Australian telcos block access to 4chan, other sites
9news.com.au
9news.com.au
Let's say I get why they'd block 4chan and 8chan, but blocking a blog is just over the top. Liveleak I also half-understand, but I also don't approve of it, for a while it was one of the best online video resources on the atrocities committed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, just hiding our unwanted images under the rug won't help much.
Later edit: For example videos of the Tikrit massacre [1] are only available on Liveleak (I'm talking of the "mainstream" web), YouTube has nothing on it. It is my very strong opinion that we need these images to remain in the public psyche so that we'll try our best not to make the same mistakes again, and by censoring access to this kind of videos we're not helping with any of that.
... on the other hand, it puts pressure on Liveleak to take initiative to clean its house, and the only tool the telcos have here is a longsword.
I'm a fierce fighter for the First Amendment and its free speech protections. But such absolutism around free speech has its drawbacks. Hate speech runs wild. Incivility is given a safe harbor in which to breed. Some really awful sides of humanity can come uncomfortably close to one's day-to-day life. But it's a trade-off our country debated, debates and continues to make.
Australia hasn't made the same trade-off. Australians repeatedly elect representatives who pass into law measures I'd consider draconian if raised in America. But Australia isn't America. And within a band, in which both America and Australia lie, there are multiple optima balancing freedom and stability.
I'm a gay male, but I'm very reluctant to ban 'hate speech' - I'm worried that such laws could be used against other (as yet unknown) marginalized peoples in the future, if such laws, or rather the concept of such laws existed, they could have been used to suppress our struggle for rights. We, for example said some pretty sharp things about religion for example, which in other countries would be prohibited speech, similarly, we were also decidedly uncivil in our struggle for civil rights, so has every successful civil rights movement.
Any law used to defend the now status quo, can be used to prevent that from changing in the future, even to welcome other groups under the tent. Simply put, you got to the top, don't pull up the ladder behind you.
That said, I wouldnt object to broadening what constitutes a call to action to include doxxing and 'encouraging internet vigilantism'.
Do we really want some political committee sitting around and arguing the merits of these people's writing? What about weird kink websites? What about radical political blogs that advocate for policy you find dangerous? You may find some of these things abhorrent but there are almost certainly people who would find certain things you believe abhorrent.
Any time you get into individual selection of what is acceptable thought and what isn't you are crossing a very dangerous line. Even if the initial things that are deemed unacceptable seem reasonable.
Edit: Telco monopolies relating to infrastructure are essentially state actors. There is a big difference here between a Telco refusing to route traffic and a bookstore deciding what content to carry.
I am looking forward to Facebook also being banned.
--FB, probably
Please consider the sites as a whole, or please take your false equivalency elsewhere
Facebook's userbase is dropping steadily, so I would say that more people are realizing it isn't as great a piece of software as when they first made an account. We're not arguing Stackexchange vs 4chan, its one social network vs another anti-social network, one of which treats you like a gold mine, and the other couldn't care less. I know which one I'd rather use.
Sounds just like Facebook to me
One of these things is not like the other.
Which is exactly why it's been continually reposted by some astounding individuals. Right-o.
The video has still been circulating Facebook
> These forums are home to all kinds of needless, immoral content
So is Facebook
>It is an active recruitment ground for fascists and white supremacists.
So is Facebook
Actually Facebook actively scans and monitors for said content and groups. So no, it is not.
>The video has still been circulating Facebook
It most certainly has not.
While we're at it, let's ban political debate and fake news. Ban NPR and ban Breitbart. Ban religious debate too. If it offends someone, get it off the platforms.
Let's make it so every controversial content and comment is forced off YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
It's the fastest way to end centralization.
I am not a free speech absolutist. But with the coming technology, like MaidSAFE and others, it will become possible for people to communicate and say whatever they want, no way to censor. Full stop.
The governments will go back to having moles inside each group they care about, which is more targeted and harder.
