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Terminating Service for 8Chan

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Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#461

Post by ajross »

word-reader wrote: post #419
ajross wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like most of the outrageous incitement to violence people have posted on 8chan would be illegal under Brandenburg v. Ohio And yet, no one wants to police that. So... Cloudflare did it themselves. I mean, look, I get the principled point you're making, but it's on really shaky ground. Either the conduct on that site was garbage that should be removed or it wasn't. And if it was... well, good riddance. After…

Matthew Prince could have just said "per our terms of service we don't provide services for websites that violate US law and 8chan allows posts that in our opinion incite imminent lawless action, therefore we're terminating their account". Instead he posted this confused essay that clearly shows he understands neither 8chan nor the relevant law, instead making up weird terms and making it entirely vague what their po…

OK, so 8chan (edit: sorry, should have written "Cloudflare") could have handled this better according to your personal sense of justice or aesthetics or whatever. And... 20 people are dead in El Paso.

It's like we're not even talking about the same thing here. I just don't get your thought process, sorry. You agree that this incitement and radicalization shouldn't have had a forum, I think.

You just... would rather talk about the mechanism by which the forum access was removed than the incitement and radicalization? That's really the hill you're taking your stand on?

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#462

Post by crankylinuxuser »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #361
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should that mean a power company can cut off your power because they don't like what you've said? Should that mean the water company can cut your water off for criticizing them? Should that mean that a bank can refuse to give you a loan, because you said something bad, even if your credit is more than acceptable? ------------------------------- Remember this: its the extremist that the law is made around. And soon en…

> Should that mean a power company can cut off your power because they don't like what you've said? No. Because they are a public utility and that would be a violation of the first amendment. > Should that mean that a bank can refuse to give you a loan, because you said something bad, even if your credit is more than acceptable? Yes. Because they are a private institution and not obligated to do business with you. Th…

> No. Because they are a public utility and that would be a violation of the first amendment.

> Yes. Because they are a private institution and not obligated to do business with you.

That's some pretty strong dissonance there. Here in Indiana, the utilities AND banks are all private entities. And there's no actual state or federal law that would prevent a utility from cutting utilities for "being and speaking of white nationalism". I chose my examples carefully - all are much more regulated than some Walmart or Target or Amazon.

My larger discussion was that over very corporate autonomy. Who made them arbiters of what language was acceptable? Why should infrastructure companies be decision makers of what is said online? Years ago, we restricted the phone companies from doing that very thing - and they wanted dearly to forbid classes of speech. Yet somehow when it's "on the interwebz" we throw those ideas and rules out, all so that someone can make a bigger pile of dollars.

Don't forget, cloudflare is a US company. There's absolutely 0 reason why they can't be considered an infrastructure company and subject to common carrier rules as well. Or the counter-offer is they can be responsible for speech over their network. I doubt they'd like that either. After all, they're still hosting piles of stressers and ddos merchants.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#463

Post by the8472 »

panarky wrote: post #450
the8472 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then I went to where was free speech was absolute and saw what was discussed. That suffers from a selection effect. Since not many sites prioritize free speech and only allow things within some narrower region of the overton window to be discussed it follows that the more extreme positions get pushed to sites that allow more. If, hypothetically, every site were tolerant then you wouldn't have that association. Also…

These sub-communities that people want to censor, do they have any redeeming value? Or are you just making a slippery-slope argument that this might be a precedent for some hypothetical future censorship of something worthwhile?

> These sub-communities that people want to censor, do they have any redeeming value?

The usual example would be cartoon child pornography. Some want to see it wiped off the face of earth, others argue it provides an outlet for pedophiles.

> Or are you just making a slippery-slope argument that this might be a precedent for some hypothetical future censorship of something worthwhile?

Maybe that too, but it's more about that they are not illegal, which means the judicial system has not found that they shouldn't exist and no attempt has been made to bring about such a decision. If its not the judicial system, who should be the arbiter of communities that are allowed to exist? Do we want facebook, google and cloudflare to be community-shepherds?

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#464

Post by melbourne7 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #309
rand_r wrote: post #263

The best argument I’ve heard for being a free speech absolutist is that speech is the highest form of thought in Humans. We think via dialogue. We arrive at the truth via dialogue. Criminalizing free speech limits our ability to think and arrive at the truth, and that can’t be good for anyone long term. I haven’t heard of a good rebuttal to the above reasoning.

