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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society. What 8chan is doing is exactly the same, minus the Islamist part, yet there's hypocrisy in how they're treated vs e.g. the social media wing of ISIS.

These people are trying to kill as many of us as possible. In no way should society accept it. It's simple societal self-defense. Root out the terrorists wherever they may congregate, regardless of whichever flavor of terrorist they happen to be.

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Cloudflare provides services to a number of Islamist terror organizations: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cloudflare-cybersecurity-terr...

> Cloudflare provides services to a number of Islamist terror organizations

yes, and that entire article is about people trying to get them to take them down and the criminal statute they're using to force the issue, which is part of the GP's point. Not a lot of folks in the federal government hand wringing about deplatforming on that one.

And yet, Cloudflare didn't take them down proactively like they did with The Daily Stormer and now 8chan. Under what standards are sites like 8chan worse than the Taliban?

Looks like the standard is there hasn’t been enough bad press about their material support of those terrorist orgs yet. They clearly wait for the public outrage before acting.

According to some CEO interview they hold on as long as possible until forced otherwise.

This is relevant as the censorship here (whether justified or not, right or wrong it is censorship) is not done by CF, but by a faceless internet mob that is attacking both CF and 8chan.

CF has all the right to terminate its relationships with anyone. social media mobs should not force companies to exercise that right.

> According to some CEO interview they hold on as long as possible until forced otherwise.

I think an appropriate qualifier here might be that they used to hold on as long as possible. I don't think that's universally true anymore.

> This is relevant as the censorship here (whether justified or not, right or wrong it is censorship) is not done by CF, but by a faceless internet mob that is attacking both CF and 8chan.

In the same sense that a mob outside the courthouse ensured a guilty verdict, perhaps. But it's still the jurors who actually acted.

> In the same sense that a mob outside the courthouse ensured a guilty verdict, perhaps. But it's still the jurors who actually acted.

I am not sure what you mean here... but I would find in both cases very problematic that a mob could wield such power. A mob is not a democratic representation.

I meant that the mob may have made demands, but the only power the mob has is that which it is given. Just like the verdict reached by those jurors, Cloudflare chose their own path.

Mob power come mostly from two sources. First, the one you point out, people/companies yielding and affirming the efficacy of their method. Second from other public figure joining in the pressure.

The reason the mob has power is in the end that they do not get criticized by those they respect.

Proactively?

Without being forced by a court to do so.

Probably it's closer to home- those sites fuel domestic terrorism, whereas the Taliban do not. Also public pressure and public attention. They're probably incredibly hesitant to take anything down, but if something becomes front page news then they have to deal with it. Also I don't know what's proactive about any of this, if anything it's way too little too late. The sites you mention provide absolutely zero value to anything resembling civilization- they're gathering places for sociopaths and psychotic morons. I'm not even close to being remotely upset that they may have been treated more harshly than actual ISIS or Taliban sites or whatever. There is a level of pathetic beneath which it all just kind of blends together and it doesn't make sense to attempt to rank them. Yeah, ISIS is shittier than the people who like Daily Stormer, but they're both so shitty that it's not really possible to rank their shittiness relative to each other. It's like the difference between jumping off a 50 story building vs. a 100 story building- there is a distinction, but it doesn't really matter.

I don't think 8chan was exactly a good site, but I'd still put it in the category of "internet-neutral". There's some horrible stuff there (which is all you really hear about), a lot of neutral stuff and a little bit of good.

IMO the reason Cloudflare took down TDS and 8chan but not the Taliban or Hamas is simply outgroup vs fargroup. [0] The operators, users and targets of 8chan or TDS are all familiarly western but different enough to hate, while islamic terror organizations are so different it's hard to relate to them - sort of like that joke about how the more similar two religious denominations are, the more likely it is that they hate the other. [1]

0: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

1: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religio...

I agree with you. Those sites were closer to home and less alien to Americans, and thus might get more scrutiny and judgement. That's got to be a factor. But I've got to think avoiding bad publicity and negative headlines is the #1 factor behind any inconsistencies in their reaction. The news cycle can be a powerful force for companies concerned about how they're perceived by their investors.

> But I've got to think avoiding bad publicity and negative headlines is the #1 factor behind any inconsistencies in their reaction.

