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8chan Criticized By Its Founder, Blocked by Australian and NZ ISPs (marketwatch.com)
Several major ISPs in Australia temporarily blocked access to 8chan, along with "dozens" of web sites that hosted video of last week's mass shooting in Christchurch New Zealand, Ars Technica reports -- noting that the ISPs acted on their own in response to "community expectations."
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan (who "cut ties" with the site in December) is now criticizing 8chan moderators for their slowness in removing posts inciting violence, including last week's post from the Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant: Their reluctance to do so, along with the proliferation of posts on 8chan praising Tarrant's actions, have persuaded Brennan that the toxic, white-supremacist culture that lives on parts of the site could someday be linked to another mass shooting....
Brennan, 25 years old, expressed regret that the site had consumed so much of his life. "I didn't spend enough time making friends in real life," he said. High-school events and classes in upstate New York didn't matter to him at all. What mattered was the community of like-minded provocateurs, trolls, libertarians and conservative thinkers he discovered online as a boy and that formed his identity as a young man. "I just feel like I wasted too much time on this stuff," he said.
Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell (in a Post video) argues that 8chan "has grown from this central place for tech libertarians, trolls, just people looking to get a rise out of other people online, and it's really radicalized into this place of overt neo-Nazi, white supremacist, racist, sexist, anti-everything discourse...
"We haven't really reckoned with how to deal with the negative parts of easy and free and anonymous connectivity around the world, and there's no real good mechanism for solving a problem like that."
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan (who "cut ties" with the site in December) is now criticizing 8chan moderators for their slowness in removing posts inciting violence, including last week's post from the Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant: Their reluctance to do so, along with the proliferation of posts on 8chan praising Tarrant's actions, have persuaded Brennan that the toxic, white-supremacist culture that lives on parts of the site could someday be linked to another mass shooting....
Brennan, 25 years old, expressed regret that the site had consumed so much of his life. "I didn't spend enough time making friends in real life," he said. High-school events and classes in upstate New York didn't matter to him at all. What mattered was the community of like-minded provocateurs, trolls, libertarians and conservative thinkers he discovered online as a boy and that formed his identity as a young man. "I just feel like I wasted too much time on this stuff," he said.
Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell (in a Post video) argues that 8chan "has grown from this central place for tech libertarians, trolls, just people looking to get a rise out of other people online, and it's really radicalized into this place of overt neo-Nazi, white supremacist, racist, sexist, anti-everything discourse...
"We haven't really reckoned with how to deal with the negative parts of easy and free and anonymous connectivity around the world, and there's no real good mechanism for solving a problem like that."
It is the solution...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
But what the actual fuck would you call THIS BULLSHIT LOL?
Two sides to that coin. Thanks for the demonstration.
You can't stop the signal
Murdering people on camera is blatant proof that the progressives were right all along about you, yes.
...what's underground gets drudged back up into the open. In late 2014 discussions of run-of-the-mill internet drama regarding ideologues and he-said, she-said stories was unexpectedly banned from multiple websites, so it moved to 4chan. And then, in an unprecedented move, it was mass-banned from 4chan as well.
So, what happens then? The conversation doesn't stop; it moves to the venue which is least likely to inhibit it, which ended up being 8chan. The Streisand Effect was strong. As soon as it happened I knew that it'd be some kind of turning point.
All politics aside (jokes! I know that's impossible), the dynamics of crowds and movement on the internet seem to be something woefully misunderstood by the people who positioned themselves - through venture-capital funding and fuck-you money, I'd reckon - into power over moderation of the internet. Any long-time netizen could have predicted this would happen. Drama plays itself out in a matter of days or weeks if you don't take drastic steps to squelch it.
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
No no no... I believe we are all now expected to say in unison:
"Yay censorship! Down with freedom! Oligarchy forever! The cheers for censorship - hup, hup, hurrah!"
Quelle surprise. It's almost like mainstream media has an agenda to push or something.
Brennan/Hotwheels does not support or advocate censorship:
https://twitter.com/HW_BEAT_THAT/status/1108729831703769088
Not as far as the slashdot editors are concerned.
With the right, it's blasphemy, with the left, 'hate speech, both want to use the state to impose themselves.
fuck them both.
You 8chan edgelords who think death threats, racism, child porn, etc are the height of clever discourse can only blame yourselves for this. At some point, people will say, "enough" and just shut you the fuck down. So now you spoil things for the rest of us who believe in free speech.
Good job. You run with scissors, don't cry when someone gets their eye put out.
