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Comment by hash872 | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that we know from experience, after 20+ years of the modern Internet, that if you make a 'free speech' drive/repository place that's widely available, it will host the absolute worst of the human race. Then, let's say you personally were in charge of said Free Speech Drive- every day you'd get up and hear about people using it for (legal) jailbait photos, Islamic State recruiting, collaboration between extremist militia groups in various countries (including your own), actual illegal content, and so on. Pretty soon the FBI & CIA start contacting you about some of the actual or borderline illegal content being hosted on Free Speech Drive. Do you want to deal with that?

For one thing, it's easy to say 'well we'd only take down illegal content'. But in practice there isn't such a bright line, there's lots of borderline stuff, authorities could rule something posted on your site illegal after the fact- lots of these situations are up to a prosecutor's judgement call. Would you risk jail to push the boundaries? Coordinating 1/6 wasn't necessarily illegal until- it was.

If Islamic State is recruiting on Free Speech Drive, posting manifestos, encouraging Western residents to actual jihad- you wouldn't take that down? You'd leave it up if it hewed up to the line of being legal- really? Jailbait or non-nude pics of someone's teenage daughter, hosted in the thousands- you wouldn't take that down? It's easy to be an absolutist in an Internet argument, it's much harder when you face the sort of everyday content moderation issues you see in the real world

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Another wrinkle in all of this is that you can use free speech as a form of censorship.

For example, if someone says something you don't like, you can intimidate them into shutting up by, say, threatening to reveal their personal information, such as their legal identity, address of residence, and so on. On certain corners of the Internet, merely dropping dox is good enough to get randos (who won't even be affiliated with you, so +1 to plausible deniability) to harass someone you want to shut up.

A more technical variant of this is DDoS attacks. Instead of trying to intimidate someone into shutting up with threats of stochastic terrorism; you shout over them by sending a bunch of traffic to their site until the server crashes or they run out of money.

So even if you're a hardcore free speech extremist, you still need to embrace some level of "censoring the censors" if you want the Internet to actually be usable.

Agreed. That's not even getting into just pure spam, which from people like Alex Stamos I've heard is 100-1000x the issue that culture war content moderation is. Once you've accepted that a platform can remove the kind of spam that killed MySpace- or doxing or a DDoS attack, as you say- you're already on the (common sense IMO) road to content moderation. Which again, from 25+ years of the modern Internet, we know is just mandatory to have a useable site

That's not censorship though. Threats are what people are forced to do when they cannot censor you, as censorship is much more direct. And DDoS attacks aren't speech.

You've seemingly distinguished DDoS attacks from legitimate traffic. If someone is "flooding the zone" with disinformation with the purpose of making it impossible to discern the truth (i.e. it's not legitimate, good faith discourse), is it not reasonable to draw a parallel with DDoSing?

DDoS traffic doesn't contain any form of "speech" and cannot lead to any. If you insist on drawing dodgy analogies, the correct parallel would be someone taking a truck to a political rally and then playing incredibly loud white noise at volumes that prevent people hearing each other.

As for the idea that people are deliberately flooding the zone with disinformation, I'm afraid I've only seen that coming from the sort of people who use it as an excuse to engage in censorship. There is certainly a massive disinformation problem, but it's not the one they mean when they say that. Consider the experience of this guy, who just "woke up" to the fact that the BBC has been manipulating him:

https://twitter.com/James_Townsend9/status/14156518191628984...

I myself watched a deceptive BBC news report last year in which they presented a social worker as a "dental specialist", a man whose brother died of COVID except the report admitted the cause of death was unconfirmed, and supposedly flooded ECMO unit that turned out to have spare beds available.

> threatening to reveal their personal information, such as their legal identity

What's the problem with that? Bad things on the internet happen more often than not because of the lack of responsibility.

Doxxing has become the primary sin in the Internet religion but it would solve all kind of problems. I am going to commit that sin and say that Doxxing is the solution, you can downvote me and make my comment greyed out and censor me when you argue against censorship.

Instead of deleting content, simply make sure that it's linked to someone who can pay for it if it turn out to be something to be payed for.

The Anonymity argument is only good when you are actively persecuted by a state actor. I don't agree that you deserve anonymity because the public will demonise you. If you hold strong believes that can be met harshly by the general public, you better be ready for the pushback and think of ways to make it accepted. That's how it has been done since ever.

