8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

Which is precisely the opposite of what these major corporate speech platforms are doing by creating filter bubbles and deplatforming wrong thinkers.

It's the same as sending small time/non violent criminals to prison to incubate with hardened violent criminals.

"We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

-MLK

>The concept of freedom of speech falls apart if universally reprehensible speech is allowed to be publicaly espoused without being firmly challenged. Forums like 8chan and 4chan effectively incubate hate speech by providing a safe space for anonymized, like-minded individuals to congregate, espouse their basest thoughts and feelings and receive gratification for it -all without challenge.

This is a common narrative, but it depends on an empirical question of whether hate spreads online and whether this motivates action. Fortunately, studies suggest that online talk does not motivate action:

https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/internet-a...

To summarize: the internet does not accelerate the process of radicalization, it does not provide opportunities to self-radicalize, and it does not allow radicalization without physical contact with other radicals. So the empirical evidence does not entirely agree with your characterization of 8chan's role in radicalization.

If you believe that's what we should be doing, why aren't you doing that? There are people right here in this thread you could be reaching out to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20617883

My point is I don’t think evaluating it on government/private business is very helpful in determining whether something should be allowed or not.

It is censorship, even if it is private companies and nobody got arrested etc, censorship is surpressing undesired information

Facebook removes all her groups. Cloudflare shuts down her websites. Youtube removes her videos. Google only leaves anti-Elizabeth Warren search results up, etc. Basically a major presidential candidate is completely locked out of having any pretense on the Internet whatsoever.

How many people who hold the above position, would say "yeah, this is fine. These are just private companies choosing who they want to associate with. Free speech doesn't apply here."

Perhaps you could argue humans aren't built for internet communications and so free speech doesn't apply to the internet. But Supreme Court precedent disagrees. You could make a similar case that free speech doesn't apply to anonymous speech, which would have meant all the anonymous pamphleteers during the American Revolution would have had more difficulty propagating their (violent, revolutionary) ideas.

I don't think hosting is a problem for 8chan, though. They can probably find some hosting service that would in theory respect their free speech, in the absence of a court order. However, the second they go online again without cloudflare's protection, they will quickly get attacked and the hoster will have to shut it down.

Which means we now have, effectively, mob-enforced denial of free speech.

Cloudflare is the great equalizer. But when Matthew Prince wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides to nuke one out of many, many objectionable sites because he can't or doesn't want to take the political heat of proxying for some site where users talk trash or post manifestos about violent acts (which are hardly ever acted upon), cloudflare's protection can vanish. Then you have to shut up, because if you don't you're vulnerable to attack by the digital mob.

I'm gonna need something citations on being "forbid" or "censor' when posting on these sites. Plenty of people get rebuttaled and turn opinion in threads all the time.

"Let's go to oarabbus_'s house at <DOXXED ADDRESS> and kill him" is not protected speech, correct? I am sure everyone agrees upon this.

But "Let's attack folks who are <oarabbus_'s ethnicity> as they are a scourge upon our nation" is protected? Why?

Hot button topics: capitalism, abortion, religion, right vs left, states rights

I think the founders had it better: govt can't censor speech, so the individuals and the public could decide. Just, the framers didn't imagine companies of such scope.

What is that criteria? Because I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant. Would you agree that saying that a baker in Colorado must make a cake for a gay wedding is intolerant of the baker's belief? Because I'm certain a sizeable proportion of the US population would agree that it is intolerant.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

He is specifically framing the issue as one where an ideology goes outside of the realm of debate and on to violence. So for instance an ideology that says 'attack migrants' is obviously something that should be suppressed because these people have skipped the whole debate step and instead appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner. But, by contrast, an ideology that argues for reasons why unchecked migration may be unhealthy for a society and lobbies for according change is something some may consider intolerant, but is quite obviously not what he was referring to. On the other hand, he would certainly have been opposed to Antifa which, though ostensibly fighting against intolerance, have once again appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner and have 0 interest in debate or discussion or their views.

Democracy was basically conceived of as a pen-and-paper version of blockchain, where the goal was to create a balance between private property rights and the redistribution of wealth. Allowing people without proof-of-stake to vote wouldn't have made any sense in the beginning given that no one had any idea how the system would work. Keep in mind that the government was basically distributing free property to people as fast as possible so that more people could vote, and only stopped doing that once the country ran out of land.