You are welcome on my lawn.
LOLOLOLOL.
Brennan, 25 years old, expressed regret that the site had consumed so much of his life.
You're 25 ding-dong. You (probably) have many, many more years ahead ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!
Your typical progressive nazi would meet a sorry end if xe walked through Cleveland at night. Not that a prog would ever do that.
Whereas a deplorable prole like me would stand a good chance of getting out unscathed. Maybe even making some friends. Not hiding one's flyover accent goes a long way for street cred.
'Cuz the ghetto boys aren't the enemies of us good ol' boys. They're just the same as we are, but with a different culture. In the new America that's coming we're allies. Real knows real. Real respects real.
Solidarity forever.
#notallmuslims
We do have difficulty calling incitement to violence and support of terrorism crimes when the speaker's skin color has melanin.
There is only a censorship problem in the eyes of precious snowflakes who are afraid they cannot survive in this rough world without white privilege. Yes, a lot of white male losers have good reason to believe they are roadkill in a world that is even a little bit more fair. It is because they are losers.
Shitty parents raise shitty children. If you want to stop children from growing up into shitbags, get them some real parents. Juvenillie deliquency is always caused by adult deliquency.
Short version: Americans are shitty people.
The guy live-broadcast himself shooting 50 people and you're here talking about forced confessions. "Right..." indeed.
Washington Post journalists aren't changing your mind about anything. You already loved all that stuff to begin with. It's convenient making excuses and whipping up a lot of drama for yourself, though.
The most Mordorish thing going on in NZ these days would probably be the mass indiscriminate killings. But no, the real tragedy here is that people who incite violence are being silenced.
What would we do without Kendall's superb sense of perspective and surface-level LoTR analogies?
Community once expected that black people sat in the back of the bus.
Community once expected that women did not get involved in politics.
As a company it is a perilous task to hinder people in what they want to do based on "community expectations". Especially when it is quite clear that expectations are not uniformly shared across the community, which is almost always true when it concerns which information should be available to the public.
Facebook alone has deleted 1.5 million uploads of this video in the fist 24 hours. It is their site, they get to decide what they want on it, but it cannot be denied this indicates people want to see this video.
So why then block access to the likes of liveleak, 4chan and 8chan, if not only to impose your will on others? The content on those sites was just as gruesome and appalling before, so why now? It smells like censorship and virtue signaling.
It is moral corruption of the worst kind, because it hides behind the facade of decency.
This is why free speech laws exist, not for speech you agree with. And this is why information carriers should be bound to free speech laws in the same way governments are.
They delete the copy/paste spam posts all the time now. I actually had my account suspended a number of years ago.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
That sites post videos regularly of people being massacred, raped and murdered in poor and developing countries regularly without anyone caring. However, when the same stuff is posted about things happening in the developed world, suddenly there is outrage and a need for censorship.
I personally don't support any of the people posting these killings and am not keen on giving a larger platform to these right wing racist nationalists, but I cant help but see the obvious hypocrisy.
The perp live-streamed the whole thing on Facebook, and yet FB has not been banned...
regular folk. Get a room full of 100 random people and I'd be surprised you could find one who's heard of 8chan before the shootings. If you did, it was probably because of that stunt THQ Nordic pulled with them (no such thing as bad advertising...).
And if I may, censorship has it's up side, especially when it's not done by the government. It makes content creators work harder to get their message out because they can't just rely on shock value. It discourages writers from relying on sex and violence and bigger and bigger explosions. The 70s and 80s were pretty well censored and they were a golden age for films (Star Wars, the Mel Brooks films, The God Father).
Take all the breaks off and you don't get a "free marketplace of ideas", you get a bevy of trolls and their shit posts. And as the discourse gets more and more toxic you get this.
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Because using a tragedy to destroy the rights of everyone else in the country is completely on the up-and-up.
If you lose a right every time something horrible happens in the world, you will soon find yourself without any rights at all. Ask people who lived under communist regimes how life was.
I always wondered how such governments could be allowed to exist by the people. How did things get that way? How could the people let that happen? I'm seeing it now. It makes sense. The propaganda infiltrates their minds and convinces them to throw away their liberty in the name of false safety and, like cultists, attack anyone who doesn't see things the same way.
the only reason anyone can read your post but you is that /. is censoring the "Natalie Portman Hot Grits / Greased up Yoda Doll / GNAA" trolls. I can't be the only one old enough to remember the time before when /. was rendered useless by trolling efforts.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you could only hear what the drivel from your head sounds like to others.
free and anonymous connectivity is not the problem
When it comes to psychologically stable and educated individuals, this is correct. However, this is a significant contingent of humanity that is unstable and/or impressionable. With this segment of the population, free and anonymous connectivity can be weaponized to amplify their misinformation/disinformation. It can be used to rally people to focus their feelings of living an unfulfilling life on to a scapegoat.
