They and others should permanently block 8chan. TBH if NZ/AUS started DDOSing it I'd be fine with that too but I doubt we're there yet.
The others I don't agree with long term (4chan is 4chan, Zerohedge is moronic but mostly benign, liveleak is concerning but I get why they did it) but 8chan is just cancer.
I get freedom of speech, but there has to be a limit somewhere. Those animals would drop nukes for funsies if they had the opportunity.
The problem is defining those limits. And if you give a regulatory agency the power to do it, odds are they will push too far.
It starts with fringe sites that most people would agree on, but the existence of those regulators depends on there being more things to censor. It's in their own interest to expand the scope of the censoring, and the people attracted to those positions and that "power" will be the ones who have things they wish to silence.
In addition to this, as the scope creeps you risk forcing the later groups into the same channels as the ones first banned (e.g. people who enjoy dark humor being shoved into the same platforms as people who unironically spread hate and violent messages). It seems to me this will be facilitating radicalization rather than help prevent it - an analogy could be made with people arrested for petty crimes being radicalized or made into full blown criminals in prisons.
Before thinking about whether it's actually right or wrong to block access to "problematic opinions" online, I'd like to see satisfying research that government censorship actually works and mitigates these problems, rather than just sweep the mess under the carpet while it keeps building up to an eventual serious problem.
ISPs sell internet access, if you believe this website is infringing some of your local laws, you should start a procedure in your own country, it's not the role of an ISP to filter websites by their own initiative.
Remember when commenting on Hacker News: it's an international community.
Australia doesn't protect freedom of expression in the same way the US does. Indeed, there's a decent chunk of the world that's perfectly rational and sees our relatively laissez-faire attitude on some Bill of Rights content as dangerous to a survivable society.
There are already limits to the free speech (in the USA) in regards to credible threats, fraud, and defamation. I believe your premise is that limiting ugly/racist speech would limit radicalization, and I don't believe there is any evidence to show that.
In general, a formal action by the US government would involve a high-bar "prove harm or imminent risk of harm" test.
... but action of private enterprises to cease to do business with an organization (such as telcos black-holing an IP address in their routing fabric) are another matter, unless regulation states otherwise.
Most of the world is fine with their version of freedom of speech. The extremist version from the US is rare, and causes huge amounts of harm.
US business owners need to wake up to the fact that their products are seen as publishers, not pipes, and that publishers in most of the world are regulated.
In point of fact, US law defined (via the DMCA "Safe Harbor" clause) most communications-media products (fora, video sharing sites, music repositories, etc.) as pipes for this reason. "They're pipes" is how the US regulates them.
In general, yes. SESTA/FOSTA nudged the definition of the safe harbor away from content that facilitated sex trafficking. This has no bearing on whether, say, iTunes is still safe in sharing the subversive, anti-government music of Creedence Clearwater Revival. ;)
The white nationalist rally in Charlottesville was the sort of fascist rally that other countries would categorically refuse a permit to. The US does not, in general, refuse permits under the assumption that a group (even a group with a violent ideology) will turn from a peaceable demonstration to a violent riot. Federal, state, and local law is heavily bent toward assumption of good faith.
Charlottesville had several injuries and one death.
I take it you're contradicting the coroner's report that Heather Heyer died of a blunt-force chest injury? Given that the driver of the car was convicted in her murder, you may want to walk that back.
Sure. And when a "new German" stabs an "old German" in the heart and kills him, he died of "causes unrelated to the injury" to quote one of our coroners, 6 hours (!) after the attack. These things aren't worth the papers they're printed on. A tool in the hand of politics
... probably also worth noting: not unlike the US, crime metrics on immigrants in Germany suggest that as a population, they're less likely to commit crimes than native Germans.
politifact, sure. Last year, there have been 28 rapes or sexual assaults in my city. According to police reports, witness reports and phantom photos, 26 of those are not from Germany. In the end-of-year reports, that number is close to 0. Funny how that works. because double-citizenship, acquittals, people never being caught, unknown identities.. you pick one
The source you've linked to doesn't mention a stabbing, and nothing I've been able to dig up suggests there was a stabbing in the Köthen death. Death from heart condition was unrelated to the injuries sustained from a fall the victim suffered scuffling with the 18-year-old (which, yes, smells fishy, but I think you're casting aspersions on an unrelated coroner who was looking at a woman with a crushed ribcage because of possible malpractice on a local-to-you coroner's part, which is... Well, this is the sort of misinformation-spreading and stereotyping, and the harm it causes, that we're discussing in this thread).
