89
submitted 1 day ago by kbal@fedia.io to c/technology@beehaw.org

The online message board's lawyers say that UK safety laws don't apply outside the UK. This basic principle may soon be tested in court.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 1 points 4 hours ago

I used to think that was a good idea too: sequester 4chan, make it the sin-eater of the internet at large.

But as we learned through 2014-2016, from Gamergate to the alt-right to MAGA, 4chan didn't need to break for them to go elsewhere. And not just elsewhere, but everywhere. A single 4channer could make multiple reddit accounts, twitter accounts, and fake facebook profiles. But what allowed their work to reach larger audiences was to use /pol/ to coordinate their brigades across the internet. 4chan's anonymity and lack of persistent logs made that easy.

Russian state actors infiltrated their ranks as other anons. As obnxious trolls looking to get a rise out of people, they had huge blinds spots and failed to see this for what it was (or looked the other way). Once installed, they could launder propaganda by making it look like it was coming from seemingly American sources, all across the internet, all at the same time. The anons were Putin's useful idiots.

The argument of sequestering the social pariahs to 4chan implies they are physically locked up there, imprisoned but satisfied, uninterested in engaging the internet at large. But clearly that isn't true. You can't leave the Nazis in one corner of the bar - it becomes the Nazi bar. If you want to fight them, you have to remove them from the common spaces, and then remove their own spaces. Unfortunately, the cancer of fascism has metastasized all across the internet, now originating from people who have never heard of "this four chan." Fighting that is going to require us to stop falling for the paradox of tolerance and start kicking the Nazis out, whether we have laws to do so or not.

this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
89 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

40044 readers
115 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS