Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
For example, "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism."
Now these services have put it out there as policy someone has to define what's violent, hateful or racist in music. Racism? Ok nobody's really going to bat an eye at that disappearing.
Violence and hatred though? As an off again on again heavy metal listener.. almost literally every track could be described as violent or hateful. That's the genre. The same could be said for other genres and their sub-genres. Rap comes to mind. Is Eminem next on the chopping board?
Music was the easy example, there's other examples available for the other services (registrar, DNS, hosting, CDN) as to why making this policy is a bad idea. Now anyone needs to do is convince someone at the corresponding target that a site is similar enough that it should be taken down.
South Park had a two-parter that addressed this exact problem [1][2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Wars_Part_I [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Wars_Part_II
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-sp...
We seem to keep forgetting what "Freedom of Speech" means.
[Update: Added Chomsky quote]
"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky
"Because internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world."
Can I refused to make a wedding cake for a gay marriage? You can always go somewhere else.
- Noam Chomsky
I do not believe nazi's or any other group have any right to promote hate and violence against others.
> right to promote
You just did. Promotion is speech.
The issue of freedom of speech when it relates to businesses is a pretty good hypocrisy litmus test. Last year the Left was outraged when a business refused service based on moral grounds, while the Right sided with the business, and we have the opposite in this case.
Edit: so it's not quite comparable in this way.
As a side note, the Bakery case is being looked at by the Supreme Court, in terms of whether or not you can force an artist to make something they don't want to.
Cite please, I genuinely curious.
This difference isn't hard to understand.
It would be funny if in another 1000 years we'll all agree that the current US popular leftist morals turned out to be the right ones: It's wrong to discriminate against someone because of their race, religion, sex, or sexual preferences (as long as it's one of a few predefined types) but it's right to discriminate against someone because of their political views, alternative sexuality (outside the list of predefined types), ugliness, height, location of birth, or anything else you don't like. These classifications are so arbitrary and transient, why does anyone stand by them so vehemently? When they're old they might become the new racist uncle - hating the wrong people that the next couple of generations decide shouldn't be hated anymore.
Honestly, that's what's got me concerned. Political mores are changing so fast and so constantly, and people are being so black-and-white about them, that it seems like the only "acceptable" position to some people is getting pretty close to a full-throated condemnation of everything and everyone that happened before they were born.
If it wasn't so easy to fail the purity tests, maybe fewer people would become Nazis (either out of ostracization or to troll purity the testers).
This wouldn't be a problem without the Citizens United ruling. Corporations should not be considered people, especially when doing so comes to the harm of real people.
"WARNING/GUARANTEE: This album contains material which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress. In some socially retarded areas, religious fanatics and ultra-conservative political organizations violate your First Ammendment Rights by attempting to censor rock & roll albums. We feel that this is un-Constitutional and un-American. As an alternative to these government-supported programs (designed to keep you docile and ignorant). Barking Pumpkin is pleased to provide stimulating digital audio entertainment for those of you who have outgrown the ordinary. The language and concepts contained herein are GUARANTEED NOT TO CAUSE ETERNAL TORMENT IN THE PLACE WHERE THE GUY WITH THE HORNS AND POINTED STICK CONDUCTS HIS BUSINESS. This guarantee is as real as the threats of ther video fundamentalists who use attacks on rock music in their attempt to transform America into a nation of check-mailing nincompoops (in the name of Jesus Christ). If there is a hell, its fires wait for them, not us."
I enjoy some of these bands and would not want them censored. Just as I would not want Shakespeare plays to be censored either.
Keep downloading your music and your movies. You will never be able to trust your streaming services.
Similar for incenting violence and "Pumped up kicks".
Edit: They could also add misogyny to the list and wipe out large swaths of entire music genres :)
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bs-ed-anthem-letter...
This seems like, basically, all of the rap I grew up listening to in the 90s could be arbitrarily censored here.
"Big dicks in ya mouth is bad for your health" comes to mind, alongside NWA's "Fuck the Police", and even songs by the relatively higher-minded Public Enemy could be construed as racist, or incitations to violence -- if one were predisposed to a puritanical cleansing of our media. More obviously, rap from musicians like Immortal Technique, The Geto Boys, Cypress Hill are just begging to be censored under such criteria.
Of course, this is Google we're talking about, and they control much more than music and videos. It's not a big jump from determining the Wu-Tang Clan to be too controversial to ruminating over whether or not all those casual mentions of the word 'nigger' in Mark Twain's works is appropriate.
Sadly, we appear to be living in interesting times.
I may be the same as you only I was a 90s rap kid, the entire directory of music I have collected since the 00s could be considered violent and hateful.
Not arguing one way or the other but "music streaming services" is not too different from many other services which people expect to police content.
Perhaps considering whether the company holds a monopoly or near-monopoly on that media gateway is relevant.
Bear too in mind they are removing content. Before this blew up in the media, did they have a problem hosting the stuff they're now removing?
I'm not convinced there's an argument that the right of a political cause to have its music distributed by a particular company trumps the right of a company not to distribute it or the right of the public to pressure the company into not distributing it.
If one is to impose upon on the freedom of actions of media distributors or the potentially-boycotting public (I'm not sure the latter is even possible), there had better be something pretty amazingly special about the cause that means their right to be heard trumps others' rights not to be the amplifier. I'm not sure any remotely compelling argument exists for neo-Naziism being a cause deserving of such special privileges or music distribution services being the sort of thing one should have an inalienable right to.
Just as I think that songs should be legally free to espouse racism, but that they shouldn't espouse racism.
You've got this all backwards. We should be most concerned about censorship of political beliefs, however wrongheaded they are.
'Race nationalism' is certainly political. I suspect most people would associate that with 'racism' in at least some way.
Take "music that incites racism" (what do you put into Pandora to get that genre?) for example. If you have users listening to it (because before Charlottesville you thought it was okay!) and you remove it telling them their music is basically banned aren't those users just going to listen to it someplace else and feel more empowered by its message?
The more persecuted these groups feel online, the more justified they will feel in their real-world actions.
I would love to see everyone stand up and deplore gang violence with the same aggressiveness considering people are dying in cities daily.
There is also the fact that all these companies already have arbitrary censorship in place, so this isn't an argument about the principles: that one is long lost. This is an argument about the existing excemption racism has.
A bit off topic but how many bytes are spent on prefaces like this on responses to this topic?
I assume that the vast majority of people on the planet don't support Nazis or anything related. I find it interesting that any discussion of them has to include that line lest the speaker/writer be labeled as one (which happens quite a bit anyway but that's a different topic).
Now imagine if it was filled with accusations of being a racist, I'd probably just be curled up in a ball under my desk waiting for the fallout to end.
What I meant was that the meaning of terms like "white supremacist" and "racist" has changed dramatically in recent years. To the point where it's very difficult to speak clearly about these types of things.
As long as we keep up this attitude, we're going to continue - and deepen our political divides.
I'm from South Carolina and after seeing all of the conflicting historical information on the internet since the Dylan Roof shooting, I decided to pick up a bunch of books on the subject from both sides. My main driving force was a strong belief that people are inherently good and I had a really hard time believing that all of my ancestors were the evil scum of the earth portrayed in assorted narratives.
