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Milo Yiannopoulos Wants To Buy 4Chan, Promises Free Speech Haven (hollywoodreporter.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes The Hollywood Reporter:
Milo Yiannopoulos, an alt-right hero known for his banishment from Twitter, is preparing a bid to acquire his own social media firm: 4chan... The Hollywood Reporter learned that Yiannopoulos, with the help of a wealthy backer, is preparing to approach 4chan owner Hiroyuki Nishimura, a Japanese entrepreneur, with a bid this week. Contacted Saturday, Yiannopoulos confirmed plans for a possible acquisition but did not offer details.
"As a free-speech fundamentalist and a student of Internet culture, I appreciate how fragile and precious the 4chan ecosystem is and how much it gives to the wider Internet -- even if some corners of it, such as /pol/, don't always approve of me very much," Yiannopoulos said... "I spoke to my lawyer this morning about purchasing the business... I intend to approach the current owners in the next few days with an offer."
Yiannopoulos added this his philosophy as an owner "would be very simple: free-speech central, no ifs, no buts."
"As a free-speech fundamentalist and a student of Internet culture, I appreciate how fragile and precious the 4chan ecosystem is and how much it gives to the wider Internet -- even if some corners of it, such as /pol/, don't always approve of me very much," Yiannopoulos said... "I spoke to my lawyer this morning about purchasing the business... I intend to approach the current owners in the next few days with an offer."
Yiannopoulos added this his philosophy as an owner "would be very simple: free-speech central, no ifs, no buts."
Whether you like 4chan or not (I don't, particularly), you have to agree that speech there has been pretty freewheeling. And that's perhaps 4chan's most redeeming feature, the one feature I wouldn't want to change. And Milo is, simply put, the best possible custodian of free speech. Whether you like Milo or not (I happen to like him, a lot (no, I'm not gay (but I have nothing against gay or any LGBT people, and am probably bisexual (this is a lot of nested parentheses, huh? But am keeping track, we're at number 4.)))) you must admit that there are few people as dedicated to free speech as he is.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Al Gore once titled a movie of his "an inconvenient truth". The premise being that the truth can be isn't convenient, pretty or profitable. It's an argument that was widely embraced by the left when it was in there favor. Now that it is against their favor it is condemned (flashbacks of wikileaks anyone?).
Milo has previously stated that in today's society only trolls are allowed to speak the truth. This position used to be taken by the court jester or fool, the one person who could speak freely, to say what no one else dared. In today's society sites like 4chan have become the fool, saying what no one else dares.
4chan or it's replacement while always exist because history has always demanded that the truth be told, no matter how politically incorrect it is.
>>but let's not pretend he's doing/being something noble.
Sure he is. In fact, he is providing a vital service. He is shining a big searing spotlight on how free speech is being restricted on college campuses, and all the hypocrisy that entails. Of course, one has to be outlandish and outrageous to cut through all the noise and attempts to dampen the message, but that seems to be something Milo revels in, so maybe he is uniquely qualified for the job.
>> white supremacist neo-nazi hate monger
You Social Justice Warriors really need another smokescreen other than race and fascism to throw down every time your views are questioned. The country has pretty much caught on to the tactic. (You can thank the violent BLM movement for expediting its demise; boy, what a miscalculation THAT was, wasn't it?) Y'all should try being, I dunno, entertaining. Like Milo.
This guy is less harmful than Martin Shkreli overall, and certainly far less potentially dangerous. He's an icon and popular writer in alt-right circles as well as their leading "gay Uncle Tom" figure, and a leading social media harassment campaign coordinator. He hacked the accounts and organized the mass-trolling of Leslie Jones for, as far as I can tell, having the audacity to be black and female in a comedy movie.
That said, he's never sent the price of any life-saving medication through the stratosphere. He's hardly more powerful or dangerous than any Average Joe with seriously fucked-up ideology and a computer, and there are like a dozen of those who post regularly on Slashdot :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
He had to do absolutely nothing at all.
That Gamergate had anything to do with hatespeech at all is a blatant lie, made up by Gawker and their ilk and repeated ad nauseum by everybody else.
Why? Because that was easier than admitting that, yes the gamers were right, there was no ethics whatsoever to speak of in gaming journalism, everyone whas sleeping with each other, discussing on what to report and what not to mention etc...
