Interesting Links for 03-09-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Dreamwidth are moving away from Cloudflare, after Cloudflare refused to stop supporting sites that threaten people's physical safety

(tags:dreamwidth freespeech GoodNews abuse )

2. What would it be like for you if your life had a sports commentator?

(tags:sports narrative life )

3. Everywhere, no matter how boring it looks, has a history

(tags:edinburgh history scotland viaSwampers )

4. Russian oil energy price cap agreed by G7

(tags:russia oil )

5. Diablo Immortal whales face massive orb debt after third-party refunds (I find all of this hilarious, in-between wishing I didn't know what it meant)

(tags:viaSwampers games diablo fraud )

6. The UK welfare system is cruel, disgusting, and murderous

(tags:UK welfare murder OhForFucksSake conservatives )

7. Nuclear explosions in the style of various artists

(tags:nuclearweapons art ai viaPatrickHadfield )

8. Modern cars are much safer than old ones

(tags:safety cars )

9. AI is getting better at generating porn.

(tags:porn ai )

10. Worker says her job would rather replace her with 6 people than give her a raise,

(tags:work OhForFucksSake )

11. Entrance to forgotten square revealed by huge fire in Edinburgh

(tags:history Edinburgh architecture viaPatrickHadfield )

12. Valve bars Steam developer who posted anti-trans rant in patch notes

(tags:games bigotry LGBT valve Steam transgender )

Comments

[dewline]

1. Good. I support this. I don't know how we're going to deal with whatever fallout crops up, and it doesn't matter.

3. True enough. No matter how obscure a place may be.

4. Sounds good to me, until such time as Putinism is replaced by something much saner and kinder.

6. Canada's own socio-economic safety net is in need of much repair as well! Given all the inter-relations between the federal, provincial/territorial, and municipal levels of government, I have to wonder how incremental the improvements will be allowed to be. When they happen at all.

We need UBI.

8. I hope so!

10. I believe her, and that situation is appalling.

12. Good riddance to that developer.

[andrewducker]

Totally with you on UBI

[zz]

i'm afraid i'm with cloudflare on #1. core internet services shouldn't be in the business of censorship, especially by killing entire web sites because of the actions of some users. cf niemoller, collective punishment, etc.

[andrewducker]

It's a site that exists to harass people into suicide, or to kill them.

Nobody should be providing it service, or they're complicit.

[zz]

no, AIUI it's supposed to be a site to laugh at the "internet famous", albeit with some *impressively* toxic users, and a lot of trans hate for some reason. for me it and sites like it come up when i'm wondering "whatever happened to x youtuber". describing it as "exists to harass people into suicide, or to kill them" smells like a tabloid moral panic headline.

[andrewducker]

If your site contains people who are harassing and abusing people to death and you do nothing about it then you are a site that harasses and murders people.

[fub]

It's the same way that if you are at an event and someone brings a nazi flag, and nobody does anything about it -- you are at a nazi event.

Also, Cloudflare is not a utility or common carrier. They pretend they are, but they are not -- if they want to, they should make sure they are regulated as one. (But of course they don't want that...)
Dreamwidth decision to move off Cloudflare made me buy a year of paid account, even though it's not my main blog (I just mirror my actual blog to here).

[liv]

Cloudflare really really don't have the moral highground on not censoring because they are a "core internet service". They're entirely happy to refuse to provide services to sex workers and sites that host porn. And ok, it's possible to argue that porn is somehow "worse" than violent anti-trans hatred, but you can't then turn round and say that you're against censorship.

[zz]

the payment processors' monopoly allowing them to dictate site content, including the war on sex work, and what people are allowed to spend their money on, is another part of the same problem.