Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

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I think a lot of the dweb people first got interested in this area because they were on BBSes and so on sharing stuff like the anarchist's cookbook at risk of getting a visit by the FBI and used to think information wanted to be free.

Now they're adults, and have kept their interest in dweb technologies, but have come to see "dangerous speech" as a huge problem, and are waking up to the realization that their technical interests and goals would enable these kinds of things. And they're not happy about it, or at the very least are experiencing cognitive dissonance. But that was always the case, and for many, they were the unsavory people in their youth that the older folks were saying were participating in dangerous rhetoric and ought to be silenced or investigated, just like they are saying now about people who are saying things adjacent to things which are illegal.

At the very least we should seek consistency. If you support decentralized technology for speech, you should be happy with the net benefits and net harms. The alternative is the status quo. Arguably the spirit of the internet was not to have what we have now.

I agree with your first paragraph but not the rest. We still feel information should be free and decentralized technology is the future.

I'm not saying all dweb people feel this way, I'm in the other camp myself. I'm saying part of the dynamic going on includes a subset of people who forgot that these aren't some global good, they will create both good and harm, like anything else.

I agree that the BBS tradition of G-files plays into this, but those were very different times. The people downloading this sort of stuff were almost exclusively kids who got a thrill out of possessing forbidden knowledge, but aside from setting off a smoke bomb at an abandoned quarry or something, nothing ever came of it. The near mainstream culture of prepping and guns and conspiracy is far different than it was back then.

I still think that there is a positive place for DWeb technologies, but that place is specifically to enable more truly free speech. A lot of what got us into this mess is that speech on social media is not truly free. The only speech that is allowed/promoted on those platforms is that which appeals to base instincts, because it is that speech that drives revenue for the platforms. What we're allowed to say, and have heard, should not depend on what is most profitable for a few companies.

The problem with your first point is that however true it may be, it doesn’t provide a good mental framework for creating values that are universally applicable. The lessons of fearing an FBI visit for just sharing text files was correct: being free to speak and not fear oppression due to not what you say but what it implies is what freedom of speech is. It’s quite uncontroversial to say that people who explicitly advocate specific violence are breaking the just laws around that and should be suppressed. The controversy is around what speech adjacent to that is not just permissible, but if it’s just to jump to conclusions about a person’s motives or intentions and act on them in the absence of illegal speech.

You will find that the people who were on the unsavoury bbs are the people who are against censorship today.

Out of the half dozen people I know from that period in my life (2000-2006) not one has had a kind thing to say about facebook, google or twitter since 2010. Those firms are the lame dinosaur stuck in a tar pit that we made fun of Microsoft for being in the 00s.

It's the people who called us nerds and made high school hell for us that somehow ended up in hr at tech co and are now setting policy there.

That may be a more valid perspective, but I don't think these are homogeneous groups. I will say it's been surprising and disappointing to see people who have been railing against tech company centralized power for years, it turns out their big issue is more when that power is not directed in a direction they like.

> I will say it's been surprising and disappointing to see people who have been railing against tech company centralized power for years, it turns out their big issue is more when that power is not directed in a direction they like.

What else can you do?

Saying that tech co is wrong today is as much career suicide as saying that the US deserved 9/11 was in 2002. I even had one guy tell me he is going full accelerationist on his main twitter because the http based internet is a dead end and the more unusable it becomes the sooner we will get something better.

You're making a false equivalence.[1] The "dweb" people were indeed merely anarchic and irresponsible. The deeper, conspiracy-minded parts of the MAGA community are verifiably dangerous. They said for weeks that a storm is coming, that they were going to take washington, that congress had to be stopped, that the vice president should be executed, etc...

And then on Wednesday they made the attempt.

Comments like yours are predicated on this idea that speech itself can only ever be merely "irresponsible". But... the world isn't like that. If you spend years making "jokes" about insurrection, you eventually find someone attacking congress.

[1] Edit to answer the question below: you are falsely equating harmless anarchic geeks of the 80's and 90's with violent terrorists. It's not appropriate to manage these communities using the same tools.

I think this is overplayed at this point. You must concede one of only two possibilities.

1) The capitol building has all along been an easy soft target that could have been infiltrated by a small contingent of terrorist.

