> How hard would it have been to say "Sorry, that's not how DNS works" when some random person on Twitter said "You're supporting a white supremacist! Undo it!"?
I don't understand? Are you saying that lying would have been morally superior? Because, as we've just seen, that's exactly how DNS works.
As for the other legal consequences, I don't see how this changes anything. Did anybody ever doubt Cloudflare's technical ability to stop serving individual sites?
I also don't see how consistency can be an argument in any such case: Being consistently wrong doesn't seem like a strong excuse for being wrong.
I feel you're also operating from a view of the court system that is vastly more cynical than the courts deserve. This is, unfortunately, a point that I cannot adequately put into words. But if you ever have the time, maybe find some decision that interests you (or, actually, pick anything at random) and read the decision, or maybe watch the oral arguments. I often read both the majority and the dissenting opinion of cases, and come away agreeing with both of them! That should be impossible because they contradict each other, but even opinions I disagree with often have an undeniably forceful argument.
(I just thought of a good example, which is a transcript from the Waymo vs Uber lawsuit. You may be surprised to see the forceful stand the judge takes to make the proceedings open to the general public. Quote:
if you want all this stuff to be so secret,
you should be in arbitration. You shouldn't be
trying to do this in court and constantly [insisting
on closed procedures].
The public has a right to see what we do.
And I feel that so strongly. I am not --
the U.S. District Court is not a wholly owned
subsidiary of Quinn Emanuel or Morrison & Foerster
or these two big companies. We belong to the public.
(
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3533784-Waymo-Uber-3...)
With regard to your expectation of HN's opinion: I believe you're mostly just underestimating how dramatic many people consider the current political situation to be. This is somewhat beyond the usual partisan divide, as can be seen by the almost unanimous decision by CEOs (generally not suspected to secretly harbour leftwing believes) to quit their advisory roles, by the increasing willingness of republicans in congress to criticise their president, or even in the Fox News moderator's spontaneous reaction to Trump's press conference, calling it "disgusting" and "surreal".