Therefore, when a content is questionable maybe the users should be simply KYC'ed en left alone until a legal take down order is issued. If its illegal(like illegal porn, copyrighted content, terroristic activities etc), go to prison for it. If its BS get your reputation tarnished.

You are so, so wrong here.

Who the hell gets to judge what is 'to be payed for' in this world you're talking about? The mob? No thanks!

In fact the internet actually went to shit the minute it pivoted from 'Dont share your personal info publicly' to 'please give us every last drop of your personal information and share it publicly'

>Who the hell gets to judge what is 'to be payed for' in this world you're talking about

Those who demand the payment, obviously.

Denying the existence of the god or being gay could be something to be payed for in some places and obviously that is horrible thing but anonymity doesn't solve that.

Fighting for a change or leaving that place solves something. Alan Turing himself was subjected to these things in the United Kingdom. A few decades later things changed in the UK and had nothing to do with the anonymity.

Now those who think that gays deserve equal rights demand payment. Again, anonymity it's not helping the anti-gay folks but simply creates low quality discussion and stress and nothing more.

> anonymity doesn't solve that

Yes, it literally does on the internet

What it solved exactly?

Stopped people getting doxxed, hunted down a lynched in countries where you're executed for being a homosexual, while still being able to communicate safely online with other people in the same situation?

How exactly does anonymity not solve that problem?

Well clearly people that think like them will always be in control of things.

That’s the thing people don’t often consider - how will this policy/law/norm work when I’m not the one benefiting from it?

> What's the problem with that?

> If you hold strong believes that can be met harshly by the general public, you better be ready for the pushback and think of ways to make it accepted. That's how it has been done since ever.

The problem is that we're not talking about the general public. Let's say I'm Jewish. Someone on the internet may "doxx" me by finding a group of neonazis and spreading my information there, resulting in me getting threats and hate.

The internet seems to specialize in this sort of "doxxing". Why? My theory is that the internet, even if you have a real name for a handle, still distances and dehumanizes others to the point where it's hard to understand the pain you're causing.

It's hard to walk up and slap someone because you feel the slap and see them wince in pain. It's easy to DM someone on twitter something far more hurtful than a slap, laugh about it with your tribe of neonazis, and forget about it the next day.

I think the solution of your problem is physically securing you against neo nazis instead of hiding your identity. Unless of corse you are writing this from the 1940's and you are in Central Europe. If that's the case, you have a case.

I am writing this on the internet. Physically securing myself does nothing to prevent hatemail, DoSs, and slander.

The ideal that "lies can't hurt you, the truth is stronger than lies" has never seemed to actually work. There are countless fictions are far more prominent than facts, and there are countless people who's online experience has been damaged by a small contingent of dedicated attackers.

The response to "harboring free speech to the extreme results in neonazis digitally harassing Jews" should not be "okay, fine, lock your door at night, free speech is more important than you being harassed".

You get your e-harassment non-anonymously too.

If people believe that it’s wrong for you to be subjected to that, those who do this to you will pay for it.

Anonymity does have uses but it’s powerful and open to misuse. What we see today on the internet is it’s misuse, mostly.

>If people believe that it’s wrong for you to be subjected to that, those who do this to you will pay for it.

Are you referring to vigilante justice or just trusting the system? (What Americans refer to as the "democratic process" and the "justice system")

Because if it's the former, it takes a lot for people to raise a hand against others outside self-defense.

If it's the latter...the system usually fails. And saying "yeah well eventually, once there's enough political pressure, it won't fail" isn't any consolation to those who are now having to spend thousands of dollars on a therapist to recover from the trauma they've suffered (because American health insurance typically has crap mental health coverage).

Neither. I’m referring to humans desire to be liked and accepted. People are much nicer when their reputation is at stake.

Being a total jerk towards you will make them excluded from the society and probably unhireable too.

>People are much nicer when their reputation is at stake.

I think a more accurate statement would be "People are much nicer when their money is at stake." And I don't mean "nicer" as in "genuinely better," it's more "I'll paint on a smile and not say anything bad" (just ask a waiter and they'll have plenty of tales where they had to do this for a tip).

