this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
13 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37613 readers
86 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The EFF is working on all that. And have been for decades. They are allies.
They're making a stand on blocking because they have a bigger perspective on the issues. Which I thought was quite well articulated in their article.
I'm not saying that they can't point this out as an issue and I'm aware that it's in line with their absolutist beliefs on the internet being a public utility, but they spend an awfully small amount of time discussing the real and tangible harm that KF has brought to this world. They could also have spent more of their words on these other issues when bringing up KF. As I stated it's about how tone deaf this seems to me that's so off-putting about it.
I agree that the internet should be a public utility, but it's not, and if I'm gonna be spending efforts focused on trying to make it a public utility I want those efforts to go towards instances which are worth the time. If it was already a public utility and this was a real threat to it continuing to be a public utility, that would be a very different situation.
As callous as it may sound, it isn't their job to talk about that. I'm sure there's plenty of charities who's job it is to do that you can support, not to mention the police who should investigating if they caused real harm.
Real tangible harm was caused by KF - the burden of education is on everyone who chooses to open their mouth about this issue in the same way that we expect people to be reasonably knowledgeable about minorities before talking about them. We chastise companies and people for taking tone deaf stances on all sorts of issues all the time, because they should know better. They chose to open their mouth about a group which caused a lot of violence in the world, it's their responsibility to be educated on how to approach the subject tactfully.
They could have fairly trivially provided links to charities which exist to offset this harm. They could have trivially talked about how the police system is currently failing to protect minorities and others disenfranchised by the existing system that has no net neutrality. They didn't do these things. For such a large company and a non-profit with the reach that they have, they need to be better than this.
I mean even if it was a public utility, there's still laws around those in regards to what you can and can't do with it. So depending on how the framework around it is set up, and if there was a proper system in place to enforce it, I don't think it would necessarily even be a threat to it becoming or continuing to be a public utility.