ISPs Should Not Police Online Speech—No Matter How Awful It Is.
ISPs Should Not Police Online Speech—No Matter How Awful It Is.
Entrusting our speech to multiple different corporate actors is always risky. Yet given how most of the internet is currently structured, our online expression largely depends on a set of private companies ranging from our direct Internet service providers and platforms, to upstream ISPs (sometimes....
As always EFF is 100% right. This is a hard but important line to draw in the sand. Laws surrounding networks should be enforced "at the edges" not in the middle. Your ISP is a router, all dozen hops between your computer and the website you are visiting are routers, their job is to route, not filter. If some internet cable routes through a country with different laws, you want them enforcing their weird laws on the wire about how you can't insult their king? Of course not.
Or better yet, as is happening in this article, you want fucking comcast (or some other isp), the company that fucks you with their monopoly power at every possible opportunity, to be the arbiter of what is acceptable content and what is not? Fuck them. Leave that to the legislative process and courts.
If what you or the website is doing is illegal in the jurisdiction it is located, let local law enforcement handle it. They can imprison you or the website operator, that is where the crime is happening, the crime is not happening because packets are flowing from one end to the other.
This one is a tough nut to crack, because generally I agree, but holy fucking shit we're talking about Kiwi Farms here.
There is nothing not one fucking thing that place produces that isn't a garbage fire of harassment, abuse, and violence.
Usually the EFF is spot on, but I find their argument in this case pretty weak. While I think there are better ways to handle this as well than straight censorship, like give me a break, EFF, no one is doing anything about these scumfucks. I would give one shit about such an argument if I felt there was anything that would happen to stop this, but I'm pretty fucksure it won't. If I felt like law enforcement was closing in and as was going to charge everyone involved in the site under some sort of gang-harassment law (which probably doesn't even exist), then maybe this argument would hold weight. But I don't feel like that, and I feel like the more people make weak arguments for horrendous places like this, more vulnerable people will continue to suffer Kiwi Farms abuse, harassment, and violence.
To put it even more simply: When a person uses a room in a house to engage in illegal or just terrible activity, we don’t call on the electric company to cut off the light and heat to the entire house, or the post office to stop delivering mail. We know that this will backfire in the long run. Instead, we go after the bad guys themselves and hold them accountable.
Who the fuck is actually doing that, EFF?? You're basically arguing for endless abuse from these fucks because the justice system doesn't give one fucking shit about what they're doing because the justice system doesn't generally give a fuck about vulnerable people.
That’s what must happen here. 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. Solid enforcement of existing laws is something that has been sorely lacking for harassment and abuse online, and it’s one of the reasons people turn to censorship strategies. Finally, we should enact strong data privacy laws that target, among others, the data brokers whose services help enable doxxing.
- ACAB, the cops are corrupt and you can't trust them.
- The courts are corrupt and you can't trust them.
- We're living in a hell-hole of a gerontocracy where government can't pass a fucking bill to end Daylight Savings time, and you expect them to do something about policing this when we can't even get cops to do their fucking jobs without murdering innocent citizens in the process? Get the fuck out of here, EFF, you're a joke now.
Your argument really sucks. You don't trust the courts or law enforcement to uphold laws, but you're willing to allow ISP's, like Comcast (the most hated company in the US), to regulate what speech can be used online? That's absolute madness and defies all logic.
but you’re willing to allow ISP’s, like Comcast (the most hated company in the US), to regulate what speech can be used online?
Where did I advocate for that? This is a small ISP, and I am in no way arguing that what they're doing is the best solution. What I am arguing is that there is no political movement to create laws to police this, especially not an international political movement, since not all Kiwi Farms users are from the US. I'm saying that the EFF's argument is that we should expect no one to do anything, and let them keep ruining people's lives, because our solutions for stopping this mess currently aren't perfect. It's one of those "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" situations. I am in no way endorsing what the ISP has done, but I am questioning an argument to argue for laws to handle this when we can't even seem to get our politicians to do anything, especially when it comes to policing some of the worst of our society. Republicans claim guns aren't the problem, mental health is, but they also want to take away all the money for support and mental health services, and they refuse to see the connection between the violent vitriol they spew about political opponents and lone-wolf terrorists, like dude, we have an entire political party not operating in good faith and who is happy to let this kind of shit keep happening. The idea that we just have to sit by idly and twiddle our thumbs while they ruin lives because the solutions aren't great is a fucking farce.