Today, there are plenty of online hangouts for people with all sorts of ideas. This is great since people can easily form communities around a TV show, hobby, etc, but it also enables flat earthers and anti-vaxxers, whose views are often rooted in bigotry (see: All Gas No Brakes video on the flat earth convention [0]). Those communities tend to encourage an "us vs them" mentality and to cut out those who seek to "hold them back" (basically modern cults - alienate yourself from your friends and loved ones, we will provide all the community you need).

In the past, joining groups like the Klan was a much more difficult endeavor (they tended to operate much more in the shadows), and the groups tended to be on the smaller side. Today, it's just a matter of joining a Facebook group about "race realism", "the truth about George Floyd", or whatever, and bam, you have access to thousands of like-minded individuals to build your own personal echo chamber. The traditional tactics of people avoiding those they dislike IRL don't work so well as a form of collective shaming when you've got someone who is terminally online and has tons of people to tell them just how right they are and linking various garbage to reinforce the worldview.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H110vCGvTmM

See, I deeply dislike my speech moderated. Here on HN I am not allowed to advocate certain opinions like "US was wrong on even attempting to ban TikTok", I already got in trouble two times for it and I hope this wont be the 3rd one(I am supposed to pick my words carefully so not to inflict strong feelings, or my account gets rate limited or comments hidden). Also, whenever I express an unpopular opinion or controversial proposition(like the one in this thread) I would get my writings grayed out or collapsed instead of rebutted. That is a censorship by a community. When it comes to the online communities, they are often heavily moderated to push certain agendas which creates bubbles.

Free speech is non existent these days. The places that had were invaded by trolls and dabd actors, go shut down one by one after each incident that cost outrage.

My proposition attempts to solve these issues. Don't censor, never delete or ban anything or anyone unless legally required to do so(copyrighted content or illegal porn), hold responsible instead.

I recognise that there's value of anonymity, what I propose is to limit it to the occasions when there's a value.

Oh BTW, if when I say non-anonymous I don't necessarily mean a connection to the government issued legal identity. Using a pseudonym that is the same everywhere but not connected to a government recognised identity should be good enough most of the times. Throwaway accounts are fine when relevant. One person pushing an agenda through multiple accounts is not fine. There can be mechanisms to allow anonymous posting attached to a real identity where doxxing is an option when the person is determined to be a bad actor.

> The internet seems to specialize in this sort of "doxxing". Why? My theory is that the internet, even if you have a real name for a handle, still distances and dehumanizes others to the point where it's hard to understand the pain you're causing.

That's a good theory. My personal theory is there are a lot of psychopaths and sociopaths in the world, and the internet lets them find each other and form communities that revel in causing misery.

...you cannot possibly be seriously decrying anonymity under the handle "mrtksn". If you're going to argue that, you can do it under your real name.

I do. I'm not saying do like me, I'm proposing a solution that works only if it is a rule for everybody.

So could we please have your real name and home address? Be the change you want to see in the world.

Sure, as soon as everybody else has theirs in open.

> That if you make a 'free speech' drive/repository place that's widely available, it will host the absolute worst of the human race.

That's only due to selection effects. If being open were the default then they'd be diluted among all the other people. ISPs themselves, (older) reddit, 4chan all serve as examples that the people you don't want to talk to can be mostly siloed off to some corner and you can have your own corner where you can have fun. Things only get problematic once you add amplification mechanisms like twitter and facebook feeds or reddit's frontpage.

> For one thing, it's easy to say 'well we'd only take down illegal content'. But in practice there isn't such a bright line, there's lots of borderline stuff, authorities could rule something posted on your site illegal after the fact- lots of these situations are up to a prosecutor's judgement call. Would you risk jail to push the boundaries?

I don't see how that's an issue? They send a court order, you take down the content is a perfectly reasonable default procedure. For some categories of content there already exist specific laws which require takedown on notification without a court order, which exactly depends on jurisdiction of course, in most places that would be at least copyright takedowns and child porn.

> Pretty soon the FBI & CIA start contacting you about some of the actual or borderline illegal content being hosted on Free Speech Drive. Do you want to deal with that?

