IIRC it spammed websites with traffic, didn’t conceal your IP at all, and some people got arrested for using it to make some websites go down for a very brief period. Basically a way to use people who didn’t know what they were doing as cannon fodder

Could you elaborate? Does HOA mean something different in other countries?

Home owner’s association; when you buy a house and it is part of a HOA, you have to sign a contract to join the HOA as a requirement of buying, which means you have to pay dues and abide by the rules of the organization, and you have to require the next buyer to also join in order to sell your house.

Nope definitely not why would I do that to myself

I doubt the school administrators who would be buying this thing or the people trying to make money off it have really thought that far ahead or care whether or not it does that, but it would definitely be one of its main effects.

If she grabbed that thing out of the air and smashed it anon couldn’t really call the cops on her for it

If they had an in with Blizzard though shouldn’t it be anon getting banned not the Chinese people seeing his message

So how would this work, the Chinese ISP is inspecting unencrypted packets from videogames for banned text and shutting down the connection on seeing any? Wouldn’t most relevant text be on https websites anyway, why even implement something that way when the text isn’t guaranteed to be in a clear standard format and it’s just game chats?

Maybe people just started typing it that way instead to begin with, you can’t know

IMO for some people arguing is a form of intimacy

So your claim is that states specifically don’t have this authority, only the federal government? What’s your reason for thinking this?

edit: Here’s an example showing that they do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair%2C_Inc.

There’s also laws like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Consumer_Privacy_Act

The businesses that the CCPA refers to do not need to be physically present in California. As long as the business is active in the state and meets the requirements, they are considered to be under the CCPA

A number of state based internet regulation laws have recently run into trouble in courts, but that’s because of First Amendment concerns, not questions over whether merely being accessible to state residents gives jurisdiction to enforce them, which afaik it does.

The difference between what the laws are trying to enforce is a different issue though. The point is a website can be prosecuted just for being accessible when what it offers is against local laws.

I figured, but seems relevant that what they’re buying is bullshit no matter what

Pretty sure it doesn’t work that way. Look at what happened to Binance; not a US website, not technically allowing US customers, still successfully prosecuted by the US government for not doing enough to prevent people in the US from using it.

Conversion therapy isn’t real though; you can’t make someone not be gay. From the parent’s perspective, their problem is likely that they think they have a religious obligation to not accept homosexuality (perhaps their place in their community depends on this), but also want a relationship with their son, and don’t want to have to choose between these. So probably what they really want is for their son to go back in the closet in a way that is plausible, and the service they are paying for offers that plausibility and creates the greatest possible chance of it happening (being nice to anon and letting him know he has an undo button without feeding him bullshit or being pushy).

So on second thought, maybe it’s not unambiguously wholesome, because it is lies and could be enabling a homophobic culture. But on the other hand it’s probably for the best that this sort of conflict be put off until anon is no longer a teenager who is totally dependent on their parents. Whether the money was earned honestly I think is less of a big deal here ethically, it’s basically in the same category as paying for a consultation with a psychic, the sort of thing where they are all but explicitly paying for the fiction.

What a wholesome story

Because refried beans are as you mention no longer countable, I think “refried beans” should be taken all together as a singular compound noun rather than the word “beans” modified by an adjective. So then “too much refried beans” is the correct way to say it because it isn’t plural.

I did this, except in a cardboard box, plugged into an outlet with no ground, and using it to mine cryptocurrency. Somehow I didn’t burn down my apartment.

I don’t understand this attitude. If an argument is good, why wouldn’t it be valuable or matter? I think it would benefit people a lot if everyone put more thought and consideration into their arguments, especially in the direction of conveying some original thought that isn’t just a remix of the same tired propaganda style rhetoric everyone’s heard a million times before. “Winning” doesn’t matter, but collaboratively thinking about things with other people matters, and a good way to do that is through argument.

it may be moral in some extreme examples

Are they extreme? Is bad censorship genuinely rare?

but there are means of doing that completely removed from the scope of microblogging on a corporate behemoth’s web platform. For example, there is an international organization who’s sole purpose is perusing human rights violations.

I think it’s relevant that tech platforms, and software more generally, has a sort of reach and influence that international organizations do not, especially when it comes to the flow of information. What is the limit you’re suggesting here on what may be done to oppose harmful censorship? That it be legitimized by some official consensus? That a “right to censor” exist and be enforced but be subject to some form of formalized regulation? That would exempt any tyranny of the most influential states.