Technology

"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.

It shouldn't be on the ISPs, it should be on the SERVICES that USE the ISPs.

I'll give you a perfect example, the Uvalde shooter.

He had been using a French social media platform called Yubo where he posted animal abuse videos and threatened to rape and murder other users.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/buffalo-uvalde-suspected-shooters-allegedly-abused-animals/story?id=84970582

He was reported to Yubo, REPEATEDLY, and Yubo did nothing.

Maybe we need to make social media companies mandatory reporters in cases like this? Rather than just ban a user wholesale, increase monitoring of them and report the account to local authorities?

@gsa4555 So if ISPs are utilities like a electricity or waste water, should they be regulated? Even Proud Boys have electricity and water to their house, and laws prevent them from being cut off just because they are vile.

I apologise beforehand for a slightly rude tone. I won't be "kind" towards stupidity - because that would be arseholery towards everyone, as everyone gets harmed by stupidity.

Plenty individuals are reducing the matter into two positions:

1. Let hate discourses and harassment run rampant.
2. Let corporations dictate what's considered acceptable or not.

And then, when you criticise one of those positions (because they're both foul), you'll get some assumers neighing that you're defending the other view, even when explicitly stated otherwise. It's that old false dichotomy: "if u dun think dat red is blue than u think dat red is green! Red is not green you is dumb lol XD lmao".

And that is exactly what is happening here. EFF is criticising #2 as short-sighted and dumb; it is. However it is not defending #1. This is blatantly obvious for anyone with basic reading comprehension, as the following excerpts show:

But just because there’s a serious problem doesn’t mean that every response is a good one.

Finally, site-blocking, whatever form it takes, almost inevitably cuts off legal as well as illegal speech. It cuts with a chain saw rather than a scalpel.

Here's the third position:

3. Governments should institute and enforce laws against hate discourses and harassment.

That's rather close to what EFF is proposing, see:

The cops and the courts should be working to protect the victims of KF and go after the perpetrators with every legal tool at their disposal. We should be giving them the resources and societal mandate to do so.

I agree with this because it's easier to whip a gov into defending your interests than doing it with a private entity, that will always defend its own interests against you. EFF is spot on when it says that they won't stop at illegal speech, you're giving them precedent to dictate what you - intermediated by your government - should.