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Unfortunately we've had a very poor week for internet freedom. However much of it has been the result of corporate overreach. This week: Reddit bans Cigar, be

by thrden 8y ago

Unfortunately we've had a very poor week for internet freedom. However much of it has been the result of corporate overreach. This week: Reddit bans Cigar, beer and Alchohol trading subreddits, toy bb gun sales, and gun related coupon clippers Youtube (and facebook?) banned Channels featuring guns they deem inappropriate. Including videos regarding proper safety and maintenance. It has become clear to be that the internet is naturally monopolistic in a way physical institutions are not. One simply cannot move their gun channel, or the cigar trading forum to other sites and have a decent chance of maintaining even 10% of their customers. What happens if google also decides that they don't want these things to show up in search results. We need regulation to ensure that these platforms remain open for all types of users, not regulation that forces more content off these platforms.

Consultant32452 8y ago
I think we need to start using the book burning metaphor. Google, Facebook, et al are doing the modern equivalent of burning books. The government shouldn't stop private individuals from burning books, but the public should recoil in horror.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
chime 8y ago
And just a few hours ago the Cloud Act passed as part of the Omnibus bill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
abritinthebay 8y ago
What about the “internet freedom” of those sites to tell people they don’t want to go away? This legislation isn’t that but your examples are.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bfuller 8y ago
>This week: Reddit bans Cigar, beer and Alchohol trading subreddits, toy bb gun sales, and gun related coupon clippers Reddit also banned subs that were used for sourcing marijuana, designer drugs, xanax.. direct deals onsite. i'm not defending the drug war, but when you only include the subs you wrote the move looks really silly. if people were only doing giveaways and trading toy bb guns, those subs would still be open. the fact is reddit was being used by vendors for direct deals of illegal shit, and in order to put that to a stop reddit had to ban all sourcing.
- thrden 8y ago
  While I'm not saying they should have banned one, and not the other it would have been entirely possible to say ban an opioids sales subreddit, but not the bb-gun subreddit. It would have been trivial to simply make the rule such that only illicit sales/transactions were banned. They decided to create these rules and if the rules make reddit look foolish than maybe thats because they are.
  - secabeen 8y ago
    Take the challenge from their side. If they leave the bb-gun sub active, how do they ensure that people aren't going to the bb-gun sub, and trading real guns there? They'd have to have humans police each post, or develop ML algorithms that can reliably identify when someone is hiding a real gun sale as a bb-gun sale. The former doesn't scale reliably (sure, the mods of the bb-gun sub could probably do it voluntarily, but I doubt reddit wants to bet the corporation on their continuing to do so), and the latter doesn't yet exist. Banning both subs definitely stops the illegal transactions at the (relatively minor) cost of not letting people trade bb-guns on their site.
    - girvo 8y ago
      But what stops people from trading real guns on ANY subreddit?
    - pavel_lishin 8y ago
      > Banning both subs definitely stops the illegal transactions Big ol' [citation needed]. This just moves it to r/beaniebabytrades, where you have to not explicitly say you're trading firearms. The only way this helps is by making those subreddits less discoverable, but anyone with an interest in guns will go to another subreddit, and get clued in by the members there.
rsync 8y ago
"It has become clear to be that the internet is naturally monopolistic in a way physical institutions are not. One simply cannot move their gun channel, or the cigar trading forum to other sites and have a decent chance of maintaining even 10% of their customers." That's funny - I thought that exactly the opposite was true. The Internet (not particular sites, not AOL or "the facebook", but The Internet) is naturally un-monopolistic because you can, in fact, just move your video channel to your own website and do whatever you'd like there. In fact, it's trivially easy to do so - you can probably accomplish the entire task using only your telephone. If you feel that this is not the case I think you've made yourself fragile to services and processes that have nothing to do with The Internet.
- avhon1 8y ago
  It takes a lot more time, expertise, and money to run a website (even a simple wordpress site) than to upload videos to youtube.
  - probably_wrong 8y ago
    You are right about that. And yet, the alternative seems to be "I want to exercise my constitutional rights, but I want a private company to make it easy, fight for me when legal problems arise, and foot the bill".
delbel 8y ago
I screwed up and accidentally chambered two 12ga shells in my Remington 870, it was a potential dangerous accident but found video to help me safely un-f the situation. Also I found a "bug" that allowed me to shoot, under a strange condition, my 9mm when the safety was on. Found out what not to do on youtube to avoid that situation. Also couldn't figure out what this knob was on my 10/22, turns out its a critical feature after finding it on youtube. This sucks I won't be able to find this type of information literally typing the gun model and the name of the problem to see a video to help me out as easily as yesterday.
- odammit 8y ago
  Go start GunTube and make a buck or two! I was reading earlier today people are uploading their gun vids to PornHub. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-bans-firearm-sales-and-how-to-videos-prompting-backlash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-b...
  - amyjess 8y ago
    > I was reading earlier today people are uploading their gun vids to PornHub. Funny thing is, my coworker and I were talking about this earlier today... we ended up agreeing that it wouldn't be surprising at all if PornHub ends up creating an SFW site under a different name (VidHub?) for things like this.
  - bootlooped 8y ago
    It already exists: it's called Full 30. I am guessing not a lot of people use it because it's not YouTube.
- midgetjones 8y ago
  These problems can also be avoided by not owning guns.
  - humanrebar 8y ago
    And you can avoid gross plumbing problems by not owning a plunger. You can have professionals with plungers deal with that. Frankly, it's a privilege to able to rely on public and paid services to protect you and your property. Not everyone gets the same service levels and not everyone can afford to pay to fix the problem.