Even today, most people wouldn't want to live in a system where millions of people could just show up for vacation for a couple days, vote to give themselves ownership of all the country's assets, and then leave.

A lot of people disprove of this approach, arguing that by doing so we ignore the oppressed or helping the oppressors, and thus we end up with different view about intolerance.

It's a pretty tough job to balance freedom of speech and prevent hatebreeding at the same time. There are many philosophical approaches but I'd say that I haven't found one that satisfies me. Currently I'm leaning towards allowing everything in the hope that rationality will win out.

At the end of the day I think it's simply a very tough topic with no clear cut answer.

"clearcut" and "you know it when you see it" seem like polar opposite concepts to me.

That is a nice ideal to strive for, but the problem is that one person’s idea of tolerance is another’s intolerance. Example: people in the Valley love to think of themselves as “tolerant”. But most outside the Valley view actions like those taken against Brendan Eich of Firefox and the firing of James Damore of Google as examples of extreme intolerance. Defenders of these actions would argue that they are defending tolerance, because the Valley viewed these people as being intolerant. Defenders of the individuals involved here would argue that these actions show the Valley is extraordinarily intolerant of any view that even slightly differs from their own.

It’s a thorny issue. I absolutely detest 8chan and most of the speech on it. Most normal people would. But I also recognize their right to exist, at least in a country that holds the concept of freedom of speech in such high regard.

I disagree.

Societies are held together by common moral standards. Intolerance of anti-social/moral behaviour (compared to the accepted standard) should be accepted, even encouraged.

One of the reasons the US is falling apart at the seams is because of the 'as long as I want to do it, I should be allowed to" attitude. People don't care what others think.

An extreme (of sorts) is Japanese society... if you are out of line expect that you will hear about it immediately from many people and the negative consequences of bad behaviour can be very broad and long lasting.

> Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

Popper argued here that we should try rational debate, but reserve the right to use force when debate has become impossible (due to intolerant people using force themselves, refusing to engage in reasonable debates, etc).

The issue isn't tolerance IMO, but the self selective societies that online forums can create.

I agree with most of your post, but on this particular point...

"First they came for the imageboards, and I did not speak out because I did not post on imageboards. Then they came for my facebooks, and zomg how did this happen?"

8chan is just an anonymous imageboard, similar to thousands of others online currently. It happens to have the characteristic of allowing creation of new imageboards in a similar way to Reddit allowing anyone to create subreddits. This characteristic has made it one of the most popular imageboards.

Much like the solution for Reddit was to shut down individual subreddits and ban particular posters, and the solution for Facebook was to close down individual groups and ban particular accounts, the solution for 8chan is to shut down individual boards and ban particular posters.

>Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut in a you know it when you see it kind of way.

This breaks down quickly when faced with a current example: Some folks oppose immigration of people that follow religions which espouse intolerance. Via your measure, this is justified. But many I think disagree with that stance, so how can this be resolved?

On one hand to reject it, you would be intolerant of hundreds of years of tradition.

On the other hand, to permit it is to accept the idea that men are incapable of controlling not sexually assualting a woman and that women ought to be blamed for their own victimization. This is clearly intolerant of women being full members of society.

Either way, permitting or banning the burka is intolerant.

Then you arrive at that whole legal concept of reasonable discrimination, because property laws discriminate against thieves. But what is reasonable here?

I'm fond of the idea of only tolerating tolerance, but how do you deal with these edge cases? If you rigidly adhere to that tolerance-uber-allis belief, how long until you end up jailing people for following ancient but intolerant traditions? How long until you end up with Chinese style muslim re-education camps? This isn't a troll, this is actually one of my own philosophical conundrums. I believe in a vacuum that people would be happier not following those ancient intolerant schemas, but I don't see that as the situation in the present day.

By which definition the first person crying "intolerance!" wins - now they can be intolerant for free, because they are just intolerating intolerance, but their opponents can't be. I don't think such model can be defined as "drawing a fine line" - more like providing a rich field for rhetorical abuse, as long as you can excuse your own intolerance by casting whoever you target as "intolerant" you yourself get a free pass for anything. Very convenient, of course, but to me it looks like a cheap trick.

