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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."
This is what happens when you let an ex-LISP programmer make comments.
"when you say "freedom of speech" you mean the freedom to be a white supremacist neo-nazi hate monger."
Definitely! Or maybe freedom to be advocating a homosexual lifestyle, or freedom to be a pornography spreading filth monger, or freedom to instruct people about making bombs or cooking meth.
Yes, in the USA there is a First Amendment, but that only provides a little protection against government censorship. It does nothing to restrain the militant, hate-filled SJWs from using every tactic imaginable, including brute force, to stifle speech that they don't like.
Creating a forum for unpopular opinions and controversial material is an entirely noble enterprise
Yiannopoulos added this his philosophy as an owner "would be very simple: free-speech central, no ifs, no buts."
Let me know how that goes for you 5 seconds in when somebody posts child porn or makes a credible threat of violence.
I know, right? The 21st century is all about properly censored and curated 'safe spaces.' WTF is he thinking?
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.
The Left has gained such control over media, academia, and government that certain ideas were entirely banished from the public eye. This left us with "cuckservatives," or neoconservatives who believed in Leftist goals through conservative methods, as the only option to the Left. That option was not an alternative, so the Alternative Right arose.
Censorship can occur through many methods. It is not merely a legal term; it means disallowing your ideological opponents from expressing necessary ideas as a way of weakening them. Doxxing people, getting them fired from their jobs, and otherwise destroying their lives is a means of censorship. This is why anonymous internet forums like 4chan came about: people wanted to talk about these taboo things.
Milo is "alt lite," according to most, in that he is from the libertarian tradition of anarchy with free markets more than the Alt Right mainstream of opposing equality. He will be fair as an owner of a free speech site, as there is nothing on record showing him ever supporting censorship or trying to censor others.
Alternative Right.