I don't see this working out well for them when it comes to total negative news. Would we have seen nearly as many requests to Cloudflare asking for 8chan to be cut off if they had not already done so for The Daily Stormer?

It's hard to say. It's never going to be a win/win for them, and unfairly cutting someone off would be terrible publicity for them. I'd imagine they're totally inconsistent about these things and don't spend hardly any time policing their customers (nor should they). I have a feeling these things tend to be on a case-by-case basis, mostly fueled by investor concerns, but I guess that just doesn't bother me like it does some people. I don't see them as having any responsibility at all to be guardians of free speech or anything, maybe that's the distinction.

On a more practical level, most internet infrastructure firms based in the US or Europe probably don't have that many people on staff who are fluent in Arabic, Pashto and other languages that would allow the quick identification of terrorists, as opposed to normal people who sometimes discuss terrorism as spectators of the news.

True, but these weren't terrorist propaganda sites, they were the official websites of Hamas & Co, and they do have an english version for anyone not familiar with Hamas. Zoho apparently is providing Email to them.

It being their official sites gives those value / legitimacy and makes them even more okay to not kick them off. Kind of like there should be hardly anything the US president can do to get kicked off twitter.

The US president isn't classified as a terrorist (organization) though, while Hamas is. CF's argument was that they weren't providing material support, otherwise they'd be breaking the law.

If 8chan or dailystormer never made the news, cloudflare would still be hosting them. It isn’t public opinion that is the big factor, enterprise client won’t use controversial services. Having a few large enterprise customers call up saying they can’t be hosted with a hate site is what made the CEO of cloudflare flip his decision.

I do think cloudflare will be forced to be more palatable to enterprise customers if they go public. One biggest factors why I don’t use them is who they provide access to.

I think you have it spot on, but public opinion is driving those enterprise customers to make that call. They still support the terror group websites, even after being informed of them, so it’s not based on policy but rather a business decision.

If I was choosing for a company like Monsanto that has the possibility of getting majorly shat on by internet opinion, Cloudflare's seeming policy of "if the media hates you, we'll drop you" would be the exact opposite of comforting.

If I were a US intelligence organization I would be incredibly happy that terror organizations were voluntarily letting a US company MITM all of their traffic...

Who has a higher body count in the West, Alt-Righters or ISIS?

We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society.

We used to, until quite recently. You could read Dabiq, the well-produced magazine of ISIL/ISIS.[1] They definitely glorified their terrorist incidents. With color pictures of their operations. All with religious justification. "Islam is the religion of the sword, not pacifism". (Dabiq, issue 7.)

Dabiq probably inspired enemies more than supporters. Dabiq says that there can be no compromise until the followers of Allah rule the earth. So ISIS could never have a peaceful border with anybody. On March 23, 2019, the last territory controlled by ISIS was captured.

8Chan is a minor annoyance in comparison. I'd let them blither and look foolish.

[1] https://clarionproject.org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propagand...

They have gone from blithering to murdering. ICYMI

> We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society.

Speak for yourself, I would. I've downloaded and distributed ISIS propaganda videos before out of sheer intrigue.

Just because someone says something you don't like doesn't mean you should ban it. Of course, this will be downvoted to hell because this is a hot topic at the moment, but we shouldn't let that too-near emotion influence out policies. We've seen that lead to stuff like the PATRIOT act in the past and we surely don't need another one of those.

Out of all the internet contrarian arguments Ive seen this is one of the best.

> Speak for yourself, I would. I've downloaded and distributed ISIS propaganda videos before out of sheer intrigue.

It will be downvoted because it's INSANE, not because it's a hot topic.

ISIS propaganda isn't banned for the fun of it or because "too near emotions influencing policies", it's banned for the effect that it casuses, the intention it has, and the attorcities it shows.

There's a difference between supporting free speech and you spreading around videos of murders, executions of innocent people who have families, and calls for more murders of innocent people all over the world. Just because those things don't make you want to kill someone, doesn't change the fact that they do help radicalize other people.

Well, let's be clear, I simply downloaded a torrent and let it seed for a while.

You seem strongly opinionated on this one though, I'm curious, what do you think of Tor or BitTorrent? Should such services be banned as they aid in the distribution of this type of thing too? If you're running a Tor middle node you're part of the distribution of not just all sorts of propaganda like this, but far, far worse things.