This is incorrect. Popper does not say intolerance should not be permitted, he said that we should not extend unlimited tolerance, and he expands by saying that only intolerance that cannot be countered by rational debate should be impermissible. Clearly escalation to violence is a form of intolerance that cannot be countered by rational debate but it's not clear at all what else should fall under this criteria.

This is clearly a very different claim that does not support your narrative, and instead, shows how your view is just another form of intolerance that we should oppose.

https://twitter.com/HMMvandenElzen/status/899506513177391104...

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

Also, it sends a great signal to anyone who might think of joining: that this ideology is so terrible that it's being chased off of the internet. That even the hands-off companies like Reddit and Cloudflare are rejecting it.

Sure, there will be a few who are attracted to it because it is so reviled, but many more will be repulsed. There's a reason why the hate groups did everything they could to be more appealing to the mainstream. Being forced back into the underground essentially means defeat.

As far as monitoring goes, I don't think it will make much of an impact. These are not difficult groups to infiltrate. Generally speaking, they're not the best and the brightest. Their opsec is poor. Activist groups have infiltrated many of them and have posted the discord transcripts. I'm sure the FBI, and other organizations, have gone even further than that.

They might be, or they might not be. They tend to keep their mouths shut during active investigations, if people found out the FBI was actively subpoenaing the site they might be inclined to stop giving them more evidence. (That is, the FBI could have developed a public-private honeypot partnership for all we know.)

And many times people aren't espousing direct, actionable threats. Talking about "international bankers" and "globalists" is protected speech, saying they control the world is protected speech, and saying something needs to be done about this is also protected speech - as long as they don't get specific (i.e. "we should fight back, let's meet up at <place> on <date/time>"), they can't do much about it. So you have people constantly agreeing about how "Zionists" are a threat to "the west" and that "something" needs to happen, egging on each others hate with various hoaxes, reactionary takes and praising Hitler, and finally someone snaps. Despite these people clearly being partially responsible for encouraging one of their members to violence, none of them will get in trouble because they never gave direct threats or incitements.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20201868 https://ceinquiry.wordpress.com/2019/06/17/fbi-8chan/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/fbi-faces-s...

>https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D9OzsEqUYAACo4H.png:large

> Even as recently as 1945, the median American only had a 10th grade education.

Again, high school diplomas were more common among the enfranchised population.

> But there's no reasonable definition of the term, whereby you can honestly make a case that the America of 1789 was somehow more educated than the the America of 2019.

I would be completely unsurprised if voters in 1789 -- white male property owners -- were far more likely to have studied the enlightenment philosophers.

>Lots of people are afraid of blood and spiders

These are inevitable in life. But you can choose to use a forum that is full of flat-earthers, racists, etc or you can choose to go elsewhere and not have to deal with people harassing you for what you were born as or what you believe in.

I also think waiting for "academic consensus" to act is not the neutral position it seems. Skepticism in the face of a pressing concern is not neutral, but instead acts to support the status quo. [1]

If we don't do something, more people will die. Possibly a lot more people. Academics have documented the dramatic rise in online radicalization. [2] Violent radicals themselves have described how online fora have pushed them towards extremism. So if you're going to argue a wait-and-see approach, I think you have to justify the bodies that will stack up in the meantime.

[1] https://twitter.com/jichikawa/status/1134323822096658433

[2] E.g., https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/... and the many resources it points to.

One big difference is that generally video games don't claim that mexicans are trying in invade USA right now. They are violent, but they are not trying to convince you to take gun and kill real people. Unlike members of community we talk about right now, that have that political Goal and executed that political goal.

It is difference between Der Stürmer and Sherlock Holmes crime story. One of them claims to contain real stories. One of them is going out of its way to convince people to be violent while the other is going out of its way to be fun.

> There's a reason that most people, including racists/bigots/etc. don't go on shooting sprees or run people over with cars.

Yes. Most racists/bigots believe in own superiority, but do not actually believe Latinos are mortal threat that requires immediate action. You may believe they are dumber without perceiving them as acute threat or being so afraid.

That has to do with them not living exclusively in extremist bubble, but instead consuming different media.

And even those who do are in fact afraid to throw away their lives completely just like that.

No, the founding fathers specifically said that freedom of speech is a God given right and not something which the government gives to a person, instead the government simply recognizes that right. They specifically said freedom of speech is a "Natural" right.

