A lot of the plot, but my guess the main reason is upcoming Cloudflare IPO[1]. Сan't blame them for for doing that.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/cloudflare-plans-to-ipo-in-s...
Terminating Service for 8Chan
991–1000 of 1001 posts
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#992On the one hand, I like the idea of a free, open, and distributed internet, where no one company or government has the power to control what is distributed or discussed. As the great John Gilmore said, more aspirationally than accurately even then: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." On the other hand, we don't live in that world, and I don't know how well it would work in practice if we d…
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." As if "The Net" is a perfect, neutral, self-supporting entity that behaves with mathematic predictability rather than a projection of the chaotic human society on which its existence depends. There is a widespread habit among futurists and technologists, perhaps arising from an appreciation for semantic economy and the anonymizing instinct to downplay as…
I don't think this statement is ignoring human input. It's extrapolating the result based on what we have observed about the interaction of the technology and the participating humans so far, viewing them as a single system. The passive voice is in recognition that an individual has almost no control over this system as a whole.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#993This should not have taken years, and many deaths.
Don't host fascists. Don't do business with nazis.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#994This should not have taken years, and many deaths. Don't host fascists. Don't do business with nazis.
Don't also use the words "fascist" and "Nazi" to shut down those who aren't really either, but who you disagree with strongly.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#995Earlier quoted context omitted.
And all that is addressed in the article. Specifically the paragraph that starts with "We do not take this decision lightly" The point is that what 8chan is doing is egregious enough for them to step in and cease doing business with them. This isn't a slippery slope kind of thing.
They literally said that they would not kick someone off their platform anymore after they did it to The Daily Storm. Then they did to 8chan because enough people threw a hissy fit
Nope, they said "We've taken measures to ensure that they cannot sign up for Cloudflare's services ever again."
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#996Nearly every mass killer in the last 10 years has posted an angry rant on Facebook or Twitter.
A couple may have posted on 8chan.
Guess which platform is being criticized for allowing hate?
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#997Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should be legally required to do business with any customer? At some level does a person not have the right to say, "I don't like you and won't take your money?" Sure, the US and others have protected classes that limit the reasons you can refuse to do business with someone but those are more to do with people in those classes being unfairly burdened and facing difficulty living tier day-to-day lives.
> You should be legally required to do business with any customer? No you shouldn't be. But this should also be treated fairly. Communications Decency Act of 1996, Section 230 allowed platforms to not be held liable for user generated content. But it did not allow publishers to have the same freedom. Notice the very important distinction between "platforms" vs "publishers". A publisher like a newspaper can be sued fo…
I don't think dropping someone as a customer on your platform meets the bar for exercising editorial control over content. CF specifically dropped one customer because they were trying to imply that being hosted by CF was an endorsement of their views.
This would be an unproductive outcome. There's really no point in allowing CDNs to be sued for the content they distribute except as a mechanism to force them to take unsavory customers to maintain their ability to not be sued. Why is it a problem that in your view, platforms can 'enjoy' the benefits of both?
Why can't a platform not endorse the content of their customers while also not doing business with people they don't like? It doesn't seem to be a contradiction -- a freelancer who refuses an offer to build a neo-nazi site is not suddenly endorsing the content that lives on all the other sites they built.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#998Does this start to open CloudFlare up to legal issues for all the sites they host? I was under the impression they were more of an infrastructure/utility type service, and weren't liable for what took place, the same way gun manufacturers aren't liable for shootings or gas stations for car crashes. But if now they're manually deciding who goes on their network and who doesn't, it seems like they're more responsible f…
You would think but apparently that doesn't apply anymore. You can control the content and still get the protections of a common carrier.
I just know I'll remember that cloudflare could pull the pulg on my site if one of my users posts something they don't like. I don't think I can recommend their service to any of clients because of that.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#9991428 comments and no one points out that the QAnon movement used 8chan for communications.
Re: Terminating Service for 8Chan
#1000Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Free Speech has absolutely been impinged by this decision." No, it hasn't. No one has a moral, legal, or ethical responsibility to pay for someone else's speech. The government must tread lightly, but private individuals are under no compulsion to listen to others. 8chan is NOT having their speech rights infringed, they are simply having a business agreement terminated. They are still 100% free to create a website s…
The problem with that argument is that there's no such thing as a "public square" on the internet. Everything on the internet is controlled by a private company in some manner or another. Whether you're talking about DNS, cloud hosting, ISPs, CDNs, or CAs there are always going to be some number of privately controlled intermediaries with the means to censor your speech. For some of these entities, such as CDNs with…
"The problem with that argument is that there's no such thing as a "public square" on the internet."
There's also no public square in magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, libraries aren't required to stock your book, nor book stores, no one has to lease you space for a store, etc. You have the right to speak, no one has an obligation to listen or pay attention. No one has an obligation to help you speak, etc. That's what I mean when I said, "do not confuse public square with private property." Just because everyone watches TV and uses the internet does not mean anyone has a RIGHT to express themselves there.