As it turns out, there's some critical details left out and now that I understand the build up to the war better I can at least rest easier. It's virtually impossible to have a conversation about though.
Sure there were economic factors at play and those are interesting in their own right, but in the south the biggest thing that people fail to understand is the element of fear. I don't want to do a historic nose dive, but the 3 things you can read about to understand that better are The Haitian Massacre of 1804, John Brown, and The Cherokee Declaration of Causes.
Of those three, only John Brown is mentioned on the Wikipedia timeline. The other two provide context.
It's fascinating to read about though.
What I've found is the easiest way to find where there are holes that need to be explored is just by asking "Why?" anytime you hear of an event. If you're given history and just told, "this happened, then this happened..." the quickest way to get an answer to something is to simply ask "Why did they do that?"
That simple question will point you in the right direction more often than not. When you start answering enough of those questions, everything that happened makes a lot more sense.
Although it's popular to bash "there's no single truth" people, the more and more I look into history, the more I think that's true. Everyone has a very complicated history which is a product of what did or even didn't happen. Which results in totally different point of views and everybody see truth differently. It's truly fascinating to see how different timelines merge and separate and the today's politics and policies they cause.
While well some people might put disclaimers on everything others are simply giving up. This started during the Trump campaign where everybody was called racist. The same with anti-semitism, especially against the current president who has a Jewish daughter. When people sling these around just as general insults and as a way to say you're wrong, then they lose their power.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/intense-emotions-and-st...
It is why I've argued that the current toxic atmosphere is adding to the problem.
I thought that was profound, but I struggle to fit overuse of the word Nazi online into the same framework, indeed I find it much easier to fit the kind of opinions and behavior that people might refer to as 'Nazi'-like into this framework:
https://lakesideconnect.com/anger-and-violence/the-link-betw...
"Gilligan notes literally dozens of synonyms for shame: feelings of being slighted, insulted, disrespected, dishonored, disgraced, disdained, slandered, treated with contempt, ridiculed, teased, taunted, mocked, rejected, defeated, subjected to indignity; or, experiencing feelings of being weak, ugly, inadequate, incompetent, a failure, losing face; and being treated as if one were insignificant or worthless.
Based on his research and other expert opinions, Gilligan concludes that “the most potent stimulus of aggression and violence, and the one that is most reliable in eliciting this response is not the frustration per se, but rather, insult and humiliation (page 32).” In other words, the most effective, and often the only way, to provoke someone to become violent is to insult them."
That got me accused of being a sympathizer.
We all have to be careful to pay our tributes, or we'll be ostracized. Can you think of any other reason for such widespread repetition of these useless words?
(And of course I must, too. I'm speaking here from a completely abstract standpoint which shouldn't be construed as support for neo-nazis or anything vaguely like them.)
It's a bit more than that. Trump has had no problem condemning Antifa thugs and violent radical Islamists, so it is noteworthy when he equivocates on violent white supremacists, especially when some of them are claiming that he supports them.
Also they are used to how politicians typically do whatever necessary to appease their constituents till the horse is dead. Not saying this is bad, but that's the expectation and one he doesn't follow.
I also think he's not attuned to people's sensitivity toward race.
I said no new taxes. No new taxes. No taxes. I won't raise taxes. Taxes will not be raised. Over and over and over and over.
Not being a pol hurts him here in that he does not get that aspect of governing.
You don't just do what you think is right, you have to continuously signal your intention, otherwise your intention is suspect.
This is par for the course for Trump, who (only when under extreme political pressure from his own party) will belatedly condemn right-wing extremists with one corner of his mouth, but give them a verbal wink with the other.
(Corollary: arguing for the removal doesn't make you a violent Antifa Communist.)
Condoleeza Rice, an African American woman with political clout and experience, has argued we should keep the statues. Others have made a strong case for removing statues of people who committed treason.
But whatever your view, this should be done legally and peacefully. No mobs tearing down statues, no pitchfork-wielding defense of statues. We live in a democracy. Exercise it.
President Trump equates the alt-right racists and the Antifa violent Communists for political purposes. President Obama equated Israelis and Palestinian terrorists for political purposes[0].
People find it hard to condemn violence when their side is doing it; they point out wrongs in the other side to soften or excuse their side's violence.
[0]: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/227669/re-cairo-speech...
So while the "freedom to speak, whatever" side has a point, they're also being naive.
Besides - You think the other side is having a conversation in the first place?
No they are not. They're busy making in roads and winning audiences.
People thinking this is a discussion are under a mistaken impression.
It's a popularity contest. Has been for decades.
It's over.
You can't win a propaganda and disinformation war with polite conversation.
I'm not, I just think it opens up some interesting discussion as to what we can or can't discriminate against.
I'm glad there's a place like Hacker News where people who disagree can still speak to one another civilly.
Not that HN karma matters, but it's very well possible that that is already going on.
The only civic discussion forum I know of is the extropy chat email list.
> But what's the end game? Do service providers have to morally support those who they provide service to? Because that's how things are looking.
And what do you know. That's exactly what's happening.
Apparently the concept that providing your services to Nazi's could be thought of as evil totally escaped their thoughts.
It seems like quite a lot of people have deeply internalized the opinion that "Free Speech" is an unalloyed good, and are confused by anyone who sees this as a matter of shades of gray.
I'd argue, the people looking at things in black and white are the ones' being ridiculous here. Is child porn free speech? Is a direct threat free speech? Is copyright infringment? etc. No matter how hardcore a free speech advocate you find, there's going to be a line for them. But apparently anyone who draws their line one step to the side of that is evil and/or stupid because that is the point where the slippery slope starts, conveniently just to the side of their own line, which is on firm and solid ground.
Not accidentally letting a few slip through, not being overwhelmed by scale and doing a crappy job, but as a point of principle not following the rules you are trying to enforce.
free speech must be absolute, so yes, in this case it is black and white, sorry you don't see it that way.
Edit: Can't even post now. Saying this place is "no better than Reddit" may actually be a little insulting to Reddit.
There it is again. Wow, this is a really interesting social phenomenon we're seeing.
Apparently the vast majority of people on the planet aren't enough to stop fascists from threatening, beating, and murdering people.
In order to actually stop people from doing those things, society would have to give up a lot of freedom to prevention through force ("stopping"). In a free society, the focus is usually on prevention through dissuasion (influence) or through reactive means (punishment, rehabilitation).
What are your thoughts on how society could physically prevent these actions while maintaining freedom for all its citizens ?
If not, I believe taking it down would do more harm than good.
Apparently the post that identified some of the bands is here: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/08/14/white-supremacis... Googling a few, they do seem to be strictly "national socialist" / white nationalism oriented bands.
The trouble is, this easily can lead to a very slippery slope on one hand, and charges of "double standards" on the other.
There is a lot of music that directly depicts violence (hip hop and metal in particular are loaded with violent imagery). In most cases, the people making it are not directly involved in said violence. Sometimes, the violent imagery is actually there for anti-violent reasons, even.
