Technology

I must disagree.

We need not wait for marginalized groups to be impacted to decry T1 ISP censorship. Ban whatever speech you want; the method of enforcement should be to arrest the perpetrators - not stop the sale of paper, the delivery of mail, or blocklist class A ip ranges.

On a more philosophical level, this is the question of “kindergarten policy” - do we punish those who crayon on the walls, or do we take away everybody’s crayons. To punish the ability to do wrong, or the act of doing wrong. Like most philosophical questions, there’s no good answer to this.

It gives us no joy to call Hurricane on this, not least because many will perceive it as an implicit defense of the KF site. It is not.

This isn't about defending KF, this is about who decides whom to kick off the Internet: a private entity like an ISP, or an officially appointed judge.

The judicial system may have its flaws, but historically it's been more reliable and fair, than private entities.

My initial concern is that internet access is mostly considered a utility which at least the UN considers a human right. "If you can take away a right, it's not a right, it's a privilege." That being said, "rights" are a social construct anyway which we regularly violate for "good" reasons, eg prison violates one's right to freedom of movement, and as an institution they weirdly reinforce The State's monopoly on violence and arbitration of who qualifies as "human" - in a twisted sort of way, prisoners are rendered "less human" by the state by their rights being taken away. Maybe it would be better to consider taking away internet access via ISPs sort of the moral equivalent of turning off someone's water if they're using it to poison the town well? If you abuse your right, you don't get to use it anymore as a defensive mechanism for everyone else's rights, ala sex offenders being put on a list which violates their privacy for better protection of more vulnerable groups.

Thanks for this comment. I totally get how it can feel like 'free speech defenders' have a blanket defense that ends up protecting evil people. And you're right.

The world has become so loud with instant global communication. So many different ideas, cultures, personalities, perspectives... I think we all wish we could turn down the volume, but none more so than for people that spew hate.

No group deserves to receive threats of violence, harassment, or belittling of their existence. While I think we sit in agreement that it should be an obvious choice to ban people like Nazis and stop there, you could easily apply my previous sentence to many groups of people. There are some left-leaning communities where you'll see people wishing Trump to be strung up, or saying MAGA supporters should use their second amendment right and kill themselves. Many members of those communities would never condone violence against the former president or his supporters, but whoever we give the power to make the 'free speech' decision may see it differently.

The whole concept of free speech is not that everybody has a good idea. It's that nobody can be trusted to decide what is a good idea. If you believe in free speech, you believe in hearing a lot of bad ideas that can make people very uncomfortable. While I do agree that there can be very minimal exceptions to this in extreme circumstances, (death threats, stalking, harassment) we need to be very careful about who makes the call.

This is asking we put the responsibility of that arbitration in the hands of Spectrum and AT&T. Take a minute and think about that.

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.

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.

I think the question then becomes "what happens when the services refuse". Because the next step up is getting their ISP to kick them off.

The only thing Yubo could/should have done is forward it to the police though (which is what the users that initially reported this content should have done as well, independently). I'm not sure why that hasn't happened. I hate to say it but this is still not the company's responsibility, the most they can do directly is ban his account which wouldn't accomplish anything in this case. I'd say go straight to local authorities rather than expecting services to handle it.