That's fair, but then he shouldn't have been surprised when his site started hemorrhaging users who were there entirely for the freedom of speech they enjoyed.
8chan will probably last much longer than 4chan precisely because Fredrick refuses to make those judgement calls about what is and isn't acceptable. He doesn't need to bear a heavy conscience about what kind of speech he is allowing, he just follows the law to the letter and lets people do their thing.
I leave you all with a fantastic speech the late Christopher Hitchens made about the freedom of speech and why there is no freedom of speech unless you extend that freedom towards people you disagree with, even the ones you find completely abhorrent.
>8chan will probably last much longer than 4chan precisely because Fredrick refuses to make those judgement calls about what is and isn't acceptable. He doesn't need to bear a heavy conscience about what kind of speech he is allowing, he just follows the law to the letter and lets people do their thing.
I honestly don't see how 8chan is different from 7chan, and I'm willing to bet that after the controversy is over 8chan's influence will die down much like 7chan's.
> Is this an accepted stat or is this a soundbite used by 8chan supporters?
The qualifier you missed is "who were there entirely for the freedom of speech they enjoyed." There are some 60-80,000 daily users of 8chan right now, even in spite of the constant DDoSes the site has suffered over the past few weeks, and that number is only increasing; they had to come from somewhere. I've visited 4chan a few times since the split and have noticed quite a few people that seem out of place in imageboard culture, and in general a lot more of the whiny and shitposty elements that I left 4chan to get away from, so my guess is that as the older anons that craved the free atmosphere that had been slowly eroded from 4chan over the years left, they were replaced by newbies who were previously too scared to visit 4chan who figured things would be "safer" now (yes, there already existed communities like /r/4chan on reddit that consisted of people that liked "4chan humor" but were afraid of, say, stumbling across gore, and there are also a lot of people that lurk 4chan without posting that don't want to deal with trolls and arguments, who might be more likely to post now that a lot of the people they disagreed with left).
> I honestly don't see how 8chan is different from 7chan, and I'm willing to bet that after the controversy is over 8chan's influence will die down much like 7chan's.
As someone who was around for both splits, they are completely different. 7chan was an exclusive community for "oldfags" (non-imageboard users, please don't shit on me for using that word, that is the actual term they called themselves) that attempted to insulate itself from the "newfags" and "gaiafags" they believed moot was allowing to ruin 4chan. They tried to do this by being highly elitist, and banning anyone even mentioning 4chan or its memes or for not being able to keep up with the latest mod shenanigans (because apparently snacks was the most important element of 4chan to them). The site died a slow death because it didn't really have any important unique communities to offer over 4chan, and because most people got tired of the comically overbearing moderation and eventually settled for the (at the time) much more lenient 4chan.
Now that 4chan is the site with the overbearing moderation, 8chan is an inclusive community for people displaced from 4chan (mostly gamergate and /pol/), for fringe communities that previously lived in "general threads" that could now create their own boards with their own moderation (much of /vg/, parts of /a/, /lgbt/, etc), and for those that never had a home there to begin with (/furry/ is a pretty huge one that, for better or for worse, is one of the largest drivers of fresh blood into the site). Even if the boards like /v/ and /a/ with direct equivalents on 4chan died out (which they are not showing any signs of doing, even though they are admittedly smaller than the 4chan boards they split from), there is still a more than sufficient critical mass of people in the communities that have no other home on the internet that could keep the site going.
8chan is also for those like yours truly, that remember how nice 4chan used to be in the lenient days before you had to watch everything you said for fear of upsetting a mod or janitor strictly following rules that the majority of the community disagreed with, or just deleting things allowed by the rules because they personally disliked them. The days when mods didn't up-end boards they didn't even use, like what has happened to /u/, /jp/, /pol/ and /new/, and /r9k/ over the years, on a whim. The days when it wasn't tragically common for downright respectable users to have to frequently ban evade just to participate. Once I'd had a whiff of the fresh air of hands-off moderation and posters that mostly ignore things they don't like instead of whining about them ad nauseum, I realized how much 8chan reminded me of my favorite days on 4chan, and I'll never go back.
