Seattle-area provider becomes haven for online extremism after El Paso shooting | Hacker News Reader

Seattle-area provider becomes haven for online extremism after El Paso shooting

geekwire.com

10 pointsaceperry10 comments

I understand the argument by Epik... I'm not sure moderating this content by law is helping anything. Can the FBI not use sites like these to its advantage in some way? I also understand the existence of these sorts of sites leaves a sanctuary for hateful ideas to spread and grow. And that even if we certainly can't stop them, the big popular ones are easier for people to fall into than some dark net site.

However, I certainly don't agree that Cloudflare should be content arbiter unless they've been instructed to chop 8Chan by the Government. And I believe there is great value in the ability for people to see these extremists ideas and not forget their existence. Not forget our past.

> And I believe there is great value in the ability for people to see these extremists ideas and not forget their existence. Not forget our past.

If that's your argument... why not just build a museum? Or have an educational program in schools?

Insofar as racially motivated terrorism is a plague, it seems like you're suggesting that we allow a reservoir for the plague so that we don't "forget our past" experiences with that plague. Contrarily, I'm happy to learn about Yersinia pestis in school or at museums, not by allowing an ecosystem for it to exist.

>Can the FBI not use sites like these to its advantage in some way?

Fedposting is definitely a thing on the chans. One of the documents filed by police for the Poway shooting included screencaps from law officer posts.[1]

[1]https://mobile.twitter.com/TheGatorGamer/status/114009748979...

> unless they've been instructed to chop 8Chan by the Government.

Think Deep State. 8chan was used by the QAnon movement for their communications signaling.

Extremist web sites do seem like awful incubators. I also have to think that a culture that worships celebrity, combined with guaranteed instant fame/notoriety for perpetrators via extensive news coverage ("if it bleeds, it leads") is also part of the incentive for murder. But a free press is essential to democracy - I don't think we want to go back to press censorship.

I don't really understand the reasoning so many people here have behind shutting down 8chan. Twitter, Facebook, and many other mainstream websites are replete with mass murderers. The response presumably will be that those sites are also replete with non-mass murderers - I agree! So is 8chan. Then the response presumably will be that the vast majority of 8chan users aren't mass murderers, but the site doesn't have a legitimate purpose like Facebook and Twitter and is "a breeding ground for hate".

Now we're in the business of deciding whether a site has a legitimate purpose because potentially (and I haven't seen any data on this - it sounds true, but would be nice to have before making these big assumptions) an outsized proportion of its users discuss controversial subjects. So, okay, private companies don't have to associate with 8chan...now we're seeing supporters of 8chan creating their own companies and services and choosing to associate with them, who inevitably are accused of creating "havens for online extremism" and hate and often are cut off from payment processors, banks, and other essential services a company needs to get by. I wonder - when this "just build your own website/hosting company/payment processor/undersea cable" free market treadmill reaches its logical conclusion, if people somehow do manage to build their own banks and undersea cables and whatever, won't they all be accused of the same thing and face some fresh shutdown attempt?

Let's just be honest, many of you don't like the content of their speech and want it gone. I would rather have an honest debate about whether free speech should exist or not rather than these ancillary discussions that don't really have much to do with the true intentions at play.

Twitter, Facebook, and many other mainstream websites will remove accounts and threads of those with certain content (beyond what is strictly illegal), and 8chan will not. This is the reasoning why it's OK to shut down 8chan but not the other providers.

There is a difference between a real discussion of controversial subjects and emotional-driven posts that don't further a logical point but just provide fuel to get someone to do something (i.e. incite). So it's possible to draw an actual, objective line.

> when this "just build your own website/hosting company/payment processor/undersea cable" free market treadmill reaches its logical conclusion, if people somehow do manage to build their own banks and undersea cables and whatever, won't they all be accused of the same thing and face some fresh shutdown attempt

Probably.

> Let's just be honest, many of you don't like the content of their speech and want it gone.

Content that does nothing but encourage/get other people to kill innocent people is useful for a society to suppress and I support it. I happen to also not like this content, but it's a coincidence.

Hard absolutist points of views in respect to rights leads to them eventually being trampled or effectively useless for real people. An example for speech - advertising/marketing is speech, but too much of it makes a communication medium useless (part of why no one wants a landline phone anymore).

I haven't used 8chan but I doubt 100% of their content is hateful content. I also doubt most of their users are hateful...

If you penalize and normalize website censorship because of bad actors then what's to stop a big company from barraging a smaller site with malicious users to get it taken down thus removing competition?

It's a dangerous game to play if anything. You can only do so much with the money you have. I know I couldn't stop people from commenting hate on my websites, I don't have the resources or people to deal with that. Should I be taken down for something I can't control? Do I have to have a certain ratio of content to get by? How long is the window to fix bad content?

> If you penalize and normalize website censorship because of bad actors then what's to stop a big company from barraging a smaller site with malicious users to get it taken down thus removing competition?

The smaller site will have to do what Voat is currently doing and restrict registrations and access for a while. Ultimately the fact that big players can shove smaller players off line is weakness of IPv4 address exhaustion and designing platforms on a strict centralized client-server model, not a model of suppressing violence-inducing speech.

> I don't have the resources or people to deal with that. Should I be taken down for something I can't control?

Yes, because you can put a banner on your page "Hey users, we can only support X users for required moderation of violent content with our current resources. Will you give us more money to support X+Y users?"

Well with that it means the internet belongs to Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

No point in even trying to build anything because they'll just DoS you with malicious users and you get rejected from all platforms.

Great solution chief.

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