It really is outrageous for gamers to demand just a minimum of standards in the way of journalistic integrity.
I was there on 4chan back in August 2014 when it really started: No hatespeech whatsoever. Any post even slightly hinting that violence of any kind was appropriate was reported and taken down quicker than even child porn. On Twitter and the other, moderated, social medias, the situation was even more tame: A Data scientist ran a statistical analysis on tweets containing the #gamergate hashtag and found that less than 0.2% of them were hostile in any way. Keep in mind that this tag was also used by the SJWs and the trolls (of both sides).
All supposed death threats (which by the way happened before that tag was even created, meaning that they were not even part of Gamergate) have been thoroughly debunked.
I think what really made the mass media (well video game mass media at least) so angry, is that this bunch of outcast nerds did not keel over and die when ordered/expected to, but instead had the audacity to fight back, completely politely. And what a fight it was: Using only polite emails and even paper letters, they got pretty much every single advertiser to pull out from Gawker and their subsites, contributing to its well earned demise, they got the FTC to update its guidelines on hidden advertising, they got an apology for the creator of Sins of a Solar Empire who had been falsely accused of rape, they greenlit a steam game from a femminist that had been bullied (including death threats) by other more extreme femminists for not being as rabid as she was supposed to be (Seedscape), they made The Escapist and even IGN adopt an ethics codex and of course they got many of the ringleaders of those 11 articles along the "Gamers are dead" line fired (those articles were released completely coincidentally all on the same day, I am sure the secret GamesJournoMailinglist that Milo uncovered later had nothing to do with it). Not officially of course, but many had their contract not renewed or were let go for "creative differences".
Meanwhile moot was spending weeks in europe with his not-girlfriend who was a SJW and at that time writing an academic paper about him.
It is kinda sad that currently the most objective article on GG is the one on encyclopediadramatica. The one on wikipedia is so biased that even Jim Wales spoke out against it. Of course they cite sources (mostly from Gawker) so by Wikipedia standards the article is fine.
If I can get a bit more theoretical here, a number of people have posted the Free Speech xkcd comic. It's absolutely right that there is a difference between 'the government won't arrest you' and 'no one should be compelled to host content they disagree with'. For this reason, I am indeed glad that Milo is keeping 4chan as a place where people can indeed post unpopular opinions.
However, I've been thinking about this recently: to what end is it not required for there to be a platform given? Twitter doesn't want to host offensive tweets. Fine. I'll join the four people on Google Plus and do it. Well, seems the other three people on Google Plus don't like my offensive speech, either.
Okay. I'll head on over to HostGator and install Friendica and make my own place where I can post my offensive things. Well, HostGator says I can't do that on their servers, rinse and repeat for GoDaddy, BlueHost, and 1&1. I head over to Amazon and rent some server time there, but Amazon says I can't post my offensive things there.
Fine, no more cloud for me - want something done right, DIY time. So, I call up Verizon and get their you-can-have-a-web-server FiOS package and load up an old desktop with a LAMP stack and host it myself. Verizon says they're not obligated to give me a platform, and when I call Cablevision, I get the same story. So, "no one is required to give me a platform" is, at its logical conclusion, a statement that can prevent a sufficiently offensive message from ever reaching the internet.
What is the reasonable expectation here? Should someone sufficiently down the line be expected to provide the same platform to hate speech as they provide to acceptable speech? Obviously I paint a picture of a fairly remote possibility, but it does raise the question of how "freedom of the press" works if no one will sell you a printing press.
Discuss.
While we're on the subject, what are David Duke, Jared Taylor and the rest of their KK buddies up to? How about the USA neo-Nazi movement? Are they looking to buy a strip mall somewhere? How about the Bundy clan? Are they looking to build a new outhouse at their compound? Does Dylan Roof have a special someone he is prison pen-pals with now?
I'm really, really not down with /. reporting on hate group leaders like they are the Kardashians.
You mean the KKK that was founded by the Democratic party and once headed by Democrat Senator Byrd? They've been superceded by the Democrats newest hate organization called Black Lives Matter. Rather than hang negros from trees though they've moved on to destroying their own cities and shooting cops.