That's pretty much what telcos have to deal with for example. Supposedly 4chan also gets requests from the FBI every now and then. It may be a nuisance, but not some insurmountable obstacle. For big players this shouldn't be an issue and smaller ones will fly under the radar most of the time anyway.

Also, having stricter policies doesn't make those problems go away. People will still post illegal content, but now in addition to dealing with the FBI you also need to deal with moderation policies, psychiatrists for your traumatized moderators (which you're making see that content) and endusers complaining about your policy covering X but not Y or your policy being inconsistently enforced or whatever.

>ISPs themselves, (older) reddit, 4chan all serve as examples that the people you don't want to talk to can be mostly siloed off to some corner and you can have your own corner where you can have fun. Things only get problematic once you add amplification mechanisms like twitter and facebook feeds or reddit's frontpage.

This isn't true at all, and the reddit report following their ban wave is pretty clear about it; once areas that actively established a standard of violent or racist discourse as acceptable were banned, the volume of objectionable material across the site dropped.

4ch had a similar situation, where the culture on /b/, which was intentionally left as an explicitly unmoderated segment of the site, a silo, actively invaded other boards with violent, racist content.

It isn't that people sit in silos and do nothing otherwise - it's that the silos themselves cause people to believe their content is acceptable, then spread that shit everywhere.

I wrote "mostly siloed" not "perfectly siloed". This is no different from real life where your social sphere is not perfectly insulated from other social spheres. Perfectly siloed also means filter bubbles.

Go on 4chan right now and see how sucessful the attempts to silo racism and nazism to /b/ and /pol/ were sucessful. That is, not at all.

It varies, for example I would say /tg/ is quite peaceful and its inhabitants are kind.

I agree, /tg/ is really not so bad, but on the whole most boards got infested.

Indeed - there's been research that backs up your position, but I'm afraid feels don't care about the facts.

I think this is a really good point, and I think that if anyone is really committed to promoting free-speech-maximalist approach to the web they should be focused on building tools that make is easier for people to host and distribute their own content without relying on a centralized service.

Any business with the technical ability to censor what they host is going to be tempted (and likely pressured by other actors) to take down content that people find objectionable. Removing these "chokepoints" where a small number of people have the ability to engage in mass censorship is key if you want to promote more diverse speech on the web. (Not everyone has this goal!)

a lot of people who say they want an absolute free speech drive/free speech host have never actually worked for a colocation/dedicated server/hosting ISP and seen how the sausage is made.

Is “seeing how the sausage is made” a requirement for having beliefs or opinions on the matter?

Yeah, actually, yeah, sometimes it is.

I think it brings one closer to having "skin in the game"

It's a real problem. It's easier to suppress such content, but the problem is, it just goes elsewhere where it is almost completely unchecked, and it just proliferates in much darker circles as a result, and we have even less exposure as to its true volume.

Maybe there should be more of an effort to reduce peoples' incentive to engage in that sort of behavior in the first place. Why do people join violent extremist groups? Why do people engage with CP? Why do terrorist groups exist? Is it just human nature? Is it a fact that with 7+ billion people we are destined to have millions of people engage in this behavior?

De-platforming horrible material is better than nothing, but it feels like whack-a-mole

No I wouldn't. Google is not necessarily wrong here. The issue is that you cannot easily 'own' a part of the internet, despite much of our life playing out there.

In the real world, if no one wants to host you and your group, the standard answer is to acquire money and buy your own land, your own broadcasting, etc. On the internet, this is much harder for 'normal' people to do, requiring them to use services like Google.

Look, once parler was taken down, I purchased several servers off ebay, rented colocation space, and set up my own services. But I have the technical know-how to actually 'own' part of the internet without depending on anyone else. Most people can't really do this. Thus they depend on Google, et al, who are not selling them something akin to a land title, which is what people feel they ought to have, but rather a service.

The reason people got Mad at AWS for taking down parler is because to the common man's mind, when Parler pays for its "website" (because let's be honest, that's as deep as most people go), it 'owns' it, and it ought to be able to hold title to that thing in perpetuity, like land. People felt upset because they felt that amazon simply seized what they perceived to be the equivalent of land or personal property.

Of course websites are different because they require active serving by a computer, and parler was paying AWS to do that and Amazon decided not to. But that's not how people view it.

