Is 4chan the perfect Pirate Bay poster child to justify wider UK site-blocking?

The game Alpha Centauri had the most hard hitting quote that I think applies now.

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny...Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. Commissioner Pravin Lal, 'U.N. Declaration of Rights' "

I mean, yes, but also…

Not specifically related to this “child protection” thing, but you can’t deny that the free flow of information also leads to some pretty terrible things, driven by actors such as states, magnified x1000 by social media, and now also AI.

Every platform these days is full to the brim with misinformation and propaganda (which ends up in mainstream media as well), deliberately making many of us hateful and sometimes violent. The free flow of information is undoubtedly being used for harm.

I’m 100% for personal liberty and accountability, and admittedly I don’t have a solution for this.

I do think the Elon Musk approach (“just let people decide for themselves”) is very naive at best.

Again just to be clear this has nothing to do with the UK thing which I strongly disagree with.

The free flow of information isn't driving extremism, it's echo chambers. People have a tendency of surrounding themselves with only those who already agree with them on some topic, so that a heavily partisan position suddenly becomes 'moderate.' This is how you have people simultaneously claiming, for instance, that the US is becoming more liberal than ever, and that it's becoming more conservative than ever.

You can also see this with the perception gap [1]. Those who are most involved in politics tend to be the paradoxically least knowledgeable about what 'the other side' thinks and believes. Typical contemporary examples would be republicans thinking democrats want to defund the police, or democrats thinking republicans are against immigration.

When you have contrary ideas bouncing against each other, poor ideas are easily demonstrated to be such - and you get a more realistic view of what people 'on the other side' actually think and believe. It naturally tempers against radicalism. But when you start to control information, you get the opposite. This is made even worse by the sort of people that find themselves on a life trajectory to go work, let alone volunteer, for the 'Ministry of Truth'. They tend to be the exact sorts that want to create information bubbles and echo chambers.

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In general I think the truth tends to trickle up, even if it might get a bit dirty on the way there. I'd appeal to places like the USSR on that. They not only directly controlled absolutely all published information, but strictly controlled migration in and out of the country, informers everywhere making people terrified of speaking their mind, and just generally had a rock solid grip on information. The result? People still knew they were all full of shit. There's a great series of jokes from the era here. [2] On of my favorites, "Why do we need two central newspapers, Truth (Pravda) and News (Izvestiya) if both are organs of the same Party? Because in Truth there is no news, and in News there is no truth."

[1] - https://perceptiongap.us/

[2] - https://johndclare.net/Russ12_Jokes.htm

“ democrats thinking republicans are against immigration.”

Um, I don’t know if you’ve just returned from a long journey in the wilderness or something, but Republicans are definitely against immigration.

When asked "On the whole, do you think immigration is a good thing or a bad thing for this country today?", 64% of Republicans state it is a good thing. [1] And note that that question has dubious phrasing since it simply says immigration. Change that to legal immigration and the number will probably be more in the 90% range.

Notably this (64%) is higher than even the Democrat level up until about 2012, after the Occupy Wallstreet movement.

[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...

There’s a concept in economics called “revealed preferences.” The idea is that you might not say what you really want, or even know it, but your behavior reveals it.

For example, somebody might say that they hate tiny airline seats and they’d gladly pay substantially extra for more legroom. But then they’ll be presented with a choice of an airline ticket with more legroom, or the exact same ticket but with less legroom for $3 less, and they’ll choose the latter. Their revealed preference is that they don’t actually value legroom very much, despite what they say.

Likewise, if someone says that they support immigration, but you vote for and continue to support someone who opposes immigration to the point of carrying out heinous human rights abuses against legal immigrants, well, actions speak louder than words.

I’m pretty sure this is the “virtue signaling” that people are always going on about. Supporting immigration is seen as a good thing, so people say they do. But when it comes down to actual concrete policy, they don’t. This used to be covered by the fig leaf of “we support legal immigration” but that’s gone now.

With due respect, think about what you're doing. You're now simply discarding any poll that doesn't conform to your own personal biases, and replacing those data with some rather extreme partisan talking points. This is the point about stepping out of bubbles. The people you see as 'the other side' do not think in any way, shape, or fashion like you believe that they might.

For instance if you went up to an average Republican and said 'So what do you think about the human rights abuses being carried out against legal immigrants?' The overwhelming majority would have literally no clue what you're talking about. If you explained this incident or that, their response is going to be 'Well that's dumb. I hope they're doing something so this doesn't happen again.'

It's like if you went up to the average Democrat and asked them what they think about having explicit LGB books made available to minors in schools? Again the overwhelming majority would have literally no clue what you're talking about. If you explained this incident or that, their response is going to be 'Well that's dumb. I hope they're doing something so this doesn't happen again.'

The 'other side' these bubbles build up simply doesn't exist in reality.

What "rather extreme partisan talking points" are those? Referring to the well-attested, widely-reported abuses of immigrants by this administration is not extremely partisan, it's just facts.

I know Republicans. I talk to Republicans. They know about this stuff and they're fine with it. They know they're not supposed to be, so they deflect. They'll say what's happening to immigrants is no different from being arrested for a crime you didn't commit, then released. They'll insist that the victim was a terrible criminal regardless of the facts. What they don't do is express any reservations whatsoever about it.

