Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

blog.cloudflare.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 1001 posts

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#531

Post by myrandomcomment »

matt4077 wrote: post #462
myrandomcomment wrote: post #415

They are a business and they have the right to do this. 100% However they can no longer say they are "content-neutral". Also because they have taken an active step to censor they face the fact that in the future they could be sued for NOT censoring other content as there is now precedent created by this action. If you never censor then you have a clam of safe harbor. Emotionally the CEO is correct. From business poin…

That doesn't even begin to make sense... Or at least you're 20 years too late with that argument: "The act was passed in part in reaction to the 1995 decision in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.,[3] which suggested that service providers who assumed an editorial role with regard to customer content, thus became publishers, and legally responsible for libel and other torts committed by customers. This ac…

You should read more of the Wikipedia under limits.

That law does not change the fact that one could argue "well they did censor this so...". It is a risk. If you have a record that says "we censor nothing" then you are much safer. I would agree that under the law you site it should be clear cut, but that is not the way it has worked lately. It's a risk based on a moral belief and I applaud the CEO for doing it. That does not invalidated the risk.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#532

Post by hsod »

njarboe wrote: post #408
PeanutCurry wrote: post #341

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…

Scott Alexander has a good article relating to this issue and Trump[1]. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wo...

"I stick to my thesis from October 2015. There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up."

I'm a big fan of SSC, but this thesis is not holding up very well

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#533

Post by flamedoge »

dguaraglia wrote: post #336
kazagistar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much for believing in "due process".

Due process? For what? It's a private company, deciding to terminate the contract with a shitty customer that is ruining their image. Worst case scenario the Nazis might have a case for breach of contract, but they won't get much out of it. Also, I'd love to see them show up in court to try to defend this as a "freedom of speech" case, and get told what a bunch of abhorrent human beings they are and to GTFO.

I think private companies serving public with ability to control visibility, especially those with majority marketshare should be subject to similar laws as anti-trust.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#534

Post by idoh »

gbarc888 wrote: post #500
pessimizer wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nazis aren't a protected class, yet. Do you think that businesses shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against skateboarders, or people who refuse to wear shirts and shoes? Not that you can't think that, but it's a weird personal ideology that calls for explanation and argument, not some pronouncement of what should or should not be done. I'm pretty sure you can make the argument why gay people, women and racial or r…

Political affiliation is a protected class. I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis. Unless a person registered with the NSDAP prior to 1945, technically they are not a Nazi.

What do mean by protected class? Cloud flare isn't a restaurant, they can pick clients based on politics.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#535

Post by lovich »

foxylad wrote: post #529
genon wrote: 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…

> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like. I have a problem with this, because in effect it is saying that if you want to be in business, you have to check your principles at the entrance. I do run a business, and I do reserve the right to withhold service from people whose…

I think that your point would be correct if businesses did not wield the enormous amount of power that they currently do. Who competes with Cloudfare right now? Who competes with AWS? There's already jokes about how if one of those services is down then the internet is down. While everyone might agree currently with getting rid of the Daily Stormer because they are assholes, the precedent and power is now set.

For the same reason is not ok for a public business to not make cakes for gay couples, we should not allow public businesses to pick and choose who is allowed to be part of the economy. If you want to argue against that, that is fine, but you have to accept it when people with the completely opposite set of morals start discriminating against _you_

edit: In case it wasn't clear, I am not a fan of Nazis, but I don't want to even set up the opportunity for businesses to have the power to just exclude me from normal day to day activity just because the CEO has decided he doesn't like whatever group I am in

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#536

Post by PeanutCurry »

ahhhhhhhhhh wrote: post #478
PeanutCurry wrote: post #341

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…

dude you're being pedantic about how bad nazis are, is this really worth it

In this instance I think it is because the point I was making in pushing a somewhat pedantic argument is that while what happened in Charlottesville, and arguably catalyzed the current popularity of nazi discussion, is obviously a tragedy it's also a highly emotional topic precisely because it's a tragedy.

This was why I concluded with the argument that we should at the same time be focused on identifying and quantifying the reach and influence these groups. Because in the wake of an extremely upsetting event it's important to emphasize the need for intelligent debate and evaluation or else the discourse becomes volatile and incapable of rational decision making.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#537

Post by ethanhunt_ »

KirinDave wrote: post #522
gbarc888 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political affiliation is a protected class. I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis. Unless a person registered with the NSDAP prior to 1945, technically they are not a Nazi.

> I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis. This coyness about the dilution of meaning is utterly irrelevant here. We're not discussing figurative Nazis or the erosion of the term. We're discussing people literally waving modern variants of historical Nazi flags, histori…

Over the years, a common argument I've heard against the tactic of calling all kinds of right-leaning people Nazis and Racists was that one day we might really need to identify Real Nazis as Nazis and then nobody will believe it (the boy who cried wolf).

And here we are.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#538

Post by sandaru1 »

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #434
genon wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get what I'm saying - comparing two well-known instances from different parts of the political spectrum where businesses try and refuse custom for ideological reasons - why are you pretending I'm comparing gay people to neo-Nazis?

Because you choose to be a neo nazi, you don’t choose to be gay. I’m not talking about denying service. I’m saying one of them did not choose to be what they are.

But the religious groups are a protected class. Religion is something you choose. By that logic, it would be possible to discriminate against "Christians", "Muslims", etc.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#539

Post by wolco »

Cloudflaire did a lot damage today by releasing that statement. It's one thing to have a policy or guideline that would ban a site like this. To have the CEO tell us he woke up in a bad mood and decided to kick this site off of the internet sends the message cloudflaire's service isn't a stable place governed by rules and policies. Cloudflaire CEO moods will dictate policy.

I always felt Cloudflaire was a hotpot service with nsa hooks.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#540

Post by nardi »

genon wrote: 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…

Gender, race, age, sexual orientation, etc. are “protected classes” that you can’t discriminate on. Being a Nazi is not a protected class. If you have a business, you can feel free to discriminate against Nazis. And you probably should.
Post reply on HN