Will 8chan "beat" 4chan? I hope not. I'm happy to let 4chan serve as the "containment site" for the (IMO) most annoying parts of the community. But 8chan doesn't need to beat 4chan. It can do its own thing. Ironically, it's a bit like Hacker News vs. Reddit in that respect.
---
Adding a response to malbiniak, because I've, uh, "hit the post limit" (cough):
>Within the first minute of his talk at XOXO back in 2012, he mentioned 4chan being about anonymity and ephemerality, not a blanket endorsement for freedom of all type of speech.
I know, he has said that many times, but his users didn't see things that way, and that is really the crux of this debacle: the disconnect between what moot and the rest of the 4chan staff thought 4chan was about, and what the community thought.
>there is still a more than sufficient critical mass of people in the communities that have no other home on the internet that could keep the site going.
This comment is exactly where my head is at and has been my connection with 4chan.
I had a very rough time in my teens, and my mother and I moved to new cities or towns every year or two. It was hard to keep friends and consider a place home. 4chan was the constant in my life where I could always escape to be comfortable and amongst people who shared my hobbies while experiencing free-speech without the repercussions of identity. No other site offers this like 4chan does, and I've seen plenty of other chans over the years, so, I'm skeptical about 8ch.
I know a lot of people who feel the same way. I'm scared for the future of what I consider my home.
I totally understand where you're coming from. 4chan was my refuge for a very long time through some tough times in my life, and 8chan is the only alternative I've used that captures the feeling of 4chan. I tried many other english "chans" over the years (7chan, 99chan, 420chan, the wakachan/iichan "network", the easymodo/warosu ghost boards, SAoVQ, etc), yet I didn't stick around with any of them. They had their own unique communities, sometimes with greater average "quality", if you can measure such a thing, but nothing could match the excitement and energy of 4chan. I think this is because even the notable ones tried to distance themselves from the "4chan mentality" and community, and attracted different but much less significant audiences in the process. And who could blame them: why would you go to a blatant and insignificant 4chan clone that didn't have anything different to offer?
8chan was once just like that, a ghost town of a somewhat more modern AnonIB clone that wasn't really going anywhere. It owes its success entirely to the fiasco of Gamergate discussion being banned from 4chan, which caused a (literally) overnight exodus of a significant minority of 4chan who wanted to discuss it, along with those who (like me, in spite of the fact that I sometimes defend it on HN) were mostly appalled by the blatant abuse of power. These people weren't trying to "get away from" 4chan or its culture, they were forced to leave. They weren't curmudgeony "oldfags" or the like trying to enforce some new cultural norms in their secret club to increase the "quality", they were 4chan.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the site is now thriving as a community "for people who loved 4chan, by people who loved 4chan." And that's what's I love about it. It's just like 4chan, with a lot of the same people and ideas, but now, the community is running the show, not some guy trying to distance himself from "his creation" and a team of mods that often don't even use the boards they're supposed to protect enforcing arbitrary rules from afar.
Give it a shot. For all the negative attention that boards like /gamergate/ and /baphomet/ receive, they're in their own worlds. The rest of the site is very welcoming towards anyone that understands "4chan culture" and isn't obnoxious about it. Also, webms with sound.
Ever heard the phrase "my right to extend my arm stops at your nose"? Online harassment and freedom of speech are similarly related.
It may be a slippery slope, but it's an important one to navigate. Throwing your hands up and saying "well all these horrible manchildren would just organize somewhere else to harass people, so I might as well let them do it here!" isn't bravery, it's opportunism.
As far as 8chan outlasting 4chan? Unlikely unless the owner realizes he's sitting on a ticking time bomb of federal criminal cases.
> Ever heard the phrase "my right to extend my arm stops at your nose"?
Great idea. Easy to misapply, because with speech people are very bad at knowing where their nose actually is. Having hurt feelings from something someone said? Not being hit in the nose, but I know plenty of people disagree.
I agree, the two are very different. However, a number of people consider their own negative emotions to be a good reason to restrict the speech of others.
There's a reason that flag-burning hit the SCOTUS.
Those articles are just repeating the accusation without evidence. Also, I'm not sure why anyone would give any credence to information from those sources in the first place.
I am astounded by the viciousness and mendacity of those who are determined to undermine 8chan at any cost. These people are essentially fighting for total corporate control of every corner of the internet, just because 8chan doesn't promote their pet issue.