Do you think banning these services, reigning in control of information to "help prevent radicalization" in a China-esque way would be a good decision? In my view this is just part of living in a free society, freedom sometimes costs security.

I don't think those services should be banned as that's not their only purpose. I do think that anyone knowingly spreading racist, extremist, terrorist material should be punished.

Platforms that can, but do not, enforce rules to remove such content should also be punished and forbidden.

I would not sacrifice the lives of the ones I love in the name of free speech. Promoting terrorist content increases ever so slightly the chances of your loved ones and your family being hurt by those who get radicalized due to such content.

If "China-esque way" is what it takes then so be it.

Interesting, most Tor operators are doing so because they feel that people should have a right to anonymity or an uncensored internet connection. I'd even argue that Tor trades lives in a far more direct way than 8chan ever could given that fentanyl and weapon sales as well as plotting of child abductions or slave sales occur right there.

Tor operators in doing so are making a choice: they feel the freedom of anonymity and speech are more important than human lives, even the lives of children.

I'd argue that running a Tor node is explicitly making that choice and that statement, so then it confuses me why you seem to be okay with Tor but more questioning of 8chan and similar services where the choice is made less directly. Is it a matter of having the ability to discern "good" uses from "evil"? You're surely accepting both uses by operating a Tor node and knowingly doing so, so I don't see how that makes sense.

If you want to look at gun laws on the other hand, that's a freedom for security trade that seems more debatable given that other countries have the same access to information, but not nearly the same gun violence problems.

> it's banned for the effect that it casuses, the intention it has, and the attorcities it shows.

What rational person will see an ISIS video and go: "Hmm this looks good, guess I should join ISIS".

When he distributed the content he didn't pick only the rational ones. Many people did exactly that, joining ISIS, traveling to Syria, doing terrorist attacks in their own countries.

They didn't get the ideas to do that out of the blue, without seeing or hearing any of the propaganda content.

People aren’t rational. And many will.

That’s one way to get onto a list.

At a guess, you don't belong to, or have friends in, groups ISIS believes deserve to be put to death.

weird flex but ok

I've downloaded

and distributed ISIS propaganda videos

Do elaborate on your motives for and style of distribution.

Not him, but I would do it because I can.

Well, that could mean anything.

I mean this seriously, more Americans should see what those ISIS videos are like.

More Americans should read the writings of Osama bin Laden too.

It's not that this material isn't horrendous, but it's very different from what you'd expect -- the people behind it are not dumb, and like all good propaganda the rationale is selectively built on compelling facts.

Why?

Damn that's cool as hell. Maybe you have some balisong tricks you'd also like to show me?

> We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society.

I certainly would tolerate those sites. Free speech arguments aside, you can't kill the hydra, but you can severely degrade intelligence operations watching that hydra. Best case the bad guys all end up on sites already being surveilled, worst case they slip under the radar.

We had this problem years ago, hacktivists targeting ISIS channels. They scatter to the winds, intelligence ends up doing more work for less rewards.

Feel good outrage made things worse.

Exactly this. These sort of folk started congregating on 8chan when they got pushed out of 4chan. I certainly don't condone mass shootings, white supremacists, etc., but if you think denying 8chan hosting is going to solve this problem, you are sorely mistaken. All it does is force these people into more concentrated forums where there is less push back and opposing views to their radical ideas. Ultimately, it forces them into corners of the internet that are harder for outside groups to locate and monitor for potential threats.

I'll be quite honest, I don't know what a "good" solution here is, but I really don't think this is it.

Disagree. Of course people recongregate in less well-known haunts, but there's a cost to them in doing so, it massively inhibits recruitment, and when there's an influx of new users after the sinking of a platform security standards tend be much lower, making it that much easier to infiltrate.

In war, degrading your enemy's communications and lines of supply is often more effective than engaging in battle.

Lone wolf attacker has no supply line to degrade. The El Paso shooter used 8chan to distribute his manifesto, we have no indication that caused his radicalization.

Empirical evidence suggests that the 'lone wolf' stereotype is not well grounded in reality, and that social networks can be essential for the development of both ideological conviction and the acquisition of practical know-how.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321955758_End_of_th...

