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Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#311

Post by vacri »

kazagistar wrote: post #65
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…

So much for believing in "due process".

> So much for believing in "due process".

Due process is not a synonym for don't do anything nor no consequences.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#312

Post by duskwuff »

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.

The Daily Stormer is literally named after a Nazi propaganda newspaper[1]. Describing the web site's viewpoint as "Nazi" or "fascist" isn't even an insult -- it's a plain fact.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#313

Post by e9 »

imron wrote: post #298
baldfat wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would want them to do this to ISIS and other terrorists.

And ISIS would want them to do it to the US government and a bunch of other sites. Today you're in luck because the guys with this power are on your side. What happens when they're not?

That's the point. That's why it's so important to be careful when you screw with free speech on your own without legal means behind it.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#314

Post by Spivak »

gbarc888 wrote: post #271
throwaway7312 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Fine, let's make political affiliation a protected class as well. There's no reason to restrict it to registered parties. Nobody should be denied access goods and services because of who they voted for and how they wish to govern this country. Otherwise the majority could use denial of services to silence and coerce their political opponents.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#315

Post by davesque »

jstalin wrote: post #291

So cloudflare terminates the account of some pathetic racists, but happily continues to host Ripoff Report, a company whose basic business model is to defame people online and then extort them for money. You know, a site that actively ruins people lives, employment, etc. But a silly racist message board is what moves the CEO to take action.

To describe the daily stormer as a silly message board is to ignore the broader context. It seems likely that what the CEO acted out against was the death of Heather Heyer at the hands of the kinds of people who visit the daily stormer (and are radicalized by it), the tacit endorsement of those people by Trump, and the specter of the US slowly transforming into something like Nazi Germany. None of those things are "silly" or "little."

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#316

Post by mc32 »

fixermark wrote: post #303
mc32 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the net neutrality or freedom of expression concerns, I wonder if it just became too costly to host them because of ddoses

That doesn't seem to be the case. It could be hypothetically (Cloudflare certainly has no interest in admitting that there's an upper bound to the DDOS they can mitigate and hackers have found it), but I think the "I remembered I'm a CEO in a country where there is not much restrictive policy on who a company chooses to do business with, and I think even my customers will agree 'Nazis suck and don't deserve a platfor…

I guess I'm saying that claiming it's taking a moral stand could act as cover for an altogether different motive --because most people would not think of the move as a precedent for what the limits are for speech from an 'inet infra co' but rather as a conscientious CEO who takes a moral stand.

I may also be simple coincidence.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#317

Post by gbarc888 »

syrrim wrote: post #308
gbarc888 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That's stupid. Why should I have anymore right to discriminate against people with red hair than people with black skin? If it's wrong, it's wrong no matter the group you do it to.

I'm talking about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. You can discriminate against red-haired people but not black people.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#318

Post by skybrian »

zzzcpan wrote: post #218
tuna-piano wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so bizarre. He tries to have it both ways. He says "no one should have that power", but then says he did it literally earlier that day. He says CloudFlare isn't changing their "content-neutral" policy... but clearly they did change that policy. I have many reasons to oppose nazis, including incredibly personal ones. That said, I think crossing this content line for an infrastructure company is a big deal, and I…

Cloudflare is pushing its pretend free speech PR too hard. But make no mistake, it's still just PR, no company like that actually cares about free speech.

It's not black and white, or even shades of gray. Different entities make different decisions about what they'll allow, along multiple dimensions.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#319

Post by iamaelephant »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #26

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 want to run my own website, I need an IP address at the minimum, and ISPs are free to cut off my internet service if they don't like what I'm hosting. In a public setting, if people don't like what I'm saying, they can't force me to be quiet (generally)…

> I get the whole "companies can choose not to host whatever they want" argument

Are you sure? Because it doesn't sound like you do.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#320

Post by sk5t »

kelnos wrote: post #310
rangibaby wrote: post #221

slippery slope

I really dislike the perfunctory "slippery slope" type argument. It's never an argument not to do something; it's merely a warning to make sure that you don't use an action as a stepping stone to taking more extreme actions. Saying that banning certain things is a slippery slope, and using that excuse to never ban things, means that it's ok to allow truly horrendous things to happen, just because of fear of overreach…

Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater is not generally recognized as political speech. At what point is it acceptable to ban unpopular political speech, provided that speech is not a direct incitement to riot/violence?
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