Yes, you're one tough maverick for repeating something stated only about 20x in just this thread.
But you're indeed quite brave to pretend not to have seen the 25 answers pointing out that it's also this CEO (and everyone else's) right not to participate in the spreading of hate speech and nazi propaganda.
Also:
"slippery slope" is not an argument, it's a fallacy. Observe: "now, they're only imprisoning the murderers. It's only a matter of time until they'll throw you in jail for walking funny"
> you are now -- in my opinion -- obligated to do so ...
Why? Does eating one apple pie obligate you to eat all the apple pie?
> ... unilaterally
As opposed to bilateral moderation?
> unilaterally
Happy now?
Did you actually want to discuss/argue with my comment or just criticize the way I worded it?
This was big when I was growing up too. KKK was always used as an example. No one liked what they had to say, but as Americans, we felt we were obligated to protect their ability to say it. You know, principles and all.
Their right to say it.
Their ability to say it is a different thing.
Their ability: do they have the tools they would like to have (and that others might own) to communicate effectively.
I think in the printing press example, people ended up stealing them to print. I'm not sure you can steal the internet.
Yes, because it prevents people from free using their own resources and those gained through mutually consensual trade to spread their ideas.
> The difference here is it isn't necessarily governments, but rather corporations that control access to the internet (printing press).
No, the difference is that nothing is being banned; people are choosing not to let other people use their digital “printing press”, which is no different than the NYT choosing not to print your opinion piece.
No one is preventing the Stormer from self-hosting. And there are a very large set of domain registrars; the fact that a handful have refused their business doesn't mean that they can't get a domain name (which is certainly a convenience that affects reach, but also not a necessity, to publishing via the internet.)
Oh, I totally agree, but the prescient is unsettling to me.
You may want to read this comment of mine I put in a thread that probably won't get seen much because it's not intellectually stimulating enough, or something: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032018
I'll add a quote from a White Rose leaflet:
> Do not hide your cowardice under the cloak of cleverness!
That's a bad thing for us overall because now it won't just be something the CEO finds offensive; rather, it will be anything that could, through any potential legalistic contortion, result in legal liability.
We should all be very concerned about these low-level infrastructure components like GoDaddy, Google DNS, and CloudFlare beginning to adopt a policy of content moderation.
I'm shocked that something as simple as "they're nazis" is actually being accepted by people here; it is pretty much the stock anti-speech argument that we've all rehearsed forever. Sad to see that many aren't living up to it now that the cards are on the table.
Domains should only be seized when the government issues a binding legal order, not when the registrar or CDN's CEO wakes up on the wrong side of the bed.
This is so ridiculous that it's hard to imagine it's not coordinated specifically to weaken/undermine any form of anti-establishment or politically incorrect speech online. These attacks on core infrastructure delivery components need to be denounced loudly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
However, this doesn't seem to indicate that such editorial activity can't have a legal effect in some areas. It is limited only to cases where the service provider would otherwise be implicated as the publisher/speaker instead of a neutral mechanism used in the delivery of others' publications and speech. There are many other relevant circumstances where such behavior creates at least a non-legal precedent (Not A Lawyer, so can't and don't want to get into the nitty-gritty) and expectation that CloudFlare will act in a specific manner that violates the content policy they claim to want to keep.
The simple fact is that even if the law unequivocally allowed such activity, that doesn't mean that Cloudflare hasn't set a standard of behavior that they will be expected to live up to, inside and outside of the coutroom. That's especially true in the case of a jury trial, but there are certainly no shortage of politically-aware judges who don't want to let their 15 minutes be wasted in falsely associating them as "pro-white-supremacist". And if Cloudflare is at all PR-sensitive, they are now in for a long, slow beating.
This is all a large can of worms that everyone should regret ever having opened. How hard would it have been to say "Sorry, that's not how DNS works" when some random person on Twitter said "You're supporting a white supremacist! Undo it!"?
IMO the evidence here indicates a coordinated takedown and censorship campaign by organized political forces, and this operation has undeniably been a resounding success for them. So much so that they have fundamentally undermined the core institutions of the internet itself, hardly realizing the sacrosanct barrier they've pierced.
And I know that the HN that recognizes this with near unanimity is lying around here somewhere. I'm just not sure why they're not showing up to these threads. Maybe the votes are being artificially manipulated? Maybe everyone has slowly earned themselves bans/account censures for touching a topic that the mods are sensitive about? Maybe employers are becoming extra vigilant about catching those who express heresy on HN in hopes of catching a Damore-esque figure before it becomes a national press story? I dunno. But this type of non-neutrality on the part of core online infrastructure providers should be a much bigger deal than it is.
I don't understand? Are you saying that lying would have been morally superior? Because, as we've just seen, that's exactly how DNS works.
As for the other legal consequences, I don't see how this changes anything. Did anybody ever doubt Cloudflare's technical ability to stop serving individual sites?
I also don't see how consistency can be an argument in any such case: Being consistently wrong doesn't seem like a strong excuse for being wrong.
I feel you're also operating from a view of the court system that is vastly more cynical than the courts deserve. This is, unfortunately, a point that I cannot adequately put into words. But if you ever have the time, maybe find some decision that interests you (or, actually, pick anything at random) and read the decision, or maybe watch the oral arguments. I often read both the majority and the dissenting opinion of cases, and come away agreeing with both of them! That should be impossible because they contradict each other, but even opinions I disagree with often have an undeniably forceful argument.
(I just thought of a good example, which is a transcript from the Waymo vs Uber lawsuit. You may be surprised to see the forceful stand the judge takes to make the proceedings open to the general public. Quote:
if you want all this stuff to be so secret,
you should be in arbitration. You shouldn't be
trying to do this in court and constantly [insisting
on closed procedures].
The public has a right to see what we do.
And I feel that so strongly. I am not --
the U.S. District Court is not a wholly owned
subsidiary of Quinn Emanuel or Morrison & Foerster
or these two big companies. We belong to the public.
With regard to your expectation of HN's opinion: I believe you're mostly just underestimating how dramatic many people consider the current political situation to be. This is somewhat beyond the usual partisan divide, as can be seen by the almost unanimous decision by CEOs (generally not suspected to secretly harbour leftwing believes) to quit their advisory roles, by the increasing willingness of republicans in congress to criticise their president, or even in the Fox News moderator's spontaneous reaction to Trump's press conference, calling it "disgusting" and "surreal".
Once you take it upon yourself to begin moderating and regulating content, you are now -- in my opinion -- obligated to do so consistently. Do you really want that responsibility?
My opinion may be unpopular, however. I'm one of those folks that believe that everyone, equally, deserves to be able to express their thoughts, beliefs, and beliefs regardless of whether I agree with them.
(Yes, you absolutely need to remove the bullet point now.)