While we need to wait for more detail to fully understand the path of radicalization, I am moderately confident in predicting the El Paso shooter visited 8ch regularly for at least 6 months, probably much longer, but posted infrequently if at all.

On the other hand making them harder to access also makes the ideas spread slower because if you get all of say white supremacist sites off Google you massively cut down on the number of random 'normies' that will fall in and get swept up in the group. Same thing applies but is probably even more effective for getting groups off the regular internet all together because then you have to convince someone to install TOR (or whatever the new flavor of the month is) to get them into the funnel.

> I'll be quite honest, I don't know what a "good" solution here is, but I really don't think this is it.

At the very least a good post-mortem analysis would be nice.

I guess I'll settle for watching the finger-pointing dumpster fire.

That makes sense when the hydra is just quietly plotting. But what about if the site is the hydra's head-growing organ, i.e. radicalization platform? Disrupting recruitment seems like a viable strategy against hydras of all sorts.

That only works if you're actually going to act on the intelligence gathered from having the discussion centralized. That's something the U.S. is clearly willing to do with, e.g., ISIS. But even what limited programs we had towards combating white nationalist terrorism were canceled by Trump.

And a few months later ISIS died because the lack of easily-spread propaganda destroyed its ability to recruit susceptible idiots to its cause to replace all the soldiers that were being killed.

IOW, mission accomplished.

ISIS is still very much an active organization, even if they don't control physical territory any longer.

I think that was sarcasm / a George W. reference, or least assume it is since I was referring to events circa 2015.

Is that what you honestly think happened?

Facebook for a few weeks didn't want to remove video of a Mexican woman being beheaded. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/fa...

There is a fallacy in your thinking imo. Sites like 8chan are not entirely devoted to radicalisation, just like a mosque is not devoted to radicalisation.

Yet sometimes in a mosque some evil islamic imam or something preaches radicalisation.

Yet we tolerate and welcome mosques. Then why shouldn’t we tolerate and welcome sites like 8chan?

Also please keep in mind that now that 8chan has been basically shut down, we have no way of make an opinion of our own.

What are you talking about? We can and do arrest, charge, and convict "evil islamic imams" that "preach radicalization", and don't let them operate mosques. We tolerate and welcome mosques because they ban radicals and report them to the FBI:

"Monteilh eventually so unnerved Orange County's Muslim community that that they got a restraining order against him. [T]hey also reported Monteilh to the FBI"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/20/fbi-informant

You do know that Homeland is a TV show and not real life, right?

A mosque that openly fostered extremism like 8chan did would of course get shut down. By contrast, 8chan has not been shut down. Its operations have been disrupted, but it hasn't shut down, anymore than Cloudflare has shut down just because they had a site outage last month.

> What are you talking about? We can and do arrest, charge, and convict "evil islamic imams" that "preach radicalization", and don't let them operate mosques.

Indeed, you arrest the single imam, you don't shut down the whole mosque. That's the point.

If a mosque openly fostered extremism in spite of arrests and multiple massacres, you'd have a problem with their landlord refusing to continue to rent to them?

> We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site that glorified and helped perpetrate mass incidents of terror against our society.

I completely disagree. I've read Dabiq[1] and similar publications because I want to know why people believe the things they believe. It is a good thing that such horrible ideas are available to the public, and for the same reason that it's good that flat earth sites are available to the public. JS Mill puts it best[2]:

> But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.

> If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

It is for these same reasons that I also read /pol/ and /leftypol/ on 8chan.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabiq_(magazine)

2. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Liberty/Chapter_2

And yet, we let Islam continue to be preached in this nation. When will we recognize that extremist ideologies like these can not be allowed to fester? Freedom of speech needs its limits.

First they came for the ragh'ds, but that was ok cuz I didn't like em and who wears a carpet anyway. Then..

Lol

These aren't exactly organized bands of people funneling in millions of dollars for carrying out actual training and misson planning/execution. They're watering holes where disaffected elements of society hyperbolically play up various happenings.

Just take a step back for a moment. We have an increasing population and increasing saturation of that population with streams of data. When something happens, we know with a speed that is uncommon in human history (to be euphemistic about it).

More population = more happenings = more things to emotionally charge people in the same 24 hour frame. Even if population increases by a bajillion, we still only have 24 hours in a media cycle.