Scapegoating has in fact been a highly successful engagement strategy for media outlets and politicians, which have in turn convinced many that education is elitist and to distrust experts thus further exacerbating the issue.
The question is really, how do we protect our society from those who would take advantage of these people?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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Is this all that happens - people inciting violence are being silenced? I hear Jordan Peterson's had his invitation of a visiting fellowship at Cambridge University rescinded." I have seen quite some videos of JP but none advised violence. OTOH when a group of white boys from a catholic school has been doxed and received death threats everybody (at least most of media and political class) found this jolly good..I wonder why the discrepancy?
There is more - every time a person starts shouting in German 'alles machbar' there is nothing to see - it is usually a deed by a single disturbed person etc. Here we do not even know for sure who this guy in NZ was - he used language that could be seen as left wing radical, certainly eco-fashists (this is what he called himself) are green and left in my country. Yet we all have to wear headscarf as a sign of solidarity? I do not have anything to do with this guy even if I am a white man. I do not subscribe to acts of senseless violence against other people. I may have a different view when it comes to politicians - after all attempt to kill Adolf is celebrated in some places. What I mean is this: we have a lot of lunatics on the right wing side of political spectrum. We have significantly bigger group of lunatics on the left side however. Plus the violence loving radicals of religion of peace variety do have significant support in their communities - nobody seems to be addressing this issue. Or rather - some people do and get banned. Quite frankly I do not care about chan or whatever the site in question is called. I think however that erosion of our free speech rights have to be discussed. While we are at it we shall also discuss the spread of Marxist ideology in politics, media and academia and we can also touch the problems that love of violence among certain religious community causes.
If you want to block all sites that incite violence go ahead and do Please be consistent while doing so!
First thing you learn about Trolls, they no nothing about the truth and care even less about it.
New Zealand is ranked higher than the USA for free speech, for freedom of the press, and democracy, honesty.
New Zealand told the world that it will not accept nuclear weapons or nuclear powered ships into its waters way back in the 1980s, and no government has been brave enough to try and change that law, because unlike the USA the government is actually accountable to the people, not the corporations.
The USA talks a big game, but when you look deeply you see its actually a shit hole, violent, dishonest, racist, scared.
the style of government of the eastern block seems to have leaked out in to the whole world.
"Have a seat, citizen; It seems that you have seen some illegal pictures and texts that conflict with the way you are supposed to look at the world."
It is the solution...
I reluctantly agree, but only to a point.
For an alcoholic, alcohol is not the solution. But neither is prohibition.
People who cloister themselves in the toxic world-views of sites like 8chan may be heavily conditioned against considering facts from other sites. Free and anonymous connectivity probably will not help such people. But I don't think ISPs banning 8chan will help either. Some other site will take its place, or the 8channer can switch ISPs.
Another topic is whether ISPs should be able to do this in the first place. I think they should not. IMHO, ISPs are common carriers. They provide a connection service, not a content service (like cable or satellite TV, that choose which content to provide.)
I think the solution is to teach young people how to spot false arguments and misinformation, as well as the history of the world, and the harm that extremist groups have caused.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Sealed Indictment : An indictment can be sealed so that it stays non-public until it is unsealed. This can be done for a number of reasons. It may be unsealed, for example, once the named person is arrested or has been notified by police.
Even Fox News agrees with me : Fox News’ Chris Wallace: Rudy Giuliani ‘Awfully Optimistic’ To Think Mueller Probe Is Over
The attorney’s conclusion that the special counsel’s report is good news for President Trump is premature, the Fox News host warned.
Bring lube, traitor, when they come for you with the shiny bracelets. Keep mentioning Hillary when you go to prison, try for a crazy defense. Keep trying to fuck your ugly daughter meanwhile I guess.
Before they take you off to die in prison a traitor.
You have controlled the world economy for the past few hundred years, colonized and pillaged half the earth and racially classified the darkest races at the bottom of the hierarchy. You have made life miserable for the darker races, and yet you still somehow feel victimized.
There should be recording devices in every religious institution, and every hate speech vigorously prosecuted until all the terrorist pastors, mullahs and televangelists are behind bars.