> Those articles are just repeating the accusation without evidence
Except for all the evidence that's in the article, like the newspaper link with quotes from the police chief. But hey, if you ignore all the evidence, there's no evidence!
> Also, I'm not sure why anyone would give any credence to information from those sources in the first place.
Probably because they lie a lot less than GamerGaters seem to.
If 8chan didn't keep calling the police on people, I think it would probably get a lot less heat. You can't claim to be all for free speech, then say it's okay to call the police on somebody who said something you didn't like.
>If 8chan didn't keep calling the police on people
8chan is actually not a person, and no evidence has been presented that a user of the site has done any such thing. I have noticed a couple of posters in this thread posting a gish-gallop of links (mostly from discredited sources) purporting to prove something, but one sees upon inspection that they in fact do nothing of the sort.
Man, not 24 hours ago you tried to convince us all that an article did not contain certain information, when any literate person could see that it did. You're not only a liar, you're a bad liar; your only strategy is making bold, false claims and hoping that everyone is too lazy to follow up on them. Why should we believe anything that you say?
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. I think the epistemic closure among the remaining GamerGate partisans is exactly like the sort of thing you see at the core of plenty of movements. MRAs, climate change deniers, biblical fundamentalists, hardcore marxists, truthers, conspiracy theorists, et cetera, ad nauseam.
Promoting a worldview is a tricky thing. To be really good at it, you have to believe, and the more unorthodox your worldview, the harder you have to work to maintain that worldview in the face of widespread resistance. The easy thing is to refuse to even consider anything to the contrary, to only talk with people who share your views.
This pattern happens over and over in tech, too; it's not like we're exempt. Look at the dot-com bubble, for example. It was an article of faith that the Internet would change everything. That it turned out to be true eventually didn't matter; enough people took leave of their senses that we wasted billions.
Let's be real here, the incidences of SWAT teams showing up at people's houses have mostly been used to argue that action should be taken against people who say negative things online. Hell, we've even had demands that everyone in the gaming community should be forced to use their real name to end harassment, which is just about the worst thing you could do if you cared about SWATting but very handy for punishing people who hold the wrong views.
Members of the anti-GG and social justice crowds have carried out similarly stupid and counterproductive acts of aggression and bullying. They still all deserve a voice and home.
SWATing is horrible, but IMHO you should be placing more of the blame on our fucked up militarized police system that lets bored teenagers send an armored car full of soldiers, armed to the teeth and ready to kill to anyone's house with a single phone call. If it takes a few SWATings for the public to realize that this is completely unacceptable, so be it.
>Members of the anti-GG and social justice crowds have carried out similarly stupid and counterproductive acts of aggression and bullying.
It's not directly relevant to the topic, but if you really believe this you should better educate yourself with regard to what has been done in the name of gamergate.
>IMHO you should be placing more of the blame on our fucked up militarized police system that lets bored teenagers send an armored car full of soldiers, armed to the teeth and ready to kill to anyone's house with a single phone call. If it takes a few SWATings for the public to realize that this is completely unacceptable, so be it.
SWATing has been an ongoing thing for quite a while, with a few cases making their way into mainstream news. Perpetrators (when caught) are prosecuted quite heavily. Waving off SWATing as not the fault of places which allow and encourage harassment in the form of doxing just because the military industrial complex exists seems like blaming auto manufacturers for drunk drivers.
I've actually had arguments with people who believe drunk driving is the fault of "the system" for not making transit instant and free for everyone. So blaming auto manufacturers is the sort of thing people actually believe.
> "I've actually had arguments with people who believe drunk driving is the fault of "the system" for not making transit instant and free for everyone."
"Fault" is a concept that I believes always lies with the person who is actually committing the crime, but I think the general idea isn't outlandish.
Say I've got a problem of drunks leaving the bars at night and pissing on the sidewalk. I can make it illegal, arrest anyone who does it, and when the complaints continue to roll in I can point out you can't make people not break the law. It is nobody's fault but their own, surely I cannot be responsible for another man's bladder.
Alternatively I can recognize the futile nature of attempting to correct this behavior with laws alone, and do something like install public toilets in problem areas.
