Malicious attack on Wikipedia – what we know and what we’re doing

Re:Malicious attack on Wikipedia – what we know and what we’... by the8472 on Saturday September 07, 2019 @03:49PM (#20906070)

Genocide has been and still is a political tool. It is extreme, but ultimately something that people consider and carry out as part of political processes, not a special category of its own. And realpolitik is to continue dealing with countries that practice genocide. Consider Burma or China.

Cloudflare simply has the luxury of choosing which politically disagreeable parties they do not want to associate with because they are insignificant customers.

Pretending that this is not due to differences in politics and moral judgment is semantic smoke and mirrors.

Anyway, the point is that they are not a neutral carrier/providers. Unlike banks or telecoms which are required by regulation to accept any legal business. CF styles itself as neutral infrastructure, until they decide they are not.

The risk of getting deplatformed due to someone's moral judgment is quite real, even for an entity such as Wikipedia. For example they were blocked in the UK because the Virgin Killer album cover landed it on a block list used by major ISP.

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Re:Malicious attack on Wikipedia – what we know and what we’... by wwright on Saturday September 07, 2019 @08:04PM (#20907570)

I didn’t say it wasn’t political, but it’s not just undesirable for immediate political reasons — it’s undesirable for nearly universally-agreed moral and ethical reasons. So implying it’s only inconvenient for politics is, in my opinion, misleading.

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Re:Malicious attack on Wikipedia – what we know and what we’... by the8472 on Sunday September 08, 2019 @06:49AM (#20909716)

The political tends to encompass or at least subsume the moral and ethical aspects, as I tried to allude to with the realpolitik aspect.

But again, this is just a tangent. The core argument is that it is best not to rely on providers that have the freedom to make political/moral decisions who they deal with because that freedom makes them susceptible to moral denial of service attacks. You are one moral outrage away from being deplatformed.

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Re:Malicious attack on Wikipedia – what we know and what we’... by wwright on Sunday September 08, 2019 @08:47AM (#20910234)

I can see that mentality, but what I’m saying is that, personally, if I become a Nazi, I think I should be deplatformed.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Malicious attack on Wikipedia – what we know and what we’... by whenchamenia on Sunday September 08, 2019 @10:37AM (#20910816)

Then who decides what is a Nazi? Deplatforming someone for their speech makes them one in my book. How far down do we go?

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