
The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opinion/cloudflare-daily-stormer-charlottesville.html
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Two questions for everyone:

1.What do you think are the chances of Nazi's taking over the United States?

2\. What do you think are the chances of the US government using its power and
influence to label and suppress opposition?

I think the answers to these questions pretty much determine where you stand.
If you think there is a real chance that Nazi's will take over the United
States, then any means of opposition is justified, and censorship is a fair
price to pay to keep this evil from happening. If you think that there is
pretty much zero chance that Nazi's will take over the United States, but that
government has a tendency to suppress dissent, then censoring Nazi's(who you
think pretty much have no chance of coming to power and making their evil
ideology anything more than words) is just opening the door and setting a
precedent of suppressing ideas and will likely be used to suppress other less
evil (or even good) ideas.

~~~
creaghpatr
Republicans of course know that George W. Bush was hitler, McCain was Hitler,
Romney was Hitler, and Trump- you know the joke by now.

"Call them Nazis" is a pretty standard tactic in the left wing arsenal.

Bush:
[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/jan/5/20040105-1145...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/jan/5/20040105-114507-1007r/)

McCain: [http://www.mtv.com/news/1593432/madonna-compares-john-
mccain...](http://www.mtv.com/news/1593432/madonna-compares-john-mccain-to-
hitler-at-tour-opener-campaign-calls-slam-outrageous/)

Romney: [http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
room/news/247789-romn...](http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
room/news/247789-romney-campaign-tells-obama-to-rein-in-his-supporters-on-
nazi-comments)

It's kind of a shame that Democrats have trivialized the Holocaust into a
political punchline. But you can see the 'concerns' on the left if these
'nazis' get into power. It drives their rationalization for these kind of
censorship actions and the tech companies are just taking advantage of an
opportunity.

~~~
nrb
Not sure if you actually think this is only one side doing this, but just
substitute "hitler" for "communist" from the right, with the same fears and
motivations.

There's no excusing either, but let's discuss this with some intellectual
honesty.

~~~
creaghpatr
Communists don't get banned from the internet so far- nazis do.

~~~
enraged_camel
You can absolutely get banned from right-wing forums for being even slightly
liberal (aka "communist").

You only have to look at The_Donald to see this in action everyday.

~~~
daxorid
GP mentioned being banned _from the internet_ , not from a forum.

Name a single Communist who got their domain name permanently clientHolded by
every Registrar attempted, or their Hosting, DNS, DDoS mitigation services
denied by every provider attempted.

Reality is that Communists don't face anywhere near as much platform denial or
employment insecurity as Fascists do. Not even close, despite the
significantly more horrific body count of Communists in the 20th century.

~~~
enraged_camel
In the West, communists don't have to worry about being banned from the
internet because, at least to my knowledge, they don't believe in racial
supremacy and support systemic extermination of other races. Unlike, you know,
Nazis.

It is interesting you bring up the higher body count of Communists in the 20th
century. The only reason Nazis didn't get to exterminate more people is
because America entered the war and the Allies won as a result. Make no
mistake though: if Germany had won, Hitler would have moved on to people of
other races. After all, he believed the Aryan race to be far superior to
others, including non-German whites.

------
sanityUnbounded
I'd say it's more sad than terrifying. Terror implies immediate danger, most
people will not feel the danger that shutting down of a Nazi website should
entail. Most people are not Nazis.

The value of an online community exists within participation from those that
visit the website. Anyone that visits can explore the ideology from the
perspective of those that believe in it, which is an invaluable tool for
education.

What happened in Charlottesville was a moment in american history, no matter
which side you fall on. What google, godaddy, and cloudflare are doing is
(understandably) limiting community engagement on extremist websites. However
by doing that it is also restricting those that want to understand who-what-
where-when-why-how from accessing the conversations that occurred, and
obviously, they did indeed occur. Now, anybody that wants to explore both
sides of the event has to do so by navigating a barrage of news articles which
loosely throws around the term "nazi", and a smaller subset of opinion
articles which view it as a censorship issue.

It makes the stance of anti-censorship & anti-nazi an impossibly difficult
stance to take because these two issues are being viewed as two sides of the
same issue. This is not conducive to a proactive internet culture. For the
first time in history we have the opportunity to explore opposing
political/race ideologies from inception to protest, and instead of using it
to learn about human nature and group think, companies are hitting a mute
button to win a popularity contest with investors.

