On the one hand, I like the idea of a free, open, and distributed internet, where no one company or government has the power to control what is distributed or discussed. As the great John Gilmore said, more aspirationally than accurately even then: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
On the other hand, we don't live in that world, and I don't know how well it would work in practice if we did. In this world, corporations and governments have enormous power. Cloudflare has made it clear that it will use that power in a fairly limited and restrained way, but it will use it as it sees fit.
Given that, this seems like a reasonable exercise of that power, and that's about the best we can hope for.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
As if "The Net" is a perfect, neutral, self-supporting entity that behaves with mathematic predictability rather than a projection of the chaotic human society on which its existence depends.
There is a widespread habit among futurists and technologists, perhaps arising from an appreciation for semantic economy and the anonymizing instinct to downplay associations between oneself and one's assertions, to use the passive voice when concocting reductive maxims of this sort.
I believe many of the moral blind spots of technocratic thinking are connected to the peculiar tendency - revealed by this passive voice framing habit - to overlook or outright dismiss the role that human inputs play in the complex systems futurists propose as solutions to human problems.
This is extra funny because in general anyone's internet access is trivially easy to take down with just a bunch of well sent and crafted routing control packets.
Internet was not designed in an adversarial model.
I don't think this statement is ignoring human input. It's extrapolating the result based on what we have observed about the interaction of the technology and the participating humans so far, viewing them as a single system. The passive voice is in recognition that an individual has almost no control over this system as a whole.
We lived in that world until media pushed mentally ill people to the front.
Look at the graphs reporting on racism and the surge of terror.
They basically revived nationalistic movements for clicks. Not wanting to reverse cause and effect but there is ample evide ce that the call for censorship massivle accelerated occurrences like shootings.
> Not wanting to reverse cause and effect but there is ample evide ce that the call for censorship massivle accelerated occurrences like shootings.
That is interesting, but just saying that it is so doesn't lend any credibility to the conclusion. If there is ample evidence, surely you should be able to present it?
>Given that, this seems like a reasonable exercise of that power, and that's about the best we can hope for.
Maybe, this event may become the precedent for all future hosting providers of unpopular opinions and where denial of service attacks become used against these hosting providers. Losing protection from anti-ddos service(s) becomes a process to eliminate the unpopular opinions being expressed.
I think this is dangerous recourse and even if there are competitor services like cloudfare. There are limits in services available and state actors can understand this problem. Then make it impossible for unpopular opinions to be expressed by either orchestrating what's needed to get the anti-ddos services to resent their customers or by other means.
Me personally, I'm alright with 8chan being deleted from the internet but I don't think that will even solve the problem. People with poor quality of life will continue being radicalized and do these acts of revenge in their eyes against a system that made them live in pain (somehow unjust to their views). I think we just need to improve quality of life for people equally without leaving some people left behind because of whatever circumstances. Otherwise people feel the need to leave with sometimes a couple bangs.
> Maybe, this event may become the precedent for all future hosting providers of unpopular opinions
Maybe it won't!
I feel like every time a controversial site gets shut down message boards are flooded with slippery slope arguments, but by and large I haven't seen it ever transpire.
I'd argue reddit is a decent example. They banned some very hateful subs, and then later started banning subs because they 'were not good for advertising' see r/waterniggas.
That's not a slippery slope, though. That's Reddit banning subs for two different reasons. I'd they banned subs for hateful content then changed the definition of "hateful content" to include things advertisers object to then it would be. But if they're publicly stating that they're doing it because of advertisers then it's not really related.
Any time reddit says they are removing something due to "hateful content", it's just PR speak for "we got some media/advertiser backlash for this content so we are removing it".
Reddit was notoriously infested with white supremacist subs, jailbait subs, pics of dead people subs, and more, and they were all brought up to the admins many times, and the admins never took any action on this hateful content until CNN et al started writing articles about it.
It's not entirely unlike this situation with Cloudflare, really. These companies talk a big game about their principles and morals, but at the end of the day the only principle they strictly adhere to is the principle of public backlash.
Recently, after Youtube responded to Steven Crowder's harassment of a gay reporter who works for Vox named Carlos Maza, a number of independent youtube personalities who comment on news mentioned they had their videos demonetized. This included people who are on the left. Here's an example and someone I follow[0]. It's not quite what you're talking about, but it's an example of how trying to moderate speech or chill it affects everyone who isn't already an established player (CNN,MSNBC,etc) regardless of their ideology.
