There's something about this word that makes me a bit cautious when it comes to media. I remember "the most hated man in America" that every news agency was telling us to hate without ever having heard of him. Dozens of CEO's have done the exact same thing as he did since then, and no one can name a single one of them because they are large companies who pay huge amounts of advertising dollars to the people who decide what is "most hated"

It put the pharma industry and their completely legal practices in an uncomfortable spotlight, and the media which happily takes their money came in running defense to find a martyr. Thankfully he was jailed for nearly a decade after making a joke on twitter so the problem is completely solved now :/

> In 2019, in the span of a few months, three gunmen posted their ‘manifesto’ on the site in advance of their terrorist attacks.

Think it is fair to note that the horrendous one in New Zealand was livestreamed in full on Facebook.

It is a glaring example of fake consensus. They're hitting a soft target in the Daily Stormer & 8kun, but frankly the internet - and the world at large - is oozing with scum. The people who have decided they hate this particular wart are a tiny, vocal, powerful and very unlikable minority who are not representing the real emotions people feel here. Which is almost certainly tolerant indifference.

They're telling people how to think, not what is happening. People who do that are untrustworthy.

Is that indifference coming from a place of awareness, or a place of ignorance of the whole situation? If the content of these websites was brought to light - without any sort of commentary - do you seriously think the public would still look at these sites with indifference?

> They're telling people how to think, not what is happening. People who do that are untrustworthy.

It depends on intention. And also: what is happening here that they aren't reporting?

I just went over to look at one of the sites in question. Even with those sorry facts in mind, I still think the Daily Stormer would get indifference. It isn't a very inspiring website and the content appears to be stupid. Their current feature article is "Women are So Ugly" which is unlikely to do well at sparking a ... whatever it is they are meant to spark. Can't go very far without women.

But now if I ever find myself posting unconfortable stuff for my gov. I know where I'll look for.

> Nick Lim, a young American Internet fundamentalist with absolutist views on freedom of speech

Later, journalists Carola Houtekamer and Rik Wassens use a quote to illustrate how they want their readers to think about Nick Lim:

> "Right now, Nick Lim is like a wounded elk ... It is time to move in quickly for the kill, before he gets away again."

Lovely. "Move in quickly for the kill". Such upright anti-haters!

> At least three suicides have been linked to the brigading on [Kiwi Farms]

If a young American Internet fundamentalist ever has a bad meeting with some upright anti-hater stirred up by lovely words about "moving in for the kill," will journalists Carola Houtekamer and Rik Wassens admit to being "linked to" homicide? If Nick Lim should die by his own hand, will everybody in "anti-hate" understand that journalists Carola Houtekamer and Rik Wassens are linked to at least one suicide?

"Hate" evidenced from a 4chan troll board is of a quantity and quality different to "hate" sourced from a senator's or CEO's mouth. Why are emotional ideas allowed to be vaguely and uncritically reported?

I loathe Facebook, the pharma industry, and the capitalist machine which perpetuates these evils. But this is a whataboutism.

Or, even more recently, a man live streamed himself shooting people for ~6 hours (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-08/police-ma...).

Facebook seems to be doing a poor job of moderating content.

Last time such internet lynch mobs with a touching story and progressive slogans appeared with such support from the media, the whole thing happened to be staged by porn studios to remove all the competing content from porn streaming sites, which they now have all to themselves because only they happen to have papers to prove the legality (or “legality”) of materials.

Most non Americans don't even know about their existence let alone hating them.

"How the Netherlands facilitates free speech on the internet, and how that's a bad thing!"

You don't want a hosting service or an ISP to censor their customers. Even with neo nazis.

I'm pretty sure there are some laws against hate speech and the kind of threats that neo nazis make even in NL so the sites could be taken down through a legal process.

- free-speech absolutism (this position exists) - ban all communication between all humans (this position is not advocated by anyone) - some speech should be banned

I reject all absolutist positions. Ideology is cancer. It's childish: the conceit that one's simple plan will fix the problems in the world. It's the reason communism has been a disaster.