Designing a society to accommodate people such that they are less likely to break the law does not mean that I am assuming responsibility for their actions, nor assigning fault to myself when people break the law.
This particular person believed that going out and getting drunk was a basic human right, and that having to be responsible for your own transportation infringed on that right. Less of the pragmatic concessions and more of the bizarre notions of fault.
>It's not directly relevant to the topic, but if you really believe this you should better educate yourself with regard to what has been done in the name of gamergate.
No, really, gamergate supporters like Milo Yiannopoulos have also been doxxed, sent death threats to, sent threatening packages to, had their family members harassed, etc. The social justice movement contains honest supporters of diversity in tech, and psychotic scumbags like Shanley Kane. There are idiotic assholes on both "sides," and you shouldn't let them discount the entirety of the movements they "support."
I'm in no way excusing SWATing, but I absolutely think the outrage it generates should be directed towards our militarized police system. The drunk driving analogy is stupid because the benefits that cars provide to society outweigh the negatives of drunk drivers, but there is no good reason for an anonymous tip to warrant armed soldiers breaking into your house in the night, usually making no indication that they are policemen and not just thugs and robbers, and shooting you dead if you so much as move the wrong way in your confusion. It's a profoundly dangerous and easy to abuse system, and it needs to change.
>No, really, gamergate supporters like Milo Yiannopoulos have also been doxxed
I don't think someone searching his twitter feed for a phone number he himself posted for self promotion falls under the same category as taking selfies outside someone's place of work.
>The drunk driving analogy is stupid because the benefits that cars provide to society outweigh the negatives of drunk drivers, but there is no good reason for an anonymous tip to warrant armed soldiers breaking into your house in the night, usually making no indication that they are policemen and not just thugs and robbers, and shooting you dead if you so much as move the wrong way in your confusion. It's a profoundly dangerous and easy to abuse system, and it needs to change.
You're right, the system does need to change. And I would even agree that is linked to the issues of online harassment. However, that is not the cause of online harassment, nor would improvements to police reaction policies put a stop to doxing.
>I don't think someone searching his twitter feed for a phone number he himself posted for self promotion
The parent commenter was referring to an incident when Shanley Kane tweeted Yiannopoulos' personal phone number, which was not intended to be public. He subsequently received a deluge of messages (does this qualify as "harassment"?) Such behavior is commonplace amongst the SJW set, and not so much among their opponents, contrary to the mainstream perception.
He posted his number privately in order to facilitate an interview regarding the topic at hand. I'd argue publishing that is far more egregious than taking a selfie outside someones publicly listed place of work.
Either way they are both shitty behaviours, don't really think we need to take a one vs the other.
I think the implied threat to personal safety is more jarring than obnoxious phone calls, but this is so far off topic it belongs elsewhere.
The kinds of harassment we've seen come out of one man's personal crusade against an ex-girlfriend are disgusting, and it's incumbent upon all of us to discourage it.
A guy that has been using 4chan and other anonymous messageboards since he was 12 acts and thinks like a 4chan user. What a shock.
I know it's not the same to you, but if you look at the top 15 boards on 8chan, that list includes a board that Fredrick likely has no interest in (gay porn), boards full of users that he probably disagrees strongly with (/leftypol/, a left wing version of /pol/, and /christian/, iirc he is an athiest), and a community full of people that he personally cannot stand (/furry/). Maybe you wouldn't pay to provide a home for "gamergate jerks", but he doesn't seem to have a problem providing a home for a lot of people he dislikes or disagrees with.
What is the difference between "enabling" and "not stopping" something? Is he "enabling" GamerGate because he supports it on his personal twitter account, or is he "enabling" it just for refusing to censor it on his site? Is he "enabling" /baphomet/ because he made some improvements to the site software that happened to fix a spam/flooding problem they had? Then is he not also "enabling" the /furry/ board that he developed a CAPTCHA option specifically for, due to the constant attacks of one dedicated spammer that board received? Or does "enabling" just mean "allowing something I dislike"?
If you own a media site (or, let's say, a newspaper), you're very much responsible for what's on it. If you believe in free speech to the point that you'll publish anything anyone wants to say to your audience, then you're very much enabling them and responsible for anything that happens as a result of publishing that.