You’re right about the demonetization effects, but to clarify the Maza-Crowder tiff - Maza previously spent years mocking Crowder and making inappropriate sexual references involving himself and Crowder. Crowder responded inappropriately, thinking he could pull off a Don Rickles act. Still, nothing either of them have done opens them up to harassment charges.
I think the wider demonetization is part of a cynical attempt to sabotage non-publisher media generally, it’s not an accidental side effect. There’s a scorched earth campaign by certain activists at Vox, Media Matters, and even CNN to contact advertisers en masse and essentially threaten that they are considering naming the advertiser in a hit piece about objectionable content. They aren’t dumb - they know the fallout will affect independent journalists and media of all politics.
How many controversial topics can we recall that we lived through and where they became accepted overtime? What medium was used at the time and was it the popular communication method for the time. I'm sure historically there was a similar fight with what mediums were available at the time. Burning books or just killing someone who speaks out.
The internet can be the only method nowadays where people with little finances can make a loud enough voice be heard and there are still unpopular views I'm worried won't ever get accepted if people are not being cautious about throwing away measures. That's why the slippery slope argument is worth me typing. Even if maybe it won't!
I think unpopular opinions from life experiences are what gravitates people to whatever categorization and or label is placed upon them.
Btw, the only reason I feel the needs to share my thoughts is because I have an unpopular opinion myself. Assisted death should become available for people that desire it. There are some sites I view that have resources for people that are ending their life and these sites suffer denial of service attacks. They started using cloudflare recently.
This feels like a misunderstanding of the word freedom. Freedom in speech means that I can say what I want.
It does _not_ mean that a hosting company has to host it or that a CDN has to optimize it or that a search company has to rank it or that an ad-network has to monetize it. Each of those players is free to do what they think is best with their time, resources, etc.; which often includes thinking of what "the public" will think of them doing (or not doing) a thing.
Freedom does not mean that I have the "right" to be heard or the "right" to be amplified—either as much as the next person or at all.
The net, as in a network of computers, is quite close to free. Being a part of a society is not.
Ted Kaczynski was not arrested for writing manifestos beyond the pale of normative capitalism from a self-built cabin in Montana. He was arrested for sending bombs. The moment one person freely decides to harmfully affect others, those others can do something about it.
It seems much of the hand-wringing about freedom—when we talk about the internet and corporations—is that extremist speech does not have access to the same megaphone, the same means of monetization (and therefore survival). And that…well that's what living in a society is all about.
Are there bad parts about tech as we see it today? Absolutely! But it hardly seems like the problem is "not enough shit is allowed on the internet." I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.
No one has the "right" to have their speech amplified by 3rd parties. However, I don't think Cloudflare is in the business of providing amplification, they are in the business of providing access, which I think is closer to censorship than restricting amplification.
Access means people who WANT this content can get it easily. If you're making it harder for people who voluntarily choose to view 8chan content, you're restricting access.
Amplification means getting content in front of new eyeballs that wouldn't have otherwise seen it. E.g. if Facebook determined that given this user's age, race, zip-code, and favorite TV shows they might be in interested in this racist-meme sharing group that one of their friends joined, and then surfaces that content, that's amplification.
> Amplification means getting content in front of new eyeballs that wouldn't have otherwise seen it.
Which a CDN does as well. If a user visits the site during peak demand and the site without a CDN can't handle it, the user doesn't get the site in front of their eyeballs. With a CDN, they might. Analogy also works during DDoS attacks. Both assume that the user doesn't have infinite memory and patience to keep trying (because that's a realistic assumption).
"Amplification" has be overloaded. You are talking about a viral marketing definition, whereas CDNs are a hardware+software force multiplier for performance.
Cloudflare can't block access to a website. They can protect their customers from DDOS attacks, and they happen to do it more cheaply and effectively than one could do alone. If they refuse to service a website and that website gets DDOSed off the internet, that is not cloudflare's fault.
Should that mean a power company can cut off your power because they don't like what you've said?
Should that mean the water company can cut your water off for criticizing them?
Should that mean that a bank can refuse to give you a loan, because you said something bad, even if your credit is more than acceptable?
-------------------------------
Remember this: its the extremist that the law is made around. And soon enough, the law will be wrapped around non-extremists and used as let another tool of influence and control. The worst part is that anyone who speaks against this sort of law is seen to be defending the extremists, and is seen as a despicable person - yet the criticizers never stop to think about the average Joe and Jane.