I suppose you might make an argument that this deflection indicates an overall approval of immigration since they need to find excuses to support the administration's anti-immigration actions. I would argue that if you claim to believe one thing, but you always find an excuse to defend actions against it, then you don't actually believe it.

Polls are not magic opinion-finding systems. They report what people say. This demonstrably frequently diverges from what people actually do, think, and feel.

You swapped from 'heinous human rights abuses' to 'abuse' when challenged on a point being framed in a rather extreme and partisan fashion. And that's not to mock you or anything - it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Abuses are one thing, human rights abuses are another, and then human rights abuses so abnormally cruel that they deserve to be labeled as heinous? I mean are we talking about stuff like Unit 731 [1] here? I'm pretty sure we are not. Yet these echo chambers encourage people to use ever more hyperbolic and sensationalized language framing ever more actions as the most severe and consequential thing to ever happen, mostly just to rile people up (and get those votes in social media).

This is why conversation, and free flow of information, from people of different worldviews is so critical for a functioning society and avoiding radicalism. And I have to say I'm still not certain what you're even talking about, whereas I assume you think literally every American knows exactly what you are trying to reference. But this is again an issue about bubbles, and what I was getting at with if you asked an average person about some trending talking point. On the overwhelming majority of issues, most people's response is going to be 'What are you even talking about?'

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

It’s shorthand. You don’t have to repeat the full phrase every time. I’m talking about things like CECOT. No, it’s not Unit 731. I think being sent to a horrible prison in another country without a trial qualifies as “heinous.” Maybe you don’t. But that’s missing the point. The point is the support for these actions, not their precise description.

You say people don’t know about this stuff. My experience is otherwise. Maybe you’re right. I don’t think so.

Expedited removal [1] is a part of immigration law dating back to Clinton. People who are in the country unlawfully do not have all of the same rights as citizens or legal non-citizens. And support (or opposition) for immigration in no way whatsoever implies a position on how to deal with people who are in the country illegally. For instance Hispanics are less supportive of immigration than average, but more supportive than average of allowing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. And I myself am quite supportive of immigration, but not at all a fan of path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. I even have very specific reasons for that, but my anecdotes are probably irrelevant here.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedited_removal

Expedited removal does not require sending people to a hellhole third-world prison.

Many of the people sent there were in the US legally.

But thank you for illustrating the deflection I was talking about. This is how these conversations always go for me. First the ignorance, "I don't even know what you're referring to." Then the minimization, "it's not so bad," "you're being hyperbolic." Finally the justification, "this is nothing new," "they were all illegals anyway."

I'm not deflecting anything. Rather you've brought us down a tangent that has literally nothing to do with the initial issue of whether or not one supports immigration. I'm more than happy to continue the discussion, but I'm not entirely sure what we're even debating at this point. So I suppose I'll just consider it a discussion, it's interesting in any case!

The US does not get to dictate what happens to a person in a country once they're deported. That is up to the host country. El Salvador has been going through an extreme crackdown on gangs over the past several years sending them from one of the most dangerous countries in the world with one of the highest homicide rates in the world, to a country with a homicide rate a fraction of the US' and one of the 10 safest countries in the world! [1] The deal between the US and El Salvador for hosting prisoners was for a relatively small number of deportees who were vile enough that even their home countries refused to accept them back, leaving them in a state of limbo.

And the deportees were overwhelmingly not in the country legally. The media made this claim based on people who were admitted to the country via the CBP One app. But those admittances were all rescinded in April. At that point users of the App were notified of the change, the app was updated to 'CBP Home' and updated to work as a tool to help people self deport in a way that would not imperil their chance of legally applying for a visa or citizenship to the US in the future. Those who chose to stay in the US beyond that point were doing so illegally, and were informed that they would be arrested, deported, and permanently prevented from ever legally entering the US.

https://www.gallup.com/analytics/356996/gallup-global-safety...

It's not a tangent. It's the worst example of the anti-immigrant actions being taken by this administration, and it's supported by its supporters.

You think (or at least say) it's a tangent because you're deflecting. This is basically a No True Immigrant argument. I point out immigrants being abused, you come up with reasons why that doesn't count. I'm sure this would continue. I could talk about, say, a green card holder who gets arrested by ICE because of a decades-old marijuana offense and then after being held in bad conditions for several days is released into the middle of the night with no way to get in touch with anyone she knows, and you'll just say that they have a right to do this because of that marijuana offense, or this is standard treatment, or some other such faff.

Ah, but now you're finally revealing the core of your argument. You seem to be effectively insisting that somebody must equate illegal immigration and legal migration. Am I somehow straw manning you?

Because if not this is of course rather silly, as the two have little in common besides moving. Legal immigration to the US is absurdly difficult and entails extensive vetting, qualification, and a lengthy process of 'proving' oneself. Illegal immigration requires breaking the law to enter a country, breaking the law to remain in that country, and then generally also continuing to break the law as you reside in the country. So with one you're getting the best of the best and with the other you're getting people who view the law as something to be followed when convenient.

You're absolutely strawmanning me. Or do you equate deporting a green card holder with a decades-old marijuana conviction as being against illegal immigration? Do you think that suddenly revoking status from legal immigrants and then deporting them is only being against illegal immigrants because you revoked their status first?

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." You can't claim to only be against dishonest men when you do this sort of thing.

I do think that this administration's actions against illegal immigrants have been so bad that everyone responsible should be imprisoned. But they are not only against illegal immigrants.