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Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

blog.cloudflare.com

751–760 of 1001 posts

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#751
Principles are tested in hard times.

In half of Europe Nazis were replaced by Stalinists...hope we're not on the same path.

Legally 1st amendment is protection against the government, but principally it should be applied to any entity with national or global power.

Racist, Nazis or anyone can say what they want (minus explicit call for violence), and the opposing side has the equal right to prove them wrong. That's the beauty and intent of the 1st Amendment. How people are cheering this decision, seems rather shortsighted to me.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#752
post #748
post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any sympathy for the Daily Stormer. I just don't see where this is stopping. What else needs to be taken down? /pol/? Who about Breitbart? Or maybe some 2nd WW Nazi propaganda? Or something from the US civil war? You guys seem to be ok with this very slippery slope being assessed by random private companies accountable to who knows. And then you have the nerve to call us who believes that limits of free…

I'm curious, if you imagine a possible historical situation, let's say a German business owner in the 1930s that took a stance of not offering services to Nazi organizations, does that appear commendable, or bad in the same "slippery slope" way that you apply in the present situation? It seems to me that such a business owner would seem in hindsight to have been acting virtuously, and it seems that businesses that di…

> It seems to me that such a business owner would seem in hindsight to have been acting virtuously,

No it wouldn't - There is a large percentage of population joining Nazi parties for convenience, for their career or even out of fear. Are you going to deny them the food you sell from your shop? If they are Nazi's, are they still not human beings deserving to access food in the market?

Does someone being a member of the Nazi party mean we can let them starve to death? Shoot them and push them into a trench even?

The moment you dehumanise vast swathes of the population, you've already lost and dropped to the level of "Nazi's". It's not wise to let your enemies turn you into them.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#753
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…

He addresses this in his email to staff, which quoted in the article:

"The right answer is for us to be consistently content neutral. But we need to have a conversation about who and how the content online is controlled. We couldn’t have that conversation while the Daily Stormer site was using us. Now, hopefully, we can."

If the building is on fire, you put out the fire first, and then decide what the future fire safety policy is.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#754
post #573

We take down Al Qaeda terrorist websites all the time because they can be used to radicalize people. Nazis are no different. They are calling for the systematic violent overthrow of the US government and for the extermination of many millions of so called undesirables. This is a terrorist threat. I take this threat very seriously as do many people in the Jewish, Hispanic, and African American community. There are lit…

^^^ The parent comment hits the ball out of the park. The commentary on past posts on HN and elsewhere floors me. It seems one or two things are prevalent: 1. Folks will gladly loan the hangman the rope that he will use to hang you, your family, and your neighbors — all because of "purity of belief" in free speech. Sorry, hate to break it to you, but these illiberal forces are a clear and present danger to this comfo…

I recommending watching 'The People vs. Larry Flynt' for a (much-needed) lesson in what Freedom of Speech means in the United States. I am certain Larry Flynt had a hard time finding print houses willing to publish Hustler but the fact he was being arrested and prosecuted – by the government – for distributing Hustler is when/where the line was crossed.

I have doubts that SCOTUS will ever consider 'The Nazis vs. Cloudflare'.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#755
post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^^^ The parent comment hits the ball out of the park. The commentary on past posts on HN and elsewhere floors me. It seems one or two things are prevalent: 1. Folks will gladly loan the hangman the rope that he will use to hang you, your family, and your neighbors — all because of "purity of belief" in free speech. Sorry, hate to break it to you, but these illiberal forces are a clear and present danger to this comfo…

> They won't politely tolerate you. Deviants will be chastised, expelled/expatriated, jailed, or killed. Ignoring prudence (preservation of self and the society at-large) is perilous. Except I never really seen a 'neonazi' saying "punch a communist" I never seen mass media encourage such behavior either. Do you not realize that this is cyclic reinforcement of behavior? (Antifa says punch nazis, nazis punch back, anti…

why do you need to "take sides"? life is not binary. If you don't like antifa that's fine, but you don't then need to support nazis for that ...

