Why We Terminated Daily Stormer • Hacker News Board

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#271

Post by gbarc888 » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 1:01 AM UTC

throwaway7312 wrote: post #253

spydum wrote: post #233

I have read many of the threads here, and I think it boils down to this: do businesses (NOT THE GOVERNMENT) have the right to choose what content and customers they serve? Further, does it matter if they are a hosting provider? A network provider? A telephone provider? Can those providers cancel you if the company doesn't like what you say or are? This is tough: I honestly don't know if freedom of speech needs to be…

This is just the latest in a string of examples like this. The Christian bakers / gay wedding cakes is one example. But people being booted off services like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon are others. We ought to have the right to exclude people from our own private spaces, our own private clubs, and our own private businesses (freedom of association). However, at what point (and at what scale) does our priv…

The Christian bakers were sued and then forced to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple because sexual orientation is a protected class. "Alt-right" or whatever Daily Stormer is, is not a protected class. "Political party" is a protected class, which puts Daily Stormer in a possibly fuzzy territory (I have never read Daily Stormer so I don't know if they count as a political publication).

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#272

Post by guelo » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 1:01 AM UTC

throwaway7312 wrote: post #253

spydum wrote: post #233

I have read many of the threads here, and I think it boils down to this: do businesses (NOT THE GOVERNMENT) have the right to choose what content and customers they serve? Further, does it matter if they are a hosting provider? A network provider? A telephone provider? Can those providers cancel you if the company doesn't like what you say or are? This is tough: I honestly don't know if freedom of speech needs to be…

This is just the latest in a string of examples like this. The Christian bakers / gay wedding cakes is one example. But people being booted off services like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon are others. We ought to have the right to exclude people from our own private spaces, our own private clubs, and our own private businesses (freedom of association). However, at what point (and at what scale) does our priv…

> at what point (and at what scale)

The internet giants are monopolies and should be regulated as such, or broken up. But the government has basically abandoned monopoly enforcement over the last couple decades. The irony is that it is because of right-wing, anti-regulation, libertarian politics that the government has become so reluctant to enforce monopoly laws.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#273

Post by noir_lord » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 1:01 AM UTC

jquery wrote: post #213

rtpg wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: where's the line? The government shouldn't be censoring. I don't allow white nationalists into my house. At what point does "I" represent something too big for me to no longer have the moral privilege to refuse to collaborate with white nationalists?

Maybe when you get in the business of providing speech as a service. For example, imagine you went into the wedding cake business, and someone came in and wanted you to make a gay wedding cake (note: not a wedding cake for gay people, but a wedding cake that normalized gay marriage). Now imagine you're a very old-school traditionalist about that sort of thing. Should you be compelled to make that cake with two women…

On the flip side of that you can only run your cake making business because you benefit from access to a stable monetary system (hah, I live in the UK), a safe and civil society and an educated populace with money to buy over priced sugar.

Given that does society not have a right to say that "If you want to earn money providing a service then you should do so by providing that service equally to all people who aren't breaking the law"?

Not saying which side I fall, I'm not sure but I think the question is interesting.

Far to often we focus on our rights and forget that other people have rights and that society has a duty to us and we have a duty to society.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#274

Post by dingo_bat » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

spydum wrote: post #233

I have read many of the threads here, and I think it boils down to this: do businesses (NOT THE GOVERNMENT) have the right to choose what content and customers they serve? Further, does it matter if they are a hosting provider? A network provider? A telephone provider? Can those providers cancel you if the company doesn't like what you say or are? This is tough: I honestly don't know if freedom of speech needs to be…

Private companies certainly have the right to kick you of their service if they don't like you. However, everything that is legal is not right. And we should point it out and criticize such actions. Today it's Nazis, tomorrow it could be you.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#275

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

throwaway7312 wrote: post #253

spydum wrote: post #233

I have read many of the threads here, and I think it boils down to this: do businesses (NOT THE GOVERNMENT) have the right to choose what content and customers they serve? Further, does it matter if they are a hosting provider? A network provider? A telephone provider? Can those providers cancel you if the company doesn't like what you say or are? This is tough: I honestly don't know if freedom of speech needs to be…

This is just the latest in a string of examples like this. The Christian bakers / gay wedding cakes is one example. But people being booted off services like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon are others. We ought to have the right to exclude people from our own private spaces, our own private clubs, and our own private businesses (freedom of association). However, at what point (and at what scale) does our priv…

There's enormous precedent around the whole scale from public discrimination to privately owned public (government) forums to private discrimination in special critical circumstances (common carriers, employment, and housing), to private discrimination in businesses that are public accommodations generally, and mountains of statute and case law specific to each.