If you want to create an analogy, I think chans are more like user
group meetings that happen in public spaces (e.g. a public park). Nobody
would kick members out of the park because they heard that they're
pro-ISIS (that's just their opinion). However, display of illegal
content or illegal actions would get members removed via someone calling
the cops. Off topic comments that detract from the spirit of the group
could also get members suspended or kicked out of the group
permanently.
Is it up to park police to monitor the user groups? Sure, but they
cannot take action unless it violates the law.
You're still giving them a platform to do so - it doesn't matter the exact details of how much is user-generated and how much isn't.
If you allowed anybody in the world to put an ad in your newspaper, for example, you would be responsible when ISIS use it as a recruitment or propaganda tool - they wouldn't have that reach otherwise. Same with imageboards, reddit, or HN.
Same with VPS servers. Same with internet infrastructure; hubs, switches and fiber. Or ultimately any physical area in which people uttering heresy and atrocious opinions stay while uttering them (the latter point would ultimately be of concern to any owner of private property, or the state itself in the case of common public property).
How are these distinct from imageboards, forums or reddit? This is a very slippery slope which implies censorship from the very beginning. Are you prepared to follow your reasoning all the way to its conclusion and stop people from having any platform for speaking their mind? Once you go there, you no longer have freedom of speech, which I agree with Hitchens et al. has to be protected even when it is uncomfortable.
I agree that there is a very tricky ethical case when it comes to harrassment or terrorism, but I have no good ideas on how to resolve it. We should err on the side of not censoring stuff we don't like.
> Are you prepared to follow your reasoning all the way to its conclusion and stop people from having any platform for speaking their mind?
No, that's not the conclusion. The conclusion is that the providers are responsible for it and are definitely enabling it, but sometimes that's better than the alternative. Not everything's black and white, unfortunately.
I'm not entirely certain that unrestricted use of a popular destination is the same thing as unrestricted use of a transport, though, to try and figure out a place where the line should be put. If you have an audience and allow people to reach that audience with dangerous and harmful ideas, that's likely worse than giving them the transport to build their own audience.
Alright, so we're separating infrastructure into two types. There's "transport" infrastructure that allows people who already know each other to communicate and there's "audience" infrastructure that provides a way to present ideas to a group of strangers.
Holding providers of "audience" infrastructure accountable means that the only unorthodox groups that can communicate as effectively as the orthodoxy are groups with members that can provide "audience" infrastructure. Now the unorthodox suffer a disadvantage. The purpose of this system is to prevent dangerous and harmful ideas from being spread. This is still censorship.
You're confusing censorship with freedom of association and freedom to chose your customers. If an ISP won't take the KKK's money, that is not censorship. Censorship would be if the government banned every ISP from serving the KKK whether or not they wanted to.
Requiring all ISPs (or forums or whatever) to accept and retransmit the KKK's propaganda is just as much a limit on freedom as banning the stuff.
If I configure my home router to use OpenDNS, such that my children cannot access internet pornography or extremist forums (such as 4chan or 8chan for example), that is a form of censorship, yes? It is a form of censorship that the government is not involved in. It is legal, and it is well within my rights to do. Hell, I'd go so far as to say it is the appropriate thing to do. It's still censorship though. I don't know what else I'd call it.
Alternatively, when an American cable news channel bleeps profanity or blurs nudity, isn't that a form of censorship?
I'm really confused with where the "censorship is only something a government can do" idea came from.
Some sort of conflation between the ideas of "censorship" and "violation of first amendment rights" I suppose.
I gave a government example, as that's what we were talking about. Censorship just requires power, and government power is the most important and obvious kind because governments are monopolies over large numbers of people. But yes, you also, having power over your kids, can censor what they see.
But if every individual ISP refuses to host the KKK because they'd just rather not do business with bigots, then that's not censorship. It's just freedom of association.
If the 8chan guy tomorrow decided to shut down and nobody else wanted to host the pedophiles, that isn't censorship. They can buy a piece of land and make a pedophile clubhouse. They can buy a printer, make pedophilia leaflets, and distribute them in the town square. But if nobody wants to help them do that, it isn't censorship, because nobody is exercising power over the pedophiles, just over themselves.
But if every individual ISP refuses to host the KKK because they'd just rather not do business with bigots, then that's not censorship. It's just freedom of association.