That being said, there is also some music is made by people with actual criminal histories and/or nasty opinions. This includes well known figures in genres such as black metal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes) and hip-hop (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Shmurda). Even on simple "racism", you'd definitely be excluding certain music from a well known country musician (the infamous, IMHO mostly cringe-worthy, "underground" albums from David Allan Coe.)
The few bits of music I've heard that trade heavily in white nationalism is very poor quality -- which of course seems quite the likely outcome to me. Such music is atypically metal or punk, genres which are considerably influenced by the blues. Most of the best musicians keep an open mind to all sounds; rock and roll (which historically was a fusion of "hillbilly music" and R&B) doubly so.
So I think removing these obscure white nationalist bands does more harm and good. Such makes them "more underground" and probably more appealing to those "rebelling" for whatever reason. In contrast, keeping the music around lets most people see just how awful and cringe-worthy these type of bands typically are.
Sadly that is a bold assumption that the facts do not necessarily support.
Music is up to interpretation. One of my favorite songs is Sublime's April 29th, 1992. You could easily say it incites violence, glorifies looting and rioting, and should be removed. But my interpretation of the song makes me think it's more about understanding the mindset of the people who were looting and rioting, and not condoning the violence.
How could anyone impartially decide what should and shouldn't be published?
By the same token they would need to remove all the content that promotes communism in multiple countries.
In my country it's illegal as is the case with nazism.
I don't hold much hope Google, Spotify etc. would actually walk that road.
In the United States, it seems the Communist Party might be technically banned (although it exists): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954
Poland seems to ban "promotion of .. communist .. ideology", and Romania seems to ban "totalitarian .. actions of a communist .. nature". Countries that seem to ban communist symbols include Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. Countries that previously passed similar laws include Moldova, Czechoslovakia (1991), Poland, and Hungary.
Apparently, some countries like Albania, Czechia, Germany, Italy, and Slovakia ban "totalitarian ideology".
There are probably more bans worldwide.
Thanks to progressivism we can finally judge people by the content of their character.
(/s, Let's face it, everyone can see this is politically motivated and the demand for empathy and charity only ever goes one way. Apparently it's ok to set cars on fire and smash people's heads in for political reasons, just as long as you loudly explain that you're _against_ fascism and nazis while doing so.)
We need a real balance, otherwise, we are pushing the world towards the war.
Not so long ago, less than 50 years ago, there was little to no distinction between LGBTQ people and paedophiles. They were one and the same (look up the term nonce, British slang used against both LGBTQ people and sex offenders for one example, or the case of Alan Turing for another).
Some very brave people fought against the perceived wisdom of the majority, even when through association alone they would be considered to be paedophile supporters themselves. These rights for LGBTQ people are still being fought around the world today. People died over this fight. People are still dying over this fight.
I understand the desire to limit hurtful speech, but in doing so we hand over the power to set limits to an arbiter. An arbiter who may feel that today's moral majority view outweighs that of others.
What you feel today about people of colour, about LGBTQ people, others may feel about animal rights, human genetic engineering and AI rights in the future amongst others. If you limit the boundaries of free expression it is no longer free. You are taking those rights away from those seeking to fight injustice in the future.
It's not hard to hate Nazis. It's harder to see the consequences of our actions through the red mist. The British Government has the official position that censoring the Internet is something that must be done. Even the EU is starting to think this could be a good thing. If you think this stops with Naziism, then you're wrong. If you think this won't come to America, you're wrong.
The other argument is that if Google and co have never ever bowed to political pressure to remove something except as required by law, that gives them a great argument to push back against some of the less progressive governments which they must work with. If Assad starts demanding that internet companies in Syria ban his political opponents, then Google could reply "we didn't even ban Nazis, why the hell would you expect us to ban anyone for you?"
And in case this all seems hypothetical, remember that the current US government recently requested all visitor logs for an anti-Trump website.
Nazis should be able to use public utilities, but the thing is, if we decide Google is a public utility, then so should communists, pornographers, drug dealers, criminal gangs, et al. And in fact, great, let's do that! Let's pass those statutes, let's break up the internet monopolies, let's decentralize and encrypt everything we can, all the time.
But let's also make sure that up until the very moment those statutes pass, we're not giving Nazis special favors.
(I know, I know, but God forbid we all admit when we really do have common goals?)
You should count the number of bombings of abortion clinics over the last decade or two, count the number of laws restricting access to abortion in the last 5, and then decide whether inaction today will prevent action tomorrow.
What is the causal relationship of this argument? If I condemn nazis today, and say the nazis come into power, does my past action magically make it easier for nazis in power to be, well nazis? If I don't stand against nazis today and they come into power, will that magically shield me? Rhetorical consistency has no physical power.
> Google could reply "we didn't even ban Nazis, why the hell would you expect us to ban anyone for you?"
Or they could just do it anyway. Being rhetorically consistent has never been a requirement for taking actual action. Just remember that the United States government has already colluded with business leaders to suppress political beliefs [1]. After the Fowley Square Trial, the United States government actually disbarred and jailed any attorney who defended the communists they charged. They then passed a law forbidding picketing of courthouses. The ACLU supported that law.
Pandora's box has already been opened. It's always really funny how it's the far right who have their rights vociferously defended by centrists but those very same centrists always stood by while communists were rounded up and exterminated. By the way, this happened too in Germany. All of the people who publicly opposed the Nazis before they came into power were condemned with the same exact centrist "both sides are wrong" rhetoric we hear today.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. These very exact arguments were being made in the 1930's. They were being made back in the days of Usenet, BBS and vBulletin forums. They will be made so long as there exist people who want to maintain some abstract virtue at the cost of other peoples' material safety. So long as someone is not directly materially threatened by the white nationalist political program, they will indefinitely stave off any concrete opposition to that program.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_Communist_...
Ideological consistency and abstract virtue are things for the far-left/right almost by definition. If a centrist is protesting or standing around doing nothing it's for another reason. That might span from "actually believes it protects peoples' material safety better" to "is completely clueless" or "doesn't want to speak up and face extermination themselves", etc. You're basically calling it virtue signalling but that is often just a way to dismiss someone's authentic concerns or motivation.
The far right has had a persecution complex for decades. It is a self sustaining social phenomenon. Again, there's this extravagant counterfactual claim that if no one materially opposed the nazis, the nazis wouldn't be as nazi as they are, which is such an extraordinary claim that it requires extraordinary evidence which is never provided. It is always stated blithely as some sort of obvious truth.
Nazis have already validated their persecution complexes. They are already fully invested in it. That's what got them to dress up as nazis and march about being a nazi and screaming "jews will not replace us". You're literally just repeating the same argument I called into question as if you have supported it with any new facts.
> Ideological consistency and abstract virtue are things for the far-left/right almost by definition.
Oh god please read a history book [1] [2]. Ideological inconsistency and irrationality are hallmarks of fascism. Both Nazis in Germany and Fascists in Italy constantly changed their beliefs and allegiances. They never at any particular moment had a cogent internally consistent ideology let alone an externally consistent one. The only predictable thing about fascism is it's brutality once it has triumphed over those who oppose it. And, historically speaking (please read a book), that triumph occurs because centrists actively sabotage their opponents and stand aside while they entrench their power.
