How 8chan Finances Itself via Amazon | Hacker News Reader

How 8chan Finances Itself via Amazon

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15 pointsanigbrowl12 comments

>a racist message board >a wellspring of racism, violence, and criminal activity online and in the physical world

The irony of this being posted on Twitter is not lost on me. Twitter, the site where bullying, racism, illegal content, calls for violence & discrimination, political extremism etc. are much larger in numbers than on any of the 2/4/8/whatever-chans.

What accounts for the difference? IMO it's all about paying lip service - and occasionally providing a feature to help users. The feature may get yanked out anyway, like "Quality Filter Discrimination" was.

This is the story link:

Can we update this post to reflect please. Thanks.

Appreciate that, I was tired at the time of posting and didn't think to link directly to the longform version.

8chan, I believe, is not a "racist" message board, rather a free speech message board, which means they host racists among other users.

But after reading the thread I see the intended public: https://twitter.com/DevinFaux/status/1127956035552120832

do you really intend to tie the concepts of free speech and racism together like this?

I certainly do. Supporting free speech means supporting the right to say things you (and the majority of the population) find unsavoury.

I support free speech.

do you support organisations like isis having online platforms too?

Evidently.

'Unsavory' is an interesting way to describe speech that instructs, encourages, or incites the commission of murder, which has a terminal effect on the speech of the people who die and and a chilling effect on the speech of those around them.

Logically, it would appear that murder is the ultimate form of censorship, by not merely constraining speech but eliminating its very possibility. Perhaps you could articulate how you resolve this philosophical conundrum?

The problem free speech message boards will always have is that the only people who seem to be genuinely motivated to post on free speech platforms are people who can't get on normal platforms. As a result free speech platforms almost always end up dominated by extremists and racists. Partly because they're the ones with the biggest motivation to use the platforms, but partly because their use of the platform drives away more moderate users. Plenty of people believe you have a right to free speech but also believe in their own right not to hang around and listen to you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

But after reading the thread I see the intended public

That seems an oddly teleological argument; judging the intention of a speaker by extrapolating from the response of a single person who replies to them enables drawing almost any conclusion you want.

Given that you've commented to my post, isn't that like saying you are my intended audience - despite my having no way to know you were going to create a HN account yesterday?

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