Have we all just completely forgotten the years of fighting for net neutrality? The very same net neutrality where we all have been arguing that sometimes even private companies shouldn't be allowed to arbitrarily filter whatever they want?
If all of the major ISPs launch their own email competitor and then go on to block Google, would you be singing the same tune? "It's okay because AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Charter are private institutions and are not obligated to do business with Google"? What if it turns out that the AT&T CEO is a Trump supporter, and he decides that anyone who has AT&T as an ISP will no longer be able to access any news site other than Fox News? "It's okay because AT&T is a private company and has no obligation to do business with the Washington Post"?
The entire argument for net neutrality is based on the premise that sometimes even private companies become so big that they become very similar to 'public utilities' and it is absolutely in the public interest to force those companies to not arbitrarily filter whatever they feel like.
You can argue that Cloudflare, or a bank, or whoever doesn't fit this definition, but you can't both be for something like net neutrality while simultaneously spouting this argument that "private companies can do whatever they want". We have literally centuries of laws that specifically say that no, companies cannot do whatever they want just because they are private.
You're mixing up net neutrality with freedom of speech issues. Net Neutrality seeks to regulate IP packet filtering and prevent transport providers from selling premium services ("fastlanes") to particular companies only. What content those companies deliver or (re-)transmit is not regulated by net neutrality at all.
I'm saying this not because I disagree with your position, but mainly because this confusion was dominating the debate in the US and was to some extent a deliberate strawman pushed by the opponents of net neutrality.
Incorrect , net neutrality also required that ISPs not block.
A lot of pro net neutrality people didn’t really understand what they were arguing for, I think, since the same people will turn around and argue that ISPs should be able to censor content they don’t like.
“A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices, subject to reasonable network management.“
The point remains that the OP mischaracterized net neutrality. What is important is that net neutrality only concerns transport of IP packets. Content providing companies and web site owners can moderate, block, or censor content as they like and as they deem fit. They have done so in the past under net neutrality, do so in countries with net neutrality laws, and are doing it now in the US without net neutrality.
The two issues are frequently mixed up, hence my comment.
On a side note, I've never heard anyone argue that ISPs should block content, that seems like a strawman to me, but I guess if you just search hard enough you can find someone on the Internet who argued for that nonsense.
> lawful content
Good point, that's compatible with restrictions of freedom of speech due to declaring certain kind of content illegal, and clearly illustrates that the two issues are different from each other. Yet people confuse them again and again, and additionally almost always base their arguments on a false dichotomy or on fallacious slippery slope arguments.
8chan is lawful content. Vile, hateful content, but completely lawful. They comply with DMCA and moderate to remove illegal material. If they didn’t, the FBI could already have had them pulled offline just like they do to ISIS websites.
The logical end to deplatforming is arguing that ISPs should be able to block or decline customers based on the content they are hosting. Otherwise a customer can buy business-class internet and host their immoral content themselves on a server farm in their home, which takes away the whole point of deplatforming which is to make the content no longer available on the internet.
> The logical end to deplatforming is arguing that ISPs should be able to block or decline customers based on the content they are hosting.
Not at all. That's an obvious strawman.
You're mischaracterizing what's going on there. If I run a company, it is my right not to make business with radical hate groups and terrorists. They will be someone else's problem then.
That's exactly the reason that Cloudflare has given, not some nebulous talk about "deplatforming".
> which is to make the content no longer available on the internet
LOL. That is decidedly not the purpose of deplatforming, as the word "de-platforming" readily suggests.
> the FBI could already have had them pulled offline just like they do to ISIS websites
It is obvious to me as an outside observer that the FBI applies justice selectively. Domestic terrorism is underrated. Of course, 8chan could be raided and closed for the same reasons as ISIS websites are raided and closed. The laws are there and 8chan could easily be considered aiding and fostering domestic terrorism. The laws are just not applied in this case.
It's also kind of 'reasonable' not to apply them as harshly, since US judges and juries suffer from the same bias. They are unlikely to judge of some deranged gun nut that he was planning or aiding a terrorist attack. They are highly likely to judge of some deranged ISIS sympathizer that he was planning or aiding a terrorist attack. Police authorities make the call on what to pursue and what not to pursue based on the prospects of a successful trial.
>If I run a company, it is my right not to make business with radical hate groups and terrorists. They will be someone else's problem then.
