Commentary From Elsewhere: In Defense of 8 Chan (aka 8ch.net)
If someone used a chemistry book to build a bomb (and kill people), do we outlaw libraries (as they can hold chemistry books)?
The situation
For those of you living under a rock: People kill people, with disturbing frequency. When a single person kills a group, there is usually an attempt to figure out ‘why’. Which in turn, tends to lead to trying to remove the ’cause’.
This time, 8chan is being ‘blamed’ for motivating an attack. From that, various people who are in the infrastructure business no longer provide their services to 8chan.
As an occasional visitor of 8chan, I will acknowledge they are not the most civil place online. Even the SFW parts have a tendency to be NSFW (if for different reasons).
The various ‘chan’s (2,4,8, etc) definitely have a unique flavor, which I am thankful I do not encounter in ‘real life’. Another forum I visit describes it as ‘Chan Behavior’, which it then takes it’s time to summarize as “stupid spammy behavior”. Not for everyone, but if you don’t know what you are getting into, you’ll learn real quick (and nothing is stopping you from leaving).
An analogy
I think a good analogy for 8chan would be a library. There are many books (boards), written by many authors (posters), on many different topics, with vastly different skill levels (not to mention coherence). The question becomes: How many ‘bad’ books do you find in a library before you close it down? And who is the ‘you’ that does the closing?
Where (if anywhere) does the 1st amendment come into play here? Yes, Cloudflare is a private business, so it could claim it is not bound by the Bill of Rights. But by that logic, so is the power company (at least where I am, your mileage may vary). If the electric company decides the library has too many ‘bad’ books, can they cut off power? Such a move seems like an abuse of their near monopoly position to control communication (speech).
The infrastructure provider (Cloudflare) has dropped 8chan because of the belief a portion of the site encouraged murder. No court of law (at least as far as I can tell, although it would be an impressive standard of ‘speedy’), but court of public opinion. Which means political knee jerk reactions in the heat of the moment. Again, not what I want from infrastructure. Act In Haste, Repent At Leisure.
Infrastructure‘s job is to ‘just work’, leaving judgments and punishments up to the courts. Sure, the legal system isn’t the fastest thing out there, but in the end it should be more reliable. Unless we want to change our system, in which case we should give it some serious thought first.
A (limited) review
As 8chan is mostly down, I can’t check it for actual statistics. I am able to use it’s .onion address for limited information, but who knows how accurate that is.
Using that information implies the most active board/community/whatnot is about video games, closely followed by b2 (ie the second random board). Then there are a pair of news boards, followed by movies. While there are many other boards, some of which I am sure are ‘bad’, the listed few seem to be the most used.
Again, as the site is mostly down, I can’t directly check the content, but at first glance, the discussions would seem to be covered by the 1st amendment. Politics and entertainment should both fall under that umbrella. Yet the infrastructure says no, you cannot speak here.
As an aside, comparing a thing you don’t like to nazi’s may leave you feeling morally justified in your actions (whatever those may be), but it hardly helps the situation. If it’s bad enough, the comparison isn’t needed. If it’s not that bad, you shouldn’t be comparing. And if the comparison is needed to get the action you want? Well then you are being manipulative in your justification.
The future
This opens up the various service providers to be obligated to monitor and censor ‘bad’ sites. Which should lead to most of the ‘social media’ sites being shut down as well. While I don’t use Facebook enough to be able to comment on them, what little I use of Twitter shows posts just as bad as any I’ve seen on 8chan. Sure the exact verbiage differs (ironically enough, Twitters ‘worst’ posts tend to be longer), but the internet is full of idiots.
If this sort of thing becomes acceptable, we’ll have all providers of services cutting off any clients they don’t agree with. While it would be amusing when Facebook and Twitter go away (as they have their ‘dark corners’ as well), on the whole it will harm us all by making it harder to share ideas and communicate differing opinions.
Unless silencing all differing opinions is the desired goal. At which point, when does this site get taken down too?