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Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

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Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#361

Post by AnthonyMouse »

midasz wrote: post #240
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's always a line This is where you've gone wrong. There isn't always a line, some businesses are in the business of selling products and services and not in the business of policing content. And if some of their customers are pedophiles or the like then have the police arrest the pedophiles and leave the fry cooks and gas station attendants out of it, even if the pedophiles eat food and drive cars.

> There isn't always a line Yes there is. The line is Nazis now. There was a war, they lost. They're not welcome anymore.

Wait, so being a Nazi would be okay if they had won the war?

Might makes right and censorship of political opponents was Nazi canon. I thought you were saying their ideology was defeated.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#362

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cellar_door wrote: post #213
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no problem with Nazis using USPS but FedEx is to be condemned for not opening all your packages and refusing the ones with proscribed literature?

This is a bad analogy. Cloudflare is not inspecting individual packets for hate speech. They are refusing to do business with an organization that negatively affects their brand (The Daily Stormer). They should have the right to make that choice as a private entity. Funny you bring up Fedex: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/business/fedex-washington-red...

> They should have the right to make that choice as a private entity.

The question isn't whether they should be allowed to do that, it's whether they should be forced to do that by other people.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#363

Post by StavrosK »

afiori wrote: post #348
ztjio wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel and think this way. But recent events, and the trajectory of the internet over the last decade has changed my mind completely. We must stop giving excuses to the massive centralization, to the enormous companies that step in and rent-seek what is supposed to be a distributed system. The most powerful tool we could have to get a proper internet back is the simple concept of accountability. If I was a ba…

This does not really make sense, it would be perfectly fine if two products existed, a cheap inaccessible captcha and a more expensive perfectly accessible one with companies offering both of them to users.

Fine in what sense? In my opinion, it is not fine to block disabled users out of webpages just because it costs a bit more to let them in.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#364

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Reelin wrote: post #262
ygjb wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The reason why freedom of speech (or freedom of expression, if you're Canadian like me) is important in a government context is because the government (in theory) has a monopoly on violence. Businesses and private individuals should not be expected to uphold and enforce freedom of speech because requiring them to do so puts them at odds with themselves. An employer expected to uphold freedom of speech must then r…

> The reason why freedom of speech ... is important This view is (IMO) far too narrow. Freedom of expression, particularly political expression, is absolutely essential to the functioning of western society as it currently exists. Personally, I also see it as an ideal to be pursued in and of itself regardless of any functional need for it. Government regulation has a high potential for abuse for a number of reasons (…

You're missing the thread here.

Suppose a guy walks into a grocery store with a shaved head and swastika tattoos. He wants to buy a bag of apples. The store owner doesn't like the cut of his jib and asks him to leave. That's fine, the guy goes to the grocery store across the street and buys the apples there.

The store owner across the street doesn't care what kind of tattoos a man has and is willing to sell apples to anybody. That's fine too, right? But then an angry mob descends on the store, filling the entrances and harassing the customers, accusing the store owner of being a complicit racist for doing business with Nazis. The store owner does some simple math and realizes that selling a bag of apples a month isn't worth this kind of trouble, so they start to turn the man away too.

Then the angry mob does the same thing to anyone who will do business with the man at all. He can't buy food, electricity, clothes, medicine, nothing, or the merchant will be the subject of a harassment campaign which will cost them more than they could get from his business.

This is clearly just as coercive as anything the government could do, if not more. Even they're not allowed to deprive you of food and medicine.

And as much as we might like the idea of making life impossible for Nazis, the target is only the current whim of the mob. Nothing guarantees that a given target is actually evil.

Or that they're paying enough attention to notice that the guy with the shaved head and swastika tattoos is a Buddhist monk and not a Nazi at all.

Which is why, when the government does it, they have an obligation to give you a fair trial and access to an attorney and respect your constitutional rights. None of which the mob gives you.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#365

Post by dependenttypes »

Thorrez wrote: post #339
ztjio wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel and think this way. But recent events, and the trajectory of the internet over the last decade has changed my mind completely. We must stop giving excuses to the massive centralization, to the enormous companies that step in and rent-seek what is supposed to be a distributed system. The most powerful tool we could have to get a proper internet back is the simple concept of accountability. If I was a ba…

If we want to regulate the captcha industry there should be a law passed specifically regulating the industry. Blindsiding the industry with judgments against them when there are no laws about it will decrease confidence in the rule of law, which will hurt the economy as businesses lose confidence in their ability to predict the future.

There are already laws regarding accessibility.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#366

Post by afiori »

StavrosK wrote: post #363
afiori wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does not really make sense, it would be perfectly fine if two products existed, a cheap inaccessible captcha and a more expensive perfectly accessible one with companies offering both of them to users.

Fine in what sense? In my opinion, it is not fine to block disabled users out of webpages just because it costs a bit more to let them in.

That is not happening in what I described. A webpage could decide to offer the cheapest working captcha as a default with a "Are you using assistive technologies?" / "Do you need help?" link to a more accessible service.

I don't think that is will be common in the wild, but it is an argument against regulating captcha providers rather than websites.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#367

Post by manquer »

maccam94 wrote: post #356
manquer wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there are subset of people with visual problems who also have auditory problems, that does not mean you should not support the ones with vision only problems. Are there not "ML techniques" for visual captchas too ? With more and more powerful models like GPT-3 coming along every few months, Even if the accuracy levels are less for visual over audio today how long do you think that is going to last ?

I believe they meant that audio captchas have become inaccessible to humans in general. Bots have gotten so good at audio captchas that the difficulty level has to be high enough that humans are also unable to complete them.

Visual captchas too can be quite very hard these days for the same reasons, there are many other ways to verify bot or human, many of them may not allow you to remain anonymous while doing so, pretty much any 2FA method could work for example.

I would say given the choice for a number of people the accessibility is more important than loss of privacy. At least it is choice they should have instead of shutting them off the internet.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#368

Post by StavrosK »

afiori wrote: post #366
StavrosK wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine in what sense? In my opinion, it is not fine to block disabled users out of webpages just because it costs a bit more to let them in.

That is not happening in what I described. A webpage could decide to offer the cheapest working captcha as a default with a "Are you using assistive technologies?" / "Do you need help?" link to a more accessible service. I don't think that is will be common in the wild, but it is an argument against regulating captcha providers rather than websites.

Oh, I see what you mean. There may be a market for "accessible CAPTCHA", that's audio-only.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#369

Post by Thorrez »

dependenttypes wrote: post #365
Thorrez wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want to regulate the captcha industry there should be a law passed specifically regulating the industry. Blindsiding the industry with judgments against them when there are no laws about it will decrease confidence in the rule of law, which will hurt the economy as businesses lose confidence in their ability to predict the future.

There are already laws regarding accessibility.

Are Captcha companies violating those laws? If so, then yes, enforce them. If not, then either change the laws or leave the Captcha companies be.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#370

Post by midasz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #361
midasz wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There isn't always a line Yes there is. The line is Nazis now. There was a war, they lost. They're not welcome anymore.

Wait, so being a Nazi would be okay if they had won the war? Might makes right and censorship of political opponents was Nazi canon. I thought you were saying their ideology was defeated.

We wouldn't be having this conversation if they had won the war - my family would be dead and I would never have been born. Excuse me for not protecting their right to speech (which leads to action).

Nazism isn't a point of contention anymore. We know what their rhetoric leads to (because they were allowed to rise and showed the world what the consequences are). That's why I said they lost the war. It's imho a pretty strong argument to draw the line right there, to ensure the sacrifices were not made for nothing.

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