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
That's great until the mob with torches are outside your door calling for your
blood. Intolerance will _always_ win if you insist on every issue being a
"both sides" debate. It's the same as trying to argue with a creationist,
antivaxer or flat earther; there cannot be a reasonable discussion if one or
more sides have no facts to stand on (master race bollux was bad science back
in the 1920s and hasn't gotten better).

No one is loosely throwing around the term Nazi, these groups self identify as
American nazis, carry fucking nazi flags, are on video chanting "jews will not
replace us". Also these groups aren't new; they've been around for years
technology has just amplified their voice. You don't need The Daily Stormer
and its ilk to come to an informed decision on "are Nazis bad" just open a
history book.

There's a valuable discussion to be had about whether it makes sense for the
internet to not be a public run utility (and thus subject to full 1st
amendment protections). But so long as we're leaning on the free market to
sort things out, you're on the wrong side of history if Nazis are the cause
you want to defend.

~~~
ineptech
Sounds like you're okay with society censoring the websites of Nazis, yes?
Care to clarify who gets to decide who is and isn't a Nazi?

This is not rhetorical. In my experience, a lot of people agree with "It's
okay to censor Nazis" but virtually no one agrees with "It's okay to censor
people that ____ disapproves of", _regardless_ of what fills the blank.

I guess I'd say I'm against censorship not because there's no speech bad
enough to censor, but because there's no one trustworthy enough to do the
censoring.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Care to clarify who gets to decide who is and isn 't a Nazi?_

Given the strict definition of "waving swastikas and advocating for violence
against Jews" works in the scenario at hand, I'm not yet terrifically
concerned about over-reach.

~~~
ineptech
> waving swastikas

The only reason people wear swastikas in America is _because_ of the strong
free-speech protection that this thread is discussing the erosion of. If we
banned swastikas (like Germany) then people would stop wearing them (like
Germany), but we'd still have the same hate speech you're discussing
censoring.

> advocating for violence against Jews

That's a pretty broad standard. If a politician supports evicting Israelis
from disputed settlements in the West Bank, is that "advocating violence
against Jews?" The answer "Yes according to some people, No according to
others." So again, I ask: who are you trusting to decide? President Trump?
Congress? You personally? To be clear, the offer currently on the table is
"some middle-managers at Cloudfare, as directed by the fickle hand of social
media."

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _If a politician supports evicting Israelis from disputed settlements in the
> West Bank, is that "advocating violence against Jews?"_

Someone chanting "death to Jews" and waving Nazi flags leaves little
unambiguous. I'm usually a slippery slope fanatic when it comes to free
speech, and I still am as it relates to First Amendment concerns, but private
companies choosing not to do business with people who self identify as Nazis,
wave Nazi flags and chant "death to Jews" while saying that employees of said
companies are _also_ Nazis is pretty clearly their right. Courts aren't
computers and the law isn't code; judges can understand "they are Nazis."

~~~
ineptech
You're answering the question "Is it okay to censor stuff that's super-duper
bad", which no one is asking. The question at hand is who gets to distinguish
bad-enough-to-ban from the not-bad-enough-to-ban. That you've replied twice
without answering suggests, I think, that there's not an easy answer. Not that
there's any shame in that! The founders couldn't come up with a good answer
either. The first amendment essentially says, "Restricting speech is so
difficult to get right that we don't trust Congress to do it."

Meanwhile, the point this article is making is that (in practice, if not in
law) the _current_ answer to the question of who decides what to censor is
"middle managers at network infrastructure companies, based on what their
social media departments suspect might hurt their brand." If you think that's
an acceptable answer, great, but I don't think you can go on thinking of
yourself as a "slippery slope fanatic when it comes to free speech" in that
case.

