I call this Confederate flag behavior.

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

They did try to defend it. They were what was meant by the "good people on both sides" remark. They are up against an increasingly consolidated media empire that generally does not like the man who made that comment. It's unfair to put the onus of successful promulgation of a message against a wave of misinformation and misappropriation, and condemn them for failing at that.

For my example, I've lived in the south for 30 years.

I don't hear much about the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy loudly denouncing racism.

That's not its unified mission. I don't hear the BDS movement speaking out that much against suicide bomb attacks on civilians either, but that doesn't automatically delegitimize all of their arguments about the Israeli occupation.

It doesn't, but IMHO it does delegitimize their position a bit by not doing so.

If you're tangential to violence and hate, and you don't denounce it strongly and frequently, people are going to wonder.

It's tough to make the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable speech on a case-by-case basis.

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.

Sadly we are all manipulable. Tho being aware of that fact makes you a lot more resilient to manipulation and more likely to end up with a life you would have chosen. So kudos.

Study political science, propaganda, psychology of advertising, this is something that can make you resilient to propaganda. Just being aware that you may get manipulated can't help you much as you have to be able to spot it effortlessly everywhere.

As a fellow math enthusiast, I would love to grab a coffee or beer with you next time I'm in NYC and hear about this journey. Care to email me? [email protected]

Totally agree. But also one needs to say that this is of course the tip of the ice berg. I don't think people land there right away, but rather start maybe at some "normal" YouTube video's comment section or the comment section of some politics focussed news site.

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.

My concern: the person expressing 'calming, positive comments' gets doxed and/or SWAT'ed for their efforts.

I agree in principle with what your suggesting, but at this point those boards are echo chambers, not spaces for discussion.

Valid concern... Probably one shouldn't approach the situation with a 'improve discussion' hat on, but rather with a 'participating in critical discussion' hat. I mean just people actually reading articles, comments, thinking about them and answering would probably be a high advancement in culture.

I recently got an account at a more or less alt-right news website and the comments there were all just rants that stood for themselves.

"Free speech" protections DO NOT APPLY to a private company deciding whether to provide internet services to something like 8chan.

Period.

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

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

That's probably because you are actually the one misunderstanding. The argument it sounds like you're making (I apologize if I'm reading you wrong) is the often made one that "Freedom of speech only protects you from the government". This argument equivocates the idea of freedom of speech with the First Amendment.

Many Americans, and freedom loving folks internationally, believe that freedom of speech is critical for a liberal democracy to exist. Many of the American founders believed in the idea and enshrined it in our Bill of Rights to make sure the Government can not violate it. They did not, however, create he idea of freedom of speech, which existed long before the Bill of Rights, exists outside of America and outside of the context of Government and Citizens.

Think of it like murder. People do not find murder reprehensible because it is illegal. It is illegal because it is reprehensible, and most people would not support it regardless of its legal status (I hope). The idea of murder and the legality of murder are related but separate.

Your argument is therefore taking as narrow a scope of the idea of freedom of speech as possible and then arguing against that, which is a type of straw man argument. I hope that clarifies the logic fallacies involved in your argument and helps you better understand those you disagree with.

Most people understand that fine. It's about freedom of speech as a social principle and value, not strictly a matter of law.

It's granted that people are within their rights to throw out speech they dislike and that there's a world of difference between severing a voluntary business relationship and the deployment of state force, but the implications of an anxious, PR-sensitive set of internet infrastructure providers is certainly fair game for discussion.

If we get into the habit of shutting down every site that attracts a spate of negative attention, it still has the aggregate effect of chilling free discourse. If a shooter came onto HN and posted a manifesto here, would it withstand the mainstream media onslaught?

Well, wait, the question is whether or not internet service is considered a utility, and whether or not that utility is allowed to take a "side" as a result.

I think that 8chan is terrible and I would rather it not exist, but at the same time, I would be pretty against denying its owners water or something, since we've decided that utilities don't get to take sides.

Wouldn't that be more like public roads? You couldn't decide that Fords are not allowed on a road, just because of the brand, but Ford is perfectly within their rights to not sell a car to somebody, just as Cloudflare and Voxility have decided to sell their hosting services to 8chan.

Well, that's the question.

I'm not saying I disagree with you, evidently; the line in which we draw "utility" is a discussion that I really don't know that I have a good viewpoint. Are you entitled to having a soapbox to shout off of? I'm genuinely not sure.

Yeah, I agree. Up until the internet, getting information out there required resources and/or a platform to speak from, be it the pulpit, a newspaper, etc. If you had something to say, you had to go through such great effort to say it.

What do we even do, besides sit and watch? I've totally shifted the way I browse the web to reduce my exposure to toxic information, and I think that the whole corporate banning of Alex Jones was a net positive, but what happens when a voice I agree with gets shunned in the same way?

What a messy problem

Most 'internet as utility' arguments though don't extend to hosting or other services though, only the physical infrastructure that exists as a near monopoly (and at best is usually a duopoly of one cable and one DSL provider) in most locations. The argument is they shouldn't get to play favorites because the ability for competitors to come in and provide competition to limit bad behavior is extremely limited.

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

Sure, I'm aware that the KKK existed before the internet.

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

I didn't claim I was getting rid of anyone or anything. I didn't really claim much at all in my post, but there's a difference between "getting rid" of stuff and deplatforming it.

For that matter, how does your logic make any sense? If I hire a hitman to kill someone, could my defense in court be "Well he was going to kill somebody anyway! You're just sticking your head in the sand by blaming me for it!"

Is your argument that rhetoric, delivered consistently enough and effectively enough, can't possibly influence people to do reprehensible things?

However, most southern states still have anti-masking laws on the books specifically to discourage KKK meetings and actions.

Just like 8chan isn't getting rid of them either. They're just pushing them to a different platform where its going to be harder to keep tabs on these people.

I just wonder with all the technology we have at our disposal, how is it these people continue to slip through the system undeterred to escalate this type of violence?

It's more like sticking their head into the sand, isn't it (metaphorically)?