As the article discussed, people generally want free speech for the things they approve of, and restrictions on speech about things they think are bad. There are some things that seem to have overwhelming public support, like bans on child porn, terrorist videos, and copyright violation. I'm thinking of specific events like the Christchurch shootings, where there was a lot of public outcry along the lines of "such things shouldn't be allowed on the Internet", and 8chan was eventually kicked off Cloudfare. I guess when people want something banned, they want it gone for good, including from the likes of Tor hidden services. But that won't stop them from going to the same kinds of services to access some information that they think has been unfairly banned.
I also find it ironic to be censored when commenting on topics related to censorship, or at least greyed out to -4, which is about as much as can be achieved without moderator assistance, I think.
A very curious thing happened in Australia wrt the Christchurch shooting.
In NZ, there was a law at the time that allowed the government to basically designate the video as illegal, forcing ISPs to take it down - or perhaps it would be better to say, allowing them to avoid making a choice either way. But that was not the case in Australia. So after NZ took it down, the Australian ISPs voluntarily censored the video - all of them in concert, acting, effectively, as a private censorship cartel. And it was a very intrusive form of censorship - not only they blocked the video itself, but any blog or forum that posted a link to it, and refused to remove it, was itself blocked. There were several large forums that were blocked in that manner, because they had a subforum with an "everything goes so long as it's not illegal" policy, where people can rant and vent and have flame wars. Furthermore, the ISPs refused to publish the exact list of websites that were banned, or even confirm or deny whether any particular one was banned.
And despite it being a country-wide block on some information - much as the Great Firewall censors e.g. any Tienanmen photos - as a private action, it was completely legal, with no third party review, oversight, or appeal. Something to ponder when we're talking about freedom of information in developed Western countries...
ISPs should be neutral information carriers. It should be illegal for them to try to influence society by censoring data flowing through their networks. What stops them from voluntarily censoring everything related to a political party they don't support?
> child porn, terrorist videos, and copyright violation
One of these is not like the others.
> "such things shouldn't be allowed on the Internet"
This is why people created things like Tor in the first place. The internet is not a country. Nobody should get to decide what is and isn't allowed on the internet.
> the reality is every first world country's internet backbone is controlled by the state
We need to move beyond this. Some kind of world-wide mesh network would be great. Perhaps phones will become this one day.
If we don't, the internet as we know it today will be destroyed. Every country wants to impose its own laws on it. This will lead to a regionalization of the internet: each country will have its own.
> should information be allowed to flow freely?
Yes. If some information is not meant to flow freely, it shouldn't exist at all. Laws must be enforced before the data is created. Instead of making information illegal, target the activity that generates the information.
There's obviously tension between the typical belief that not all information should be allowed to flow freely, and the limited tolerance of "safe spaces" like Tor, encrypted chat channels and sites like Sci-Hub where information does indeed flow freely.
I also find it ironic to be censored when commenting on topics related to censorship, or at least greyed out to -4, which is about as much as can be achieved without moderator assistance, I think.