This type of thing is possibly one of the hardest ethical issues to tackle. On the one hand, I don't support racists and fascists at all. But on the other hand, I recognize the potential damage in carving out these exceptions in free speech. As social mores change, the ideas of "acceptable" free speech may change, and we need to be cognizant of the ways that these exceptions could be abused long term. Otherwise, we're just setting up future generations for a collapse of the concept of freedom of speech.
I think the answer to solving hate and bigotry goes much, much deeper than preventing people from speaking their hateful and bigoted views. All that's going to do is sweep the problem under the rug, and eventually that problem will come back out some orders of magnitude worse. Perhaps we could do things like make it illegal to teach kids hate and bigotry? But then you've got the entirety of America mad at you because you're "telling people how to raise their kids". Mere advocacy against bullying and hate doesn't really seem to be working.
I think we'll see better gains in this area when we stop trying to find the first thing we can to "blame" these mass shooting on, and arguing endlessly about what that cause is (guns, video games, unrestricted freedom of speech, etc). We need to dig deep. I think if we understood more on the topic of mental health, we'd have a better chance at understanding these situations.
> On a side note, I've never heard anyone argue that ISPs should block content, that seems like a strawman to me, but I guess if you just search hard enough you can find someone on the Internet who argued for that nonsense.
Well, it's been going on for years in the Netherlands, where the Pirate Bay, almost all of its proxies, and a couple of non-TPB torrent sites are being blocked at the ISP level. It used to be a relatively simple to circumvent DNS block (the ISPs didn't really want to, either), but they've gotten better at it and now if it's blocked, the site is either gone, unless a specific proxy for it exist (or you use a VPN).
To tie it back to the US again, the reason this happened is because of a Dutch lobbying group (Brein) that is funded by and works directly for the gigantic US content industry and rightholders (there are maybe a few Dutch artists attached to them , but they are a mere drop in budget).
Net neutrality is deeply entangled with freedom of speech issues. In fact one of the ISP's main arguments against it is that it violates their 1st amendment rights.
>but you can't both be for something like net neutrality while simultaneously spouting this argument that "private companies can do whatever they want".
One can definitely pick and choose what you want to support, all those laws did exactly the same. Charities are 'picked and chosen' not to pay taxes, even though they are basically private companies. I don't see a contradiction between supporting net neutrality and supporting Cloudflare's decision.
>We have literally centuries of laws that specifically say that no, companies cannot do whatever they want just because they are private
We have literally centuries of law stating that 'Neo-Nazi White Supremacists' isn't a protected class, hence can be refused service.
If and when this is abused by companies causing real problems which society thinks is unacceptable, new laws will be passed restricting discriminating against neo-Nazis.
Maybe write to your local congressman and senator asking them to pass a law forcing Cloudflare to serve neo-Nazis.
>ISPs use the public's right of way and air wave spectrum licenses, so I don't think they're good examples.
And Cloudflare's business is similarly dependent on these very same rights of way and spectrums. So why shouldn't they be subject to the same restrictions?
Hint: it's because the argument for net neutrality has nothing to do with the ISP's usage of ROW or public spectrum, and everything to do with the effect that it would have on society if ISPs were allowed to arbitrarily filter whatever they want.
What's funny about this is that I actually don't need to make this argument, because Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince has already made it for me. The entire blog post that he wrote [1] when Daily Stormer was taken off CF is one big explanation of why companies like Cloudflare having the ability to arbitrarily filter sites is bad. That didn't seem to stop him, I guess.
> Due Process requires that decisions be public and not arbitrary. It's why we've always said that our policy is to follow the guidance of the law in the jurisdictions in which we operate. Law enforcement, legislators, and courts have the political legitimacy and predictability to make decisions on what content should be restricted. Companies should not.
>And Cloudflare's business is similarly dependent on these very same rights of way and spectrums. So why shouldn't they be subject to the same restrictions?
In order for them to win, you'll have to ignore the fact that when they created a CloudFlare account, they agreed that CloudFlare had the right to terminate such services for any or no reason.
However, this was a problem when Visa and Paypal cut off donations to Wikileaks. It was actually quite hard for them for a while to get donations in, even though there were plenty of people willing to donate.
Certain banks and their services (e.g. wire transfer), as well as payment providers should be treated like public utilities, especially when they have quasi-monopolies. The same for ISPs in areas in which there is only one or two, and other large companies with quasi-monopolies like Google, Apple and Microsoft. I don't think this applies to companies like Reddit or Cloudflare, though, for which there are easy and widely used substitutes.
