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Comment by s9w | Hacker News Reader

So the campaigns against free speech show results. The wheels are in motion, the dominoes are falling. Funny how here on HN the use of the term "free speech absolutists"/"free speech absolutism" has absolutely skyrocketed for example. So are these the last days of the internet? 4chan is still there, voat too (although barely) - but I don't know how much longer. 100% legal sites are taken offline for absolutely no reason at all besides being on the "wrong side". And the internet is cheering. What a sad time

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Yea. I find it quite ironic that HN of all places is generally speaking supportive of this.

I do think though that the internet is kind of a different game though. I don't think anything can be banned altogether. People will always find a way.

Ultimately we'll just end up creating new anonymous and distributed services where we can talk freely and corporations (lol) and governments can't dictate what is acceptable.

The pace has quickened though. The big corporations are all coordinated now. Hosters, domain registrars, other infrastructure, payment processors, Traditional and Social Media... everyone is locked in and blindly banning everyone who isn't theirs

True, I'm just saying you can't stop people talking. Nature always balances out one way or another.

The problem with stopping people from talking is that they have no choice but to get violent. In my opinion it's the politicians have ignored the public for so long on issues such as immigration which are fueling this.

Exactly. Censoring has the opposite effect.

It's fascinating to compare it to the desperate fight for Net Neutrality. HN was hysterical when faced with a hypothetical threat, but when we see real examples of censorship the response is filled with apologist arguments and hand-wringing.

The only difference seems to be who is doing the censoring. When it's Silicon Valley tech corporations with a well established left-wing bias, well then they're private businesses who can be trusted to choose which dialogue is okay to have. But when it's corporations outside of Silicon Valley, well the internet will never be the same, be sure to call your congressmen.

Haha good point. Sometimes it feels so ironic I wonder if there's actually a handful of us talking to mostly bots who are indistinguishable from actual people.

It's not a campaign against free speech, it's a campaign against collective organization of murder.

What a sad time

How about the free speech rights of the 22 people who died in El Paso?

> How about the free speech rights of the 22 people who died in El Paso?

Excellent point, I'm sure we would have done a swell job taking away their rights as well had they survived and had opinions we disagreed with.

A very nice false dichotomy.

Not at all. Killing people silences them in addition to terminating their other rights, through no fault of their own.

The www is fucked. Move to tor. The only place where you can have an interesting conversation is one where the conversation can't be monetized.

any suggestions?

If you support free speech so much then you should respect Cloudflare’s right to exercise their free speech right to decide what content they want to serve on their privately owned servers.

The idea that the government should force companies to host extremist content against their will is anti-free speech, not pro-free speech. It’s equivalent to forcing people to put up political yard signs on their lawn without their consent.

I never said any of these things. I merely mourned that this community happily applauds the burning of the internet.

If you support private companies’ freedom so much then you should allow Internet providers to choose which sites you have to pay extra for to visit.

The idea that the government should force companies to adhere to net neutrality against their will is anti-freedom, not pro-freedom.

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