You can't legislate ideas out of existence. Shutting down online venues where certain ideas flourish will do nothing to solve the problem that such an action is presumably trying to solve. Why would you actively push untoward discussion further underground, instead of letting it happen out in the open, on a public website?
Because people vulnerable to radicalization view public websites. The solution of "let it happen in the open" doesn't appear to be working in practice. Underground sites are harder for those unaware of the topic to find (and for policing what goes on on those sites, the US has the FBI and the CIA).
>Because people vulnerable to radicalization view public websites.
Why do you think people should be legally prevented from accessing information? Don't you believe in free will and the idea that everyone should be able to internally decide what is right and wrong for themselves? Or do we want that power to be put in the hands of the state?
Where were the accusations of online radicalization and calls for censorship when that one guy shot those Republicans at a baseball practice in 2017[0]? There's definitely no shortage of hyperbolic anti-Republican sentiment, out in the open, on social media platforms even more mainstream than 4chan. Surely if we're banning access to places where the NZ shooter was (allegedly) "radicalized," then we should prevent people like that shooter from being "radicalized" too, right? What's different about the two situations that warrants completely different rhetoric?
> What's different about the two situations that warrants completely different rhetoric?
They're not particularly different, except we now have many examples of Jewish people being attacked because they're Jewish, or people being attacked because they "look" like Muslims to their attackers, or black people being attacked because they're black, or gay people being attacked becuase they're gay.
We have churches and mosques and synagogues being shot up. We have crowds of people being driven into by cars. We have people being murdered for who they are.
How often does this happen for Republicans?
This point - is violence mostly from the left or right - is tedious, becuase it's unambiguously mostly from the right and it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
The more important point is that it is overwhelmingly committed by men. We need to look at why some men resort to violence.
Free will is a fascinating hypothesis that is only partially explanatory of observed human behavior. ;)
To be less glib: in the US the bar is very high, but we do, in fact, have some things that we've removed from the "free will" discussion. Child pornography is the obvious example.
Yes because the process of creating child pornography is harmfully exploitative of a child, and we as a society have decided this one of the worst things anyone could do, so we've made creating, distributing, and accessing child pornography illegal. If someone disagrees with this, they're most assuredly allowed to voice their opinion on it however they see fit, obviously as long as no child pornography is involved.
Drawing a parallel between child pornography and untoward politically incorrect discussion out in the open doesn't seem like a very useful comparison, especially when I provided another recent example of a shooting that one could argue was caused by online "radicalization."
The US bar is very high to curtailing speech as a government action, and it's worth noting that the story we're commenting on is about an Australian telco taking private action. I actually don't know the law in the US around what would happen if, for example, Verizon decided to IP-blackhole 4chan of its own initiative (in general, Americans would probably rake it over the coals for diminishing consumer choice at the very least). It'd be a hell of a show if they tried, and I don't see it coming.
The example you brought up is also from the US and, I hate to say it, was probably treated differently because the US is just desensitized to the amount of violence in its culture these days. The baseball shooting was tragic, but none of the injuries were even as permanent as the ones Gabby Giffords suffered. But the New Zealand shooting was in a country far less tolerant of such intra-civil violence, and Australia already has speech constraints relative to the US (contrast their attitude on videogames to that of the US).
(... but to turn the conversation around: do you think there should have been a conversation about online radicalization after the 2017 shooting? Maybe there should have been. What do you think should have been done differently?)
Yes, Australia and New Zealand are not the US and as such do not share its free speech laws and "free speech culture(/history)." This current situation is interesting though because from what I can tell, there hasn't been any government action yet, just private ISPs taking action with their own infrastructure. This is all sort of uncharted territory and it seems like nobody's sure how to go about solving these complex issues, yet ISPs are taking preemptive action of their own accord. (I agree that if an ISP in the US were to do something like this, it would be one hell of a shitshow, again due to legal and cultural differences.)
With regards to the 2017 Republican baseball practice shooting, I do think there should have been more of a conversation about online radicalization after the fact. I'm not saying legal action should have taken place or ISPs should have started DNS-blocking websites, because a.) again, cultural and legal differences compared to NZ/Australia and b.) because there was no convenient scapegoat to point fingers at. When "right-wing" violence happens, it's very easy to say, "ah see! 4chan and 8ch at it again," because everyone basically agrees that those websites contain "right-wing" hatred. Yet, "left-wing" hatred is and has been, for some reason, allowed to take place on most major social media websites and discussion platforms, largely uncriticized. Plus, it's undeniable that this has dramatically increased in recent years, since about 2015 especially, for obvious reasons.
So you have blatant, largely unimpeded "left-wing" hatred allowed to happen out in the open on most of the Internet, while "right-wing" hatred is forced off mainstream platforms and onto fringe sites like Gab, 4chan, and 8ch... so when "far-right" extremists commit acts of violence, it's easy to say, "See, these fringe websites where all this hatred is being espoused? We should do something about them!," but when "far-left" extremists commit acts of violence, there's no easy targets to place the blame on, because the hatred happens just about everywhere and is for some reason considered to be more or less socially acceptable.
It's hard to argue that "radicalization" due to online information and opinion dissemination is anything but a major cause for concern and something that we should be investigating and having frank discussions about, but in order to do so, the discussions have to be actually frank and encompass the entire situation, something which few if any are willing to actually do. Our physical human forms have not evolved to intuitively grapple with the consequences of the existence of the Internet[0], yet just about everyone uses it every day. We should dig deep and really examine this at some point.
I understand your concern and I'm no fan of terrorist propaganda of any sort, but if you think that hiding some content from the public Internet will prevent these events, you're dreaming. The Columbine shooters weren't "radicalized" by public websites, to our best knowledge. Nor was the perpetrator of the 2012 movie-theater shooting in Colorado.
It's unlikely that making it hard to reach 8chan / 4chan etc. would impact those shootings, no. But it may very well have had impact on the New Zealand shooting. And the Pittsburgh shooting.
In the US, the bar would be pretty high for government action based on this reasoning; a direct link would have to be proven, and either an imminent threat of harm be demonstrated or the media in question be demonstrated to have nothing but illegal activities occuring with it. I don't think 4/8chan raise to this high bar. Other nations? Bar not so high.
>The solution of "let it happen in the open" doesn't appear to be working in practice.
To be more blunt, it in fact has absolutely no evidence. At no point, not once, in this little foray into unrestricted publishing since the dawn of the internet, has "let it die" ever actually worked. It's a techno-libertarian myth that completely ignores human behavior.
Exactly. Occasionally a chan poster will submit that the boards continue to exist because whomever is keeping tabs on the elements is afraid they'll scatter.
Just like the idea goes "if we make it harder to get guns, we may still have tragedies but fewer", the rationale may go for making it harder to find like-minded hate online.
Right now. On your personal computer or through tor, go to 8chan /pol/. It is a cesspool.
Where those cesspools exist, publicly searchable and accessible, hate can breed. I know I /want/ them gone, but I'm not sure if I'm okay with it being done by law, because that's a lot of power over the Internet that governments haven't had.