Are there easy and widely used substitutes for Cloudflare's DDoS protection?
Because a big reason why I think this is bad is because I thought there are in fact no realistic alternatives to Cloudflare's protection.
If there are alternatives, then I am also in the camp of "okay they can decide who to do business with or not".
But I was under the impression that, if you are a controversial website, at a certain size (not even that big, depending on your enemies) you are likely to draw DDoS attacks of a severity that only Cloudflare can realistically protect against. The DDoS attacks being relatively cheap for whoever orders them.
> No. Because they are a public utility and that would be a violation of the first amendment.
> Yes. Because they are a private institution and not obligated to do business with you.
That's some pretty strong dissonance there. Here in Indiana, the utilities AND banks are all private entities. And there's no actual state or federal law that would prevent a utility from cutting utilities for "being and speaking of white nationalism". I chose my examples carefully - all are much more regulated than some Walmart or Target or Amazon.
My larger discussion was that over very corporate autonomy. Who made them arbiters of what language was acceptable? Why should infrastructure companies be decision makers of what is said online? Years ago, we restricted the phone companies from doing that very thing - and they wanted dearly to forbid classes of speech. Yet somehow when it's "on the interwebz" we throw those ideas and rules out, all so that someone can make a bigger pile of dollars.
Don't forget, cloudflare is a US company. There's absolutely 0 reason why they can't be considered an infrastructure company and subject to common carrier rules as well. Or the counter-offer is they can be responsible for speech over their network. I doubt they'd like that either. After all, they're still hosting piles of stressers and ddos merchants.
> Here in Indiana, the utilities AND banks are all private entities.
It's likely there's one (or at most, a small handful) of each utility enjoying a state-supported monopoly, even if it's technically run by a private company. The same is not true for banks - I can sign up for one of hundreds of nationwide or online banks even if all the local ones decide I'm an ass.
>That's some pretty strong dissonance there. Here in Indiana, the utilities AND banks are all private entities. And there's no actual state or federal law that would prevent a utility from cutting utilities for "being and speaking of white nationalism". I chose my examples carefully - all are much more regulated than some Walmart or Target or Amazon.
I don't see a dissonance. If and when banks and utilities start cutting off neo-Nazis, the public and politicians may find that unpalatable and pass laws restricting it. Or may not. The fact that isn't happening right now means no unnecessary laws are required.
If and when society and politicians feel that Cloudflare shouldn't be able to not serve 8chan, it will pass a law doing so. Call your congressman and senator.
>Years ago, we restricted the phone companies from doing that very thing - and they wanted dearly to forbid classes of speech
No, [1] the bakery that paid $135,000 in fines, went bankrupt, and is stll bound by the lower courts decision because SCOTUS only remanded the case back to a lower court.
And yeah, they might ultimately win... if you want to call that winning.
> and is stll bound by the lower courts decision because SCOTUS only remanded the case back to a lower court.
Wrong, they are not bound by the lower court decision, because the Supreme Court vacated the judgement and remanded the case for further consideration in light of the SCOTUS ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop (as stated in the order linked from the source you linked), because that decision set relevant precedent which the lower court did not consider in its judgement (for timing reasons, as the lower court decision predates Masterpiece Cakeshop, I believe.)
Your hypos fall well short of the level of actions undertaken by the two sites which have been terminated by CloudFlare, which advocated for, championed, and celebrated violent actions against innocent and blameless third parties, including children.
Your argument fails to credibly address the situation at hand.
Cloudflare didn't and can't "cut off” 8chan. They can stop providing CDN distribution and bandwidth services to 8chan. As it happens, 8chan's web host _did_ cut off 8chan, so you should be directing your rants at them.
When you use the tired, old "businesses can refuse to serve anybody they want" argument, understand that you are using the same arguments used in the past to refuse business to various races, creeds, orientations etc. that are now protected classes. That really ought to make you queasy and perhaps you should contemplate why.
By the way, some states are now recognizing that political affiliation needs to be a protected class as well: https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/political-aff.... It may not be in keeping with modern progressive thought but is certainly in the spirit of classical liberalism as well as an important first step in depolarizing the country.
Historically, some of the most discriminated people have been people of a different religion. In principle you can "stop believing in your religion" as easily as you can stop believing that immigrants are destroying your country.
