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by doubleunplussed 2650 days ago
I think blocking 4chan and 8chan means their users will resent the establishment even more. Considering this is the demographic whose resentment was influential enough to play a role in the election of Trump in the US, I think society needs to think twice before stamping the boot into their face.

I know some people who will feel that blocking these sites was an affront to their identity. And like it or not, the number of people who feel this way is not small, and their influence even less small. You can't just stamp them out, and you're radicalising them further.
2 comments
arp242 2649 days ago
After Reddit kicked out CoonTown and some of the other hate subs a few years ago, hateful content all over Reddit dropped. A few people went all huffy-puffy and started this Voat thing, but most just stayed on Reddit and ... stopped posting hateful crap.

So ... it does work. People don't radicalize on their own, they do so in a community, and they behave according to standards in the community. Sites like 4chan and 8chan are especially deceptive since it's a mix of people (not just white supremacists) who will slowly radicalize (part of) the general population there.

This makes it different from StormFront and all the explicit neo-Nazi websites. You don't go to StormFront to post memes fur teh lulz, only to get slowly drawn in to a white supremacist world.

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roca 2650 days ago
No, those people very much need a boot stamped into their face (metaphorically). The vast majority are cowards who hide behind anonymity or in their sick community. Catch a few and make an example of them and the vast majority will back off. I'm talking about NZ here, I understand the situation in the USA is different and worse.

In fact, though, they won't be cut off. 4chan and 8chan are both accessible to me here in NZ with no tricks.

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doubleunplussed 2650 days ago
I think it's DNS blocking with the ISP-provided DNS servers. Perhaps you're using google public DNS already?

In Australia I believe it was blocking at the IP address level, so requires a VPN to circumvent. But only for some ISPs.

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