Even if the per capita incidence of violence decreases, a rising population means more slices of highly charged emotional manipulation within the same media cycle.

Edit: So instead of increasing population, resultant increasing pop density, increasing information density, and a myriad of clusterf* systems running haywire (even in an era where we're safer than even 20 years ago)...4chan and 8chan are the devil and satan for allowing people to shitpost in a hyperbolic hyperironic manner?

The "hyperirony" excuse is complete bullshit. It's not redeeming when the defense is that they only support, encourage, and enable terrorism because it's a joke. That would make it more despicable, even. Instead we have incredibly racist and hateful people who don't see themselves that way making excuses. They're still shit humans. You don't murder people and say it was irony as your defense.

Shit humans have always existed. But claiming they support "terrorism" in the same sense that we think of organizational terrorism is ridiculous.

4chan and 8chan didn't create hyperirony (although they certainly cultivate massive gardens of it) or densensitization. Our media cycle has created it in tandem with a feedback loop that synergizes with the principle of "more people + same time amount = more hyperslices of emotion eliciting news that distort mental maps of larger-than-self situations"

You're safer at a wal-mart than prior 4chan and 8chan. But if you combine higher population density and information density, you'll get more raw events of violence even if the chance of experiencing violence has gone down.

Imo, there's a more insidious risk in allotting more powers of censorship to entities who are far less subject to reciprocal investigation. Think of 9/11. If we had done nothing, we would be safer and more prosperous today. We let the fleas provoke us into gouging untold amounts of flesh to stop itches.

Edit: A more simple way to phrase it is that hyperirony and the lack of "proper affect", which is really what people seem to be most horrified about, is a defense against the 24/7 atrocity exhibition which turns emotion into banality.

I guess it would fall under stochastic terrorism, so the modus operandi is different (it doesn't need secretive cell networks for example), but it's not ridiculous to compare it.

It is ridiculous because it's a consequence of anonymity which is still precious enough to ward off against knee jerk emotionalism. As I said, 9/11 was my lesson on how much more magnificentally messed up a sort of societal "immunological reaction" can be in comparison to the actual illness. The thought of a crackdown is both a more chilling outcome and a potential catalyst for actual organizational terrorism if people can't let off steam*

* - Note that more people, especially younger folks with their hyperbolic tendencies, and anonymity means more raw sociopathy and psychopathy being displayed in relation to those events. It's at least partially a function of the numbers game.

But I said "lol" what more do you want from me? A "lel" perhaps?

Fahrenheit 451

> We wouldn't tolerate the existence of an Islamist site

Why? Think about what you're saying. Imagine equivalents:

1. We wouldn't allow cell phones that let terrorists communicate

2. We wouldn't allow roads that allow anyone to carry whatever contra-ban they want down them.

3. We wouldn't allow trains that allow just anyone to carry books on whatever topic they want.

4. We can't allow for air that allows two willing participants to communicate using sound waves.

The hubris to imagine that we dare have a say in whether a group of adults date to communicate with each other.

The difference is that every single one of your counterexamples is something that society depends on.

Nobody depends on 8chan. 8chan is not comparable to "air".

This point is so incredibly banal that I'm surprised to find myself making it.

Indeed, but speech itself is is. I think OP's point was that free-speech is as fundamental a "air" and that everybody everywhere depends on it.

And they're free to continue their speech elsewhere. Cloudflare and Voxility are within their rights to refuse service to a client on the basis that the client is persistently associated with terrorism and kiddy porn.

Why is that a remotely controversial statement? Nobody is suggesting that chan-tards should be rounded up for unamerican activities, and I'd be the first to speak against that, but CF don't need to tarnish their brand with 8chans bullshit.

They're free to withhold their support and so express an opinion.

> Why is that a remotely controversial statement?

Because Cloudflare used to say that they would never take anyone down, and now they have. I think it's valid to wonder if they'll be more willing to take down other content, and perhaps become a target by groups looking to restrict the spread of certain information now that they've shown that this is something they're willing to do. This also brings up the point of why Cloudflare thought this specific website was worth taking down, and not the other horrible things that they do support.

Well, say you're cruising around the fringes of the web one day and you stumble on a forum where people are plotting to kill you. You, personally. What do you do?

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