
Cloudflare CEO on Terminating Service to Neo-Nazi Site - rdl
https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295
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hliyan
I think we need to be mindful that anything used against a bad person might
eventually be used against a good person. It is why due process exists. This
time the outcome was positive, but what precedent does this set?

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valuearb
Due process is a concept of law. It's not applicable to the relationships
between private individuals. If a person wants to break up with someone they
are dating, do they owe the the other person due process?

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gigatexal
I respect him a lot for doing this but also realizing the precedent it sets.
I’m not going to defend neo-nazis but I will defend their rights to speak
their minds and think how they please (however bigoted and ignorant it is).

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DanAndersen
inb4 huge semantic discussion about "rights" leading to a "First Amendment" vs
"private company" comment thread that repeats the same talking points ad
nauseum.

My own take on this is that we've unwittingly placed huge swathes of newly
created de-facto 'public spaces' into private hands. In the same way that I
advocate for ISPs being forced to be neutral in delivery of content, I think
that we need legal machinery that prevents infrastructure (the 'roads' of our
new cyber-society) from being politicized in the way that DDOS-protection or
domain registrars are now becoming.

Defense of free speech (principle/culture here, not just 1A) is ALWAYS going
to be a defense of 'monsters', because they are the only ones that need
defending, and because if you don't set up boundaries, eventually this power
gets used more and more and the boundaries of acceptable discourse shrink.

Does anyone actually think that this is the last time that this power will get
used, or that it's the least extreme target that will get hit?

We're ceding a lot of general society and discourse from the realm of public
law and transparent oversight into the realm of private and arbitrary
decisions by those who control enforcement of vague terms of service.

All I can say is that I hope we're careful and can build new social structures
that get what we actually want in the future, rather than applying old
precedents that lead into a path that we'll end up regretting down the road,
no matter how reasonable and just it is now.

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valuearb
How can privately created spaces become "de-facto public spaces'? Just because
Facebook is popular doesn't mean it should be publicly owned or controlled.
Everyone has the ability to speak freely on their own web sites, and on many
sites (4chan) that freely allow them to post whatever they want.

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js2
"Cloudflare: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer" (Discussion):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922)

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davidreiss
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I can't believe this is what social media and the tech industry has become.
And I can't believe there are people actually supporting this kind of
censorship.

What ever happened to principles? Do people not realize that they are sowing
seeds of their own destruction by supporting this kind of arbitrary censorship
from large social media companies, CDNs, ISPs, etc.