For numerous examples of why free speech matters, the other way, look at the latest article on at https://qbix.com/blog
It’s like 3d printed guns, or desktop printers or copiers. Things that governments heavily regulated through gatekeepers now can be produced by anyone.
I will say this... if you add up ALL the mass shootings in the USA they add up to less than 2% of all shootings. And if you add up ALL shootings and killings, including by Boko Haram and so on, we have far less than 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, 5,000 years ago etc.
Steven Pinker was right. We are getting far more peaceful, because of technology. As long as we keep a check on population growth, we may even have enough resources, not too much garbage and sustainable living in every generation.
If anything, Boko Haram (which stands against Western education) is an example of values from hundreds of years ago. They are more violent.
Today’s values are much less violent but they will only survive if we can live sustainably, and that starts with women’s education and having children later.
An example snippet from the configuration in Unbound DNS would look like this:
forward-zone:
name: "."
forward-addr: 1.1.1.1 # CloudFlare
forward-addr: 1.0.0.1 # CloudFlare
forward-addr: 8.8.8.8 # Google
forward-addr: 8.8.4.4 # Google
forward-addr: 208.67.222.222 # OpenDNS
forward-first: no
unbound-control dump_infra | grep 1\.1\.1
1.1.1.1 . ttl 1745 ping 0 var 71 rtt 284 rto 284 tA 0 tAAAA 0 tother 0 ednsknown 1 edns 0 delay 0 lame dnssec 0 rec 0 A 0 other 0
You can also enable TCP and TLS for recursive servers that support DoT (DNS over TLS). I prefer this over DoH, as everything in your home can benefit from it, not just your browser. Some of the servers mentioned above listen on TCP 853 for TLS. Just google "Unbound DNS TLS" There are some examples on Calomel as well. [1]
forward-zone:
name: "."
forward-ssl-upstream: yes
forward-addr: 208.67.222.222@853
forward-addr: 1.1.1.1@853
forward-addr: 8.8.4.4@853
forward-addr: 9.9.9.9@853
forward-first: no
unbound-control dump_infra|cut -c 1-60|column -t
9.9.9.9@853 . ttl 851 ping 6 var 84 rtt 342 rto 342 tA 0 tAA
8.8.4.4@853 . ttl 851 ping 13 var 79 rtt 329 rto 329 tA 0 tA
208.67.222.222@853 . ttl 844 ping 876 var 1823 rtt 8168 rto
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_recursive_name_server
[2] - https://dnsprivacy.org/wiki/display/DP/DNS+Privacy+Public+Re...
I stare at my iphone and start to wonder where I get to change my dns settings...? So I've just spent five minutes poking around and I haven't found it yet. So I've just googled it, and apparently you need 3rd-party apps to do it...
Now, interestingly, I could imagine kids doing it rote if someone just tells them how to install the an access-4chan app etc. For example, a couple of years ago I watched in horror as a 10yo friend of my kids demonstrated how to download an app (not from the app store) that would create a vpn to stop the app-store from being able to connect and discovering and uninstalling all the pirated games this kid then proceeded to install for my grateful kids! And her hands flew over the screen, tapping away and typing in English, which is a language she didn't speak let alone write in! Amazing rote. And very scary to tidy up after her!
So yeah, kids will probably circumvent this kind of thing even if parents can't.
Took me about 30 seconds. Settings -> Wifi -> Tap the info icon for the network you're on -> Configure DNS.
[1] http://fortune.com/2019/03/15/reddit-banned-watch-people-die...
The man who owns the press, controls the speech.
As Mark Steyn has remarked on this latest moral panic, "Less speech inevitably means more violence - because, if you can't talk about anything, what's left but to shoot up the joint?"
I think we're about to learn that the 'net may also interpret incitement to violence risk as damage and route around it.
To be more blunt, it in fact has absolutely no evidence. At no point, not once, in this little foray into unrestricted publishing since the dawn of the internet, has "let it die" ever actually worked. It's a techno-libertarian myth that completely ignores human behavior.
