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...
“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’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.
To add to this I don’t think under any circumstances a for-profit business should be responsible for this kind of regulation. An ISP as a business has the main goal of maximising profit, and whatever they do would only be in service to that goal. This is aside from the fact that they’re completely unelected which gives the public little recourse. This should be the government’s job.
That’s because you and every other idiot zoomer has been brainwashed into thinking protecting free speech is racist or something. If you don’t understand why megacorps and the government shouldn’t be able to censor you then you shouldn’t be able to use the Internet at all.
Free speech absolutism is even more of a brain dead idea.
Hey, person whose been on the internet since doing so involved torturing a modem here. You’re not a wizened authority and people who believe differently than you aren’t brainwashed children. Fuck the Nazis.