It's depressing how many free speech absolutists you find on HN. I presume these people are intelligent in the field of tech and know it. Their political pronouncements are pure Dunning-Kruger. Founding four companies and retiring at 32 does not imply that you understand how societies work.

I.e they take no issue with resolving that on legal grounds, but against succumbing to social (real or not) pressure of bystenders.

At least three suicides have been linked to the brigading on this site

Yuppies?? pearl clutch??

Is there a line between free speech and hate speech/inciting violence etc? If yes, what is it?

I find it interesting that the risk curve around how permissive a host is. If they're not permissive, they're possibly going to take your server down at the slightest external pressure. If they're too permissive, they're probably hopelessly embattled and might themselves go bust. But what's the sweet spot? For me, I mostly buy nearlyfreespeech.net's shtick (though less so nowadays) and have used them for about 20 years now, but am always keeping an eye out for other tolerant/stable hosts.

If you are a hosting service and one of your clients publishes illegal content (perjury, child pornography, etc.) then either of two things happen:

1) If your client gets sued or investigaded for said content and you don't have their credentials, you are held responsible for the content they publish. You go to court and you get fined/arrested and forced to remove the content.

2) If you have your client's identifiable information then 2a) the client goes to court and he is fined/arrested and forced to delete che content 2b) if the client used fake credentials (fake passport, stolen credit card etc.) and you prove your good faith then you are only forced to take down the content.

Someone larping as a deep state agent isn't doing anything wrong necessarily, the QAnon folks are interpreting literal gibberish as a call to action. Like astrology or animal sacrifice, people are looking for patterns to confirm their preconceptions or to try to make sense of the world around them. 8kun didn't create the Qult, years of corruption, lack of education and a festering, though not necessarily misplaced, hatred for politicians did.

8kun is an easy target because it lets politicians and news agencies point at something bad. The claims of terrorist content, racism, and child porn are not necessarily wrong, but the same content is also posted all over other social media if you go looking for it. The biggest difference is the scale at which the websites operate and big tech's automated moderation (versus 8kun's human moderation). The Qultists gather in "normal" social media like Facebook but because normal people use that it's difficult to point at it and say "this is bad and should be banned".

It's funny how the USA so strongly enforces freedom of speech by law but at the same time drives away websites like 8kun because of the terrible things people say online when they're allowed to express themselves anonymously.

Aside from being an endless game of whack-a-mole, I feel the race to deplatform undermines ideological diveristy and other key civic values.

Has there been any reduction in the number of misthinkers? Anecdotally, no.

Maybe it's best to step back and look at the bigger picture:

- Why are people seeking out this type of content?

- Why has there been an increase in the fragmentation of American (and Western) society?

- Why do so many of us feel so alone, despite being more connected?

Society is ill. I am unsure of the underlying problem but think it may be related to a lack of civic education and governments needing to reevaluate their end of the social contract.

The 'increase' is that it is more-widely known about.

>Why do so many of us feel so alone, despite being more connected?

We're not 'more connected'. We are just more aware there are others connected, too.

I can't wait to see the social and military studies that will come out of the Ukraine war. There, i see a connection (between people), but even within that, there are collaborators...fragmenters. And you can bet some good money there is a line of people waiting to take over from Zelensky.

Fragmented we are, connected we aren't.

There are differing degrees of acceptability. If we're talking about the type of content on the two sites listed, that's beyond the point of any sort of debate.

Do you think insisting that the US is controlled by Jewish people benefits society in any sort of way? Do you think that kind of "ideological diversity" is of any value to society whatsoever?

https://www.hs.fi/visio/art-2000009056356.html

Like do you have any idea what kind of content is hosted on these sites? The main headline on the news site they allude to is this: "Big Tech to Increase Surveillance and Censorship of White People Following Biden Speech"

Are you seriously trying to justify this? Do you seriously think that the people hosting this shouldn't be held accountable by the press and public?