Like, you literally don't know what you're talking about. That is what's so absolutely frustrating about centrists. They presume that they know either by osmosis, pop history, or the propagandistic pseudo-history that's taught in secondary school how these political movements happen. You actually don't know how fascism works but the ideological structure of the west has put it in your mind that you do know, and you know exactly how to combat it, and that so happens to be milquetoast support for vague principles and the status quo.
It's so frustrating because it's so easy to just pick up a decent secondary source and actually gain a detailed, coherent view of the early 20th century which A) provides a real, actual, empirical model for the behavior of fascism and how it was resisted; and B) a parallel history that can be checked to see what is the same and what is different about material conditions this time around.
Now you might want to completely dismiss me because of my combative tone that clearly confirms to yourself what you already knew: that those damned people who hold to a political position outside the Overton window are a bunch of fatuous lunatics who should be dismissed. But at least look at these books that are written by extremely reputable and rigorous scholars. On many things I think it is obnoxious to dismiss a discussion with a demand that the other be more educated, but on this particular subject I need to make my position clear. I'm only aggressive about this because I think it's the most important conversation of our generation and currently it is an exact repeat of the conversation that led up to the very worst terror in human history. The only ingredient missing that really propelled the Nazis rise to power (they languished for about a decade before they really started picking up steam) is a global economic crisis. I wonder when the next one will come?
As an example of how much events today rhyme with events then, Lügenpresse [3].
[1] Robert Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism. Relatively recent book with universal acclaim from all across the political spectrum, from socialists, liberals, and conservatives.
https://libcom.org/files/Robert%20O.%20Paxton-The%20Anatomy%...
[2] Hanah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism. It's an older book and it has a perspective attractive to centrists that tries to establish common patterns between Stalinism and fascism. That approach is considered more tenuous these days but it's still good scholarship for its historical account of, for example the development of biological racism at the time. Biggest downside is that she does not really consider economic or technological factors as much.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_press
[4] Bonus link. Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism. Short essay but deep. I like to read it from time to time. Fascism is a paradoxically subtle and brutal thing. Umberto's essay really grasps that.
However, when entities like Google, Apple, FB have such impact on the population and spread of information, they can become the "great firewall".
This is very dangerous and google should not be in the position to become the thought police.
I'm 99.99% certain if freedom of speech was formulated today, it would include private companies as well.
Freedom of speech already does. Unfortunately Americans tend to conflate the broad concept with the US First Amendment.
There were cases where people lost their jobs for their extracurricular legal activities that were hate speech according to someone. Like in US, private companies seem to give in much quicker than government that tries to follow the law to the letter.
Seriously, conservatives in America want to have their cake and eat it too. "We meant freedom for corporations-as-people but only when it helps us".
For the record, I'm not American. I grew up in ex-USSR country that was just recovering from total censorship. What is going on today in the world is sickening me. A lot of rhetoric in the West is too similar to USSR craziness. I'll be happy to be offended and keep my right to offend you. The other way ain't pretty.
Amazon blacklists people who abuse their service, like return policy. They are not breaking the laws, but blocking these bad customers is not only a moral choice but also a rational one, since it protects the sellers and other customers. Likewise, if you are making a scene in a private space, if it disturbs the usual operation, the owner should have the right to kick you out, because you are damaging their business.
So I say otherwise, any private business owner should have the right to refuse offering their service to people who they consider harmful to their interests.
Google could argue, hosting those hateful content draw negative attention from the media which tarnish their image thus hurt their business interests.
The one and only problem is, Google is too big and too powerful, their decision carries significant impact which should not be taken lightly.
I'm pretty sure abuse of return policy is covered by some kind of law. On the other hand, blacklisting customers who just use advertised return policy to it's full extent is not moral either. False advertisement is breaking of the law too.
More powerful companies (like Google) need to constrained in ways that less powerful companies (like Joe's Cake Shop) don't.
Citation? This seems like a clumsy attempt to bash the south. Considering that the two largest cases for violating public accommodation laws hail from Oregon (Sweet Cakes) and Colorado (Masterpiece), with other cases from Las Vegas (Walmart) and Ohio (Take the Cake), it seems ... off.
In the real world, freedom of speech is generally free enough as it is, and in the example above, is in tension with my right to freedom of association. Yes, the Nazis are allowed to yell at me, just as I'm allowed to distance myself from them. If I own property, I can go one step further by going home and locking the door.
I don't like Nazis, but Google's censorship here is giving me pause. Yes, of course they have every right to refuse to do business with whomever they like. Thankfully, so do I. If I don't care for Google's censorship, I'm free to use Spotify, or Pandora, or whatever other company (hopefully) makes a principled stand against censorship.
At the end of the day, it's their house, and if they want to lock the door to keep Nazis out, I can't imagine any fair world that would force them to open those doors.
If Nazis are such a big problem, secret service and whatnot should start looking into them. It's not a job of private company to enforce it's own point-of-view on the society. Wether it's correct not, but a private company cannot hold a a fair trial. And censorship without one is just wrong. I'd rather have a pissed off bakery serving gay cakes and coffeeshop serving nazi teaparty than letting a private company apply censorship.
> I'd rather have a pissed off bakery serving gay cakes and coffeeshop serving nazi teaparty than letting a private company apply censorship.
I'd rather have bigoted companies free to be bigots, so that at least I could know who they are, and to avoid patronizing their business at all costs. The alternative is that they are forced to pretend to be not-bigots, I give them my money, and then they donate it to bigoted charities.
I'm not talking about making everybody pretend to be not who they are. That's totally fine by me. If a bakery wants to fly a Nazi flag - so be it. But if gay couple wants a selfie drinking smoothies by said flag - that's fine.
So the question is, at what threshold (of size, competitors, etc) should free speech move from the corporation's policy to decide to the customers'? At one end of the spectrum, we've got corner stores, where there are a million options, and policy is decided by whoever's working at the time; on the reverse side, there are governments, who must inherently be monopolies, with policy decided by the voters. Google, cloudflare, godaddy, all fall somewhere in between, with the concern being that they fall too close to government in terms of power, while decisions remain made by internal managers, without user accountability.
I think that something like ifps.io may partially solve this issue as the Nazis could host their own site and individual nazis could provide storage and bandwith to keep it online.
I think the concern is, what if Google and Facebook can be thought of as essentially being the internet. It's certainly true that the internet has gotten far less decentralized in the past decade. Google essentially has a monopoly on how people find information.
I’ve heard “freedom of speech” defined as a natural right, but this idea is the most unnatural way for people to act.
Point in case - people bringing up the gay cake in mentioning of google memogate.
Is a bus company right to refuse service to protesters going to a protest? Can a train company cancel trains specifically on a day of event they don't like for some reason? Can cellphone carrier shut down service for people they don't like for some reason? Can gas station refuse selling gas to skinheads on a roadtrip? What if they're just going to work on a regular workday?
