zoom past opinions of large numbers of normal people, they too will be forced to move on to the alternative platforms.

> Instead of just existing as a small number of weirdos on mainstream platforms with millions of users, they are now building their own silos.

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.

> 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.

Well they seem to be offline now, so I think it worked.

Is that a good thing?

Yes

This is why the left also needs a gun rights and ownership culture

Possibly, but as soon as it became a thing it would be raided by the police, as per what happened to the Black Panthers.

Police are also a reason the left need a strong gun culture (I mean we are talking about the same groups of people, police and right wing extremists, terrorist groups, white supremacist gangs etc). BP didn’t go far enough and were hamstrung by lack of support from the left due to racial division within working class and those in poverty

Good thing the left is so supportive of the working class now lol

It’s bad as ever, I’m not suggesting we’ve reversed those divisions. And now the left have gained an anti-gun stance on top of it, and in typical liberal fashion, have started with giving up their own individual gun ownership before addressing ownership at large in society

I'd argue that while initially having more guns causes the probability of being raided to go up, with enough guns that starts to fall.

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.

gun ownership itself doesn’t make an organization a threat to the police or fbi as is utterly evident. nor does the possession of guns itself cause organized criminalized activity to be treated with severe force, as is also utterly evident

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

This is in the context of being a targeted organisation, such as the BP.

pretty sus to tell dissidents they should all disarm to protect themselves

maybe, but what has that got to do with this thread?

you began the thread saying the left saves themselves from attack by de-arming themselves

You should read to the end of that sentence. I also don't consider it to apply only to the left.

got it sorry had your next BP comment as thread root

np

btw BP were raided when they started taking direct action to support their communities through programs like the free breakfast service. guns didn’t do BP in, socialism did

Perhaps we should discuss the problems with the term (and implications of) "stochastic terrorism" -

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?

There's a HackerNews user, goes by the handle Chris2048. And I just don't know what his problem is you know? Back in my day we had a solution for those types of people. If he wasn't hiding behind the internet I bet he wouldn't be so tough.

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?

Can I kindly ask you to explain what is the problem with this kind of message?

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?

The implication of ST is you aren't targeting a specific individual, so this analogy falls short there - "Chris2048 on HackerNews" is definitely targeted. People rail against HN and its "tech bros" all the time.

The definition is widely accepted now to include targeting either a group, or an individual[1]. The "stochastic" component is that no individual or group is being specifically directed by command to carry out the attack, but the speaker is knowingly or negligently adding rhetoric to incite someone to do so.

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...

Perhaps, but then "individual or group" seems to be pretty relevant to me, especially if you provide information specific to that individual/group versus a "tribe" of distributed individuals.

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.

This is called fedposting and it's basically the message board version of what the FBI does to entrap Muslim terrorists and white supremacists IRL. The problem you're going to have with making it a crime is, where do you draw the line?

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?

The speaker is pretty obviously guilty of incitement to violence if they were inciting violence. Which my parody above is demonstrating pretty clearly. Now, is one incident sufficient cause? Probably not.

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 someone actually does something, then yes, they should be guilty of a crime. I don't think it's possible to come up with a definition of "stochastic terrorism" in the way that you want, which doesn't result in a massive curtailment of civil liberties. How many acts of speech are necessary to make it into a crime? How many listeners / readers?

Accusing people of being terrorists sure sounds like incitement to violence. Perhaps you should stop perpetuating the problem?