In the US, the bar would be pretty high for government action based on this reasoning; a direct link would have to be proven, and either an imminent threat of harm be demonstrated or the media in question be demonstrated to have nothing but illegal activities occuring with it. I don't think 4/8chan raise to this high bar. Other nations? Bar not so high.
Why do you think people should be legally prevented from accessing information? Don't you believe in free will and the idea that everyone should be able to internally decide what is right and wrong for themselves? Or do we want that power to be put in the hands of the state?
Where were the accusations of online radicalization and calls for censorship when that one guy shot those Republicans at a baseball practice in 2017[0]? There's definitely no shortage of hyperbolic anti-Republican sentiment, out in the open, on social media platforms even more mainstream than 4chan. Surely if we're banning access to places where the NZ shooter was (allegedly) "radicalized," then we should prevent people like that shooter from being "radicalized" too, right? What's different about the two situations that warrants completely different rhetoric?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...
To be less glib: in the US the bar is very high, but we do, in fact, have some things that we've removed from the "free will" discussion. Child pornography is the obvious example.
Drawing a parallel between child pornography and untoward politically incorrect discussion out in the open doesn't seem like a very useful comparison, especially when I provided another recent example of a shooting that one could argue was caused by online "radicalization."
The US bar is very high to curtailing speech as a government action, and it's worth noting that the story we're commenting on is about an Australian telco taking private action. I actually don't know the law in the US around what would happen if, for example, Verizon decided to IP-blackhole 4chan of its own initiative (in general, Americans would probably rake it over the coals for diminishing consumer choice at the very least). It'd be a hell of a show if they tried, and I don't see it coming.
The example you brought up is also from the US and, I hate to say it, was probably treated differently because the US is just desensitized to the amount of violence in its culture these days. The baseball shooting was tragic, but none of the injuries were even as permanent as the ones Gabby Giffords suffered. But the New Zealand shooting was in a country far less tolerant of such intra-civil violence, and Australia already has speech constraints relative to the US (contrast their attitude on videogames to that of the US).
(... but to turn the conversation around: do you think there should have been a conversation about online radicalization after the 2017 shooting? Maybe there should have been. What do you think should have been done differently?)
With regards to the 2017 Republican baseball practice shooting, I do think there should have been more of a conversation about online radicalization after the fact. I'm not saying legal action should have taken place or ISPs should have started DNS-blocking websites, because a.) again, cultural and legal differences compared to NZ/Australia and b.) because there was no convenient scapegoat to point fingers at. When "right-wing" violence happens, it's very easy to say, "ah see! 4chan and 8ch at it again," because everyone basically agrees that those websites contain "right-wing" hatred. Yet, "left-wing" hatred is and has been, for some reason, allowed to take place on most major social media websites and discussion platforms, largely uncriticized. Plus, it's undeniable that this has dramatically increased in recent years, since about 2015 especially, for obvious reasons.
So you have blatant, largely unimpeded "left-wing" hatred allowed to happen out in the open on most of the Internet, while "right-wing" hatred is forced off mainstream platforms and onto fringe sites like Gab, 4chan, and 8ch... so when "far-right" extremists commit acts of violence, it's easy to say, "See, these fringe websites where all this hatred is being espoused? We should do something about them!," but when "far-left" extremists commit acts of violence, there's no easy targets to place the blame on, because the hatred happens just about everywhere and is for some reason considered to be more or less socially acceptable.
It's hard to argue that "radicalization" due to online information and opinion dissemination is anything but a major cause for concern and something that we should be investigating and having frank discussions about, but in order to do so, the discussions have to be actually frank and encompass the entire situation, something which few if any are willing to actually do. Our physical human forms have not evolved to intuitively grapple with the consequences of the existence of the Internet[0], yet just about everyone uses it every day. We should dig deep and really examine this at some point.
They're not particularly different, except we now have many examples of Jewish people being attacked because they're Jewish, or people being attacked because they "look" like Muslims to their attackers, or black people being attacked because they're black, or gay people being attacked becuase they're gay.