by thrden 8y ago

Consultant32452 8y ago

I think we need to start using the book burning metaphor. Google, Facebook, et al are doing the modern equivalent of burning books. The government shouldn't stop private individuals from burning books, but the public should recoil in horror.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

chime 8y ago

And just a few hours ago the Cloud Act passed as part of the Omnibus bill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

abritinthebay 8y ago

What about the “internet freedom” of those sites to tell people they don’t want to go away? This legislation isn’t that but your examples are.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bfuller 8y ago

>This week: Reddit bans Cigar, beer and Alchohol trading subreddits, toy bb gun sales, and gun related coupon clippers Reddit also banned subs that were used for sourcing marijuana, designer drugs, xanax.. direct deals onsite. i'm not defending the drug war, but when you only include the subs you wrote the move looks really silly. if people were only doing giveaways and trading toy bb guns, those subs would still be open. the fact is reddit was being used by vendors for direct deals of illegal shit, and in order to put that to a stop reddit had to ban all sourcing.

thrden 8y ago
While I'm not saying they should have banned one, and not the other it would have been entirely possible to say ban an opioids sales subreddit, but not the bb-gun subreddit. It would have been trivial to simply make the rule such that only illicit sales/transactions were banned. They decided to create these rules and if the rules make reddit look foolish than maybe thats because they are.
- secabeen 8y ago
  Take the challenge from their side. If they leave the bb-gun sub active, how do they ensure that people aren't going to the bb-gun sub, and trading real guns there? They'd have to have humans police each post, or develop ML algorithms that can reliably identify when someone is hiding a real gun sale as a bb-gun sale. The former doesn't scale reliably (sure, the mods of the bb-gun sub could probably do it voluntarily, but I doubt reddit wants to bet the corporation on their continuing to do so), and the latter doesn't yet exist. Banning both subs definitely stops the illegal transactions at the (relatively minor) cost of not letting people trade bb-guns on their site.
  - girvo 8y ago
    But what stops people from trading real guns on ANY subreddit?
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    > Banning both subs definitely stops the illegal transactions Big ol' [citation needed]. This just moves it to r/beaniebabytrades, where you have to not explicitly say you're trading firearms. The only way this helps is by making those subreddits less discoverable, but anyone with an interest in guns will go to another subreddit, and get clued in by the members there.

rsync 8y ago

"It has become clear to be that the internet is naturally monopolistic in a way physical institutions are not. One simply cannot move their gun channel, or the cigar trading forum to other sites and have a decent chance of maintaining even 10% of their customers." That's funny - I thought that exactly the opposite was true. The Internet (not particular sites, not AOL or "the facebook", but The Internet) is naturally un-monopolistic because you can, in fact, just move your video channel to your own website and do whatever you'd like there. In fact, it's trivially easy to do so - you can probably accomplish the entire task using only your telephone. If you feel that this is not the case I think you've made yourself fragile to services and processes that have nothing to do with The Internet.

avhon1 8y ago
It takes a lot more time, expertise, and money to run a website (even a simple wordpress site) than to upload videos to youtube.
- probably_wrong 8y ago
  You are right about that. And yet, the alternative seems to be "I want to exercise my constitutional rights, but I want a private company to make it easy, fight for me when legal problems arise, and foot the bill".

delbel 8y ago

I screwed up and accidentally chambered two 12ga shells in my Remington 870, it was a potential dangerous accident but found video to help me safely un-f the situation. Also I found a "bug" that allowed me to shoot, under a strange condition, my 9mm when the safety was on. Found out what not to do on youtube to avoid that situation. Also couldn't figure out what this knob was on my 10/22, turns out its a critical feature after finding it on youtube. This sucks I won't be able to find this type of information literally typing the gun model and the name of the problem to see a video to help me out as easily as yesterday.

odammit 8y ago
Go start GunTube and make a buck or two! I was reading earlier today people are uploading their gun vids to PornHub. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-bans-firearm-sales-and-how-to-videos-prompting-backlash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-b...
- amyjess 8y ago
  > I was reading earlier today people are uploading their gun vids to PornHub. Funny thing is, my coworker and I were talking about this earlier today... we ended up agreeing that it wouldn't be surprising at all if PornHub ends up creating an SFW site under a different name (VidHub?) for things like this.
- bootlooped 8y ago
  It already exists: it's called Full 30. I am guessing not a lot of people use it because it's not YouTube.
midgetjones 8y ago
These problems can also be avoided by not owning guns.
- humanrebar 8y ago
  And you can avoid gross plumbing problems by not owning a plunger. You can have professionals with plungers deal with that. Frankly, it's a privilege to able to rely on public and paid services to protect you and your property. Not everyone gets the same service levels and not everyone can afford to pay to fix the problem.