I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that actual calls to swat people have been deleted on that board. But, I can't say for sure because I don't hang out there, and the events of GamerGate have me applying a shakerfull of salt to any negative press surrounding 8chan.
And as far as "incorrect", that is your opinion and it is your own, I have a differing one. I like the idea of a site where the admin has assured that they will not interfere with you unless they have to.
Really, did you miss the qualifier "that allows people to set up their own communities"?
And since I've hit the posting limit:
That is your opinion @zorpner, and nothing I can say will change it. We disagree, vehemently, on the whole "silence is complicity" thing.
@bryantd:
Because freedom of speech is a guiding principle, a human right, not just a law, and that guiding principle is a higher priority than people talking about societally-disapproved-of-things. The price of following that principle is that people can and will talk about things that some or even most people don't like.
The idea of cracking down on people discussing things because you personally find it distasteful is, to me, incredibly offensive. I don't like the idea of neo nazis or places where people post pictures of dead children, but I also don't think someone should have the ability to come in and say "No, you can't talk about that."
@bryantd again:
Ah, gotcha. In that case, no, I don't think there is a strictly different moral obligation in play.
I get that curated spaces are a thing, and I don't have an issue with those, but the problem I see a lot is that there are N stated rules in a space, but N+X unwritten rules and breaking them gets you in trouble, and oftentimes you don't know what you did wrong. This leads to the superficial projection of freedom of speech and an open community, but in reality, that is not what's happening. I.e. deception. And in an atmosphere of deception, censorship follows. Censorship, to me, being a greater evil than whatever someone could possibly be talking about.
That's the "why", because the moral obligation of free expression, IMO, is a few levels higher than most others.
Heck, even here on HN, this is a problem (though not NEAR as much as some other sites, thanks to Dang and PG and the rest). But still, we have shadowbans and post timeouts and opaque algorithms that kill posts before anyone has had a chance to read them.
I'm not asking why you think freedom of speech is a guiding principle and a human right. I get that and I agree that freedom of speech is incredibly important. I have spent a lot of mental time over the last few years thinking about that belief in relationship to my feeling that it's bad to cause pain.
This is not a simple problem.
However, it's also irrelevant to my question: why do you think that the admin of 8chan has a different moral obligation vis a vis free speech than the admin of Hacker News? You said that allowing people to set up their own communities was important, and I sincerely don't know why that makes a difference here.
It's OK with me if you misspoke, and you think that Hacker News should operate under the same principles as 8chan.
> I have spent a lot of mental time over the last few years thinking about that belief in relationship to my feeling that it's bad to cause pain.
I submit that the two are not in conflict. The first is a principle that all people should have this right. The second is moral guidance on the subjective application of that right.
People can use their rights for good or for ill. The key thing is that people have that right. It's not a right if someone else's subjective moral judgments can take it away.
> This is not a simple problem.
That depends. Why do you think there is complexity? At a guess, you think others should live by your principles, and so you are conflicted when they do not.
That is a poor guess. I think it's complex precisely because I don't think everyone should be forced to live by the same principles, and because I recognize that some principles conflict. People have been arguing about value pluralism for a while now, so I feel like I'm in pretty good company here.
If free speech wasn't fundamentally important to me, I wouldn't think it was a complex problem, I'd be happy to limit speech.
I like the idea of a site where the admin has assured that they will not interfere with you unless they have to.
If an admin chooses not to interfere, that does not absolve them from the responsibility of what happens on their site. If they had the power to remove it, and did not, they share in the blame for the consequences.
Are phone companies liable when criminals use their products to talk on the phone? Are the developers of encryption liable for ISIS encrypting their calls?
Call me when CNN and Fox News get sued for lying, and when Sony gets prosecuted for starting trivial lawsuits to stifle free speech.
First off, I'm talking about culpability, not liability. Conflating morality and legality (not to mention censorship and providing a platform) makes your entire post nonsensical.
And in the context of culpability, it's obvious that such a relationship only exists when the individual with the power to prevent bad action is aware of the action. So in this case, where Hotwheels is not only a participant in the relevant boards on 8chan but has expressed approval of what's happening, it's easy to hold him culpable (and probably liable as well, for what it's worth).
