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Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

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Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#811

Post by notahacker »

moomin wrote: post #796
chvid wrote: 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…

Congratulations, you've just employed the Sex With Ducks argument. Remember before employing slippery slope arguments to explain why we haven't already fallen down the slope when we banned terrorist websites. And taking down The Daily Stormer was speech. If you want to regulate that kind of speech, it's your right to say so. But don't pretend you're supporting the First Amendment when you do so.

Don't pretend you're supporting the First Amendment - a restriction on governments making laws against press freedom - when you use it to compel companies to assist in the dissemination of Nazi propaganda against their will.

It's not a defence of political freedoms to compel people - rhetorically or otherwise - to disseminate messages that appall them; it's a grotesque imposition upon their political freedom.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#812

Post by saimiam »

If you have not read the post and came straight to the comments, you should read the post. I found it well written, thoughtful, and cognizant of its potential role in dictating what the future of the internet could look like.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#813

Post by JohnStrange »

cm2187 wrote: post #795
mbrock wrote: 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…

A more realistic historical example than yours (which assumes hindsight): what about the McCarthyism? "If these guys are communist let's not give them jobs, particularly in the medias where they could spread their ideas". The US liberals kept a pretty sour memory of McCarthyism. But fundamentally it is no different.

There are many differences:

1. Nazis started WW2 with around 80 million deaths, including hundreds of thousands US soldiers, and killed 5-6 million Jews in the gas chambers of concentration camps.

2. McCarthyism originated from and was systematically exerted by the US government in many official capacities. There were vetting committees, job prohibitions, and other direct government interference including using intelligence agencies to gain information on US citizens. They didn't let Charlie Chaplin enter the US.

That's very different from a private company that ceases to make business with a Nazi website due to violations of their ToS.

On a side note, John von Neumann suggested to government officials to pro-actively launch a nuclear strike on Moskow. That tells you how different the climate was then as opposed to now.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#814

Post by glenstein »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #705
thedrbrian wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do /pol/ actually sympathise with the Nazis or are they just trying and getting a rise out of people ?

It's a mixture of teenagers trying out shock humor, people trying to be ironic, people who don't identify as Nazis but certainly identify with many of their ideals and straight up Nazis. There's a lot of abyss-gazing that pushes people over the edge into extremism.

Exactly. People who are subjected to that imagery and messaging, even if "ironically" risk internalizing it over time.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#816

Post by intended »

chvid wrote: post #599
matttproud wrote: post #591

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…

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…

People sitting on the fences talking about slippery slopes are only ceding space to people pushing the conversation down.

I'm sorry but The space to sit idly and think about it is gone. All of society is on the slope because America didn't realize that some points are raised not to discuss, but to tie down discourse and keep logic at bay.

Leaving the field open for emotion and lazy logic to defeat whoever remains.

There's rules to how this is done, and they have little to do with facts but everything to do with owning the communication channel.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#817

Post by Asdfbla »

chvid wrote: post #599
matttproud wrote: post #591

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…

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…

Many European countries (like Germany etc.) have operated with free speech restrictions since the end of WW2 and the slippery slope that is always brought up never materialized.

Slippery slope arguments are only valid if you believe that your jurisdiction doesn't have proper rule of law. Otherwise experience, at least in European countries, showed that courts are very well capable of recognizing the importance of free speech even for tasteless and hateful speech.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#818

Post by rootlocus »

illuminati1911 wrote: post #615
Akujin wrote: 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 last sentence is the main reason why the world is so fucked up today. "Unless you agree with my radical leftist agenda you are a nazi/racist/ "-mentality and the complete unreasonability of the left is the reason why normal people are fed up with all this crap and are voting for Trump, Brexit etc. No matter how evil some group is (may they be pedophiles, satan worshippers, nazis, whatever...) silencing them and a…

> The problem with making these exceptions like "Let's have freedom of speech but not for these and these people...yadayadayada" is we can never be sure where to draw the line.

There's no problem here. You have freedom as long as you don't hurt other people. Different nuances of what "hurt" means which are not covered directly by law are decided in courts of law by judges.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#819

Post by calafrax »

r721 wrote: 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…

> I think we have to have a conversation over what part of the infrastructure stack is right to police content

how about no part of it? if the founders of the united states were able to create the world's most powerful nation without giving themselves the right to censor speech then why should any private company need the right to censor speech?

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#820

Post by jrs95 »

willvarfar wrote: post #659
chvid wrote: 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…

CloudFare served DailyStormer for years. Then DailyStormer says CloudFare are secretly nazis. Then CloudFare say "no we don't, goodbye". If DailyStormer hadn't been so stupid, and had never claimed CloudFare was anything other than neutral, then they would still be served? Stupid own goal DailyStormer. The censorship and 'line' seems to be not what you say or incite against others, but what you say about CloudFare.

I think it was probably a tongue in cheek statement (since a lot of people would have accused them of being secret Nazis over this eventually) that Cloudflare took seriously, or at least saw as a good excuse to shut them down to appease some people while positioning themselves as strong supporters of free speech on the internet at the same time.
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