~~~
anigbrowl
But you're saying that we should just ignore the examples of super-duper-bad
speech because of the difficulty of deciding where the line is. And that is a
really hard problem, but it doesn't take away from the fact that people are
engaging in super-duper bad stuff like calling for genocide and plotting and
committing political murders.

~~~
teddyh
Yes, and maybe allowing that would be less bad than allowing censorship to
creep its way into acceptability.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'd like you to expand on this. I'm sure you're familiar with the idea of a
chilling effect, and can understand how accepting the open advocacy of
genocide, ethnic cleansing, or terrorism would negatively impact the freedom
of those who are intended to be on the receiving end of such policies.

How many or how detailed must threats against others' wellbeing become before
you consider them unacceptable?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect)

~~~
weberc2
Threats of violence are already illegal. If speech crosses into
threat/violence, we should punish that vigorously so as to deter further
violence and to assure would-be victims. In fact, this is already policy and
it's working out pretty well; Nazism lags even Islamic terrorism (at least in
the US) in deaths. Surely if we tell people not to worry about Islamic
terrorism, no one should be chilled by Nazism. The fear isn't rational; it's
only propped up by leftist FUD (as fear of terrorists was largely propped up
by the right in the aughts).

~~~
anigbrowl
Strange, I haven't heard of anyone being arrested for promoting genocide yet,
why not? Your comparison with Islamic terrorism is a red herring since we
don't have Islamists holding public rallies demanding we impose Sharia law.

~~~
weberc2
> Strange, I haven't heard of anyone being arrested for promoting genocide
> yet, why not?

We weren't talking about promoting genocide, but about threatening and
committing violence. If you can't debate with integrity, I'm not interested.

~~~
anigbrowl
Yes we were, as anyone can confirm by reading back up the thread. Impugning my
integrity because the topic of conversation makes you uncomfortable seems like
a you problem.

You chose to answer a question that had been addressed to someone else, which
you're welcome to do, but it doesn't give you ownership of the conversation as
you seem to imagine.

~~~
weberc2
> as anyone can confirm by reading back up the thread

I said "Threats of violence are already illegal.", to which you responded,
"Strange, I haven't heard of anyone being arrested for promoting genocide
yet".

> Impugning my integrity because the topic of conversation makes you
> uncomfortable seems like a you problem.

Ha! If I had any doubt about your integrity, I certainly don't now. Feel free
to keep trolling, but you'll just be shouting into the void; I'm blocking this
thread.

------
davesque
This article has some good points. But I think it's interesting to notice that
there are certain kinds of information that even we here in the US, and other
liberal countries, censor (and have more or less always censored) without a
moment's consideration. Take child porn, for example. So that blows a hole in
the idea that there's no clear line somewhere. I wonder, then, why are ideas
like Nazism, with its close historical proximity to genocide and the death of
millions (arguably much more repugnant than pictures of naked children),
somehow given more consideration than something like child porn?

~~~
muppetpastor
Easy answer to your question -- do a quick google search for NAMBLA

We don't censor the _opinion_ that people should be able to have sex with
children.

There is a very clear line and it's called the First Amendment.

We censor child porn because it is a crime that involves a victim.

The Daily Stormer was all talk.

Once you start talking about censoring people who _might_ cause people to
commit crimes, you've crossed a philosophical boundary into policing thought
crimes.

~~~
ztbrown
For what has to be the billionth time: when a company stops you from posting
hate speech on their platform, your first amendment rights have not been
violated.

~~~
falcolas
No, but your fundamental human rights, as recognized by the UN, have been.

[http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-
rights/](http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/)

Article 19

~~~
mcguire
" _Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers._ "

I assume you'll be filing suit against _Der Spiegel,_ _Le Monde,_ and _The
Economist_ for failing to publish your articles?

Seriously, I would bet that "impart information and ideas through any media"
doesn't mean that you have the right to use others' equipment, venue, and
name.

~~~
talmand
Except for maybe when you paid for such access beforehand?

~~~
cr0sh
Just because you pay for something, doesn't mean I have to continue to sell it
to you.

Now - if the Daily Stormer paid for services, and wasn't refunded their money
after their access was pulled, that's one thing.

But if the money was returned to them, and they were told "We won't sell you
this service any longer, because you have violated our terms of service" \-
then the company offering the services are free and clear to do that.

If the DS wants to continue broadcasting their speech, they are welcome to set
up their peering services, dns providers, and DDOS prevention and CDN services
themselves. And, if someone violates their terms of service, they are just as
free to stop providing services to them.

