Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we h4XX0r the Dark Web to pwn your s3ns3s, other people are inexplicably less annoyed about this than Stuart is, and:
[00:01:15] After a terrorist murdered 22 people and injured 24 others in the mass shooting in El Paso in 2019, police said that they are "reasonably confident" that the shooter published an anti-Hispanic, anti-immigrant manifesto published on 8chan, a messageboard heavily linked to alt-right propaganda and mass shootings. Cloudflare then dropped their support for 8chan, refusing to provide them with DDOS protection.
In the midst of this, Kevin Roose, a tech writer for the NYT, said: there's a big, interesting debate here about which layers of the internet should be responsible for banning extreme content. And we agree. So, this is that interesting debate: which levels should be banning stuff like this? ISPs, literally the provision of an internet service? Facebook and other end-user applications? Cloudflare and other infrastricture providers? And what justifies a decision to ban? Government regulation? Corporate PR? The CEO's personal opinions? Is there a risk that challenging the orthodoxy results in banning by the mob, or is that just a fig-leaf used by those who want to keep their awful opinions? A bit of all of that, perhaps: we dig into the whole topic from a few different angles.
I donāt think the problem is simply technology, software or hardware. Rather, the affects of technology on wetware.
Specifically: Dopamine and the building of new and reorganising of existing neural networks. Be it from acts of tyranny (paying a fiver to have 20 unique account up votes to exact āp0wniesā on someone who dared question your social status even though you knew you were wrong), from a gamblers high, or accurately interpreting the prevailing views of your community and conforming well; The release of easy dopamine is addictive should be treated as an addiction accordingly. The first step is admitting the problem.
Matt Richtel (Pulitzer winning columnist and now novelist) has written extensively about technologyās affect on the brain and endocrine system and there is actual research in the medical and psychological fields being carried out. Thereās actually entire industries that profit greatly from laying down new and/or reforming our neural networks to crave dopamine hits regardless of what it does to us psychologically and the changes it makes to our expectations of ānormalā. I would talk about that hereā¦I woullllldā¦but Iām afraid of getting S.W.A.T.ed.
Last weekend I was out with a friend I had known over 20 years. Her husband is doing well and her kids are upper school aged now so she decided to go to university (Iām super proud of her, btw :)). Iāve noted though, she is picking up some modern traits such as relying on consensus to form firm opinions rather than investigating on her own. I had brought up āThe Boysā which I had recently binged and loved. She said she didnāt like it because it was sexistā¦ very matter of factly. When asked further she said that the man seeking vengeance because his girlfriend/wife dies is a sexist trope. It was Friday night at the pub (being a shift worker thatās my only time to go out really) so I put good times above all else and changed the topic as soon as I could. How I know she didnāt watch it and instead was relying on consensus of a particular group (probably facebook) is that she didnāt mention Simon Peg at all (plays the dad) and I know she enjoys his work. Not even a āI canāt believe he associated himself with that projectā or anything else indicating she knew he was in it (itās not sexist and actually addresses the issue of superhero sexism quite effectively, btw). I donāt know if itās that weāre so bombarded with information and demands on our attention, that weāre expected to have a polarized/definite opinion on almost anything now, or maybe weāre just too tiredā¦but this joining the majority as a way of shortcutting investigation makes for an ungood world.
This is actually why Iām thankful for the conspiracy theorists and tin foil hat nutters (not sexists, racists, classists, etc. etc.) of the world While more often than not just cheesy clickbait, at least they present the idea that āsameā is not the only way. I donāt know for how long most will be around though Thereās a memo from the Phoenix FBI field office equating conspiracy theorists with domestic terrorists.
People appropriating Pastor Niemoller is one of my personal pet peves but I do have to state that (despite a law suit against the FBI in 2013 by the Michigan ACLU) all Juggalos/Jugalettes are now deemed members of a hybrid gang for simply liking a band (that includes the effects of that designation on boarder crossing, sentencing, etc. etc.). Most are not fans of Insane Clown Posse though and probably ā¦donāt care. Now, in 2019, theyād like to apply a designation to āconspiracy theoristā, but most are probably not one of those either and likewise probably ā¦donāt care. Regardless of what you, you make part of most, identify as or donāt identify as you should notice this and look into it further because you donāt get to define what will be designated next ā¦and you should care about that.
The problem with the 8chan-style arguments, and so the reason this is the one place I unilaterally side with the gate-keeping companies on this, is that theyāre not looking for āfree speech.ā Theyāre looking to leverage the credibility of large companies to do the work of spreading their messages for them. Because, as mentioned in the episode (I think by @sil), nobodyās stopping them from paying for a web host thatāll risk liability for their actions and building a system to protect the server from overload. They donāt want that, they want people to say āI saw it on Facebookā or āit was the first search result on Googleā and they also donāt want it all done for them on the cheap, even over the objections (the āfree speech rights,ā if you will) of the people who run those platforms. This, from people who will turn around and say that getting rid of the government would allow us to all do what we want, even as companies act like feudal lords.
Can it be turned against people we should protect? Of course it can, and it already happens with alarming regularity, with everything from breast-feeding mothers being marked as pornography, transgender people (and non-Europeans whose names might resemble those of fictional characters) getting banned for violating hand-wavy Real Nameā¢ policies, banning people who point out that their harassers are āwhite menā (two identifiers making it āhate speech,ā in contrast to advocating for the extermination of an entire religious group, which only has the one identifier, basically), giving police departments say over when to ban people streaming their actions, spottybanning of liberal groups, and so forth. Those stories donāt generally make much of a splash, though, stuffed as they are between the right-wing outrage machine churning out articles wringing their hands over not being allowed to advocate for ethnic cleansing like we used to be and the media giving us its endless parade of āracists donāt want to be called racist, because words hurt and it never occurred to us to suggest maybe not being racistā stories. Itās a ābig dealā when it happens to conservatives, because theyāve become a lock-step group that echoes their messages widely across social media.
But even so, nobody has a right to the assistance of Facebookās algorithm or a right to cheap hosting, and if companies (not people running the company, but the actual company itself) have the right to religious beliefs, then those companies surely have the right to decide they donāt want to help 8chan or Alex Jones.
And yes, now thereās the problem that these creeps are harder to intercept before they turn violent. But Iād argue that nobody has bothered to stop them before (even though thatās not out of the question, so making the cops install Tor (and go on their Journey to the Center of the Dark Web) to continue to not stop anybody isnāt exactly a huge cost while making it not worth the trouble of your average teenager to go get regaled by warmed-over readings from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or whatever QAnon dimwits are going on about, this week.
You Are Not a Gadget (2010)
Who Owns the Future (2013)
Dawn of the New Everything (2017)
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (2018)
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Please respect our code of conduct which is simple: don't be a dick.
While more often than not just cheesy clickbait, at least they present the idea that āsameā is not the only way. I donāt know for how long most will be around though 
Thereās a memo from the Phoenix FBI field office equating conspiracy theorists with domestic terrorists.