People who wish to discuss their neo-nazism can go open their own forum wherever they wish, at their own expense -- once the government stops them, we have a problem (assuming they're not actively violating any laws, etc). No one is obligated to host that content, and people who choose to host or continue to host that content are active participants in that behavior. Silence is not complicity -- knowing, and choosing to be silent, clearly is.
Of course, no hosting provider would be obligated to take their money to host them, and any that did would presumably be seen as active participants in their behaviour if they continued to do so, and the same with upstream providers of internet connectivity. So unless someone is willing to take a stand and host that content even if they're seen as complicit for doing so, then no they can't open their own forum anywhere on the internet.
Which wouldn't be so bad if neo-Nazis were the only ones affected, but sadly they're one of the groups least likely to be driven off the internet this way.
There's a pretty substantial difference between "I like the idea of a site..." and "only legitimate stance to take."
Can you explain why you think granting the ability to create a sub-board generates a different moral obligation, in your opinion, than granting the ability to create a new post?
Localism, or some generalization of that; it also feels like there's a kind of "principle of least privilege" here. Moderation should happen at the most local level where it's practical, with a community enforcing its own rules according to its own culture. Once you're offering a platform for people to build distinct communities on, you're assuming the position of an infrastructure provider or a government, and you have some of the obligations that go along with that.
Allowing posts on a single board doesn't carry that obligation, because that's not what you're offering; the individual posts aren't and aren't meant to be communities with their own culture. I would still say that moderators have a moral obligation to be open, accountable, and representative of the community they moderate (even if it's a community they didn't want or ask for), and HN does a particularly poor job in this regard (lobste.rs demonstrates that it's possible to run a site like this with an open moderator log).
OK, thanks -- that clarifies for me! And yeah; right now, for example, it's kind of awkward having this conversation because you've hit a post limit of some kind, which I gotta assume is a moderation thing. Irksome, since I think it's a good discussion.
FWIW, I agree strongly that unclear rules are bad. You should know what parameters you're operating under. I think there's some space for judgement calls, because it's really hard to write rules that cover all possible cases, but I also think it's significantly better to make those exceptions rather than SOP.
Sincere thanks for taking the time to explain. I will not burden you further with having to edit your posts to reply to me, and certainly feel free to drop me an email if you'd like.
And as far as "incorrect", that is your opinion and it is your own, I have a differing one. I like the idea of a site where the admin has assured that they will not interfere with you unless they have to.
Really, did you miss the qualifier "that allows people to set up their own communities"?
And since I've hit the posting limit:
That is your opinion @zorpner, and nothing I can say will change it. We disagree, vehemently, on the whole "silence is complicity" thing.
@bryantd: Because freedom of speech is a guiding principle, a human right, not just a law, and that guiding principle is a higher priority than people talking about societally-disapproved-of-things. The price of following that principle is that people can and will talk about things that some or even most people don't like.
The idea of cracking down on people discussing things because you personally find it distasteful is, to me, incredibly offensive. I don't like the idea of neo nazis or places where people post pictures of dead children, but I also don't think someone should have the ability to come in and say "No, you can't talk about that."
@bryantd again: Ah, gotcha. In that case, no, I don't think there is a strictly different moral obligation in play.
I get that curated spaces are a thing, and I don't have an issue with those, but the problem I see a lot is that there are N stated rules in a space, but N+X unwritten rules and breaking them gets you in trouble, and oftentimes you don't know what you did wrong. This leads to the superficial projection of freedom of speech and an open community, but in reality, that is not what's happening. I.e. deception. And in an atmosphere of deception, censorship follows. Censorship, to me, being a greater evil than whatever someone could possibly be talking about.
That's the "why", because the moral obligation of free expression, IMO, is a few levels higher than most others.
Heck, even here on HN, this is a problem (though not NEAR as much as some other sites, thanks to Dang and PG and the rest). But still, we have shadowbans and post timeouts and opaque algorithms that kill posts before anyone has had a chance to read them.