But companies aren't required to give someone a bullhorn to amplify their
voice.

------
dtech
So the real problem here is the monopoly/oligopoly.

Usually, a monopolist has more restrictions in what it can do than a healthy
market business. Should a monopolist be allowed to not serve a customer
because of an ethics difference? (assuming the customer did nothing illegal)

~~~
eplanit
Situations like this will help drive a mindset that these and most all ISPs
should be regulated as Utilities.

~~~
zero_intp
You are serious? A IP washing service is by no means a utility. Maybe we can
talk about companies that receive a government granted monopoly; certainly we
should talk about regulated Title II, but this article claiming that
Cloudflair should not choose who they protect is asinine.

Anyone is free to try to go raise the money to create a technology company;
just as any technology company should have the freedom of self-expression to
not take customers outside of protected classes.

~~~
oh_sigh
The author of the article makes a point about how it's everyone's right to go
onto the street and voice your opinion. But if you'll be attacked and silenced
any time you do that, so long as you don't hire the local protection, do you
still have that right to free speech if the local protection doesn't like you?

------
dannyw
There are two services that are gateways for small, independent (but prominent
/ notorious) internet sites:

CloudFlare and Google Project Shield.

These are the two only services that provide affordable DDoS protection, even
for 100++Gbps, for $200/month or free.

Tell me another provider like CloudFlare that will protect a blog against a
100Gbps DDoS for $200 a month.

\---

By the way, regulating CloudFlare by limiting its ability to choose customers
would be unconstitutional under the 1st amendment, would it not? There are a
very specific number of protected classes that private individuals or
companies can't discriminate against.

"Do not discriminate against hate speech" is not a class.

~~~
ntuch
> hate speech" is not a class.

As a hacker, do you not see that there's a security vulnerability here that's
big enough to drive a truck through? You simply _label_ whatever you don't
like as hate speech, then you're magically allowed to censor it.

~~~
walterstucco
Cloudflare can and will censor everything they want without the need for
labels

When you subscribe to their service you agree to their terms

The right to be published or served through a gateway is not an universal
human right

~~~
daxorid
> The right to be published or served through a gateway is not an universal
> human right

This is demonstrably not true; it just requires the victim to be a member of a
protected class. Private businesses can not legally deny service to ethnic
minorities, women, people with disabilities, or gay people.

The law determined many decades ago that some people are more equal than
others.

~~~
oh_sigh
> Private businesses can not legally deny service to...

They can deny service to those people. They just can't do it _because_ of
their membership in those protected classes.

------
imgabe
We can't realistically expect service providers to completely allow free
speech until we learn to separate the speech from the service on which it
occurs.

Suppose a bunch of Nazis started frequenting Hacker News and dominated every
thread with a discussion of Nazism. The site would pretty quickly become known
as "that Nazi place" and everyone who's not a Nazi wouldn't want to go there,
even if the people running the site don't share the opinions of the people
using it.

It's not entirely rational, but if GoDaddy got a reputation as "web hosting
for Nazis" that would severely limit their market and hurt their business, so
of course they're going to jettison that customer in order to keep all the
others.

~~~
milcron
We do have DMCA safe harbor. Is that different from what you're talking about?

~~~
imgabe
I'm thinking more of an economic consequence, rather than a legal one.
Customers boycott businesses all the time for speech they find distasteful. A
newscaster uses a racial slur and advertisers threaten to pull sponsorship
until he's fired. A company owner endorses a candidate or cause that customers
don't like so they vow never to do business with them again, etc. etc. I
personally stopped using GoDaddy years ago because of their stance on SOPA.

So, why couldn't businesses boycott customers for the same? If someone's
speech is so odious that nobody wants to be associated with them, even in a
remote, business sense, I think that should be allowed as a reasonable
consequence.

------
blfr
_it wasn’t until Cloudflare, a website security and performance service,
dropped the site as a client that The Daily Stormer truly lost its ability to
stay online_

Daily Stormer lost its ability to stay online on the clearnet because its
registrars kept dropping it. First GoDaddy and Google for .com (or .net) and
then national registries when they tried ccTLDs (.al and others).

They did manage to find a replacement for Cloudflare -- BitMitigate.

[https://bitmitigate.com/a-commitment-to-
liberty.html](https://bitmitigate.com/a-commitment-to-liberty.html)

------
mrguyorama
Should we encourage or require companies like google and cloudflare to cater
to fringe groups? Ordinarily, a business, especially in the United States, has
the freedom to not conduct business with all but a few protected classes. Is
being a neo-nazi, or a member of antifa, or of the old Animal Liberation Front
now supposed to be a protected class?

If yes, does that mean we also require the bakery down the road to post
advertisements for local hate group gatherings? Do we want to commit to taking
away a business's freedom of association?

If a Nazi walks into the coffee shop I'm at and starts trying to rally people
around the their ideology, I'm going to do one of two things, either leave or
attempt to talk the nazis down, and when that (typically) doesn't work, also
leave. If the Nazi comes back every day and does the same, it can reasonably
affect that coffee shop's business. Does the coffee shop not have the freedom
to kick the Nazis out?

