this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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"If we don't let the oppressors roam freely, they might try to oppress you" is not something I expected to read from the EFF today. But well, here we are.
It has been standard internet behavior that if a platform does not have the proper response to abuse complaints, you move up a layer higher until you find someone that is receptive to it. This has been standard operating procedure for more or less for the entirety of the current millennium, and this article has done absolutely zero work to provide a good reason it should be anything otherwise, other than bringing up generic "free speech" stuff.
You should not get a path out of that process because one layer immediately above the problematic entity is actively choosing to disregard abuse complaints. You simply move up to the next step. And this process simply must keep existing, as doing anything otherwise is to allow people to pull off all kinds of bad things; scams, spam, illegal activity and far more.
And if you abolish the non-legal form of that process? Well, there's still a legal process - and as soon as someone that wants to censor minorities gets control over the legal process, they will simply change the rules in their favor, as has happened countless times in the past.
I think what distinguishes Internet service provision from all the other "platform" aspects of the Internet is that Internet service has become a kind of baseline utility. Everything depends on it: your smart home devices, your security system, Point of Sale systems, etc. You can't search for employment without it, your kids can't attend remote school, etc.
We all understand that when someone buys advertising space in a newspaper, they are forming a contract with that newspaper, and the paper has to be a willing participant. But that's not really how we think of utilities. I think we'd all be pretty unhappy if the electric company refused service to a facility, or if the water company refused to hook somebody up to the water supply, or the fire department refused to put out a fire, due to the property user's political speech. Even if we deeply disagreed with that speech.
I think ISPs are a lot more like utilities, and a lot less like newspapers. If it's that important, then write a law explaining exactly how and when ISPs are intervene by removing or refusing service in these situations, and defend the law in court. But don't leave it up to ISP terms of service.
If such a process existed, the entity in question would almost certainly end up being shut down by that process, unless they find a funny technical loophole around it, in which case that would be a failure of the law that should not be rejoiced by anyone.
But as it stands, that law and process does not exist; ISPs already can and will shut you down for things like downloading copyrighted content (with or without complaints from the copyright holder), tethering without approval, being a technical nuisance in the form of mass port scanning, hosting insecure services and other such stuff. "Hosting a platform solely dedicated to harassment and stalking and ignoring abuse complaints about it" absolutely deserves to be on that list.
Not sure about the US, but in the EU that process does exist: anyone can submit a claim against any domain, and if the "competent authority" which can be a judge or a law enforcement agency, so decides, they add it to a list of domains to be blocked at the ISP level... currently meaning at the ISP's DNS resolver (use non-ISP DNS resolvers at your own risk), but technically they could request routing or deep packet inspection blocks through the same process.
As far as I know (but this might be outdated), ISPs in the EU are not allowed to play other shenanigans with user's data.
It's consistent with stances on things like network neutrality. ISPs suck, are a monopoly in most areas, and I don't trust them to make these judgement calls. If we had actual competition in the space in the US then I'd care less.
To add to this I don't think under any circumstances a for-profit business should be responsible for this kind of regulation. An ISP as a business has the main goal of maximising profit, and whatever they do would only be in service to that goal. This is aside from the fact that they're completely unelected which gives the public little recourse. This should be the government's job.