1. Protected classes are defined by a history of prejudicial treatment and blocked access to essential services, and they exist as a class of people defined by biological markers. So you can control being black or being gay, and you can’t access any bus service or use the same water fountain anywhere. This is very different than holding an opinion, and not being serviced by an add-on provider. 2. There are great differences between being denied a voice and being denied an amplification platform for that voice. We never mandated that newspapers print every letter to the editor, or even provide equal time to classes of opinions (although that did happen in a natural way).
If you tried to get a cake plastered with swastikas, that would not be protected free speech and could be denied service. You have to go find a Nazi baker or append the speech yourself. This is very different from being black and you can not get any cake from any baker, and they’ll know too, because you can’t exactly hide the fact that you’re black.
No, that's totally wrong. Religion is a protected class in many cases.
Christians have enough of hard time for their believes in quite a few places. Why are they less protected than gays? Why is their freedom of speech is worth less than gays?
One could argue that gay cake is not biologically defined marker. For example, by christian believe, marriage is to make babies. Gays can't make babies. Thus gay marriage is not biologically even possible.
Then we step into another issue. Frequently "protected class" is taken as free pass to do anything rather than being protected for their specific attribute. For example, people being called racists for rightfully calling out black person for his bad behaviour.
We see this in the offline world, ADA compliance can be expensive, but is a cost of doing business. Providing services to someone you find morally repugnant can be emotionally expensive, but you may not be able to legally refuse them service, while servicing others. It's not clear to me why it's ok to pick and choose customers because of their (terrible) political beliefs, offline or online. If their content is illegal, let a court decide that and issue an order requiring it to be taken down. The domain registration, and associated NS records are unlikely to be illegal.
Self determination is a very core part of what I, an outsider, see as American-ism. But self determination only seems to apply to government interference, not private.
For example, in the US organisations like HOAs (Homeowners Associations) and employers are allowed to encroach on what from my perspective I consider personal freedoms, but people accept it in the US because they're non-governmental in origin.
Here in Europe, freedom is freedom. It is irrelevant who is telling you you cannot paint your home orange be it local government, a private entity, or your next door neighbour. But in the US freedom only applies to government, private entities are allowed to violate people however they want under the guise of "choice."
What I've found in my life is that choice is a perk of the wealthy. The poor often lack choice.
I'm a pro-government liberal who is extremely wary of the power of global corporations, but I still take some solace in what this says about our system.
But since we've basically given up on stopping monopolies and mega-mergers the companies and now so big and control so many things they have power without competition to keep it in check.
That's been the case before, it's not a great thing. In the late 18th and early 19th century, a few magnates were arguably more powerful than the US government. They certainly ran the US government. A lot of the protections we have today are a response to that time period
United Fruit Company in Guatemala, Shell Oil in Nigeria, BP in Iran... there are countless examples of corporations paying off people to do their dirty work for them
A democracy is structured to be open and conflict is embedded to force decision-making by consensus and compromise.
Corporations are structured to be closed, authoritarian structures.
We're lucky there isn't much history of corporations having state-like scale + monopoly on legitimate violence. Super lucky.
If it has the latter, it is, by definition, the State. Irrespective of scale (and state-like scale is meaningless.)
The East India Company, Pinkerton Investigations...
What did you think my point was, I'm interested to see how I could be more clear in the future.
Like the right of free speech? Or free initiative, by blocking money transfer?
The difference isn't that big anymore, and that is the problem.
[0] https://ipfs.io/
As strange as it is, who else but a huge powerful tech company could do that?
1. A Reasonable Position is expressed, in this case - 'Nazi's are very bad'. The Reasonable Position often involves an Enemy that must be stopped. Most reasonable people will agree with the Reasonable Position.
2. The Reasonable Position becomes the overriding factor in any situation that involves it. All other factors and considerations are dwarfed by it and forgotten.
3. Because the Reasonable Position comes to dominate the thinking of the Extremist - who often means well - they come to believe one can only ever be for or against the Reasonable Position. There is no room for moderate positions that try to balance the Reasonable Position with other important considerations and values - in this case, freedom of speech.
4. In order to show support for the Reasonable Position, third parties are forced to action in accordance with the world view of the Extremist. If they try to balance other considerations against the Reasonable Position, they are seen by the Extremist as sympathizing with the Enemy.
5. The fervor of extremism charges through society, trampling on other values and considerations.
My last post on Reddit was simply saying that dehumanising people and denouncing pacifists as sympathisers only creates further radicalisation. Currently at -350 points as it's clearly a controversial statement.
And Google is not that far off. They have a monopoly in at least one market and the EU has already found them guilty of anti-competitive practices. The US government has not brought an anti-trust case against Google, and you could argue it's failing to do its job--the ties between Google and the US government run disturbingly deep, with Google allegedly serving as an arm of US foreign policy in many ways: https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
Either way, the most important point is simply that monopolies are dangerous. And the best solution is to weaken them, whether through regulatory action, consumers voting with their feet, or other companies introducing competition. I think the most interesting project in this space is Searx, which allows me to aggregate results from Google and other search engines, and flip a switch to turn each engine on or off. Searx is a great step in the direction of breaking Google's monopoly and thus hindering its ability to severely limit free speech. https://github.com/asciimoo/searx
(I assume GoDaddy only pulled their DNS service, Daily Storm still owns the domain. If this is wrong please correct me)
I agree that a private company does not have to host any neo-nazi materials (or anything really, for that matter). I would do the same if it was my company and I would rather work with such a company as a customer.
"I think despicable people have a right to talk, but I'd rather they be forced to string together two tin cans than be able to own cellphones or audio amplification equipment."
"I think despicable people have a right to eat, but I'd rather they be forced to dig roots and vegetables out of the ground than be able to buy processed foods from a supermarket."
Where is that line, exactly? And what is the rationale for drawing it there?
>"I think despicable people have a right to eat, but I'd rather they be forced to dig roots and vegetables out of the ground than be able to buy processed foods from a supermarket."
OH you mean like segregation that the US is barely just getting away from. I had grade school teachers that told me about their experiences with segregation. We can't even figure out how to be nice enough to eachother to make cakes for gays in 2017. http://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/26/us-supreme-court-colora...
Businesses are not obligated to serve anyone, and it goes both ways and maybe the people making the choices not to do business with customers who have different opinions, sexual orientations, or skin colors should experience what it is like that it goes both ways.
Maybe it's just me but I think enabling hate-speech and bigotry is much worse than failing to maintain 100% neutrality.
There's nothing stopping these maniacs from starting their own intermediaries to host the content(trash) they want to peddle.
Why couldn't you say the same about net neutrality?
Whatever you permit to be used against your opponents is certain to be used against your friends as well.
1) Google, Facebook, Twitter, CloudFlare, GoDaddy, and a few other actors ban a certain flavor of hate speech.
2) The pro-hate-speech crowd tries to start their own "Facebook for white nationalism" but can't, because they don't have "premium" peering arrangements with all the eyeball ISPs.
3) There is no step 3, it's game over.
