Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

It existed only on the edges, usually in softer pragmatic forms, and stopped a lot of bad ideas as a pressure group.

Characterizing the entire development of software and the internet in 90s-2000s as based on libertarian techno-utopinanism is largely manufactured narrative though. One I keep seeing pop up more and more. Largely by people trying to push poorly though out authoritarian gov-controlled internet by spinning the present internet (and parenting) as a product of some ideological radicalism.

I got us 4chan and 8chan. It got us mass shootings and endless "they are just trolling, they are just teenagers, they are just ironic" chorus constantly bad faith defending the far right.

So now that we've arrived at the far right, it's time to stop decentralized dissent and prevent the pendulum from swinging back? This seems like a terrible idea.

And personally I'd say mass shootings are primarily encouraged by corporate mass media (including social media) glorifying the events and the shooters, rather than anonymous message board speech.

The “freedom” of the early internet was bullshit, because it just meant “freedom to make money” and “freedom from having to deal with the consequences of your products on regular people.”

It most decidedly did not mean “freedom from corporate hegemony” which is how we are where we are now, where children are matched with pedophile groomers[1] and delivered endless advertisements for freelance porn practitioners for profit.

This version of freedom isn’t a free internet at all. That was just a PR pitch. And it wasn’t really a great idea to begin with, since it ends up leading to where we are now.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-06/instagram...

it depends on which early free internet you're talking about. mine strictly forbid commercial usage at all - and it was lovely.

"arrived" and "swinging back"? You sound like an optimist; the dark-enlightenment Neo-Reactionary folk behind this are only just getting started.

Society gave us mass shootings. 4chan and other anonymous boards gave us protected speech. We've had mass shootings long before 4chan and they didn't start kicking off until they reached a critical threshold of interest due to social media and the almighty algorithm, not 4chan. Conflating these things is either ignorant or dishonest.

Lmao, if there's anything that powers up the far-right is precisely algorithmic social media, not uncensored old-school message boards.

> which is how we are where we are now, where children are matched with pedophile groomers[1] and delivered endless advertisements for freelance porn practitioners for profit.

Yes, which is why we are not in the early internet anymore and fully into surveillance capitalism, algorithmic social media.

Are you saying that the early web only existed in the USA? I did not witness a growth in mass shootings here in Europe from that time. Those things did not happen until Web 2.0.

Twitter is worse than 4chan now, at least 4chan is moderated.

4chan is not emblematic of the Internet Wild West. It was spawned by users ejected from a traditional forum, a scant half-year before Facebook was launched; it was, in fact, a sort of mirror to Facebook's response to that old internet, moot and Zuck being two sides of the same upper middle class white boy script kiddie coin.

And, as with Facebook, the main issue was the ways in which each platform perpetuated old social ills, not the ways in which they freed users.

Lastly, the tragedy of each is that it would have been entirely possible for ethical actors to takeover or fork each platform to scrub them of the ills and to promote the good. Bluesky is making a try of it vis a vis Twitter, and while my hopes aren't high that it will be an ultimate solution, I appreciate that there's finally been at least an attempt.

Exactly. And the early internet lead directly here. Which is why going back makes about as much sense as picking up your baby and dropping it on the floor again.

"Arrived" because any further and we're into the far reich. "Swinging back" because I have to be an optimist that as the blatant autocratic authoritarianism rises there will be mass pushback.

I do know how deep the sophomorically-justified rabbit hole goes, in that I've read a fair amount of dark enlightenment material. I actually credit Moldbug's writing for helping me go from defaulting to fundamentalist-axiomatic analysis (rightist) to leftist-constructive-qualitative analysis (leftist) - top down hierarchy is utterly incapable of responding to the complexity of the world, and only sounds so appealing post-facto when a singular coherent narrative has been written.

All of those changes were choices. Like setting icann as a for profit entity at the behest of a corrupt libertarian faction. We didn’t have to destroy peer to peer communication. We didn’t have to cede email to google. None of those things were inevitable. Could have become anything really.

Yeah but we didn’t do it, because our political system is built around deference to large corporations and we’ve abandoned antitrust and taking on corporate power.

But here’s the thing. This effort to stop these corporations from delivering unlimited porn to children is a step in the right direction. Which is restraining the activity of these companies to hurt people.

Which is why calls for the old “free” internet are now, like then, bullshit.

Bullshit. This about enacting tboughtcrime and normalizing that two Americans cannot exchange whatever arbitrary information the current administration has decided is disallowed. It starts with porn and ends with any form of dissent. It's another step towards Newspeak.

I know they taught you about slippery slopes in elementary school social studies, and I assume you've educated yourself not only of the past but also with speculative material such as 1984. If not, I'm not sure why you feel qualified to make the claims you're making.

4chan was started because posters in the Something Awful anime subforum could not stop posting underage child porn which was obviously against the rules.

To stop these disgusting freaks from polluting the SA forums with their child pornography and degeneracy, Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka closed the anime subforum (ATDRW aka Anime Tentacle Death Rape Whorehouse) and moot started 4chan.

So yeah, 4chans early legacy is ‘a bunch of pedophiles were mad they couldn’t share their abuse images’ which later transitioned into a love of fascism. What a great place… NOT.

P.S. Adults who like anime are fundamentally broken, it’s children’s entertainment.

Yeah that’s the libertarian techno utopian Silicon Valley point of view. It’s not that I don’t understand it, it’s that I think it’s pretty clear at this point it’s just a PR pitch for a group of sociopathic assholes who think they deserve to run the country.

Giving unlimited porn to kids is not “good, actually” and it was illegal before the internet and it’s a frustrating accident of history that nobody understood the implications of Section 230 at the time.

The internet is a core infrastructure commercial enterprise and what it produces should be subject to standard product regulations.

this is excellent bait

>It got us mass shootings

Americans will blame everything but their gun laws.

Thanks, I thought I deleted the last sentence but forgot to, oops ;)

The general facts are true, my opinion of anime fans is my own

I'm not a libertarian, and I don't live in SV. I'm also not a sociopathic asshole. Your argument is filled with ad hominem, then presents a ridiculous straw man, and never actually addresses the argument I made.

Would you like to try again?

No the facts are not true, your origin history of 4chan is completely wrong. Moot was a massive weeb who wanted his own western Futaba alternative.

< This about enacting tboughtcrime and normalizing that two Americans cannot exchange whatever arbitrary information the current administration has decided is disallowed. It starts with porn and ends with any form of dissent. It's another step towards Newspeak.

No, it's not.

It's about regulating consumer product safety. The above argument is one employed to avoid that obvious fact. Nobody wants to decide what you can email another adult. We want to make these giant conglomerate tech companies accountable for the harm they cause to people. Giving massive amounts of unlimited porn to children is harmful and we shouldn't be OK with it.

I get that "oh think of the children" is often used disingenuously. So what? This isn't one of those times.

Both of us can be right, moot is a massive ween and I’m sure he wanted a 2ch clone in English but it didn’t happen until ATDRW was shut down in 2003. I was an SA forums member when it happened.

This has nothing to do with what you said before. If you really were a SA member at that time you would know the history.

You've doubled down on the straw man. Literally no one is talking about "giving massive amounts of unlimited porn to children" but you.

> So what? This isn't one of those times.

It 100% is, and you cannot see it because you yourself are caught in the fervor.

If you don't want to visit a website, don't visit it. If you don't want your child to visit a website, block it. But to force website operators to check IDs at the door through sketchy third party services so that other consenting individuals can use their services is just batshit insane and a gigantic slippery slope towards a State-run internet that criminalizes all non-sanctioned speech. You need to look past your little hang up and understand the bigger picture.