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Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#341

Post by PeanutCurry »

I'm obviously being a bit facetious when I say this, but are there really few things worse than nazis? I'm not expert on the subject of neo-nazis or the nazi movement, so maybe this seems more complex because of my position of ignorance. But none of the statistics seem to imply that nazis are more than simply intellectually repulsive and socially disgusting. That's not to say that nazi affiliated groups never commit crime or kill people. But by the numbers they seem like a very small blip on the crime radar compared to groups like the Sinaloa, MS-13, ISIS, Boko Haram, or the Lord's Resistance Army.

I realize the significance of what the nazis accomplished in the past. But there are actual talks about further restricting freedom of speech in America being put forth by some groups because of the attention that's being given to white supremacists and nazis right now with seemingly little attention being given to identifying and quantifying the reach and influence these groups actually have in the modern context.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#342

Post by larkeith »

r721 wrote: post #4

>“This was my decision. This is not Cloudflare’s general policy now, going forward,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Gizmodo. “I think we have to have a conversation over what part of the infrastructure stack is right to police content.” (from internal email) >Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision. It was different than what I’d talked talked with our senior team about yesterday. I woke up this morning i…

This is excellent context to have. Thank you for providing it.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#343

Post by jacquesm »

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #321
jacquesm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, absolutely not.

Can you give me several reasons why a judge wouldn't merely grant summary judgement in favor of Daily Stormer? Or why their arguments would fail? "Cloudflare unexpectedly revoked our traffic mitigating service in the middle of our highest costly traffic, our costs went up this much. Cloudflare caused this, these are the damages, and here are the punitive damages to deter this behavior in the future, the CEO even said…

Because it is pretty rare for a judge to side with a consumer who states they would like the judge to force the company to do business with them.

Neo Nazis are not a protected class in the sense of the word so they'd have to pull some kind of legal rabbit out of their head to make that work.

The fact that there are damages does not immediately imply that some outside party is liable for those damages. It merely means that you are back where you would have been without that outside party.

So even if Cloudflare caused this that does not immediately imply liability. So if the Daily Stormer wishes to sue Cloudflare they obviously can but I really doubt they will make it stick.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#344

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #321
jacquesm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, absolutely not.

Can you give me several reasons why a judge wouldn't merely grant summary judgement in favor of Daily Stormer? Or why their arguments would fail? "Cloudflare unexpectedly revoked our traffic mitigating service in the middle of our highest costly traffic, our costs went up this much. Cloudflare caused this, these are the damages, and here are the punitive damages to deter this behavior in the future, the CEO even said…

Because of this sentence from Cloudflare's Terms of Service:

"You further agree that if...Cloudflare, in its sole discretion, deems it necessary due to excessive burden or potential adverse impact on Cloudflare’s systems, potential adverse impact on other users, server processing power, server memory, abuse controls, or other reasons, Cloudflare may suspend or terminate your account without notice to or liability to you" [1].

If you don't want that kind of a service relationship, you negotiate a fixed-term contract up front.

[1] https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/ Section 10; also see § 15 (Termination)

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#345

Post by kelnos »

Spivak wrote: post #301
bqe wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get the whole "companies can choose not to host whatever they want" argument, but in order to do anything on the internet, you have to interact with companies. If I switch what you said around a little bit: "I get the whole 'people can choose to interact with whoever they want' argument, but in order to do anything, you have to interact with people." So you're saying I have to interact with Nazis? I have no choic…

A few business decide not to provide goods and services to black people -- not great but there are other options. Every business decides to stop doing business with black people we have a real problem.

The way I look at it is, assuming you don't hold a monopoly on a particular service, you can choose not to do business with certain people, for whatever (legal) reason.

However, it cuts both ways: your other customers also have the option to boycott you and encourage other people to do the same.

And if every business decides to stop doing business with certain people, then either a) those people really need to rethink what they want to do, because maybe everyone else thinks they're reprehensible, or b) we actually do have a case of a civil rights violation in a new way that we haven't considered making a law for.

Every business deciding not to serve black people would be a case of (b) (though retrograde, as we already have laws around that), and refusing to provide service to hate groups is, IMO, clearly (a).

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#346

Post by Ygg2 »

thinkfurther wrote: post #120
zcombo432 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said so himself in May that every website deserves due process before taking it offline. “Whenever you have a private organization which is making what are essentially law enforcement decisions, that is a risk to due process. And I think due process is important,” Prince said in the interview.

"Yup, they're Nazis". What more due process do you require?

> What more due process do you require?

That sounds like something a Nazi would say.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#347

Post by derefr »

y7 wrote: post #178
r721 wrote: post #4

>“This was my decision. This is not Cloudflare’s general policy now, going forward,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Gizmodo. “I think we have to have a conversation over what part of the infrastructure stack is right to police content.” (from internal email) >Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision. It was different than what I’d talked talked with our senior team about yesterday. I woke up this morning i…

This is in a way much worse than if they actually changed their policy. With this precedent, it looks like what they're saying now is "we're not policing content, except for when our CEO feels like it". Basically this is a clear act of corruption, given their own proclaimed principles of content neutrality. That the ultimate trigger seems to have been that the removed site said something negative about CloudFlare is…

Is it corruption when a governor issues a pardon, or a president vetoes a bill? The point of an Executive is to be able to do act-utilitarian evaluations of context, while the organization itself is stuck following rule-utilitarianism.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#349

Post by xname2 »

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.

No. Cake maker must make cakes for gay wedding. duh.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#350

Post by bqe »

Honest question for people who think this stifles freedom: do you also think taking down ISIS recruitment videos is anti-free speech? Should we not do that either?

Online radicalization is real. The challenge of how to deal with that and offer considerable freedom on the Internet will be a challenge for our society.

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