> It seems like most of the outrageous incitement to violence people have posted on 8chan would be illegal under Brandenburg v. Ohio
And yet, no one wants to police that. So... Cloudflare did it themselves.
I mean, look, I get the principled point you're making, but it's on really shaky ground. Either the conduct on that site was garbage that should be removed or it wasn't. And if it was... well, good riddance.
After the third (third!) mass murder advertised on the site, I think the time for principled and careful consideration has passed. Shut the garbage down, then we'll figure out if there's a better way to police this stuff going forward.
Matthew Prince could have just said "per our terms of service we don't provide services for websites that violate US law and 8chan allows posts that in our opinion incite imminent lawless action, therefore we're terminating their account". Instead he posted this confused essay that clearly shows he understands neither 8chan nor the relevant law, instead making up weird terms and making it entirely vague what their policy will be for terminating accounts in the future.
OK, so 8chan (edit: sorry, should have written "Cloudflare") could have handled this better according to your personal sense of justice or aesthetics or whatever. And... 20 people are dead in El Paso.
It's like we're not even talking about the same thing here. I just don't get your thought process, sorry. You agree that this incitement and radicalization shouldn't have had a forum, I think.
You just... would rather talk about the mechanism by which the forum access was removed than the incitement and radicalization? That's really the hill you're taking your stand on?
Cloudflare is the gateway to 20% of the internet. Their CEO is harping on a vague term he calls "Rule of Law" as he capriciously and personally terminates a customer's account, demonstrating lack of knowledge of key facts in the process. That was my main topic. Reducing radicalization is obviously important but this action isn't really going to help much there anyway.
> he capriciously and personally terminates a customer's account
Oh please, he gave them two (2) (fucking TWO!) mass murders of leniency before he pulled the plug on their CDN access. This was literally a three strikes policy for hate crime shooting sprees, and it's still "capricious" in your eyes? In your opinion, what should the death toll be before a CDN provider can use it as a justification for terminating service?
People use twitter all the time to announce crimes, but everyone knows Twitter is a limited medium and tries to police that content.
But I agree with you. After enough incidents of users announcing mass shootings via the website, they should have set up rules and opened moderator/"janitor" applications to police the content. This is exactly what 4chan did when they grew media attention about bad things happening on their site. 8chan didn't do this because it goes against why the site was created in the first place.
And yet, no one wants to police that. So... Cloudflare did it themselves.
I mean, look, I get the principled point you're making, but it's on really shaky ground. Either the conduct on that site was garbage that should be removed or it wasn't. And if it was... well, good riddance.
After the third (third!) mass murder advertised on the site, I think the time for principled and careful consideration has passed. Shut the garbage down, then we'll figure out if there's a better way to police this stuff going forward.