To extend your metaphor, imagine that part of humanity's brain is engaged in thinking about the abduction and exploitation of children. Another part is lionizing mass murderers and advocating for copy cats. A different part of the brain is contemplating the state of the art for financial and cyber crimes etc. If you come to believe that the time humanity's brain spends occupied with these pursuits leads to negative r…

I hear you, the problem is the Catholic Church had intuitions about whether the earth revolves around the sun was positive or negative, too. Dangerous ideas come in all shapes and sizes; but on the whole are less dangerous than someone deciding which is which.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#465

Post by anigbrowl »

cameronbrown wrote: post #4
whatshisface wrote: post #2

Another way to view this would be, "Cloudflare ends support for mass shooting early warning system."

This. Having this content out in the open means we can monitor it. I totally get why Cloudflare would not want to do business with 8Chan, but every step towards pushing 8Chan and it's members underground is less visibility into the kind of people who operate on the site.

Yes, but 8ch users have been expecting this since Christchurch, and in any case chan culture has a long history of people on one site raiding an other and causing it to collapse with DDOS or contraband or whatever. It's not hard for people who regularly monitor it to figure out where people will move to.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#466

Post by mnm1 »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #398

So Cloudflare went from hosting everything that's not illegal, to kicking people out who claim that Cloudflare supports their ideology, to kicking people out with less than a day's notice on a Sunday if a forum attracts user-generated content that Cloudflare doesn't like - and the rules for content that they don't tolerate may change on similarly short notice with no warning before they decide to terminate your accou…

Most companies have similar polices for much milder infractions. Amazon kicks out customers all the time based on random algorithms. So does Google. And Apple. At least cloudflare clearly has human review and even writes a long blog post to explain their decision. And we're talking about a site that incites violence. So I'd say cloudflare has at least a much more transparent policy than most internet companies. As far as timeline, it's about on par. One day you're in, the next you're out. That's the norm these days. I'm not saying it's not fucked up but until we start regulating these companies, this is what we're stuck with.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#467

Post by taurath »

word-reader wrote: post #411
taurath wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like a knee-jerk reaction to moral panic and bad PR I’m not so sure. We “ban” drug markets and terrorist groups by denying them access to infrastructure all the time. Private businesses get to decide which businesses they provide services to. Freedom of assembly doesn’t mean you get to live in a trash strewn public square, nor on private property that is leeching toxic waste into the surroundings.

Drug markets and terrorist groups are against US law while racist speech and broadly advocating the necessity of violence are not. Cloudflare had previously drawn the line at providing services for any US-legal content, then they suddenly changed it after a lot of bad press in a pretty poorly written blog post.

Whats the difference between 8chan /pol/ and a terrorist telegram group? The telegram group probably has fewer people planning attacks on US citizens.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#468

Post by 481092 »

0x445442 wrote: post #186
King-Aaron wrote: post #56

A lot of not-so-subtle support for 8chan leaking into this thread. Cloudfare aren't a government. They aren't a democracy. I don't know why some people seem to think they should act any differently. If you own a notice board in the real world, and someone put something horrible on it, you would take it down. This is no different.

As long as they can be sued for liable the way any other publisher can I have no problem with them pulling 8chan. If they're going to selectively hide behind section 230 to promote their political agenda then I do, they can't have it both ways and I hope congress clamps down on this.

Do you complain when liberal writers don't get hosted on Fox News? Or when liberal guests don't get as much air time as conservatives? Do you want congress to clamp down and make all sides get equal air time and newspaper time? This 'everyone should host my political agenda and his agenda....ad infinitum, all equally in time and space', is not just ridiculous but impossible. They're a private company doing the same as CNN or Fox, deciding not to host what they don't agree with.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#469

Post by joppy »

sytelus wrote: post #205

This is the same argument cake shops make against taking order from gay people. I do believe that so-called manifesto is mind-numbingly dumb, fact-free and it is dangerous in the sense it will inspire more violence against innocent people. But that precisely what makes it a good test case for asking some fundamental questions. Can commercial businesses with deep reach, pricing power and critical function deny service…

Refusing service to people based on their ideology or sexuality is vastly different to refusing service to people who threaten harm to others.

Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan

#470

Post by 481092 »

ReptileMan wrote: post #88
King-Aaron wrote: post #56

A lot of not-so-subtle support for 8chan leaking into this thread. Cloudfare aren't a government. They aren't a democracy. I don't know why some people seem to think they should act any differently. If you own a notice board in the real world, and someone put something horrible on it, you would take it down. This is no different.

They are utility though. Have you thought about that people support neutrality/common carrier style behavior with 8chan existing being the acceptable price to pay and not 8 chan itself?

They host and indirectly disseminate media, just like a news network. Do you expect Fox or CNN to host views they don't find acceptable? If we're going to accept that biased media is legal (news networks) then biased media is legal (Cloudflare), although you'd have a harder time making a case of bias against Cloudflare in comparison to the former.
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