~~~
istorical
If you think of internet communication as a utility, then perhaps we should?
Would you think it's OK for an electricity or a water company to decide who it
wants to serve based off that company's fallible determination of an
individual or group's beliefs?

I think if only because communication is such a basic human right, then we
shouldn't risk the 'false guilty verdicts'.

If you think about it - giving a business the right to cut off customers
decreases the chance of guilty people being empowered and skating by without
punishment (which is awesome!), but increases the chance of innocent people
being victimized through a 'false conviction'.

I'd argue that for very fundamental services, it's not the job of the business
to try to play judge and jury and determine who is right and who is wrong, if
only because the risk of an innocent party (like a false conviction putting an
innocent person behind bars in the legal system) is so high stakes.

~~~
mrguyorama
So since food and water are also basic human rights, should we disallow
Walmart from turning away Nazis? If I was a jewish business owner, why
shouldn't I have a right to turn away someone advocating for my death? At that
point isn't it just self defense?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
You do not need to announce your political ideology to do business with
Walmart, etc. Walmart does not collect that info by nature of a normal
transaction.

You do need to announce your political ideology to whoever you're buying
services from when you're buying services for a website for a politically
charged website.

~~~
cr0sh
> You do need to announce your political ideology to whoever you're buying
> services from when you're buying services for a website for a politically
> charged website.

Actually, you don't - at least not here in the United States. That said, if
the company finds out about your political ideology before they sell the
service to you, or after the service has been sold to you, they don't need to
sell it to you or continue to sell it to you.

They do need to give you back your money, though, if you have paid for service
already (minus whatever you have used).

------
Pigo
Maybe this is a pretty good test of the free-market to self-regulate. Most
people wouldn't shed a tear for one hate site going down. But if someone else
takes the reigns of this company and starts following Twitter or YouTube's
example, what would stop another competitor from filling that void and taking
the money from jilted sites? As long as it's possible for new services to
compete...

~~~
danso
That already happened with Daily Stormer:
[https://www.propublica.org/article/spurned-by-major-
companie...](https://www.propublica.org/article/spurned-by-major-companies-
the-daily-stormer-returns-to-the-web)

I imagine it might be easier to make some niche profit in Cloudflare's
business. Not so sure with Twitter, partly because Twitter itself isn't
profitable, but also because the main feature of social media services is
their ubiquity and userbase. Even if Voat were decidedly a better site than
Reddit, it just wasn't that interesting to revisit a sparsely populated
discussion site. Especially one weighted toward folks who wanted to discuss
the things that Reddit wanted to ban.

~~~
problems
> ubiquity and userbase

I'm not so sure about that - I recall having much better experiences when
these sites were much smaller. Something about eternal september.

~~~
njarboe
It depends on the filtering to get to smaller.

------
zebrafish
Interesting to think about the dichotomy that exists between our country and
China when it comes to issues like this. In China, they would just block the
content and move on to other things. In the US, because we value every
individual's rights, we have to grapple with these tough questions.

I think it's worth these headaches to protect our inalienable rights, but
others may disagree. It makes me proud, though, that our country is still
willing to take on these issues despite the amount of vitriol from both sides.

~~~
nxsynonym
As frustrating as these topics can be, I think it's much better to have the
discussions then to just shut things down a-la-China.