To top it off, people are scared because they don't know how to own anything on the internet. Even tech savvy people have no idea how to purchase or lease IP space, set up servers, routes, etc. It's all very confusing.

> once parler was taken down, I purchased several servers off ebay, rented colocation space, and set up my own services. But I have the technical know-how to actually 'own' part of the internet without depending on anyone else.

You said you rented colocation space. You (I assume) are paying a monthly fee for an Internet connection for your servers. You are absolutely depending on others who can be pressured just like AWS was with Parler. Don't kid yourself.

Sure, but the difference is that... if that happens, I own the computers. They can take down my internet connection (although I have multiple colocation centers owned by different people... I guess I could go international if I really want to add extra redundancy), but the computer is mine. The data on the drive is mine. They cannot touch this stuff. If they did, I can accuse them of larceny, and sue for damages.

It's written in the contract that they can take me offline, but they cannot touch my stuff. They can take it off the shelf for non-payment, but there's a period in which they have to retain it and offer it for pick-up.

This is wholly different than Amazon not only taking parler down, but also deleting the data, forcing them to download terabytes in three days, over a weekend.

And you're still right though. i don't actually own any IP space. In fact, IP space 'ownership' is handled by an NGO with little regulation. That's terrible. It ought to be governmental, because owning parts of the internet is an extremely important part of society. Too important to be left in any non-governmental organization's hands.

There are blockchain like systems that could solve this problem in a distributed fashion. There's also urbit. Or we could have proper governmental authority.

Acquire money and buy land sounds like a very large challenge for most people. I'd say about as hard as setting up servers, but probably harder

But it's not hard. Look at the mormon exodus. Look at how minority religions have pooled money to buy large tracts of land and large temples. It's fairly easy for a group of people to do this.

It is still cheaper to set up a server or pay someone to do it, than buy actual land to live on.

> In the real world, if no one wants to host you and your group, the standard answer is to acquire money and buy your own land, your own broadcasting, etc. On the internet, this is much harder for 'normal' people to do, requiring them to use services like Google.

If anything, it's easier since you can own a small plot of land and host a few servers in a building you throw together, instead of having to feed a bunch of people, buy large tracts, build a temple, etc.

Get a metro-e connection, and it doesn't matter how repulsive your legal content is - this isn't some residential connection bringing in <$100/month, they won't drop you until you become a liability (which is basically when the FBI comes knocking) because they make so much money on dedicated lines. (Plus, there's early termination clauses, and the last thing Comcast is going to do is pay that to appease a Twitter mob - what are you gonna do, switch ISPs? This is America, if you're using Comcast, it's probably because the next best thing is DSL.)

And that's just fine. People have the right to be assholes.

And it's your right to think that. But it's my right to think that containing the degree that people can be assholes makes for a better internet and a better world.

In the physical world, if people act badly enough, there will tend to be physical consequences. If someone goes up to a grandmother or little girl or whoever, and starts berating them with vile or threatening speech, they do so at the risk of finding themselves bloodied or worse. Everyone knows this can happen, and unless they are mentally ill, tend to learn at an early age to curtail such behavior behavior before something bad happens to them.

All this has had thousands of years to evolve to the current state, where in most places (at least in the first world), interacting with people in public places is generally pleasant and non-confrontational.

But online, it isn't that way. When there are zero repercussions, things become very unpleasant for all but... well, those assholes.

I get that you prefer such a world, but I don't. How do we work that out? Do we all adopt your way, simply because.... I dunno, I guess because that's what you want?

Oddly enough, there is not a strong business case in allowing the dregs of society to post their garbage all over your servers.

If Twitter adopted 4chan policies, it would be destroyed financially in short order.

Twitter is pretty loose compared to many of the big social sites. They allow nudity and porn, for example, but of course have rules such as marking it as sensitive. Try that on FB.

It is almost like they adopt polices that help their business. Just like brick and mortar businesses have policies on customer conduct and will ban trouble makers that impact their bottom line.

People have a right to be assholes but everyone else has the right to shun them from polite society.

There is no right to be heard, just to speak and not have the government stomp on you for it. No one else is required to listen or host it.

If I were hosting said Free Speech Drive, I would be oblivious to the contents of what my users host on their drives. I would not violate their privacy by spying on them. Their files, not mine.