2) The police purposefully stood down and allowed this to happen while doing the minimum to make it seem like they tried.

Neither option is a good look for our country.

Now compound that with using this event as a popular excuse to restrict free speech, when the correct reaction should be to improve security at the capitol for any enemy.

If you think this goes away becuse big tech takes even moderate voices down, you don't understand what's going on.

"2) The police purposefully stood down and allowed this to happen while doing the minimum to make it seem like they tried."

seems likely that the trumpers gave that order so their mob could get in

> big tech takes even moderate voices down

Can you cite some "moderate voices" that have been taken down by big tech? They're all still up as far as I can see. Trump incited an attack on congress. He got banned. Parler deliberately cultivated an extreme community of violent rhetoric (they really did, have you looked at that site?). They got banned. Who else? Seems like only people reasonably identifiable as extremists are affected.

I remain horrified at the right wing community's ability to rationalize violence. The President directed an attack on Congress last Wednesday to prevent his opponent's certification. And... what people really want to talk about is Parler losing their hosting?

(Edit to note that you refused to answer the question and jumped off on a WHATABOUTBLM?! tangent instead. In fact, contra your hyperbole, no moderate right wing voices have been censored or silenced.)

"Trump incited an attack on congress."

Evidence of Trump telling people to storm the capitol?

"I remain horrified at the right wing community's ability to rationalize violence"

We'll, I'm right of center and I condemn it. Just like I'm sure there is a history of you condemning this entire year of BML and Antifa burning and looting cities across the US.

I remember what Como said on CNN. "who said protests need to be peaceful". Of course CNN is the bastion of right wing extremists... Oh wait....

We have to condemn all political violence.

If you spend a whole year burning and looting a city and the city is still there you weren't very good at it.

I haven't tried, I make things, not destroy other people's things.

Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a double standard at work. I recall every news outlet spending bottles of ink explaining how massive BLM protests somehow weren't spreading covid but now the capitol protests are. However I think there's a fundamental difference between breaking into a Target and looting it and attacking the capitol of the United States. Of particular concern are all of the side details. The detail that a threat assessment was not done for this protest despite knowing about it weeks in advance. The fact the police responded less strongly to this attack than they did to a protest by disabled veterans in wheelchairs and later took selfies with the attackers. The fact that insurgents carrying blue lives matter flags beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher. The detail that the person speaking to this crowd just a few hours earlier was the president of the United States.

> I recall every news outlet spending bottles of ink explaining how massive BLM protests somehow weren't spreading covid but now the capitol protests are

It's actually been reported that a covid-positive individual was clustered with members of congress during the evacuation. I don't know why you think that isn't correct to report.

It is correct to report. My point was that any large crowd of people is likely to spread covid.

These can both be true

Really? Can a weak man lose an arm wrestling match to a stronger opponent and truly say "I let you win?"

Either the authorities were capable of repulsing an hundred unarmed civilians or they were not.

I'm unclear how both can be true, but I'm open to ideas.

I dont see reason for people to downvote you: I find it exceptionally hard to believe that the capital building does not have a proper response to a small group of people trying to storm the building.

Here is my theory: the "coup" was such an utter non-threat that those in charge did not want to give an ounce of evidence regarding how they could respond in order to prevent legitimately threatening bad actors from understanding the possibilities.

The side effect of being able to move towards more restricted speech is just icing on the cake.

> Here is my theory: the "coup" was such an utter non-threat that those in charge did not want to give an ounce of evidence regarding how they could respond in order to prevent legitimately threatening bad actors from understanding the possibilities.

Six people died! How is that an "utter non-threat"? The mental revisionism is out of control. How is it that people are so unwilling to condemn the most obvious kind of political violence imaginable?

You can condemn it, be fearful of it, and be specific with regards to the threat it presents. It presents threats. I assume the specific threat the poster was refuting (which I won’t throw my 2c on here) is that it posed a threat to materializing a new government in the United States, which is typically the top of mind threat when talking about coups. So citing the number of deaths is neither here nor there in assessing the validity that it was a legitimate threat to creating a new government and ending the previous one.

After seeing thousands of soldiers with machine guns in full military gear with armored vehicles protecting the Capital from Black Lives Matter, your statement sounds ridiculous.