Starting your own ISP can require MASSIVE capital investment if you want to have a hope of competing and take years. There's a reason there are only a handful of really competitive ISPs in the US.
Changing DNS hosts is a mild inconvenience. They can find someone who will host their records. Google shouldn't be forced to do it.
But if I don't like the only ISP in my town blocking some stuff I don't the kind of money Google had to waste to start a new ISP for me and others in my town.
Please don't let that happen in America. Making up hate or blasphemy reasons is very easy.
However, you create a path for the next person to use the same argument to censor other speech. Maybe they'll be riots over the next war involving the US and it'll be for "the good of society, to prevent violence" and it'll get censored as well.
Anyway, we've had this sort of thing in America, but we've probably largely forgotten the history (Lady Chatterly's Lover, Fanny Hill, and so on) and haven't really paid attention to the small-scale occurrences that are still ongoing (e.g. public school libraries are often pressured to remove "controversial" books).
Yes, there are concerns about concentrated, oligopolistic markets, but those are solved by breaking up the major players -- not by legislating some requirement of fair service for literal swastika-waving, Roman-saluting Nazis.
People are not entitled to claim freedom of speech for posting Nazi trash on their own private website, and then claim freedom of speech from other private entities refusing to do business with them. Everyone has a negative right to express Nazi views. Nobody has a positive entitlement to demand material resources from private actors to express Nazi views.
The disgusting thing here is that, for many years, if we on the Left pushed for a universal basic income, or for single-payer health-care, we would have the difference between positive and negative freedoms kindly explained to us by the political center and Right. Now a bunch of (again) literal Nazis have a sad, and that we have to quietly listen to the center and Right tell us there's no more distinction, that Nazis have a positive entitlement to be Nazis? It's completely disingenuous!
Or should the Communist Party file a lawsuit to demand a stipend from tech companies for spreading communism?
Communist Control Act, 50 U.S. Code § 841
>The Congress finds and declares that the Communist Party of the United States, although purportedly a political party, is in fact an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States. It constitutes an authoritarian dictatorship within a republic, demanding for itself the rights and privileges accorded to political parties, but denying to all others the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.
If we stand for the "right" of Nazis to compel private actors to do business with them (and holy shit does that violate the typical libertarian-capitalist positions of the American Right!), why don't we stand for the actual right of Communists, revolutionary socialists, democratic socialists, and anarchists to operate openly at all?
AFAICT, while the near total lack of government enforcement (and lack of appeals in the few relevant cases that have gone to court) have prevented many or high-level court decisions on the overall constitutionality of the Communist Control Act, the only federal court to rule on that issue ruled it unconstitutional, and the only Supreme Court decision relating to the Act held that the Act did not prevent the Communist Party from participating in the New York State unemployment scheme.
So, it's not clear to me that the Communist Control Act has any substantive legal force, and it's pretty clear that whatever it seems to say on its face, the force it does have is not actually outlawing the Communist Party.
I don't think private companies have an obligation to support hateful websites.
I'm not arguing that this is the right strategy, only that it is often extremely effective.
That prolonged suppression only works specific environments where control is total.
The USA is not that, and censorship attempts often provide further platform for the information.
The point is, there's some really dumb stuff going on and it's time to take back intellectualism from the ideologues and demand and end to the childish behavior and that might as well start with the baseless mistreatment of the Trump family as well as the baseless mistreatment of all conservatives, moderates, and other non-far-left, non-progressives.
Keep in mind that listing the ideas and ways of life that were suppressed and utimately survived is a textbook case of survivorship bias: you remember the ones who survived, and forget the ones that didn't. Some of them no one knows about because they left no records.
EDIT: the dangerous sentence here is: "All the cases I can think of". Those are not an unbiased sample of the real world cases.
Nazism has only been suppressed in Germany as far as I know(how effective has it been?). Was it ever suppressed in the US? One of the crowning moments of the ACLU's support for civil rights was to stand up for a Nazi march - it's hard to call that suppressed. Can you compare Germany to the US and see whether suppressing and not suppressing Nazism has had a significant effect? Or perhaps there is a roiling Nazi sentiment in each country, which isn't affected in a significant way by suppression? I am honestly not sure.
> dozens of Christian heretic faiths you've never heard about
These were usually expelled from the country or genocided
> the genocide of the Native Americans (where's their culture now?)
genocide
> the pre-colombian civilizations of South and Central America
genocide?
> the Roman Empire
Not really suppressed
I think I'm seeing a pattern, and it's one of the things that frustrates me in this discussion. People talk about suppressing Nazis, but they claim they are interested in just suppressing speech(which has plenty of negative effects already!). The rationalization to ignore those negative effects is what you proposed - Nazis are so dangerous that eradicating them will be a net good. However, all the examples of successful suppression you're giving me are genocide, or at least go way way beyond mere speech restriction - in all of them the people who had the suppressed ideas were hunted down and killed.
Is just suppression of speech actually effective? If I agree to it, swallowing all my concerns about the negative effects, and it fails to work, will we be looking towards more suppression, with a possible end-game of hunting down and killing the Nazis?
Yes, I thought it was obvious from the context. The original version of Nazism was suppressed by invading their country, killing 7 million people in the process, hunting their leaders, etc.
> the Roman Empire
Hm... They were conquered by foreigners, and the empire desintegrated, but it's debatable whether the real change in culture was internal or not. You're right and it doesn't fit here.
> Is just suppression of speech actually effective?
This is a different question then... You're asking if suppression of speech with tactics you deem acceptable is actually effective. I don't know.
I do know that killing people who hold certain ideas is often effective, and that was the point I was trying to make. Merely putting people in jail for violating the free speech laws might not be enough (I don't think just imprisoning dissidents without the threat of capital punishement or outright genocide has ever been tried at scale).
So maybe we don't disagree as much and we were actually arguing for different views, right?
The Internet is commercial, top to bottom. The same kind of public sentiment (or if you lack the appropriate sentiment, outraged news) would prevent anyone from agreeing to be their DNS registrar or their VPN host. Should they start their own ISP, who will agree to peering with them? Should they bypass DNS and have a well-known static IP, will other networks agree to route traffic to that IP?
Who decides on what is and isn't trash?
The article states "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism."
Does this mean they will remove things like 'Fuck tha police' or 'Smack my bitch up'?
I don't like such music and would consider it trash, it also falls quite clearly under inciting violence and hatred.
As much as I don't like that music though, I like even less having a handful of companies being the arbiters of what content is and isn't available.
Every person or entity called in to relay material that isn't a regulated utility, arm of the state, common carriers, or otherwise deprived of or restrained in the exercise of free speech rights.
Who would you give that power to though? And can you be sure that the people you give it to will agree with you on everything that should and shouldn't be allowed?
'Fuck tha police' talks about slaughtering cops, using sniper rifles to take them out, a bloodbath of cops dying and so on. Can you trust that a company that says it will remove all music that incites violence and hatred to allow such a song to be available online?
Can you trust that once a company has set a policy of removing things that incite violence and hatred that other people won't come along and petition to have such songs removed on those grounds?