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^^^ The parent comment hits the ball out of the park. The commentary on past posts on HN and elsewhere floors me. It seems one or two things are prevalent: 1. Folks will gladly loan the hangman the rope that he will use to hang you, your family, and your neighbors — all because of "purity of belief" in free speech. Sorry, hate to break it to you, but these illiberal forces are a clear and present danger to this comfo…

>Folks will gladly loan the hangman the rope that he will use to hang you, your family, and your neighbors — all because of "purity of belief" in free speech. Sorry, hate to break it to you, but these illiberal forces are a clear and present danger to this comfortable society you call home. Replace like 3 words in your comment, and I could make it into a rant advocating persecution of Communists. Which has happened b…

>Replace like 3 words in your comment, and I could make it into a rant advocating persecution of Communists. Which has happened before in the US. But it's ok now because it's against your political enemies?

If by "it's against your political enemies" means "it's against people who want to overthrow your society and replace it with a repressive one" then the two cases are exactly the same in principle and only differ in details.

So yeah, I'd say that they're both OK, under the exact same logic.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#757
post #752
post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, if you imagine a possible historical situation, let's say a German business owner in the 1930s that took a stance of not offering services to Nazi organizations, does that appear commendable, or bad in the same "slippery slope" way that you apply in the present situation? It seems to me that such a business owner would seem in hindsight to have been acting virtuously, and it seems that businesses that di…

> It seems to me that such a business owner would seem in hindsight to have been acting virtuously, No it wouldn't - There is a large percentage of population joining Nazi parties for convenience, for their career or even out of fear. Are you going to deny them the food you sell from your shop? If they are Nazi's, are they still not human beings deserving to access food in the market? Does someone being a member of t…

Well, I might ask whether you think there is a difference between selling food to an individual who happens to be a member of the Nazi party, and catering for a Nazi party event?

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#758
post #657

I would never shut down such websites. Not due to Freedom of speech, but because now they will hide better. Most of these people login with their Facebook accounts to post hateful comments etc. I mean, seriously, all it takes for any law enforcement is to keep these people under control and that's it and sue them if it's the case. On the other hand, now we risk to create more and more parallel societies and secret gr…

Hide better?

These aren't child pornographers trying to stay under the radar of the law. These are Nazis advocating for the murder of people who don't look like them, and trying to make their views mainstream.

Making them harder to for the vast majority of people to find is a major part of exactly how you shut a violent fascist movement down. And if you don't think a movement like this should be shut down, you're part of the problem.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#759
post #643
post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any sympathy for the Daily Stormer. I just don't see where this is stopping. What else needs to be taken down? /pol/? Who about Breitbart? Or maybe some 2nd WW Nazi propaganda? Or something from the US civil war? You guys seem to be ok with this very slippery slope being assessed by random private companies accountable to who knows. And then you have the nerve to call us who believes that limits of free…

Daily stormer, pol, and breitbart are all free to find another web host/CDN or start their own. There is no slippery slope with one business refusing to do business with another one. The business does not need to be accountable to anyone, because they have no requirement to host the daily stormer in the first place.

business is accountable via money to its owners and creditors. which ultimately means its accountable to the market.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#760
post #618
post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any sympathy for the Daily Stormer. I just don't see where this is stopping. What else needs to be taken down? /pol/? Who about Breitbart? Or maybe some 2nd WW Nazi propaganda? Or something from the US civil war? You guys seem to be ok with this very slippery slope being assessed by random private companies accountable to who knows. And then you have the nerve to call us who believes that limits of free…

If Breitbart or /pol/ are hosting discussions in the open between known Nazis or people who are advocating to take terrorist actions and they do not moderate and delete these things then yea they actually should be shut down. We would not tolerate this from Al Qaeda or with child porn so I really don't understand the problem. Nazism has caused orders of magnitude more suffering in the history of man than either of th…

Well communism caused even more suffering, so should we shut down every communist site as well?
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