100% agree
But lets be real, 8chan was founded because 4chan wasn't "free" enough.
I mean the only things banned on 4chan are doxing, specific threats and CP, so what exactly do you expect 8chan to attract?
Banning is effective. It makes it harder to draw new people in and radicalize them, because you can't just post a link. Of course they can get around the block with some work, but that barrier means there will be a lot less casual/blind clicks through to that content.
It censorship wasn't effective it wouldn't be so popular and people wouldn't get so upset about it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I guess you missed the part where a sealed indictment pertaining to arrest must be followed by an actual arrest within an allotted limited timespan, which didn't happen because none is necessary. You may continue your anal bleed.
While some 8ch users may continue trumpeting that they are all for free speech, many in the general public will inevitably conclude that free-speech equates to a site full of hate-spewing xenophobes. Posting and supporting that video actually hurts all those who believe in free-speech, but aren't xenophobic neo-nazi's.
I think it's way more likely that anti free-speech believers love what 8ch has done.
The best way to convince others that free speech matters is to have a sane discussion with them. It's not by supporting a complete fucking assholes video killing other innocent people while they were peacefully praying.
Strange how often that icon goes missing when it's leftist totalitarians doing the censoring.
This.
you're not seeing them because the Mods shut them down before you do. Both the human ones and the automated ones.
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Sealed indictments - verily. Glad to see the left is sinking to Q levels of conspiracy tardation.
What was the Muslim occupation of Europe and enslavement of more "whites" than "whites" ever enslaved blacks?
"I'll take, More Moors and Borders With No Doors for $400, Alex"
Lack of freedom makes life miserable for the "dark races" in "their" countries.
It is the solution...
Anonymity did not solve any problem. If you can't put your name on it, it's not worth fighting for, and not worthy of respect.
(Said the AC, ironically.)
There are many problems that anonymity can help to solve. For example:
- it allows whistle-blowers to report crimes without fear of reprisal
- it can encourage candor when people express concerns or opinions
- it allows someone to share non-identifying personal information (health issues, etc.)
- and so on.
Of course, it's a two-sided coin. Anonymity has disadvantages. I leave a listing of them as an exercise. But it's not true that "Anonymity did not solve any problem."
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
people can say what they want! Kill it with fire!
Let's listen to the free market....
"Fuck off Nazis!"
Oops...this must not be a free market...
It was announced Friday there are zero sealed indictments.
8chan doesn't "draw in" anybody. It's the exact opposite in fact... a place where new users are picked on, ridiculed, and told to fuck off and die.
http://www.centerforsecuritypo...
#notallmuslims, but a whole fuckin lot of 'em.
It is the solution...
I take it you don't browse at -1, or don't browse 8chan ... or 4chan ... any other examples of free anonymous forums you want to talk about? I mean they are all so lovely, filled with loving level headed people.
You forgot the big reason; the one the OP would be happy to silence. It permits people to express ideas that are in opposition to popular opinion.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin
Cue the left wing whiners who will point out that Franklin was making a statement about a particular issue at the time: Taxes. That's not the point. The overarching sentiments conveyed can just as easily be applied to excessive regulation, emergency government edicts, or whatever is being imposed at the moment.
But it's antifa who are the dangerous ones, right?
Or may some of you will try to argue the neo-Nazi is somehow also an antifa.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
You'll be blocked for certain comments. Certain common troll posts won't be allowed. I've tried to do a few parody troll posts where I'm calling out to old trolls and gotten blocked until I modified the post substantially and added a bit more content than just a call out to the old post.
I'm not sure, but I'm guessing they did it to prevent folks from wasting all their Mod Points on modding down trolls.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I take it you don't browse at -1
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
... for solving a problem like that.
It came to us from the movie War Games.
Joshua: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Considering there are as many guns as people, it's astonishing how few gun crimes there are in the US...
It's effectiveness of censorship was never in doubt. The simple and necessary goal is to make it as difficult as possible.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Solution to what? This is not sufficient, the point of the article is that free and anonymous connectivity has caused a problem. Saying that the same thing which caused this problem "is the solution" is not a contradiction, or even an argument, and doesn't address anything that the article said.
The shooting was fully streamed on Facebook and was up for over half an hour after before being removed.
Why wasn't facebook blocked?
I think the solution is to teach young people how to spot false arguments and misinformation, as well as the history of the world, and the harm that extremist groups have caused.