I'm all for free speech, which includes the freedom of the press to bring disgusting shit like this to light so that it can be publicly disgraced

Mostly internet drama and true obsessive hater fangirling, as seen in many other places since Livejournal, and even before that. You know you can just type the domain name into the address bar, right? Right?

I suppose that journalists who invented “darknet” now pretend that any site that does not belong to corporations making top 10 apps on your smartphone store is also spooky “darknet”.

At the extreme end of the haraam spectrum is outright bigotry where conceptually it is suggested that some groups are fundamentally superior to others based on biology, and, importantly, therefore society ought to be structured in a way that takes this alleged "fact" into account.

Over time, this religion has expanded the scope of what is considered haraam. There are secret hand gestures, "dog whistles" and, my favourite - unconscious thoughts, that can be used to identify blasphemers. Today, mostly in the west, it is suggested that one must spend time interrogating one's biases, in an L. Ron Hubbard audit kind of way (minus the E-Meters), where seminars and workshops are held to confront one's deep rooted and hidden evils, just as they did in medieval times, when many were thought to have been possessed by the devil, or by evil spirits.

Over the millennia that human civilization has blossomed around the world, many of the forms it has taken are unique and beautiful. As the years passed, many cultural traditions in the fine arts, music, theatre and culinary arts have been lost to time. These practices were not immune to the free market of ideas. If something new comes along which elicits more currency in some form or another, the market tends to be driven towards it. Preserving one's way of life is not necessarily rooted in xenophobia or hatred. To me, this is an important distinction that is often lost in these conversations. This feeling is born out of honoring many of those who came before you, not out of hatred for someone else's way of life. This religion makes no room for this type of distinction. It is devoid of nuance, like all fundamentalism is.

The modern argument against this type of thinking is that there are groups of people whose ancestors are so heinous (or, as the saying goes "deplorable and irredeemable"), with nothing in their legacy that is worthy of preservation. Not even a statue of their likeness deserves to be seen by others. An enforced good and evil binary must come into play by applying a contemporary hierarchy of sin and virtue over historical figures. The enforced narrative is that these people must have necessarily been wholly evil to the core, there is no other explanation that ought to be accepted for their behavior, and, importantly, "therefore" it should follow that their descendants and supporters should atone.

This religion has the hallmarks of all previous religious movements such as witch-hunting, mob justice, inquisition, etc. Religion can be a wonderful inward and spiritual journey that adds balance, structure, community and harmony to people's lives. These aspects of religion which veer into organized political movements that seek to impose change on the rest of society to shape the world in their chosen image, are diabolical. They ought to be universally opposed.

The histories of western countries seem to have transformed into mythological religious epic status. He died on the cross for us, therefore. They enslaved, therefore. They conquered, therefore.

If I am someday killed by a white supremacist for my ethnicity, and it so happens that the white supremacist posts on one of these websites, I would hope that this is not used as an excuse to restrict their speech. I would objectively consider this to be a far worse act. Destroying a good idea like freedom of thought, even to save my own life is absolutely not worth it.

> The site is openly racist and antisemitic and it regularly advocates a second genocide of Jews.

> „Right now, Nick Lim is like a wounded elk”, says internet researcher Guilmette, who monitors the websites’ every move. „It is time to move in quickly for the kill, before he gets away again.”

If I didn't know better, I'd assume these people don't want others to be able to advocate for certain ideas. It's funny how that works. One side gets to use the freedom of speech excuse when, say, targeting children, but merely disagreeing with that magically becomes hate speech, which totally isn't free speech, and must be mercilessly destroyed.

Oh well, people can go into the streets if they want to speak and, hey, once it really comes to that point there will be more than strong words now won't there be?

1. Who gets to decide what is "true" and what is "misinformation"?

2. Who gets to decide what can and cannot be published on the internet?

2. The law, and the most vocal/influential parts of society.

I know that might not answer the allusions behind your question, but then you have to be more specific.

2. which is it? It can't be both the law and whoever shouts loudest (if it's the law then the mob is irrelevant. If it's the mob then that's "mob rule" and not the law).