Are you conflating the facts from two situations? Media coverage of the Köthen protests suggests there was a stabbing incident in Chemnitz close in time to Köthen.
All of that having been said: I think your point that Germany has laws discouraging you from casting aspersions on groups due to individual actions of the groups, and America has far fewer such restrictions, stands. Except... Germany's homicide rate is lower than the US. So Germany's clearly doing something right relative to its neighbor 'cross the pond (of course, it may not be this---but given that Germany had to deal with actual Nazis and the US has not yet had that challenge, I'm not in the habit of gainsaying Germany's strategy here regarding laissez-faire freedom of speech).
It wasn't a stabbing, the rest was correct. It was very close after Chemnitz and the following protests, so this case was given close attention. Unwanted attention, so this ridiculous report was put out, and later the details were kept secret as "Ermittlungsgeheimnis".
I'm just using this ridiculous case to make the point that these reports don't mean anything. Both cases had extreme political pressure to make things happen.. and that exact thing was written on the report.
But besides that: I think it's faulty logic to say that as long as Germany's homocide (or whatever) rates are lower than the US, it must be better. You can't compare things like that. A murder used to be something extraordinary. Now it's everyday. According to statistics they're at an all-time low. See the case above and numerous other examples.
Well, no. A murder didn't used to be something extraordinary. Especially not in Germany---with respect, we are still talking about the country that committed genocide as state policy in the '40s. Germany's murder rate has remained basically flat for decades [https://ourworldindata.org/homicides]. What has changed is the population has risen by about 10 million in 50 years, so with a flat rate, you're going to see more murders.
...but more importantly, what has also changed extraordinarily is communication. We see a lot more of the murders, be they local, national, or international (the fact that we, a German and an American, are discussing Australian policy in response to a New Zealand murder spree is indicative of this). Internationally, we're a lot less tolerant of murder than we were because we can see it now. And as a species, we're pretty bad at risk assessment and filtering with this newfound panopticon power. It's a pretty well-documented phenomenon that fear in Germany of crime doesn't align with the hard numbers on incidents. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-09/german...
People see what they expect to see all too often.
If I may make an observation... You appear to be ascribing to some conspiracy-theory thinking in the statement that the coroner report aligned with perceived political pressure. Where is that notion coming from?
You think it'S a conspiracy theory to believe that days after Chemnitz, when another German was dead in that part of Germany, a coroner report that was pushed out hours after the attack, stating that although he was attacked and died on the spot, it didn't cause it - that all that is nothing but the truth? Ok yes I gladly accept that label
So no, you were not there. You have sources you trust more than the official reports, reason to believe those reports are bogus based on those sources, and you're using your beliefs about German process in a German autopsy to evaluate practices in an American case.
I don't think we have any more to discuss. I don't trust your unnamed sources. And I have a sinking suspicion they're exactly the sort Australian telco would find it necessary to de-list from DNS.
You're broadening the discussion from freedom of speech to freedom in general, and I don't think the conversation is particularly valuable over-broad. In terms of homicides, looking at London's rate relative to, say, major cities in the US, I strongly suspect the 2nd Amendment in the US plays a lot more role than the 1st. Comparing London to, say, Chicago, it seems that the freedom to run around with untracked firearms isn't doing the US any favors. Maybe it's the cultural difference, but I don't see London's rate as "epic" given that they're a city of 8 million souls and US cities with smaller populations have more murders.
But freedom of speech and freedom to be armed are different freedoms.
A) freedom of speech is the most essential freedom (hence, "first" amendment), so I'm not broadening the discussion too much, am I? (aka, slippery slope argument is not always a fallacy)
B) I'm glad that you brought up Chicago, since it's run by leftists and anti-gun politicians, just like every other high crime city in the US and Europe; in fact, just like pretty much every high crime dump in the world is run by leftists. It used to be easy enough to dismiss such silly arguments by saying "Chicago and the rest of Illinois has some of the toughest gun laws", but leftists have a fallacious argument for everything. Fortunately, the leftists' favorite argument of "Chicago's gun crime is caused by the 2nd amendment and the ability to bring guns across state line, etc." doesn't last very long when you consider that the states with the most gun freedom in the US have some of the lowest crime rates (Idaho, Vermont, etc.). Or, are you prepared to offer a theory (other than "cultural differences" - last I checked murder is not an acceptable "culture", or is that the next wave of leftism?) about why people in Idaho and Vermont aren't murdering people due to their nearly unrestricted access to guns and legal ability to carry them in public?