Unfortunately, academia - which is entrusted with education of the young - is infested with extremists. The bigotry in an average sociology department would not be out of place on 8chan, although the targets are different.
(I say this as an academic who has heard an officemate voice some appalling bigotry, including repeated explicit calls for discrimination, directed at "white males".)
the point of the article is that free and anonymous connectivity has caused a problem.
Yes, and that is bullshit. It has not caused a problem, except to the people who want to control communications and information. The rationale is simple to understand. So, leave it to them to make up stories to justify their existence, and sell their snake oil. The most important thing right now is to develop the tech that can route around all attempts at censorship instead of arguing about it. The tyrants can whine about our horrible freedom amongst themselves.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
for the love of god mod this man up - information isnt the weapon - it is the restriction of information that is the weapon
"His name was James Damore."
The rationale is simple to understand.
... And? What rational? Why has it not caused a problem? In what way are their conclusions bullshit? You continue to say nothing.
I'm not asking for a lot here, the "article" in this case is just a crappy little video. It's really not worth even this much attention, but your "+5 Insightful" response amounts to "Nuh-uh."
Sexual crime phantasies of a real communist.
Banning isn't effective if you've turned a person into an irredeemable "deplorable".
The rationale for disobeying and accessing the sites anyways can be as mild as "I don't trust the people who banned me anymore, so I'll look elsewhere and critically judge the 'bad' information myself" to "They treated me like a leper, so I have nothing else to lose now! These are the only people who will accept me."
Lack of empathy makes a class of people considered sub-human, or non-human. That kind of thing doesn't really sit well in the human psyche and we can sense it even if the words are kind.
We are helping to create monsters and then punish them for existing anywhere else online. This isn't a recipe for peace and understanding.
If they do violence or make calls to it, arrest them. Leave them alone otherwise or it will make the problems worse.
And my Irish ancestors were stripped bare and sold naked as "indentured servants", little more than a prettied-up word for slaves.
How many years of grievances should we bear and for how long?
Let's face it, this is a route to never-ending conflict because no human alive has no blood on their hands.
In pre-history our ancestors killed so that invading tribes wouldn't do the same to them. We are still the descendants of those murderers.
If you take that into account, then none of us is "clean", and never have been.
"has grown from this central place for tech libertarians, trolls, just people looking to get a rise out of other people online..."
Oh, please. Lipstick on a pig... whitewashing... polishing a turd... What other euphemisms are there for this?
"and it's really radicalized into this place of overt neo-Nazi, white supremacist, racist, sexist, anti-everything discourse... "
h8chan never changed. It started because 4chan was too liberal, and It's purpose is literally in the fucking name, h8 (hate). It's the baby brother to other august hard right outposts like Stormfront and Infowars.
As for Drew Harwell... What the fuck? What kind of person apologizes for the pieces of shit who go around spreading hate? Drew you are part of the problem.
You really are a piece of shit. You seem to get worse as time passes.
The problem is not "freedom of speech is anti-censorship" but rather "unlimited freedom of speech is endorsement of hate, terrorism, sexual assault, child abuse, animal abuse, copyright infringement, careless unsafe activities/pranks, libel etc"
Go look at the banned or restricted/demonetized content guidelines for things like Youtube, eBay, etc. At no time is any for-profit driven site given any incentive to keep toxic content. This is why this stuff gets funneled to the toxic waste dumps like website beginning with 8 , and websites ending with "chan" (which spawned from similar unregulated boards in Japan which allow pretty-much-everything.)
If your site operates on "we will not be silenced" then you have to allow all the unfiltered shit to sit around and stink up the place, no amount of moderating will ever get that stench off.
A better option is to fake it. Allow everything to be posted, and every time that bad user comes to the site, while logged in or cookies exist, will see their bad content. Then after an appropriate amount of time, make it disappear entirely. The user will be socially engineered to think their ideas suck or were ignored, and go be raging jackass somewhere else.
You cannot justify censorship.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Go on Youtube and search for "New Zealand shooting false flag" - the first pages of results are all official news channels, and NOTHING to do with 'false flags'. In other words, Youtube now censors videos that people make, if they dare to question the official narrative from the controlled media.
I am starting to wonder if this event was a false flag event, and also if anybody was actually shot - which would explain why the government doesn't want you to watch the video.
If you read the shooter's 'manifesto', you'll note that not once does it mention Jews, nor the role they play in banking, the controlled media, governments, and academia. Why is that? How is it possible for a white man who is against immigration to not talk about the people behind mass immigration - the Jews? (Don't believe me, research it for yourself.)