Right to clean water is not a right, right to education is not a natural right in their terms. Right to speech, right to self defense are natural rights.

Right, but those only produce a conflict in a very specific case and your right to free speech should be defended by your government/peers regardless of where you do the caching for your blog (or whatever).

I have a huge issue with this modern relativist approach, because it leads to the situation where - instead of acknowledging that there are in fact absolute rights - we constantly debate where _the line_ is.

I think the boldest example of why this is bad is the right to live. In my view, this is an absolute right. "But what if it's a mass murderer?" - "But what if they are terminally ill and are suffering?" - "But what if they are so heavily handicapped that... ?" Adding _ifs_ and _buts_ to a right that should be absolute leads down a very dark path, because _the line_ will be a constant subject of discussion.

I think we would do ourselves a favor to just outright declare some rights to be absolute (as we did before and seem to have forgotten).

   It's very easy to take a particular right (e.g., speech,
   property) and defend it absolutely. But rights are 
   inherently social, and must be balanced against other 
   people's rights.

Doesn't that sound like a good societal trade off? Your paramount right to privacy can't be defended absolutely at the cost of people's basic access to quality healthcare.

Now can it?

While much education in the US may have been reduced to this, your quote does not represent a proper education in theory or practice. A proper education teaches you how to think rather than what to think. Note that critical thinking is typically a key component in such education programs.

And yes, I think critical thinking, general literacy, and media literacy are critical for a healthy functioning democracy. The fact that many/most denizens of the US do not have access to this type of education is an incredible weak link in our democracy.

That seems to me like it might be the whole problem right there: Is there any reason to expect human institutions to survive the digital age?

I see "fake news", the problem of message authentication (not even encryption— keeping secrets —just authentication), and "deep fakes" as aspects of the same issue. Epistemology, "How do you know?"

We may have to extract the core values and value of Democracy and create some sort of new system that sustains or improves on them.

A kind of catch-phrase just occurred to me, "Computer-aided Integrity".

I'm sorry, when was everyone equally franchised? Between Jim Crow, Women's Sufferage, and Civil Rights you've got what? The mid 60s to mid 80s as the heyday of American Democracy? Having Nixon smack in the middle of that doesn't really help the arguement.

If we define democracy as universal suffrage and equal vote weight, democracy has been more of an aspiration and less of a reality since the beginning of time. If you don't define democracy that way, then we're talking past eachother.

    What a bunch of horse crap. Being told what to think, 
    what to buy, who to vote for, how to feel.

When an airplane has a problem in midair, we don't let the passengers each have one equal vote on what ought to be done, regardless of how much they know about flying.

A doctor doesn't crowdsource ideas in the middle of surgery. She certainly could, and it might work, but only if the crowd consisted of qualified doctors.

I'm not advocating to anything other than "one person, one vote" democracy, but surely the success of such a government depends almost exclusively on the quality of minds found in the electorate -- and I'm sorry, but "quality of mind" correlates pretty strongly with education.

You may fancy yourself some sort of exceptional autodidact who needs no education. Perhaps you are right! This is not the case for the vast majority of humans. The vast majority of humans are (by definition) not of exceptional intelligence and drive.

You're also conflating education with indoctrination. The two definitely are not the same. If you're trying to make a point that too often schools do too much of the latter and too little of the former, please make that point before relying upon it to support further claims.

I get companies taking a stand for who they accept as a customer. It makes me feel really icky when I see suggestions that the first amendment get even more asterisks next to it.

Keep in mind that it's still mostly ironic.

/leftypol/ was more or less just active on 8ch as /pol/, you'd be hard pressed to find any groups more diametrically opposed than that. people also often fail to take into account that the userbase was at varying points self reported to be upwards of 60% lgbtq and presumptively far more neurodivergent than more mainstream platforms. also worth noting that practically every mass shooter that has been newsworthy had an abundance of typical social media accounts, so the dangerous subset of fascists you're so worried about are already present on all the so-called moderate platforms. so who is actually dissuaded by this course of action? certainly someone motivated enough to plan and inflict mass-death upon a group of innocent people isn't gonna be kept away from extremist content simply because they have to take 15 minutes to set up tor browser.