My fear is that this particular case could set a precedence of the "pipe
lines" controlling the contents that are passed through. If we allow this to
happen in this case, how long until the other bigger pipe lines are allowed to
make similar decisions? Is it a slippery slope that leads to Time Warner,
Verizon, or AT&T to control what content is allowed to passed through their
cell/data networks?

I don't know what the correct course of action is, I just hope that we will
continue to debate and weigh options and not turn a blind eye to this kind of
thing.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Is it a slippery slope that leads to Time Warner, Verizon, or AT&T to control
what content is allowed to passed through their cell/data networks?

It's not a slippery slope. It's rock bottom. Those companies already proposed
exactly that sort of thing, a long time ago. They proposed it with copyright
enforcement, and they proposed it when they fought against Net Neutrality and
common-carrier rules.

They want to control what goes through their pipes. They do not want to be a
dumb pipe, they want to rent-seek, they want to play highway robber of the
information superhighway. They've told us that. They are proud of that. They
believe that is good business.

The question is whether we let ourselves hear it.

------
Jerry2
Google is the most terrifying company today. De-google yourselves as much as
you can, folks. This company cannot be trusted.

I know this post will get flagged and deleted because so many google employees
post here and flag everything. But it must be said. Do not trust Google.

~~~
psyc
I'll back you on this opinion. I was a huge fan of early Google (98-04). They
seemed like a noble, cute, altruistic steward of the Internet, and they did a
lot of good. IMO we have to acknowledge that things have changed. The factors
that made them succeed wildly, allowed them to grow into a profoundly self-
interested, monopolistic behemoth with entirely too much power. They no longer
even _appear_ well-intentioned, and we ought to update our expectations
accordingly.

~~~
DINKDINK
I'll add another point. Even if you believe, today, that Google is good/noble,
it's still best for the market to promote competition. If you allow too much
power to concentrate into an oligopoly, the cost to capture the market drops
to a level where coercive actors have the capability to do so.

------
james1071
The problem is as follows: a small number of private companies have huge power
over the internet.

~~~
RickJWagner
Yes, I agree.

------
mi100hael
Somewhat relevant: Twitter also just suspended the account of the White House
Communications Director, Hope Hicks.

I'd love to see an org like 18F start providing federated FOSS platforms for
govt communication like GNU Social.

~~~
davesque
That seems to be the result of a targeted mass-reporting instigated by a group
of radical leftists. I wonder if Twitter wouldn't reinstate her account once
they realize what happened.

~~~
zaroth
Would like to see everyone who flagged Hope have their own account terminated
for violating ToS. But will never happen.

------
qq66
Interesting to see Matthew Prince (Cloudflare CEO) basically _begging_ for
regulation of his own business. I think that he wants to be legally forced to
serve everyone so that he doesn't have to be accountable to Twitter hordes for
doing so, he can just say that it's the law.

------
james1071
The problem is that the US government is able to get private companies to do
its bidding without being liable to scrutiny from politicans our the courts.

------
gyardley
Slippery slope arguments like the one in the article are so tiresome. It's
perfectly possible to deny service to Nazis without it snowballing into a
problem for the rest of society. After all, plenty of nations have had anti-
Nazi laws on the books for generations, and they continue to function just
fine for the 99.9999% of society that doesn't want to murder me for my
religion.

~~~
x220
But this is the age where everyone you don't like is a Nazi

~~~
gyardley
Differentiating hyperbole from actual Nazis is pretty trivial.

------
dispo001
The success of censorship is measured in how much you don't know about its
topics.

------
tim333
Seems pretty un-terrifying to me. If you want to read the Stormer, google it,
click on the wikipedia page and go to the .onion link with Tor Browser.
Nothing's really censored these days.

------
flowctrl
Hate speech is a special category of speech, and is treated as such in the
legal systems of many countries
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech)).
It has and does lead to violence toward the groups to which the hate speech is
directed. The legal system in the USA fails to acknowledge this fact, and one
of the consequences is racial violence.

Cloudflare, ISPs, and other companies or non-governmental entities should not
be obligated to enable or allow hate speech via the services that they
provide. Haters should have to bear the full cost and social consequences of
propagating their message.

