Hacker News Reader

Comment by abhi3 | Hacker News Reader

All these companies tripping over each other to ban DailyStormer while at the same time they won't take a position against similar sites that are just as unquestionably immoral/illegal as DailyStormer (Torrent sites, ISIS sites). One might be forgiven for thinking that this sudden moral awakening of 'Big Internet' is nothing more than a selfish PR stunt.

View on HN

If you think torrent sites are "just as" immoral as White Supremacy sites, your moral compass is unambiguously broken.

Well you didn't mention the ISIS sites. Much of the torrents are actually illegal, the hate speech is protected speech.

The 1st amendment protects speech from being suppressed by the state. Private entities may ban whatever they see fit, basically; you know they do if you ever read a end-user license.

Yes, I know that. We are talking about a public communications medium. If they can throttle hate speech, they can throttle Netflix. So they won't host it, they won't provide DNS resolution. How far does it go? Can't get a static IP?

"Protected" from the government, not from private entities. I would gladly support Namecheap taking down Isis sites, but is there any evidence that they aren't?

Well what about net neutrality (my thread on that is already -2)? Neo-nazi shows are on cable access channels. I'd think the same reasoning applies.

    > cable access channels. I'd
    > think the same reasoning 
    > applies

That's because you haven't done even the most basic of research.

No I have not. So what's the reason, in a nutshell?

The spectrum isn't important here though. Things are either illegal or immoral or they're not.

These companies are only banning this one domain because it's bad publicity right now if they don't.

The law certainly thinks that where things exist on a spectrum is important, suggesting that we as a society do too. You can't use that shaky axiom as a jumping off point.

Thanks for agreeing with my point.

These hosts should kick all of the illegal and immoral sites off or none of them.

There's an argument to be made that piracy is illegal whereas hate speech (in USA) is not but my point was that Big Internet has no moral compass whereas you seem to want to argue with a strawman of moral equivalency between two unquestionably immoral acts.

It's not a strawman because I am attacking the actual argument you made.

I drew an equivalency between the unquestionability of the immoral character of two acts (even that was not my central argument) and not between the relative degree immorality (which is what you decided to argue against).

Fine then. I assumed you had considered the degree of immorality to be important, because the alternative just makes you look whichever you prefer of disingenuous or deranged. Mea cupla

In the end its a good thing for privacy (and the internet), since these antics will speed the adoption of zeronet and associated tech.

A decentralized web is the next game changer that has been brewing for a few years, and now is becoming ready for prime time. Its going to represent a seismic shift in the next few years...poor Zuckerberg, et al.

In a sense, I agree with you. These virtual signallers make me feel icky, at the same time it motivates me to support projects to decentralize the web and support free speech for all people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com