No, that is censorship.
transitive verb
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable <censor the news>; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable <censor out indecent passages>http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censoring
That's a ridiculous interpretation. People don't have an obligation to uncritically pass on any and all messages. That a publisher only publishes certain books is not censorship of all the other books. That you promote your own views without simultaneously mentioning all other views is not censorship.
Freedom of speech means that you can put up your own lawn signs in your lawn. It doesn't mean that you get to put your lawn signs in other people's yards. It certainly doesn't mean that they are obligated to print and put up your signs in their yard.
That's a ridiculous interpretation.
It's the correct interpretation.
People don't have an obligation to uncritically pass on any and all messages.
True.
That a publisher only publishes certain books is not censorship of all the other books.
True.
That you promote your own views without simultaneously mentioning all other views is not censorship.
True.
Freedom of speech means that you can put up your own lawn signs in your lawn. It doesn't mean that you get to put your lawn signs in other people's yards. It certainly doesn't mean that they are obligated to print and put up your signs in their yard.
True.
These are all true, but irrelevant. Refusing to help spread a message is different than trying to stop other people help spread a message. I've been repeating this for a while now. If you're still confused, try rereading our discussion until you see the difference.
Ah yes, the only possible reason somebody could disagree is failure to understand your perfect words.
If my neighbor puts up your signs, I am allowed to express my opinions to him. If he decides to take down the signs, that is still not censorship. I'm even allowed to decide to not talk to him if he leaves them up. Exercising my right to freedom of speech and freedom of association is not censorship. It can't be, because otherwise the right to free speech ends up being self-contradictory.
If I can say anything I want, but I have no infrastructure, then I can't communicate my ideas effectively. People who provide neutral infrastructure allow others to exercise their right to free speech. People who oppose neutral providers want to make communication difficult for people they disagree with.
Removing neutral infrastructure is restricting free speech through social conventions instead of through government. It's still censorship.
It is definitely not censorship. Nobody is under any obligation to help, say, pedophiles, promote their ideas. To say otherwise is to deny freedom of action and freedom of association.
If you have an ideological attachment to the existence of neutral providers, nobody can stop you from creating one. But as 8chan is discovering, people are free to criticize them for who they are helping and what effects that has.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. If people are free to speak, I am also free to speak out against them. If people support particular speakers, I am also free to speak out against those supporters, and to shun them.
Suppose a world where there are your vocal cords, pens, and printing presses. The sort of world that existed when these "free speech" ideas where first being seriously considered.
Should you be under fire if you sell a printing press to an unsavory bunch of people?
How many levels of "providing a platform" can we go through before we no longer vilify people? We do business with companies (our ISPs) who do business with companies (other ISPs) who does business with a company (8chan's ISP) who does business with a company (8chan's host) who does business with a company (8chan) which is used by extremists. How deep does this go?
Alternate question: Should we bust newspapers for pimping?
Certainly enabling them. On the other hand, preventing the Government from disallowing them from free speech might be worth that.
That's a different thing from giving them a platform to talk on, though. From a natural rights viewpoint, the KKK should be allowed to say whatever they want, but nobody has to give them a platform to talk on.
I think there's a big difference between defending a principle, which is what the ACLU does, and active support of awfulness. The ACLU is just making sure the government won't stop the KKK from printing leaflets if they want to. The ACLU definitely isn't printing and distributing anything the KKK asks.
I more or less agree. I often ask this particular question because I find that many people disagree with us, or have not given the matter any serious thought.
Within the first minute of his talk at XOXO back in 2012, he mentioned 4chan being about anonymity and ephemerality, not a blanket endorsement for freedom of all type of speech.
If you haven't heard it, it's worth a listen (20:59).
8chan will probably last much longer than 4chan precisely because Fredrick refuses to make those judgement calls about what is and isn't acceptable. He doesn't need to bear a heavy conscience about what kind of speech he is allowing, he just follows the law to the letter and lets people do their thing.
I leave you all with a fantastic speech the late Christopher Hitchens made about the freedom of speech and why there is no freedom of speech unless you extend that freedom towards people you disagree with, even the ones you find completely abhorrent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyBZNGH0TY&feature=youtu.be...