It really is arguing "We have to let these vicious, fascist abusers to run rampant, because otherwise their fascist political representatives or fascist business owners might use the legalism of fascism to justify them doing it even worse." Like dude, hate to break it to you, at this point, they're gonna do that whether we fight back or not.
I think all of your analysis about Kiwi Farms is right. Absolute fucking cesspool that doesn’t need to exist.
I don’t think Tier 1 providers should police their content because I don’t think Tier 1 providers should police any content outside of direct government intervention (which is a different can of worms). That’s the argument here. Giving Tier 1 providers room to police this content gives them precedent to police other content and suddenly Lemmy is blocked because of some random reason.
The root issue here is net neutrality and that might be the discontent. Look at it from a phone perspective instead. Do you think the operators of the phone backbone (not individual providers like Verizon or Mint) should be able to turn off phone access to a chunk of numbers because a group of individuals are misusing those numbers? Why do you think the backbone, not the direct provider, should be able to take those actions? Should the backbone even be listening to those calls? Or should some other sector be handling that abuse, like the FTC going after VoIP robospam?
If you think the phone backbone should police people making phone calls, then you can reasonably argue another utility backbone like internet can also police. Both the EFF and I fundamentally disagree with that premise. Because we do not have net neutrality, it is easy to mask that distinction that this Tier 1 provider would not be able to do this in other utilities.
Like I said, I generally agree, but I'm also not arguing for giving Tier 1 providers those "powers."
I'm saying the argument is weak because we're not in any position for any of the real, offered solutions to be done successfully in any reasonable capacity. I'm not saying them doing that is the best thing, and it does set a bad precedent, but I'm tired of acting like there's nothing we can do because we don't have the perfect options.
The cops aren't coming after these guys, and there is no political movement to create laws to address this. Which means, in the meantime, Kiwi Farms will not stop. Real people's lives are being destroyed, and I think it kind of matters to them that we can't wait for bullshit incrementalism, mostly because its their fucking lives.
We need some kind of RICO law for organized harrassment platform.
Good luck getting that passed nearly anywhere in the USA. You might have a chance in a few states, but I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of people on Kiwi Farms are fucking cops.
It seems odd to say the authorities aren't trustworthy so let's give authority to yet another person. Why do you want to give more power somewhere because you don't like the other people that have that power. It's still a corporation. Why trust corporations over government?
Edit: keep in mind one is supposed to abide by law, the one you want though is only beholden to itself.
@pjhenry1216 @zquestz @dingus are you seriously asking why it's okay to let IBM sabotage Hitler?
That first quote is such a weak argument too. People get kicked out of places all the time for doing illegal and terrible things. Who is this "we" that goes "after the bad guys and holds them accountable"? What does that even mean?
And while we're at it, why wouldn't there be some sort of interdiction with the post office? Are "we" not telling the government about these bad guys doing illegal and/or terrible things? Are "we" Batman or something?
Well, yes. An ISP has one job, to deliver unfettered bandwidth to the end user. Full net neutrality (unlike what they have over in the USA sadly), zero throttling, etc.
That's their one job. Just as water companies don't get to decide what flavour our water should be, nor our electric company deciding what devices we're allowed to plug in.
Internet is a basic and essential utility in 2023, it should be treated as such.
IMHO unfettered also means symmetric transfer speeds so most ISPs fail miserably at doing their one job.
It's KiwiFarms what we are talking about. Just fuck them. They deserve to be censored, and I almost never say this.
Of course they do, but it isn't the ISP's job to do so. I believe that is the point that the EFF is making here.
Censorship sometimes needs to happen to protect people, but it should be conducted by website owners/platforms and government authorities -- on each end of the information transaction, not in transit by an ISP.
I wish the wouldn't bring abortion into the mix.
We fully support criminal and civil liability for those who abuse and harass others.
But...
For years the police, courts, and legislature have done jack shit to stop this. So in conclusion...
EFF
I mean, be careful, your post has violence and may be censored by some ISPs if they act the way you think they should.