I think you're reversing causality. Wouldn't higher rates of gun-related homicide induce a locale to enact stricter gun laws? And if those gun laws are only partially effective because the problem they're trying to control is systemic and national, you'd end up with the situation you're observing: places with few gun crimes have few laws because they've not been induced to enact them, and places with more gun crime have more laws (but continue to have more gun crime because places with fewer gun laws facilitate unregulated gun markets and transportation costs within the US are extremely low).
The rest of your comments are basically an angry anti-leftist rant that I'm not interested in engaging in. I have Facebook for dealing with political rants, thank you. ;)
I'm not implying causality at all; in fact, my entire point has been to show the exact opposite, that rights (or objects, like guns, the acquisition of which stems from a right) don't cause behaviors. I have the right to eat dirt and drink toilet water, but I don't do either, because neither would be quite right.
So, in Chicago and London, where the crime has been on the rise, a reasonable person cannot blame the increase in crime on guns (esp in London's case, where it would be easier to get your hands on the Ark of the Covenant than a gun).
So, if not guns, what about other policies (welfare, immigration, maybe even other, less controversial etc.)?
(re: rant) Leftists have good ideas (protect the environment, take care of helpless people, etc.), but most leftist ideas require a bigger government and more taxation, as a means to implement them. As a result, government grows, and, because government is itself not governed by the markets, it is by nature inefficient[1], which means it eventually becomes a bloated mess (which can also lead to rising crime, etc.). Acquisition of power eventually becomes the end (see Stalin's Soviet Union, Moa's China, Castro's Cuba).
I'm not sure how you consider blocking 4chan "tyranny" compared to some of the stuff the US government (or any government, for that matter) gets up to?
A good example that could be considered to be overall harmful would be the anti-vax movement. It has spread by speech over social media through patently inaccurate information.
Does Australia have an enumerated right to free speech? I thought that remains a somewhat novel feature of the American Constitution. (Owing--in large part--to our culture.)
I think the hardest thing for folks is actually arguing that speech X, Y, and Z are hateful, because all people of every political background who log online seem to want to do is legislate others into silence or post innuendo and memes about people's character behind their backs.
There's an essay I found pretty unique, "Reflections on Debating The Right" on Current Affairs, explaining why much more public debates would be helpful... of course, that website could well be blocked soon in Australia for their articles on Palestine, given the precedents now set!
People on the right (the proles, not the rich people making money off the whole affair) don’t want to have honest intellectual discourse. They want to ‘own libruls’ and be smug (despite their choices actively hurting their livelihood and their lives leaving little to be smug about).
There’s nothing to debate, they’re just idiots. Easy to fleece idiots considering how easy it is to make money by throwing out a bunch of controversial statements and then retracting when their audience has moved on.
I hope you're never categorized as a bad actor for a view you develop by your friends or fellow activists. From what I can tell, the bleeding-edge version of the line between honest soul and bad actor is under continuous deployment... it will be crucial to study each set of changelogs! By the way, do you think sex work is liberating, or capitalist exploitation? What do you think, a 2-state solution or not? I wouldn't want to get cancelled by talking to you.
I hope to come back to this debate in a few decades and see that Robinson's pieces on debating the right, along with Mark Fisher's "Exiting the Vampire Castle" and Benjamin Studebaker's "The Left is Not a Church" will be considered important overlooked resources.
That's an understandable reaction! But I won't be unpersoning people, especially those who themselves make a hobby out of looking for more people to unperson.
> They and others should permanently block 8chan ... 4chan is 4chan
What is the difference? Neither one sounds like a place I want to go visit to check out for myself. I used to hear about 4chan for a while is 8chan a worse, more concentrated version of it?
So far nothing I've heard about them sounds inviting to me. It's a bit like saying "browse the dark web" or this other terrible place filled with hate speech.
The others I don't agree with long term (4chan is 4chan, Zerohedge is moronic but mostly benign, liveleak is concerning but I get why they did it) but 8chan is just cancer.
I get freedom of speech, but there has to be a limit somewhere. Those animals would drop nukes for funsies if they had the opportunity.