In practice, nobody cares to protect bigots and a lot of people want to protect gays, immigrants, women, etc. It is troubling that we only protect certain classes of people since maybe the next group that comes along after the current group of bigots will actually deserve protection but the arguments we built to allow the lack of protection for bigots will be used to deny protection to that group.
The end goal of bigotry is to distort legal structures to eliminate equality and preferentially harm certain people, often because of attributes they can't change, like their ethnicity or where they were born. If you're worried about protecting people of the future, you should be opposing bigotry.
Bigotry has cloaked itself in the mantle of victim and you've totally fallen for it.
Those same arguments were used against freedom of religion. English Catholics were popish spies who would try to blow up parliament and overthrow the government, etc. Therefore, they needed to be persecuted as heretics to protect the common good.
Roman Christians refused to worship the emperor, destabilizing the social order, and therefore needed to be thrown to the lions to protect society.
Atheists couldn’t be trusted because they didn’t believe in hell, and therefore would act immorally, and so should be banned from positions of power (this is actually in a couple of US state constitutions!)
(And of course, the same arguments were used in reverse later on as different groups got power)
I won’t shed any tears for 8chan who are a bunch of immoral scum, but I know these same arguments will be deployed to censor religious minorities and others in the future. Hopefully they are less appealing targets.
Were they lies? Guy fawkes was real. The pope actually did excommunicate Elizabeth and sponsor several invasions/rebellions by the French and Irish.
The western Roman Empire fell apart a hundred years after Christianity became the state religion. Some historians blame tensions among christian schisms in Egypt/the Middle East for the byzantine empire losing those regions to the Arab invasion.
(All I’m saying with the above is that the justifications seemed plausible and reasonable to the educated people of the time. Read Pliny’s letter to Trajan seeking counsel for what to do about Christians, for example)
It is a failing of the ego to think that one has foreseen all possible abuses of a policy going forward.
I think the answer is more speech, not less. Any exception you carve out will be abused in the future, based on the history of humankind and the behavior of governing entities throughout.
Take these exceptions to freedom of speech, add to them a codified framework for equity (which some are pushing for), and you're laying the groundwork for a society like that seen in Harrison Bergeron.
You're far too quick to paint me with the brush of "enemy" simply because I can understand why sensible people are worried. That I tangentially refer to 8chan as bigots should have been enough to tip you off. Maybe you should allow a little color into your world of black and white.
I suppose you don't find historical things like McCarthyism very worrying, given how easily you are to think your principle of discriminating by choice separates what you judge to be good from what you judge to be bad. But do you really trust every imaginable leader with such a power?
This is what I worry about. As social mores change, we must resist efforts to carve out exceptions to fundamental rights, in order to prevent those exceptions from being wrongly used against people in a harmful way. I think the Founders understood this on some level, even if they couldn't know what the political and social landscape would look like today.
That doesn’t change the fact that the CRA restricted freedom of association. Still, the better argument for legislating platform neutrality is that those platforms enjoy special legal status based on the notion that they can’t be held responsible for user-generated content. If you can spare resources to purge content that offends your political sensibilities, then you are making a choice not to remove content that is, e.g., defamatory, infringes on copyright, etc.
It can be checked through lawsuit -- 8chan could conceivably sue Cloudflare under numerous doctrines, starting with breach of promise / breach of contract.
Another service provider could step up, as was the case with Daily Stormer, and is extensively commented upon in Prince's commentary, and provide services.
Regulatory or legal procedures could be established to specifically address this situation or provide redress.
Public outcry, market sanctions, or labour actions might be taken against providers who exercise such power in manners which are seen as morally reprehensible. For similar examples, see Google employees over Dragonfly or Edleman's emplyee backlash over a contract with a border-wall services company.
The question to be asked, the question we all have to ask, is whether or not individuals, groups, companies, or inchoate movements which are themselves dedicated to abolition or denial of civil order and rule of law are themselves deserving of its full protections in pursuing those ends. And a considerable case can be made for "no".
It's not unchecked- they are free to move to a different service. Why should Cloudflare be forced to keep all customers no matter what? That infringes on their rights as a private business to run their business as they see fit. There is no "freedom of platform" where your right to a platform is being infringed. You have no right to a platform.
Do we really need to talk about closing down a site where people encourage each other to kill other people (no matter who does it)? Why is it so important that there are no exceptions to freedom of speech?
Seriously, I just don’t get how the purity of the concept of freedom of speech can be so important that it beats common sense.
