<story><title>ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police-online-speech-no-matter-how-awful-it</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CM30</author><text>I agree, we&amp;#x27;ve got far too many entities that should just be &amp;#x27;dumb pipes&amp;#x27; trying to play moral police at the moment, and it&amp;#x27;s a very worrying situation when it comes to free speech on the internet. Cloudflare is an often brought up example, as are payment processors like Visa and Mastercard and app stores like the iOS and Play Stores, but ISPs trying to block traffic for a site that&amp;#x27;s not actually illegal feels like a step even further than that.&lt;p&gt;It feels like private companies are de facto writing the laws about what&amp;#x27;s allowed online and in society right now, and that it&amp;#x27;s almost become a loophole for censoring free speech on a whim.&lt;p&gt;And while the site in question here is ethically bankrupt in basically every way, it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem too far fetched to assume the same thing could (and potentially will) happen for sites many more people agree with because someone&amp;#x2F;some group at an ISP doesn&amp;#x27;t like them or think they should be accessible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gorwell</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s right. Authoritarian censors found an exploit. They couldn&amp;#x27;t use the government to clamp down on civil liberties because of the pesky constitution, so they invaded the administrative layer of big tech. It&amp;#x27;s not the engineers who built the web and these companies with Silicon Valley ideals. They were never intended to be used this way and are secretly horrified.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; play moral police at the moment&lt;p&gt;Moral fashion police</text></comment>
<story><title>ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police-online-speech-no-matter-how-awful-it</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CM30</author><text>I agree, we&amp;#x27;ve got far too many entities that should just be &amp;#x27;dumb pipes&amp;#x27; trying to play moral police at the moment, and it&amp;#x27;s a very worrying situation when it comes to free speech on the internet. Cloudflare is an often brought up example, as are payment processors like Visa and Mastercard and app stores like the iOS and Play Stores, but ISPs trying to block traffic for a site that&amp;#x27;s not actually illegal feels like a step even further than that.&lt;p&gt;It feels like private companies are de facto writing the laws about what&amp;#x27;s allowed online and in society right now, and that it&amp;#x27;s almost become a loophole for censoring free speech on a whim.&lt;p&gt;And while the site in question here is ethically bankrupt in basically every way, it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem too far fetched to assume the same thing could (and potentially will) happen for sites many more people agree with because someone&amp;#x2F;some group at an ISP doesn&amp;#x27;t like them or think they should be accessible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yanderekko</author><text>At least payment providers can plausibly point to financial risks and legal concerns as why they engage in what comes off as moral policing. It&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that any similar claim on HE&amp;#x27;s part would be pretextual.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;It feels like private companies are de facto writing the laws about what&amp;#x27;s allowed online and in society right now, and that it&amp;#x27;s almost become a loophole for censoring free speech on a whim.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Feels like&amp;quot;? This is clearly embraced as a necessary step to preserve democracy by a small-but-powerful segment of population.</text></comment>