The Washington Post has an excellent piece on a group of people who have chased one of the worst troll farms across the internet, playing whack-a-mole with it in an attempt to stop it from getting people physically hurt. You should read the story, because it is remarkable. But I am not here to talk about those incredible people, as much as they deserve the accolades. I am here to talk about the fantasy world the EFF appears to live in.
The group these people are trying to take down is vile. They allowed users to dox and stalk people, at least three times to the point of suicides. They have allowed users to harass people’s employers and parents. They had a particular focus on trans people, though their targets could range as far as field as Congresswoman Taylor Greene. Eventually, tis group got a tier one ISP, one of the backbones of the internet, to drop them for terms violations. The EFF responded with a statement deriding the decision. The statement shows a ludicrous misunderstanding of freedom and power.
The EFF argues that “Tier 1 ISPs have little if any context to make good decisions about their speech.” And that “We’ve warned that endorsing censorship in one context can (and does) come back to bite us all when, inevitably, that same approach is used in another context. Pressure on basic infrastructure, as a tactic, will be re-used, inevitably, against unjustly marginalized speakers and forums. It already is.” And finally, that “For example, an ISP, under pressure from the attorney general of a state that bans abortions, might decide to interfere with traffic to a site that raises money to help people get abortions, or provides information about self-managed abortions.”
Frankly, the people who wrote this act as if they have no connection to reality at all.
The last example is pure scaremongering, disconnected from the issue completely. It is going to happen regardless. Pretending that if Tier 1 ISPs are pressured into upholding their terms of service in a manner that makes it less likely marginalized people will be driven to suicide also makes it less likely that ambitious politicians will misuse their power is so naive that I have to wonder if it trips into deliberately dishonest. Look around at the rash of book banning legislation in red states today and ask yourself: which anti-abortion politician is going to leave this in his or her toolbelt because an ISP didn’t enforce its TOS on a hate site? And when you find that politician, tell me what color unicorn they were riding.
The argument that because we established a precedent such action would be harder holds little weight. First, we have seen these courts don’t hold much respect for precedent. But second, different things are in fact different. Doxing people for the purpose of stalking, harassment, and abuse in order to drive them off the internet is not the same thing as sharing information about a medical procedure, and we should not be afraid of the argument. One of these things is not like the other. One of these things restricts freedom, one of these things advances it.
And that is the point. Not all speech advances the cause of freedom, which should be the concern here. If you really care about freedom, you should be concerned about making sure people that people aren’t afraid for their lives when they speak. Speach that drives people underground is not speech that deserves protection. Freedom is not advanced by anti-freedom.
The EFF argues two points to defend stalking and doxing and making people feel unsafe. Frist, they claim that bad speech should be driven out by good speech. This fundamentally misunderstands power and markets. If your speech is drowned out by a constant wave of threats, you cannot really participate in the marketplace of ideas, can you? If Coke threw eggs at Pepsi salespeople every time they tried to make a delivery, that’s not much of a market, as amusing as that might be for bystanders.
Their other argument is that the government should punish people who commit these acts. Well, yes. And the sky is blue. Thank you for participating in today’s game of “What’s obvious”. But this response is infuriating coming from the EFF. As their own statement notes, governments are often terrible at prosecuting harassment that starts at the internet. Second, they generally oppose broadening laws to reduce online harassment. Third, they take a very hard line stance against encryption, making it hard to track harassers coordinated activity.
There is nuance to all of these issues, but the EFF doesn’t really see it. If you were to tell me that the EFF thinks that all harassment should be handled by trying to talk the harassers into being nicer people, well, I would have a hard time arguing the point based on their actions. In fact, they kind of say this themselves: “Instead, we think the best course of action will be rooted in the core ideals underpinning the Internet: decentralization, creativity, community, and user empowerment.” Well, as long as that community doesn’t use its creativity to get ISPs to enforce their terms of service, of course.
So good luck, abuse victim. Don’t look to ISPs or the government for help when the mob comes howling for you — hope you have the time to turn defending your right to speak on the internet into a full-time job. The EFF seems to think that’s what’s best.
We can do better than this. We have to do better than this. Man, I am not even all that radical when it comes to trans rights. I think it’s overboard when people start taking the word woman out of woman’s issues — especially given the reaction to feminism right now and the need to rally against that reaction. In some sports, I am concerned about the implications of letting people who have gone through a male puberty play against those who have not. But we are taking about using speech to attack the very basic right to live. We have to be sophisticated enough to understand that speech that is anti-freedom, that is designed not to criticize positions but to dehumanize, terrorize, and physically threaten is not speech worth defending. Otherwise, we allow the violent to silence the rest of us.
And that is not a principle worth defending.
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