I might not like that song but I'm not going to try and ban it, because I accept that it's ok for people to like things I personally find distasteful. If I don't like it, I have the freedom to choose not to listen to it.
I am worried though when I hear companies talk about banning things with such large umbrella terms that can be arbitrarily enforced.
>intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.
Quite an ironic comment.
Refusing to tolerate the intolerant, when their intolerance _may_ be an imminent threat to society (e.g. neo-nazis in the US being defended by the current president) is paradoxical and distasteful, but not inconsistent with a liberal position on tolerance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/black-man-daryl-davis... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/black-woman-recalls...
That's the exact kind of thing we need more of in response to this: love and kindness can literally extinguish the hate in people. Unfortunately, that takes way more courage and strength than it does to engage in a twitter witch hunt.
It seems to be by the time intolerant people become an imminent threat, they would have already broken the tolerance levels in the US - e.g. physical violence.
Yes, you can argue that the Soviet Union didn't happen because the Tsar failed to censor enough, I'm just trying to say that thare is some substance to the argument for stopping the maniacs.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
We should not be afraid that our ideas will lose if all sides are heard. We must win this war of ideas, there is no other way. But we cannot win unless we can point to what is wrong with their ideas. For us to achieve that, they must not be hidden.
It seems that history did not end. Every generation has to win their incarnation of this war, again and again, unfortunately. The beginning of our struggle is drawing nearer and nearer.
One of my favorite examples from the book is the story about Hollywood and the Production Code in the 1930s. This was a voluntary code that the major studios obeyed for their own commercial interests (they wanted to avoid boycotts by groups like the National Legion of Decency). Because the film industry was centralized (with a small number of companies controlling all film production and distribution and most of the national theaters), this private decision by a handful of companies led to effective censorship in nearly all film in the US for ~20-30 years, all without any government action whatsoever.
I think we're in the same boat here with Google and other major internet infrastructure providers. Because a huge amount of power over the internet is concentrated in the hands of a few companies, those companies need to be very careful about the way they handle censorship.
"In an information industry the cost of monopoly must not be measured in dollars alone, but also in its effect on the economy of ideas and images, the restraint of which can ultimately amount to censorship."
"The story of Daniel Lord and the Legion of Decency goes to a central contention of this book: in the United States, it is industrial structure that determines the limits of free speech."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code
Hollywood suffered again under corporate censorship during the second Red Scare (the Hollywood blacklist). History should have taught us the dangers of the attitude that "free speech doesn't apply to private companies".
The fact that they are a near monopoly is a problem that has side effects, but the real issue to focus on is the monopoly.
If Google wants those rights, it could surrender its monopoly (through a voluntary break-up).
The government is however allowed to break up monopolies, which is why we should focus on the real issue, and the real solution.
Google is not a monopoly on domain registration.
That sounds like a big job, and one filled with ambiguity. Classifying forum posts is one thing, but trying to determine intent with music is going to be tricky.
The reason I disagree with the silencing of nationalist speech but didn't consider porn to be effectively suffering from the same issue is because I simply never considered censoring porn to be a speech issue. I had never thought of it as an idea, which is what I think of when it comes to political ideologies.
I think the difference here is more related to whom is doing the censoring. Google or MS don't censor porn on their products, Facebook only partially removes some related imagery so I don't see it as a concerted attempt to blocking the people's access to it, which is what I see as being the current trend when it comes to these more controversial topics. It's all my bias of course.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore, with the bizarre reversals in basic sense of priorities here.
Because it's not about freedom of speech. It's about making sure that the political Right and far-right get as much platform as they need to spread their message, and damn all other principles.
Google did not arbitrarily decide to ban Nazi speech on its whim, with no social support. This is a social war and it's why I find all the arguments unpersuasive - "private companies should do what they want"(except in cases when we don't like it, e.g. employment laws, denying service to minorities..) or "private companies should be forced to do what we want"(what happened to freedom of association?).
The underlying issue is that we're split on the importance and effects of tolerating hateful speech. The private companies are trying to navigate the social climate, which has become increasingly polarized. Boycotts, "with us or against us" demands is what is forcing their hand. It's not Google that's evil in this case, it's us. We are forcing them to take a stand on this social rift, and they have, and no one should really be surprised by it. Freedom of speech advocates have a long history of losing to moral panic.
Maybe it hasn't raised to EFF's radar before, but it does flare up every now and then. The PMRC drama culminating in Explicit Content Advisory as sales restriction was probably the biggest one in recent memory. The MPAA moving rating system got some heat around the release of This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006). The EFF did get involved in the SCOTUS case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, but I hate to even mention that for the tangential connection because I don't want start another gov't vs private censorship wankfest where everyone misses the fucking point.
But in general, the people who do care find themselves spending time on other priorities, or locked in a flamewars with people who show no morals beyond bland acquiescence to the status quo; and nothing ever changes.
Has Google decided they are now the truth police? Is Google taking it upon themselves to be like the Chinese censorship bureaus except for the whole world?
Instead, I wish EFF and other organizations would fund the development of a replacement for DNS rather than trying to legislate its use. Computers aren't like other kinds of technology where the implementation has to follow the physical structure, especially when considering the idea of domain names which are human readable to bind to IP addresses (which aren't human readable enough). That way, you get around corporate and government interventions entirely.
"""
Since the Charlottesville rally last weekend, American Renaissance has been under attack. Internet giants from PayPal to Facebook are trying to squeeze us out.
PayPal has cut us off, which means for now we can no longer take donations or sell books by credit card or any electronic means. All our recurring monthly donations—which are the predictable cash flow we count on and plan around—have stopped.
Facebook has blocked the AmRen account for seven days with a warning that if we violate their vague “terms of service” it will close us down for good.
MailChimp, which is the service we use to reach supporters by email, has cut us off completely. Our Twitter accounts—with a total of more than 60,000 followers—could be next, and our YouTube channel, with 35,000 subscribers and millions of views, is just as vulnerable.
As you know, American Renaissance had nothing to do with Charlottesville, and for all its 27 years, AmRen has consistently repudiated violence. This doesn’t matter. Corporate America is stamping out our revenue sources and trying to block our access to the public.
If this continues, AmRen.com could be kicked completely off the internet.
We cannot go back to the pre-internet days. With your help, we will find alternative platforms and, if need be, take legal action.
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Please, give us the means to keep our voice heard.
At this point we can take only checks, money orders and cash; no electronic or credit cards.
Please send your donation made out to:
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"""
That's the question that matters.
The problem with the approach taken by Google & Co. is that it criminalizes beliefs, regardless of whether or not adherents have taken illegal actions based on their beliefs.
If people 1) believe something, and 2) perform illegal actions based on their beliefs, a free society can punish #2. However, a free society can neither outlaw nor punish #1 without sinking into some form of despotism.
Liberty need not approve of all that she protects, and the best way to combat bad ideas is with better ideas, not censorship. Kudos to the EFF for raising an important point.
v. To impose a criminal penalty on or for; outlaw.
v. To treat as a criminal.
