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Comment by davesmith1983 | Hacker News Reader

davesmith1983

The "bad guys" just went somewhere else. This doesn't fix the problem it just pushed the problem away from reddit.

> And it's up to us to pressure these private businesses to do that.

No it isn't. I am fed up of something I like being ruined by moral busy bodies such as yourself. My friend and I like the "edgy" jokes because we work in environments where you have to be political correct and I need to let off some steam.

8chan isn't the problem. The problem is that large portions of the population aren't engaged in society at large. The is a huge problem with loneliness, suicide and general lack of meaning to life.

Censorship and harassing companies that run image board won't fix the problem. All you will do it hide it.

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I'm in favor of extra-legal filtering, according to a company's morals, as long as market alternatives exists.

If speech crosses the line, law enforcement should pursue and prosecute.

Short of that (e.g. the "we were just joking" crowd), the best possible aggregate outcome seems like it would be companies making independent moral judgements and acting on them.

If Cloudflare doesn't want to be associated with 8chan, they refuse them as a customer.

Other customers are then free to judge Cloudflare for that action and use / not use them as they decide.

This seems far preferable to more draconian, government-enforced options.

Companies are inherently political, and a diversity of options is the healthiest ecosystem.

Not, this requires that we have functioning alternatives. For something like 8chan, Cloudflare's services are probably avoidable, but there's a market penetration at with "must serve" should be considered.

E.g. if Facebook banned a political party

Generally I agree however

> Companies are inherently political

I am fed up of everything be political. I know someone is going to make Doom Eternal political somehow when the game is about a man that is too angry to die taking on the legions of the hell dimension (that is literally the plot of the game).

Gilette have tried making how I remove hair from my face political.

I want companies to sell their product and as long are people are using it legally they should probably not take a political stance.

My point is more that the zeitgeist is inherently political.

Ergo, merely by selling to the market and interacting with it, companies make political choices.

These choices may be more or less obvious, but they're always there. The apolitical company is a myth.

Note: I am using political in the greater, rather than "red vs blue" sense.

This is nonsense. This is the same warped view of the world along the lines of "the person is political" and is a thought worm that has to be binned.

I don't buy bog roll as a political decision, I buy it so I can wipe my arse.

You may not. But others certainly do. Otherwise recycled toilet paper wouldn't be stocked.

Beyond that, to use the same analogy, one brand might be dump their bleaching agents in the ocean.

It's up to the companies if they want to trumpet their behavior loudly or say nothing about it. And it's up to consumers if they care about whatever type of behavior is involved.

Well that is up to other people. It doesn't make the company inherently political.

This logic as previously stated is a horrible mind worm that infests everything and ruins a great many things that are just useful (razor blades) or fun (video games).

Politics is a set of power games done by people we call politicians and promoted by their activists. It has nothing to do with right and wrong.

I would define politics as the myriad of ways we reach agreement over differences without shooting each other.

Without politicians, politics would still exist.

It is an overly broad definition.

And so we've arrived at the crux of our disagreement. If only politics were so clean.

> The problem is that large portions of the population aren't engaged in society at large. The is a huge problem with loneliness, suicide and general lack of meaning to life.

Do you think that this is the root cause of violent islamic extremists as well?

With extremists that grew up in the west, possibly. I did work with some Somali guys (they weren't extremists) but a few of them said they didn't feel British and they didn't feel Somalian. So there is a schism there, I've felt the same schism as someone that is essentially a nomad these days I don't belong anywhere.

Extremists that grow up in the Middle-East. No idea I haven't spent a lot of time in the Middle-East (only Israel).

> The problem is that large portions of the population aren't engaged in society at large. The is a huge problem with loneliness, suicide and general lack of meaning to life.

Well said. The American melting pot makes this loneliness stronger still as there’s no sense of community left for these people. They live amongst us but they’re not connected to anyone around them.

I’m convinced there’s twisted weirdos all over the world, but traditionally communities did a better job of watching their own and making sure they were not endangering others. That simply does not exist any more, so the dark thoughts fester and grow until they’ve taken total control.

I don’t know how to fix any of this, but know it going to require either bringing those people into the light or occasionally joining them in their darkness.

> Censorship and harassing companies that run image board won't fix the problem. All you will do it hide it.

And it will come back much worse, and you won't know how to recognize it or fight it.

> My friend and I like the "edgy" jokes

Liberals like to make off-color jokes too, they're just in denial about it.

> And it will come back much worse, and you won't know how to recognize it or fight it.

Yep.

> Liberals like to make off-color jokes too, they're just in denial about it.

The logic is "it is okay when we do it".

>Liberals like to make off-color jokes too, they're just in denial about it.

Are they? Myself, a liberal, and all my liberal friends and family, make off color jokes all the time and are totally aware of it. Similarly, we don't castigate conservative friends for making off color jokes.

I think you're purposefully misstating the fact that people disagree on the (admittedly fuzzy) line between off color jokes and sincere expressions of hatred.

Or even just off color jokes that go over a line. For example, n* jokes

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