We have churches and mosques and synagogues being shot up. We have crowds of people being driven into by cars. We have people being murdered for who they are.
How often does this happen for Republicans?
This point - is violence mostly from the left or right - is tedious, becuase it's unambiguously mostly from the right and it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
The more important point is that it is overwhelmingly committed by men. We need to look at why some men resort to violence.
Just like the idea goes "if we make it harder to get guns, we may still have tragedies but fewer", the rationale may go for making it harder to find like-minded hate online.
Right now. On your personal computer or through tor, go to 8chan /pol/. It is a cesspool.
Where those cesspools exist, publicly searchable and accessible, hate can breed. I know I /want/ them gone, but I'm not sure if I'm okay with it being done by law, because that's a lot of power over the Internet that governments haven't had.
It's way past that point. It's kind of ridiculous anyone could even entertain the notion that people are just joking around on these forums at this point.
How many more white supremacy terrorist incidents do we need to quell this myth?
From the govts view, they are acting to contain sectarian violence long enough that their society can find a stable equilibrium after a shock.
I don't think appeals to the principle of freedom of speech are meaningful against acts of censorship because it is a tactical response in a perceived crisis and not something that happens under ideal conditions where they can afford to be held to principles.
However, tactical approaches like clumsy censorship signal a deeper weakness that risks exacerbating sectarian resolve in all parties.
Cynically, the solution here may have been to rate limit content they didn't want instead of blocking it outright, which is insidious, but toward the desired outcome of defusing the spread of violence, people who want the content can get it without having to position themselves against the authorities (become outlaws) to do so, while removing it from casual observation. Reddit's quarantines, and Twitter's shadow bans mitigate some of the virality of reactions. Tagging traffic to these sites for slow path processing would have been trivial, and blocking them was an unforced error.
Societies need to respond to events like these by demonstrating unity and strength, which may mean acts of extraordinary tolerance - and not with tactical approaches that make them seem weak and vulnerable to an insurgency.
This bizarre idea that principles are only relevant under "ideal conditions" is part of the problem. We can't afford not to hold governments to principles, especially under non-ideal conditions.
If a website adds no value / negative value to people's lives yet is used by a significant number of people for a significant amount of time every day it should be banned or time limited in my opinion. A bit similar to cigarettes or sugary drinks.
Who decides? The government does based on recommendation by the judiciary. Its their job to legislate
No one is stopping you from registering a new website so please dont argue freedom of speech.
I'm curious where we draw the line and what the criteria is. It's clear we need a line, since we shouldn't encourage the proliferation of child pornography for example.
But should we tolerate a community that had a "Brent Tratton Appreciation Thread" on the day of the NZ shooting? [1]
I have mild conservative sympathies and get accused by idiots of being a "Nazi" depressingly frequently. It's screamingly obvious that the rush to clamp down on "hate speech" is in reality criminalising political dissent. Which is absolutely guaranteed to lead to more violence, not less.
The others I don't agree with long term (4chan is 4chan, Zerohedge is moronic but mostly benign, liveleak is concerning but I get why they did it) but 8chan is just cancer.
I get freedom of speech, but there has to be a limit somewhere. Those animals would drop nukes for funsies if they had the opportunity.
Defending rights isn't easy.
US business owners need to wake up to the fact that their products are seen as publishers, not pipes, and that publishers in most of the world are regulated.
Charlottesville had several injuries and one death.
Meanwhile over here we have a dead German every day on average. If I were to name the ethnic origin of the murderers I would get sued.
This goes both ways.
[1] https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article181477442/Obduktionse...
Are you conflating the facts from two situations? Media coverage of the Köthen protests suggests there was a stabbing incident in Chemnitz close in time to Köthen.