~~~
MSDOStoevsky
As is evidential within that wikipedia links's first paragraph, there are
different definitions of "hate speech," and its difficult to properly
regulate. Above that, the US has a long tradition of upholding the liberal
values of philosophers John Locke, and John Stuart Mill. And the latter even
argues that it is unethical to limit things considered as hate speech. Its not
necessarily a failing, it is by design.

------
HumbleGamer
I was under the impression that CloudFlare removed them not due to their
content, but due to the site beginning to act as if CloudFlare was a
collaborator or in support of them. If that was the case, it only seems
logical they would want to distance themselves from that site and the ongoing
drama. We also arent equating the response of their customers. Didn't
Godaddy's response generate from a Tweet to them about it? Trust and believe,
support tickets were sent to registrars asking for a clear stance on this.

------
SirHound
My main concern with the web is its mutability. If we had a protocol that
considered changes versions, we'd be creating a much saner store of
information for future generations.

~~~
walterstucco
Git+static web sites

It's been my idea for years now

Please don't steal it

~~~
ben_w
I think github already has…

~~~
walterstucco
And Gitlab too

The interest around the idea of immutable web is growing

But it's still an hard tool to manage for regular people

Now we only need a good backend for it

------
intopieces
If a company has the fiduciary duty to make money for its shareholders, can it
simultaneously be forced to allow content on its servers that risks its
ability to earn profit? These companies are happy to take anyone’s money until
the glare of bad PR starts to take money from their pockets.

It seems like this kind of “censorship” is exactly the kind the freedom-loving
West is looking for. Market-based.

------
iotku
There's a lot of arguments under the claim that because you are being censored
my a private company rather than the government that you don't have the right
to complain about it.

After all, they're private businesses they can do whatever they want, at least
I'm not being oppressed by the government!

First of all, there's actually a notable connection between many of these
large companies and the US government (or other governments) so they idea that
they hold no responsibility in regards to free speech ends up a bit weaker.
They're operating under the grace of the government they're under, if the
government wants to shut them down it's bad news for them, so they generally
want to cooperate and comply with government orders. While they're not being
directly operated by the government, they do have to keep them happy.

Secondly, there's pretty much no offline public meeting place left to share
ideas, if you get blacklisted from the Internet you have significantly less
ability to express your ideas or opinions to be debated, debunked, or proven.
What do you have left? Shouting in the middle of Starbucks on a busy
afternoon? You're banned on social media, you can't operate your own website
without being blasted off of the Internet and even if you did have valid
claims nobody would be able to hear them. As a result your ability to exercise
your speech has been dramatically diminished, while people you disagree with
retain all of their rights because they have "the right ideas".

It's not hard to agree that neo-nazi ideas are unacceptable, inflammatory, and
against my ideals and the majority of others, but it's not only their rights
that are at risk. If the tables were turned and our idea's of what's right and
wrong, moral, and otherwise acceptable were in the minority of opinion people
would be extremely concerned about the right of arbitrary companies being able
to restrict our ideas.

Ultimately we hope the best ideas can win out, but that's not possible if no
alternative ideas are allowed to form. While the current problems may be from
a quite arguably minuscule amount of people that are pretty disagreeable
today, there's no telling what the future will bring in regards to new ideas
which may shake up current social norms. What you use to hurt people you
disagree with today, may be used against you tomorrow.

Finally, you can just ignore people and things you don't like. It's not a hard
thing to do without censoring someone/something so hard that they get a
platform under the reasoning that they're being censored by evil companies or
governments. There was nothing forcing me to go to a website that I didn't
want to go to, the majority of the sites that got censored would just be
ignored or forgotten by the majority of people. Nobody would be talking about
these neo-nazi sites outside of a small fringe group of people if it wasn't
for efforts to erase them from the Internet for having "the wrong ideas",
there's always going to be people looking to get attention and the only way to
battle that is to not give them the attention they seek.

People have the right to say things that are incorrect, disgusting, immoral,
or otherwise wrong. I have the right to ignore those people. Censorship is not
ignoring them, it's acknowledging them to the point of an extreme which you
then have to justify with some moral grandstanding about how you saved the
world from a problem they weren't having.

------
briholt
ITT Nazi hysteria. The only thing between us and the Fourth Reich is Twitter
and an intrepid band of internet commenters.