And, in each of the major categories, the law has already been applied on the internet.

While the specific scenarios may have some novelty, the general issues are not new with the internet.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#276

Post by ntelson1s » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

6nf wrote: post #220

alva wrote: post #8

Cloudflare refuse to withdraw services to ISIS

So actual terrorists are acceptable, but not the website of those guys who killed that one lady last week. Okay.

So that guy who drove the car ran the website mentioned? That seems like new news for all of us. I would love a citation.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#277

Post by drtillberg » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

"Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their importance... but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment." --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Northern Secs. case. (1904).

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#278

Post by adventured » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 1:04 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #258

adventured wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it incredible that so many people here do not realize what inventing and enforcing a new, arbitrary hate speech category will enable politically over time. While simultaneously they're terrified of Trump, they're extremely eager to intentionally give him extraordinary new powers of speech control. Or is the plan to only give those speech control powers to politicians & authorities one agrees with? It's like al…

In fact private corporations already have the right to censor or refuse service to any of their customers.

That is not the primary issue being debated here.

The issue is: once all the big platforms are aggressively enforcing speech controls, supported by a wider shift in the culture that backs that, how likely is it that the government will take the opportunity to become a speech regulator as it pertains to the Internet just as they are with broadcast & radio today.

I say: it's guaranteed as an inevitable outcome, if the platforms & wider culture keep moving the direction things are going now.

The consequence: the next Trump will do horrific things with those new speech control powers. It's extremely obvious this is where we're heading. The fear people are using as an excuse to argue in favor of controlled speech today, is identical to the fear that was taken advantage of by the government to implement dozens of new abusive post 9/11 powers on the basis of a constantly terrified (eg the Bush terror color codes) citizenship.

The platforms are putting the levers into place, that a future government will use at their pleasure to silence opposition. We have a very, very aggressive, power hungry government; we have a very consolidated power base politically, with only two major parties. You can't see what's going to come out of that?

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#279

Post by Clubber » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 1:04 AM UTC

Nition wrote: post #215

Clubber wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time someone says that, I just hear "I'm defending censorship." Is that what you are doing, or am I just overly sensitive? I mean everyone on here knows this, yet every time someone feels they need to say it. We aren't debating what the first amendment protects, we are debating on wether it's good for our country to have all internet speech controlled by a handful of conglomerates. This is going to sound unfair…

I'm really playing devil's advocate here but if the CEO of Cloudflare wakes up and thinks to himself "man I hate that site, I'm going to remove it from my service", and the Internet says "no you can't", is that another form of censorship? In this situation we're either limiting what Daily Stormer can do, or limiting what Cloudflare can do.

Yes, without a third option, the question is, which is more important, freedom of speech and expression, or the freedom for business to choose who they serve?

If it were a protected group like LGBTQ, Cloudflare could not discriminate against them (the gay wedding cake is an example of this). So we've already decided, as a society (or rather our politicians have), that businesses must service protected groups. How far of a slippery slope is it to extend that protection to everyone?

The difference between this and the wedding cake example, is the couple could have easily gone to another bakery. With the internet controlled by a small group of companies in a particular region, and SV's bias towards liberalism (in a capitalist sort of way), it makes it harder to just find another bakery.

I can see the frustration. Imagine if the roles were reversed and the US internet was controlled by a conservative group in Texas (as it almost was) and those companies decided they didn't want to host packets or register LGBTQ type websites; we'd be livid. I mean we have to treat all speech equally, don't we?

It's an interesting dilemma.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#280

Post by KirinDave » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 1:05 AM UTC

sbmassey wrote: post #270

jay-saint wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are few things worse than nazis. Just make sure your content is better than fascist propaganda and you should be good.

Most right wing politicians in the west have been called Nazis at one time or another.

Very few of those folks held up torches in public chanting an English version of a Nazi slogan. Even fewer still walk in public rallies waving Nazi flags, or hop in cars and run down counter-protesters.

So maybe I this case the general public can distinguish between literal and figurative fascism. The Daily Stormer supported acts of violence committed by the former, not the later.