Since there are no army related sites which encourage people to kill other people I'm not in favor of that and you are free to convince me otherwise by providing a link. But, if they were doing this I would be in favor of shutting them down, yes.
Army is all about how to kill other people. Not hypothetically, very real. Every day.
And governemnts openly advertise for it. On websites, (even in schools). And private enthusiasts maintain forums where army people discuss about the current wars and how to better kill the current enemy. Etc. Etc.
Not necessarily. The purpose of armies is to win wars. If it was possible to win wars without killing people they wouldn't kill people. In fact they are trying to minimize collateral damage. It's different with white supremacists. They have a direct interest in killing people. There is no collateral damage for them, which is also why they do mass shootings and the army usually doesn't.
Most of the latter are interested in expelling those they don't consider their own, violence to most of them is just a means to an end, otherwise "go back" or "send them back" would not have been their rallying cry.
Some really do want to kill people, but then again would you deny that the army or even the police doesn't get their fair share of these people?
I guess we already made the experiment what would happen if white supremacists would lead a country, so we can already tell that it's likely that "sending them back" isn't going to cut it, if "they" refuse to leave.
I think the vast majority of bigots are low-level blowhards who don't even understand their own viewpoints. Only a small percentage of those actually cause direct harm to others.
I don't know the answer, but I know that indiscriminate restrictions on freedom of speech aren't the answer.
It saddens me that this paraphrased prose I'm about to write even has to exist.
First they came for the Nazis, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Nazi.
Then they came for the racists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a racist.
Then they came for the bigots, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a bigot.
Then they came for the rich, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not rich.
Then they came for the religious, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not religious.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
I don’t consider deleting calls for violence towards minorities censorship. And I do think that history has shown too many times that propaganda is a powerful tool, that needs to be restricted. I mean you are free to doubt common sense, but I think doubting common sense is always the first step of becoming fanatic. What would be the country you are talking about? The way I could imagine for someone to commit atrocities out of common sense would be if he has a gun pointed to his head.
We are not talking propaganda here, these are individual actors. Some just like to provoke a reaction, some have these believes and I have seen people turning their back on these platforms innumerable times.
Regardless of the reason people visit these places, the moment they get external pressure, their believes get vindicated. We see a large surge in issues with these communities since we got on our little censorship trip. It is just plainly the wrong move to make.
There have been Nazis on the internet since shortly after its inception. But random people going out and shooting crowds in this frequency is a new phenomenon.
Historically censorship has always been applied for the right reasons of course.
This historical comparison just isn't fair since at no point in human history the possibilities of communication were anywhere close to what they are now.
Freedom of speech is not without exceptions. You can't yell, "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire for example.
Everyone here wants that perfect idealistic and pure world, unfortunately that's now the world we are given. Problem is many here want to just treat the world we have as the idealistic model world as if there is no difference.
The government could fund educational programs to teach people to think critically about the content they see on the internet, then they wouldn't have to censor it.
But the power that Cloudflare has, is being one of the only services to offer protection against modern DoS attacks. If you're a somewhat controversial site (be it right extremist or LGBTQ or sex worker forum) you are going to be suffering these attacks. And then Cloudflare is your only option, or suffer being DoS-ed off line constantly.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Cloudflare is the only serious option against heavy modern DoS attacks, right?
Cause if you can go somewhere else, then sure Cloudflare do it's thing. But if you can't ... then that is way too much power for a random company to hold the gate over any kind of controversial group, anywhere on the political, cultural or global spectrum. Because we really needed another US corporation with runaway power, that'll balance things.
Cloudflare is committing itself to do as they are told by the governments, in the spirit of upholding the law [0] on govts' behalf (despite under no obligation to do so), if they deem fit.
Whether this makes them reasonable, time will tell. Full marks to Cloudflare for so eloquently addressing this and covering themselves with as much grace as they could muster. If one reads between the lines, censorship is coming. This isn't different from what jgrahamc said a few months back in the news [1].
Signals a new era for Cloudflare, going from protector to arbitrator [2], for better or for worse.
[0] for instance, it was and still is a crime to be a minority in some countries.
On the other hand, we don't live in that world, and I don't know how well it would work in practice if we did. In this world, corporations and governments have enormous power. Cloudflare has made it clear that it will use that power in a fairly limited and restrained way, but it will use it as it sees fit.
Given that, this seems like a reasonable exercise of that power, and that's about the best we can hope for.