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Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#361
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sort of disconcerting to admit this but recent events have me reevaluating the utility of unvarnished free speech as a societal value. Taken to it's extremity, it's given us corporate personhood via Citizens United, and the codification of the principle that you (private or corporate personage) are entitled to speak freely at whatever volume you can afford to, including explicitly politicized speech. But more ab…

> It's sort of disconcerting to admit this but recent events have me reevaluating the utility of unvarnished free speech as a societal value. Very disconcerting that you and so many other people feel this way. Free speech and competition of ideas is an essential part of our society. To deny free speech is to oppress. > no recourse to the psychological and structural damage they do to our society through their dishone…

>Free speech and competition of ideas is an essential part of our society.

That is the familiar way. But when lies travel faster than corrections, and bots can automate the Gish gallop, it's hard to imagine truth actually winning.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#362
post #329
post #324

Absolutely correct. He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare. The excuse he uses for terminating TDS is an absolute crock; if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim. It's an outrage that…

> if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim. The damage of libel is reputational damage. Getting the libelous claim retracted after the claim has been seen by the public doesn't undo or erase the damage the claim does. Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you w…

> Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim

Yes, that something is called suing for libel and proving it is libel in a court.

Simply claiming something is libel (which Prince doesn't even do in his blog post) doesn't make it libel.

> Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation.

Because of Cloudflare's action there are now 1000 times as many people, including myself, who are aware of TDS's claim who otherwise wouldn't have heard of it.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#363
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…

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…

> That said, I think crossing this content line for an infrastructure company is a big deal, and I hope it's not repeated.

It's an incredibly terrible move. Such an arbitrary and biased move.

What has happened in the past few years where everyone defended free speech to everyone deciding arbitrary and whimsical censorship is something to be lauded? It feels like someone just flipped a switch and people became pro-censorship.

The tech industry is doing the same the chinese or russians are doing. Justifying censorship for "good/morals/etc".

Hate the nazis all you want but we are hurting ourselves by allow censorship on this level. These peole aren't going away. But now there is terrible precedent where social media/tech/etc can censor whatever they want. It's incredible.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This isn't about a protected class, that wouldn't even be the argument.

Civil lawsuits only look at damages and the argument on what caused the damages. It is just about proving monetary damages.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#365
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee, I hope my site doesn't happen to anger him in some way.

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

Famous last words before you get silenced.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

that doesn't mean a judge wouldn't put the monetary damages square on cloudflare

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#367
shrug

The fact that US hosting companies have the pretty much unquestioned choice to decide whether or not to host websites of organizations supporting a faction of armed rebellion against the US, to me says we're probably doing this right.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#368
post #213
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…

> http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/masterpiece-cakes...

They have not decided anything, other than to agree to hear the case:

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/masterpiece-cakes...

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#369
post #213
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…

> http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/masterpiece-cakes...

They have not decided anything, other than to agree to hear the case:

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/masterpiece-cakes...

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#370
The linked post is PR, or more accurately, damage control; and I say this with no malice towards Cloudflare. Simply, it's in their Terms of Service [1] that they can terminate accounts for any reason, which is exactly what they did.

Unfortunately for them, this puts them squarely in the same category as, say, Google [2][3][4], whose near-ubiquitous presence in people's digital lives intersects with their black-box suspension behavior and near-memetic lack of customer support, to unpleasant effects. And no ill will towards Google either; they are just one of several examples who exist at the sweet spot of significant market share, widespread presence at various layers of information-networking, and a largely disconnected customer support experience.

Cloudflare is trying to set themselves apart from a company (and competitors) that evoke that association by blogging about the gravity of their decision, but at this stage their writings aren't backed by demonstrable due process, like they aspire to work towards. Instead, they truthfully admit that it's troubling that any number of private corporations up and down the stack can boot people and information off the net, and then segue off to a self-reflective, but inconclusive closing.

No new ground is blazed by this post. After all, those hosting content that they know has fallen afoul of contemporary sensibilities are still concerned, the people troubled by private corporations' control of the net stack have another example to add to their list, and the people who are most disturbed by the nature of the content banned in this instance are pleased this situation played out the way it did.

Some will invoke the slippery slope argument, and perhaps rightfully so. I'd argue from a pragmatic standpoint that mainstream views shift over time, so it's natural that some topics will become taboo, some views will become to be seen obsolete and even abhorrent, as history has shown. And absent government regulation (in all relevant jurisdictions), corporations will try to act in their own self-interest, trying to balance reassuring their own customer-base with satisfying wider public value-sets, while seeking to shed customers who may cause them a disproportionate amount of cost: monetary, reputational, or otherwise. Government regulation protects certain classes of people through various mechanisms, like those with disabilities, or certain, but not all intrinsic characteristics that have been commonly used in the past to discriminate. We, as societies, then overlay subjective judicial systems to try to reason whether corporations' behavior towards certain individuals was legal or illegal.

It's wasted effort to try to gauge, as outsiders, whether Cloudflare will enact a transparent process if any process they enact operates solely on the honor system. If it's checked by the legal system, then that's a different story. We're too early for that story.

[1] https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/, section 5 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972554 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3839568

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