Maybe a better response by Google: For any searches that would turn up these detestable sites, include some contrasting/opposing results. Balance it out - show how stupid the Neo-Nazi arguments really are using sites with well-reasoned counter-arguments. My concern is that flat out removal just allows the scoundrels to cast themselves as victims and sets some bad precedents.
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define+criminalize&t=ffab&ia=defin...
Actually, the country many people are very concerned about now happens to be the country that is a free-for-all when it comes to Neo-Nazism and White Supremacy.
I understand the concern - and it’s totally reasonable to point out concerns - but let’s fight when they actually start sliding down that slope rather than hand-ring over Nazi’s, hmm?
I definitely see both sides to this argument, but how extreme does a website have to be in order for it to be OK by everyone for companies to remove the content? If it were my company, I wouldn't want to be associated with content like this either. So if it's lose-lose either way, I would probably do the same thing as these companies.
I would posit that each of these companies is arguing internally (at least in part) in favor of removing neo-Nazi and other violence inducing content from their services to distance themselves from fault when that content results in legal harm.
Similarly, there are a large number of ISP's and hosting partners. So if Amazon were to choose not to want to host their web site, on the theory that they were going to get huge numbers of DOS attacks, and they don't want to do deal with the PR blowback of supporting an extremely unpopular group --- is that really censorship?
This seems to be another variant of "freedom of the press" doesn't mean "free presses" issue. To say that the owner of a printing press should be forced to print Racist materials seems to be... morally dubious. It's true that the owner of an apartment isn't allowed to choose not to do business with someone based on their race, gender, religion, etc. Unfortunately for the Alt-Right, the neo-Nazi's aren't a protected class. If they think it should be, they should feel free to lobby to change the law. If President Trump thinks there are "very fine people" who belong to the Alt-Right, maybe he would even be willing to sign it....
If you support net neutrality, you fundamentally cannot support the actions of these companies. These two ideals are in direct conflict.
It seems like the extreme rights' method of gaining control is to be provocative while the extreme left lobbies admins to remove the provocateurs (see: reddit, youtube). This ends with the tech companies complying with the left. Why isnt it the other way around?
Edit: apparently today okcupid banned a nazi as a publicity stunt. Maybe im looking too much into this
I'm not even sure who counts as "extreme left" any more, there are very few people trying to do revolutionary communism or actual Maoism in the West.
Seriously considered and nearly implemented by famous leftist Richard M. Nixon: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/richard-nixon-ubi-basic-i...
> Outlawing fossil fuels.
A fossil fuel phase out eventually is a requirement, both to deal with depletion and global warming. It's just the schedule that's reasonable to argue over. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/g7-leaders-agr...
> Banning GMO.
Mainstream position in the EU: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28283-more-than-half-...
"Sometimes standing on the wrong side of history in defense of a cause you think is right is still just standing on the wrong side of history."
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/aclu-first-ame...?
Are they afraid of legal consequences? Aren't they safe to just wait till the police asks them to take it down before doing so?
Because they are owned and run by humans with moral values, not financial return maximizing automatons?
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Stalin proved that the Germans were right to go after the Socialists who were trying to undermine Germany. Not defending what the Germans did, it was horrifying. Both sides ended up being brutal and completely evil. Look at the Spanish Civil War, no real winners there and that was the prototype for WWII--fascism rose as a counter to communism. Again, not trying to excuse it, it's just reality.
Millions of people had no idea Daily Stormer existed until GoDaddy, Google, and CloudFlare kicked them out. Each one only added to their growing pile of free publicity. I guess Google never Googled "Streisand Effect"? First Damore and now this.
Edit: Also kind of ironic that my comments are now being buried on HN because I posted some unpopular opinions. Maybe we should throw HN in the mix too.
Edit2: Aaaaand now I'm not even allowed to post. HN is at least predictable in their censorship tactics, if nothing else.
the downside to them being down is that there's no more proof they were more than just white trolls.
HN has always had trigger-happy moderators who abuse their power to silence people they don't like, including PG himself. Just Google 'Hacker News Shadowban' sometime.
This attention would only be bad in my eyes if the first group was bigger than the second.
Neo-Nazis: "We feel unfairly persecuted!"
*hosts kick them off the internet*
Neo-Nazis (in an angrier tone): "See! We were right!!!"
Mission Accomplished?
When I look at trending political stories today, all I see is mind-boggling stupidity on both sides.
People with a persecution complex are going to view anything that way. Get kicked off? Fits their narrative (or is approval). Ignored? Fits their narrative. Told what they're doing is wrong? Fits their narrative.
So if you think this is stupid what would have accomplished the goal of making life harder for them?
Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Don't support their businesses. Don't let them have domains or websites. Kick them off Google platforms, Facebook, even OKCupid. All private companies need to take action now and make sure none of them can use the internet to spread their hate, or really use any service.
I think it is time to organize contacting car dealerships working next to deny selling any automobiles to them. Eventually we can get the DMV to deny licenses to these dangerous individuals, or at least put them on a registry so the feds can check in on them.
Oh and the false positives for the solution you offer are terrifying by putting the judgement into the hands of everyone. Imagine being wrongly accused of being a neo-nazi?
Please do not argue for this position based on "feelings"... In my own country, most social change was the result of war, credible threats of violence and technological progress. Natuarally, I "feel" the opposite.
Since we're discussing the US, I'd wager that's probably true there too: white culture became dominant over Native America culture because the Native Americans were wiped out, and the survivors were sent to barren reservations.
Slavery was brought to an end because its supporters were defeated in a literal war. Also, the social change that gave rise to salvery was based on the forceful kidnapping of people, too.
Worker rights are the result of strikes and often literal violence.
Were I familiar enough with the History of the US I think I could bring up other situations.
(If I'm wrong on any of these historical points I'll be happy to be corrected)
Racist nationalism is within every one of our children and is only expelled through individual education or positive exposure to people that are different. You cannot kill it off like you can Polio.
Slavery ended in the Northern US states without any war. It's an oversimplification to say the US Civil War ended slavery--it ended the southern plantation culture that supported slavery, but that's about all it did and the effects lingered until at least the early 1960s! Had there been no war, the abolitionist argument probably would have eventually won out and social change may have been more rapid.
As far as Native Americans go, they were not viewed as noble savages as they are today. Again, in a 19th century struggle for resources, the more technologically advanced culture won out. We are looking at the actions of whites and trying to apply 20th and 21st century principles to their behavior and I don't think you can.
I just visited The Little Bighorn and did a lot of reflecting on these issues. If nothing else, I am not to blame for whatever several generations past did to others and I feel no guilt over it whatsoever. I can only control my own behavior. As an intellectual, I value the diversity of ideas as superior to the identity diversity being promulgated by those with a political axe to grind.
If anyone wants to wage war against me or my family, expect to receive an equivalent amount of force applied in response.
I'm just saying that in all of these cases, the strong won and imposed their will on the weak, thus suppressing their ideas and culture... Love doesn't seem to have been very important in any of this.
I don't understand your criticism, sorry.
> Had there been no war, the abolitionist argument probably would have eventually won out and social change may have been more rapid.
Maybe, I'm not comfortable speculating about such things. I don't know nearly enough to even start :)