Perhaps a history of burning and looting might have had some influence in that difference.

Sometimes I wonder, and serious question here, when the reporter on TV stands in front of a burning building and exclaims the protest is mostly peaceful, do you see the building in background on fire?

I mean, I see the capitol building being broken into and think "that needs to stop, bring in the military if necessary".

Right wing millitias and groups have history of violence last years in USA. They also talked about their plans openly. It is not like the bombs they brought to capitol were shock this January. It was not first bomb plan.

Also, in videos you see organized trained equipped men in uniforms. That is absolutely something agencies are expected to follow.

I hadn't thought of that, yet I see the sense in the thought.

However, I don't think providing adequate police presence for a planned protest would have been showing your hand.

I worked on Capitol Hill for years. The Capitol is not a soft target. Its security measures are taken very seriously. Multiple agencies are responsible for its protection. Multiple strategies are in play from intelligence ops to deadly force. These agencies handle crowd control for dozens of very large protests every year. They are world experts in preventing violence, terrorism, and rioting. The Capitol is the very center of our government and the most powerful symbol of democracy in the world.

Some things went very wrong. It should not have been possible for a loosely organized mob to breach the perimeter, let alone get inside. There must have been some complicity or even permission. On the other hand, some things went exactly as they should have. Lawmakers were rapidly taken to safety. No VIPs were injured. Bloodshed was kept to a minimum through careful deescalation.

Overall I think we came to within inches of a major tragedy. It was avoided through a mix of competence and incompetence. We were lucky and we should consider ourselves warned.

Other explanation:

Republicans have mostly posted online, rallied with Trump etc while BLM and friends has been torching cities, looting etc.

Basically the police weren't expecting anything near this from this crowd and it took them by surprise.

Disgusting anyways.

The white supremacists and other violent right wing groups (Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, etc.,) had been planning for a while. In plain view of anyone paying attention. There was plenty of warning. So, the fact that no preparation beyond the waist high barriers was done is surprising, no? https://www.propublica.org/article/capitol-rioters-planned-f...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/trump-ri...

Yes, it was clear security was needed. But this wasn't any of those groups.

That's simply wrong. Representatives of all of those groups were seen breaking into the capitol. The Oath Keepers in particular seem to have had a large and heavily militarized detachment. There is a video of a line of them in full body armor marching up the steps past the throng to enter the building.

Likewise known Proud Boys and 3%'ers were present, etc... This was the Place to Be for all militant right wingers, and those who couldn't be in DC were staging protests elsewhere. IIRC there were violent actions on the same day at both the Oregon and Kansas state houses.

Everyone Knew they were going to be there. Everyone Knew they had the potential to be violent. And Everyone Knew that Trump's rhetoric was inciteful. None of this was a surprise. And it finally boiled over into real violence. There's no excusing or downplaying that. We could absolutely have seen this coming, and lots of people did.

"Oath Keepers in particular seem to have had a large and heavily militarized detachment"

Source video? Larping in camo and a helmet doesn't make you militarized or an oath keeper.

I saw it on twitter, but this article has it too along with a good overview of the subject:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/several-well-know...

You keep dodging. First it was "these groups aren't there" now they're just LARPers in camo and don't matter. People keep shooting down your arguments and you keep moving the goalposts.

Accusing people of doing exactly what you're doing is a well worn and bazar tactic that I'll never understand. Does it work?

You even provided a "quote" of something I never said. Good on you.

You made a statement "Oath Keepers in particular seem to have had a large and heavily militarized detachment". I asked for source video, which you now can't find and instead offer a video that doesn't corroborate your statement. So, who is moving goal posts?

What I am saying is the people causing the violence (including in the video you provided) are crazy larpers and MAGA fanatics, not oath keepers. Oath keepers are typically former military, open carry weapons, and don't look like they just broke out of mom's basement.

I am also saying I haven't seen a video of anyone who looks militarized in either organization, coordinated assault tactics, or armament. Can you cite a source video that demonstrates your statement is even close to true?

I have no idea what equivalence you're accusing me of, you seem to have made up a whole story about what I am saying that isn't there.

Edit: OK, I'm not making that equivalence. My use of the word "adjacent" was deliberate and intentional. That's the point of this whole debate.

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