Hacker News Reader

Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

Once again the EFF is proving that they'll stand behind their principles and defend freedom even for those they disagree with. They are one of the few remaining organizations that I feel I can support without reservation. Taking this difficult position isn't easy, but it is the right thing to do and I'm so glad to see that the EFF has the strength to do it in the face of growing opposition to free speech ideals.

View on HN

Lol. EFF are now a bunch of virtue signalling hacks pretending to care about Internet free speech. They outed themselves as total hypocrites when they joined the "RMS is an <X>ist" bandwagon and removed Gilmore from their board.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-...

http://techrights.org/2021/11/05/not-the-frontier-anymore/

https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/25/john_gilmore_removed_...

> They outed themselves as total hypocrites when they joined the "RMS is an <X>ist" bandwagon

Are you suggesting that, because of his work writing and promoting open source software, that EFF should never be allowed to criticize RMS? Is that what makes them "total hypocrites"?

No, the EFF is allowed to criticize RMS as much as they want. Criticizing RMS doesn't make them hypocritical. However, linking [1] and spreading slanderous lies (I'm talking about Selam G.'s hitpieces [2] from 2019) isn't very fitting for an organization that claims to defend Internet free speech.

RMS never defended Epstein -- not even once. His only crime was being a pedantic aspie. If the EFF considers that to be good enough reason to cancel him, then yes, I think that EFF are total hypocrites. FWIW, EFF's official blog post only linked Selam G.'s hitpiece that has been thoroughly debunked elsewhere [3].

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-...

[2] https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...

[3] https://stallmansupport.org

> His only crime was being a pedantic aspie.

If you actually read the article by Selam G., you'll immediately see that this is false.

"When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him."

This is clearly a case of sexual coercion. If, due to autism, RMS was totally unable to avoid sexually harassing women he had power over, then clearly he should never have had a position of power in FSF or anywhere else.

"Many, many years ago, women in the AI and CS labs met to deal with the problematic atmosphere for women in the labs. We met as a group, discussed the issues, complied examples, presented them to the labs, then wrote a report. In the early 80’s, it was a pretty big deal but it would seem it did not have lasting effects."

RMS clearly harmed many women over many years. It's telling that people like you never acknowledge the accounts of women who have specific, individual complaints against him. Even the Stallman Support page you link to has a bunch of pedantic corrections over whether RMS "really" defended Epstein, in addition to generic articles about cancel culture that say nothing about RMS harassing women grad students at MIT.

EFF was correct in criticizing RMS. He shouldn't have been on the board of FSF or any other organization.

https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...

Selam G. was paraphrasing an anecdotal #metoo comment by an anonymous source that was backed up by zero evidence. If that's good enough evidence for EFF to call for someone's head, then they're worse than hypocrites. And the law schools that gave degrees to their lawyers should consider rescinding them, since they clearly don't seem to know a thing about law.

"Alumni from as far back as the 1980’s reached out to me and told horrifying stories" -- so the firsthand accounts of sexual harassment by RMS are not anonymous, as they are known to the person writing the article.

Yes, of course, we (particularly the EFF) must take Selam G.'s claims seriously, even when there isn't an ounce of evidence to back them up.

See, it's fine to dislike RMS (for whatever reason). But the question was whether the EFF -- an organization that claims to support free speech on the Internet -- should've joined the dogpile on RMS based on ludicrous claims written by an outrage addict.

> Once again the EFF is proving that they'll stand behind their principles and defend freedom even for those they disagree with. They are one of the few remaining organizations that I feel I can support without reservation.

I find this attitude very odd. Surely some disagreements indicate a violation of their principles. What would the principles be worth otherwise? Surely this is the paradox of tolerance in a different package. Why not instead model communication as a bilateral contract?

> What would the principles be worth otherwise? Surely this is the paradox of tolerance in a different package. Why not instead model communication as a bilateral contract?

If it was justifiable for speech infrastructure to ban the speech of any ideology based on if its implementation societally would probabilistically/historically lead to mass speech suppression and/or other atrocities, then a massive array of political and religious speech would technically qualify for a ban. Including Marxist-Leninist writing, or religious proselytizing to name a few.

Why ban by ideology? Just do it by behavior of the route/node.

The EFF is arguing that companies should lose their right to withdraw service due to TOS violation, unless the government says it's ok. This is as anti-freedom as it gets. What is wrong with them

Do you think your phone company should be able to deny you service if they don't like the things you say on the phone?

Any company should be free to deny you service for any (or no) reason. Consent should be able to be withdrawn by anyone at any time.

And what happens when there's only one ISP in your area and they don't like that you post to hackernews and choose not to do business with you?

Then the laws preventing multiple ISPs should be fixed, and the anticompetitive malicious actions of the incumbent monopoly punished as criminal.

Starlink is also an option, and soon there will be Starlink competitors too.

This is a very funny response. Elon Musk has shown that he's extremely quick to censor speech on Twitter / X that he personally disagrees with. He also declines to fight government requests to censor speech, as opposed to Twitter prior to his ownership.

Starlink is the last place you would be safe from being silenced.

https://theintercept.com/2022/11/22/elon-musk-twitter-censor...

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/twitter-approving-far-...

If I made a lot of unwanted phone calls and people complained to the phone company, they would definitely cut me off. As it should be.

This is a weird one though. They're defending the freedom of criminals to commit crimes while simultaneously calling for the criminals to be prosecuted.

I don't understand why this seems hard to understand. Their reasons are very clear and explained in the post.

Tier 1 ISP censoring internet has worse long term consequences than this website existing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com