> The Supreme Court has held that "advocacy of the use of force" is unprotected when it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and is "likely to incite or produce such action".[2][3] In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction of a Ku Klux Klan group for "advocating ... violence ... as a means of accomplishing political reform" because their statements at a rally did not express an immediate, or imminent intent, to do violence.[4] This decision overruled Schenck v. United States (1919), which held that a "clear and present danger" could justify a law limiting speech. The primary distinction is that the latter test does not criminalize "mere advocacy".[5]

I suppose this misbelief is itself a demonstration that truth and justice do not necessarily prevail in open argument. Still, we are better off with many terrible ideas persisting than to further allow those in power to arbitrate truth.

And abortions are not "universally understood to be reprehensible".

Only a minority of the country believes that abortion is universally reprehensible, and the rest draw various lines between "universally" and "never".

The country is very divided on the morality of abortion.

The country is not very divided on the morality of shooting up a WalMart.

The American Constitution doesn't argue anything about free speech, define it or make claims about its origin, or even refer to is as a right, much less a "natural" right. It only declares that Congress (explicitly, and exclusively, meaning not even inclusive of any other governing body or private entities) shall not pass laws that abridge "the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble."

Liberals have nearly the entire internet as a safe-space. It's nice to have a community with similar views, especially political as people are always just looking for confirmation bias, not really willing to debate, so it's too toxic to try all the time.

There is absolutely no evidence that the 8chan circle-hate happening out in the open has had any mitigating effect. It only made it accessible to even the technically illiterate among the potential audience.

But one of the biggest ponds you own lies still and stagnant. A perfect place for mosquitos to lay their eggs. In fact you’ve managed to make it especially hospitable to mosquitos that carry malaria. And all your other ponds are next to it, all your other ponds connect to it. Lots of people who come to your ponds for other things end up with malaria.

Should you be allowed to keep operating these ponds?

there have always been hyper-radical idiots. with 8chan and such, you can see them.

you're not getting rid of anything, you're just sticking your head into the sand.

There are a huge number of people who claim they support the Confederate flag in honor of those who lost their lives under it.

Okay. It was a racist and oppressive government, but I can understand that logic. People gave their lives, and even sacrifice in favor of an unjust cause is sacrifice.

That said... if that's what it's really about for them, then why didn't those folks say something when the flag was claimed by racists and white supremacists? Why didn't they defend it from those who would appropriate the symbol?

Silence carries its own liability.

And a lot of 8chan-style behavior that isn't guilty of outright instigation is certainly guilty of immoral silence.

Source: living in a southern US state

People voice their trashy opinions there - which is totally fine - but there are so few balancing/calming opinions. Especially if you have some conspiracy affine news site/YT video, these balancing/calming opinions are just not present.

My conclusion at the moment is that more balanced people (no, not bots :)) should visit these sites and write calming/positive comments. Dialogue has become pretty unfashionable in 2019, monologues seem to have become the norm unfortunately although I think there is hope.

The classic extremist play is to patiently gnaw at the edges of acceptability. Subtle digs at Jews, blacks, Hispanics, muslims or non-muslims (you can insert any group here, really) pave the way for innuendos about their morals, work ethic, intellectual capacity etc.

You can gaslight perfectly normal, upstanding citizens into doubting their strongly held ethical convictions, first enough that they don't argue against e.g. racist loudmouths, then to the point that they don't argue for equal treatment of "out" groups. As this process plays out, it starts to seem dangerous to defend the maligned against violence, and eventually enough citizens will have had their sense of normal behaviour pushed far enough that atrocities become possible.

I don't know how to break that cycle. I do think the root causes need to be addressed, because poverty and social decline provide fertile ground for demagogues pointing fingers.

Period.

I continue to be surprised at the level to which people misunderstand this.

Lot’s of places on this planet have hyper radicalized portions of their populations that commit aggregious acts of violence, and they lack free speech.

Yet free speech is being used as the red herring to blame.

Unequivocally, your assessment of these forums causing the radicalization is wrong. Plain wrong. These people exist in any environment, they go into the shadows, they continue to lash out, and removing and restricting rights for every person DOES NOT STOP THIS BEHAVIOR.

Other than the fact that 8chan had things on it that you didn’t like, where is the evidence to support this claim? How do we know that it was a website that was responsible for the views of its userbase, as opposed to any other media they accessed? How do we know that 8chan specifically was the factor that caused the outcome?