If your site is widely used and you make it technically impossible for you see or moderate content in any way whatsoever, your site will become a host for real illegal content- not just the borderline examples I gave. As the comment above me notes, even 4chan removes CP. You place yourself in serious legal jeopardy with this decision

4chan acts as a publisher, not just a host.

If I rent out a physical storage unit to you and you use it to run a illegal drug dealing business out of it, would I be liable for that?

I suppose not, which shows that the laws in regards to hosting stuff are off and those should be changed.

There is little legal distinction between a 'publisher' and a 'host', which I understand is part of the pseudolegal gibberish that's part of the 'content moderation is censorship' belief system.

If your physical storage unit is consistently used for illegal drug dealing despite several arrests there, and several warnings from law enforcement, then yes you'd probably be liable for that. If you had significant scale of illegal content on Free Speech Drive, then yes you absolutely do face liability. I guess if you think you have a clever legal argument otherwise, you're free to spend $100-500k on a defense attorney to make that argument after your public arrest, while your name comes up online for 'Illegal Content Provider' for all time

You would end up criminally charged with disseminating CP, violating copyright and more within a month.

It is easy to be an internet tough guy, how about you actually start a simple file server with no restrictions and see how it goes?

The very worst things in history were actually censored. Ever considered this?

Your argument about "worst of humanity" could equally apply to the best of humanity with free speech.

In fact...who are you to decide what is good speech and bad speech?

On my property, I have the final say on what is and is not allowed.

Why should a company not have the same right on their property?

Stores do. Go to a store and cause a ruckus and watch the ban hammer come down on you after the cops drag you away.

How is Google different from Ma and Pa's Widget Store? At least law enforcement is not involved after most types of bannings from social media.

You're saying Google is the same as a small family business?

If that's the case then there's no reasonable discussion to be had here...

It is irrelevant.

A private business is a private business and they can set their rules as they please as long as it doesn't run afoul of laws (ADA in the states for example).

That you think there is some important distinction where Google loses rights that Ma and Pa's store has shows that you have nothing reasonable to offer.

If you want to know what a "free speech zone" is on the internet go spend time on 4chan. I can't imagine anyone spending long periods of time there without harming their mental health... and that's even with some moderation.

I'm convinced the only way to effectively create free speech on the internet is to tie whatever you say online with personal identification. Not because it will prevent people from saying bad things, but because you could use it to ban people from the internet. (for the record, I think that's a horrible idea... but so is free speech on privately owned servers)

> Jailbait or non-nude pics of someone's teenage daughter, hosted in the thousands

Even worse, imagine there was a technology that allowed you to print those jailbait photos by the thousands and drop them in Times Square. That would be far too dangerous.

Imagine if that technology was used to spread misinformation about the Catholic church.

Ban the printing press! It's too dangerous. It should be controlled by the church and the state!

Even better, get rid of religion and intertwine religious righteousness with politics. Then the state can control it all!

> The issue is that we know from experience, after 20+ years of the modern Internet, that if you make a 'free speech' drive/repository place that's widely available, it will host the absolute worst of the human race. Then, let's say you personally were in charge of said Free Speech Drive- every day you'd get up and hear about people using it for (legal) jailbait photos, Islamic State recruiting, collaboration between extremist militia groups in various countries (including your own), actual illegal content, and so on. Pretty soon the FBI & CIA start contacting you about some of the actual or borderline illegal content being hosted on Free Speech Drive. Do you want to deal with that?

Imagine if there was some kind of website or network that existed for years with barely no rules or enforcement, like image boards that only remove CP or a decentralized anonymizing network with even decentralized payment systems. That would be the end of the world.

Right, and I left this out of my already-lengthy comment just so it wasn't a total wall of text. If you can easily host your 'censored' ideas on some other corner of the Internet- what exactly is the problem? Why are you entitled to Google's private property, specifically? You've been asked to leave one establishment, and are free to simply go elsewhere.

We've entered a Golden Age for radical/controversial content- totally unthinkable freedom to say or read anything that would've been technically impossible even in the 80s. It's actually the opposite of censorship- never have people been so free to express any view, thanks to the Internet. I'm not really clear the level of hysteria over Google Drive's policies, specifically- 4chan or another site just like 4chan will always be there

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