Regardless of any arguments about legitimacy, the optics of the EFF and ACLU defending Omegle against a child sex abuse victim are horrible. They need to raise funds from donors and having to explain that they fought against an individual abuse victim seems like the kind of position they would want to avoid. What I imagine they would do is fight against any overzealous legislation some politician tries to throw together in some ham-fisted response to this kind of situation.
EDIT: Admittedly I know little of the history of these groups. Comments suggest I may be in error on my inferences here.
They sure did, but they've changed. They helped obtain permits for the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, which devolved into a MAGA riot that ended with a white supremacist murdering one protestor and injuring 35 others. Since then the ACLU has become far more squeamish about their clients and has been willing to compromise on their historical principles.
The ACLU is not the same organization that it used to be. That neo nazi march they defended was almost 50 years ago. It is doubtful they would take a similar stance today.
The ACLU of Virginia did defend the rights of white supremacists to organize in Charlottesville in 2017. I believe the resulting violence triggered some aclu soul searching and I’m not sure where the organization landed on defending the free speech of nazis and the like. Speaking for myself, I hope they keep to their principles.
damn, that's rough. It's a shame because yes, the first amendment does include "the right of the people peaceably to assemble"
But that's the rub, PEACEABLY. Clearly what happened in Charlottesville violated that and is no longer protected under the constitution. But we can't ever truly predict the actions of an individual in a large group.
I'm very torn. I feel like we veer into Minority Report if we start having to predict what assemblies are prone to violation or not.
I suspect the ACLU has refined its opinion on the nature of freedoms. Or the public that funds it has and it realized that it can't do any good if donors pull support because it keeps supporting Nazis. Maybe distinction without a difference.
> I suspect the ACLU has refined its opinion on the nature of freedoms.
Of all the targets of ire for "woke culture" etc., I'm really surprised that ACLU, SPLC and similar aren't getting more heat. They're actually highly consequential in people's daily lives and can clearly be ideologically captured by a rather small group of people, given that the orgs themselves are so small.
Much better targets of critique than random Twitter mobs.
Framing this as "what about the children" is an easy way to attack just about anything that's not strictly top-down from some large corporate vendor.
On the other hand, I do wonder if "talk to strangers" is indeed a reasonable model. Our brains form largely on the basis of neurons talking and connecting to strangers. Clearly that model works there. But then again the neurons are simple (relatively) cells with much more cohesive goals and behavior, while humans are complex entities with behavior ranging from the cooperative to the ghastly predatorial.
Ultimately it seems any such service can't be anonymous. Talk to strangers... fine. But you need to register first, with your name, face, age, and meet consequences for what you're doing on the service, if your intent is less than noble. Alas this takes people and money which Omegle apparently didn't have.
> Our brains form largely on the basis of neurons talking and connecting to strangers.
This is nonsense. Our neurons don’t talk to strangers. They talk with other neurons from the same individual. There is more in common between any two connected neurons than between two family members.
And besides there is no reason to think that what happens between cells is a good model to base human behaviour on whatsoever.
Socialization is important (we have decades of documentation on how you can permanently damage a brain in mere weeks of solitary confinement), and we can't nor shouldn't have to base that socialization with the same relatives for your entire life. If only because we biologically have urges to reproduce and are aware enough of biology to know that family reproduction is a horrible idea.
> we have decades of documentation on how you can permanently damage a brain in mere weeks of solitary confinement
Yes.
> and we can't nor shouldn't have to base that socialization with the same relatives for your entire life
Yes.
see how easy it was to write it without asserting falsehoods about neurons, and without drawing unsupported conclusions from said falsehood?
A metaphor can be faulty even if the conclusion it purports to end up with is true. And if we can do away without the obscuring metaphor (as you did in this very comment I'm responding to) then we should.
The ACLU speaks up for the rights of murderers and rapists that we don't like, because we don't want the system to be able to abrogate the rights of politically inconvenient people that the powers that be don't like. Like Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning. The ACLU and the EFF aren't about optics, but the underlying rule of law. We are better than a mob with pitchforks, even when we really don't like the perpetrator.
no, that's what they are for. The entire point is that they don't care about optics. I let my membership go when it came obvious they were starting to care.
Really, I’d like to flip the script here and dare anyone against EFF protecting Omegle to post their real life resume/linkedin/etc.
I’ll do my part to make sure you’re unhirable, because the “optics” of destroying something as simple and innocent as this are terrible, and what’s actually happening is pseudo-anonymous pressure.
You’re acting like the ACLU hasn’t _specifically_ stood up for child molesters in cases about sexual offense notification. It’s not about that. They just care more about cases that will give them free publicity than defending a floundering website.
They have changed their direction considerably since 2016. The cases they take on now tend not to align with an absolutist stance on freedom of speech and due process.
When Trump got elected, donations poured in to them amd they made a pretty clear turn to liberal causes. I think the days that they would defend the speech of deeply unpopular viewpoints on free speech grounds are over.
This is their plea for donations:
"Abortion care, trans people’s right to live freely, people’s right to vote – our freedoms are at stake and we need you with us. Donate today and fuel our fight in courts, statehouses, and nationwide."
Now I am not saying these are bad causes but it seems their priorities have shifted. They don't seem to be defending deeply unpopular people anymore
And frankly, they always had a very selective list of things they bothered to get involved in. There are a ton of civil liberties they always avoided doing anything about.
But they’re mostly irrelevant anymore - the causes they’ve started going after have a thousand other non-profits doing as much for, or better now.
The ACLU war chest has been over $400M the last few years, with many thousands of people in pretty much every state working with the organization in some capacity.
There's absolutely no evidence to support your claims that either the ACLU is irrelevant, nor that it has somehow shifted its momentum considerably since 2016 in what class of cases it handles (especially given the age of the organization and number of shifts vs. overall societal/cultural changes).
On the contrary, I can find many recent examples of legal actions spread headed by the ACLU across dozens of issues all over the country. If you can't find any it's because you're not looking, though you can start with their Annual Reports.
Your multiple statements of the ACLU's irrelevance tells me you don't have reliable sources. I would wager you've spent more time on these comments, than actually reading up on the ACLU and its activities. You're welcome to hold any opinion you want about the organization, though without supporting evidence I doubt anyone else is going to share it with you.
> When Trump got elected, donations poured in to them amd they made a pretty clear turn to liberal causes. I think the days that they would defend the speech of deeply unpopular viewpoints on free speech grounds are over.
Hard to square this assessment with the last news item I caught about the ACLU: fighting a gag order against Donald Trump on free speech grounds.
This is the pretty standard issue of, as the US drifts further and further to the right, anyone who stays relatively stable is now accused of being liberal or leftist.
That is noble they did that and shows that they still have that element in them. I do not support Trump, and it shows objectivity to defend someone like him when his rights are infringed as they seem to be in that case.
The NY Times has covered the internal friction in the ACLU to take on more progressive causes as well. I was wrong to say they have completely strayed from defending speech absolutely but they do seem to have moved focus away. [1]
For people who agree with the libertarian stance, the optics aren't horrible, of course, they are good. The question is whether there are enough of those people to sustain an organization like the EFF.
Nazis are people, and being a nazi is not a crime. Until they commit some sort of crime they should be afforded all the same basic human rights and freedoms as everyone else. That's just basic common sense.
The article mentions supporting the EFF if you are opposed to this kind of thing. It's possible they offered to help but the owner was sick of it all. That's the impression I got from reading the piece.