All of that having been said: I think your point that Germany has laws discouraging you from casting aspersions on groups due to individual actions of the groups, and America has far fewer such restrictions, stands. Except... Germany's homicide rate is lower than the US. So Germany's clearly doing something right relative to its neighbor 'cross the pond (of course, it may not be this---but given that Germany had to deal with actual Nazis and the US has not yet had that challenge, I'm not in the habit of gainsaying Germany's strategy here regarding laissez-faire freedom of speech).
I'm just using this ridiculous case to make the point that these reports don't mean anything. Both cases had extreme political pressure to make things happen.. and that exact thing was written on the report.
But besides that: I think it's faulty logic to say that as long as Germany's homocide (or whatever) rates are lower than the US, it must be better. You can't compare things like that. A murder used to be something extraordinary. Now it's everyday. According to statistics they're at an all-time low. See the case above and numerous other examples.
...but more importantly, what has also changed extraordinarily is communication. We see a lot more of the murders, be they local, national, or international (the fact that we, a German and an American, are discussing Australian policy in response to a New Zealand murder spree is indicative of this). Internationally, we're a lot less tolerant of murder than we were because we can see it now. And as a species, we're pretty bad at risk assessment and filtering with this newfound panopticon power. It's a pretty well-documented phenomenon that fear in Germany of crime doesn't align with the hard numbers on incidents. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-09/german...
People see what they expect to see all too often.
If I may make an observation... You appear to be ascribing to some conspiracy-theory thinking in the statement that the coroner report aligned with perceived political pressure. Where is that notion coming from?
I don't think we have any more to discuss. I don't trust your unnamed sources. And I have a sinking suspicion they're exactly the sort Australian telco would find it necessary to de-list from DNS.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/may...
A good example that could be considered to be overall harmful would be the anti-vax movement. It has spread by speech over social media through patently inaccurate information.
There's an essay I found pretty unique, "Reflections on Debating The Right" on Current Affairs, explaining why much more public debates would be helpful... of course, that website could well be blocked soon in Australia for their articles on Palestine, given the precedents now set!
People on the right (the proles, not the rich people making money off the whole affair) don’t want to have honest intellectual discourse. They want to ‘own libruls’ and be smug (despite their choices actively hurting their livelihood and their lives leaving little to be smug about).
There’s nothing to debate, they’re just idiots. Easy to fleece idiots considering how easy it is to make money by throwing out a bunch of controversial statements and then retracting when their audience has moved on.
I hope to come back to this debate in a few decades and see that Robinson's pieces on debating the right, along with Mark Fisher's "Exiting the Vampire Castle" and Benjamin Studebaker's "The Left is Not a Church" will be considered important overlooked resources.
Does Australia have an enumerated right to free speech? I thought that remains a somewhat novel feature of the American Constitution. (Owing--in large part--to our culture.)
Australia doesn't protect freedom of expression in the same way the US does. Indeed, there's a decent chunk of the world that's perfectly rational and sees our relatively laissez-faire attitude on some Bill of Rights content as dangerous to a survivable society.
It starts with fringe sites that most people would agree on, but the existence of those regulators depends on there being more things to censor. It's in their own interest to expand the scope of the censoring, and the people attracted to those positions and that "power" will be the ones who have things they wish to silence.
In addition to this, as the scope creeps you risk forcing the later groups into the same channels as the ones first banned (e.g. people who enjoy dark humor being shoved into the same platforms as people who unironically spread hate and violent messages). It seems to me this will be facilitating radicalization rather than help prevent it - an analogy could be made with people arrested for petty crimes being radicalized or made into full blown criminals in prisons.
Before thinking about whether it's actually right or wrong to block access to "problematic opinions" online, I'd like to see satisfying research that government censorship actually works and mitigates these problems, rather than just sweep the mess under the carpet while it keeps building up to an eventual serious problem.
What is the difference? Neither one sounds like a place I want to go visit to check out for myself. I used to hear about 4chan for a while is 8chan a worse, more concentrated version of it?
... but action of private enterprises to cease to do business with an organization (such as telcos black-holing an IP address in their routing fabric) are another matter, unless regulation states otherwise.