Perhaps the two of you are only disagreeing on what "liberal" means; it tends to mean something quite different in Europe than in the US :)

Looking in the dictionary, I see liberal as "willing to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from one's own", which is what I (as a European) had always thought -- what does it mean in America?

Politically left-wing.

Increasingly these days, it seems to be a term for anyone who doesn't give credence to the theory that global warming is a hoax made up by Satan so Barack Obama can marry his secret Kenyan gay lover.

It means "leftist" AFAIK

They said they're both European

I guess both are liberal in the US sense of term but are not agreeing about if they have to mandatory delete the contents or to mandatory do the reverse. :)

Sure, but Europeans are quite capable of using a term differently if they believe that's what their audience expects; and most people on HN are probably still USA-ian ;-)

Thats precisely the point ;).

"Shouldn't be allowed" is a bit strong. It is not unreasonable to remove questionable content when you are made aware of it; if only to protect the business from threat of legal action. It becomes policing when a website has to actively check up on its customers which places an unfair burden.

Exactly. If the post is "socially negative," then that interaction is between the two people having the interaction. They have to work it out between themselves and let other people make up their own minds based on what they see. If the playground/commons/social theatre gets terminated every time two people disagree, then we'll never be able to work out anything worthwhile, justice will be harmed.

Harassment is pressure and intimidation. Travis Collins is a prevaricator for fabricating the story that the author was following him online and harassing him. DO doesn't have the resources, wisdom or dissociated self-interest to be able to properly police things and will botch themselves up seriously if they try. They should learn from history instead of retreating into Cover Your Ass mode.

> DigitalOcean can cancel the contract once others found the blog post to be defamatory.

Well ... that's what's happening. It's not "policing content", it's holding up their side of the contract.

and their contract, it seems like, says that they can police content.

It's still policing content. As a customer I didn't expect that they would for anything short of illegal.

Their interests are not the same as yours. That particular clause allows them to require the removal of content that places them at legal risk.

"Policing" incorrectly applies that they are actively trawling the site and telling people what to write about. That is clearly not true.

I see this sort of non-argument on HN a lot. Why do you believe that just because someone has the right to do something, that changes its nature? I have the right in the US to walk down the street shouting racist slogans. If I did so, should I be immune from criticism because it's within my rights? Is one magically not-racist just because the law says racist behavior is legal?

No-one's saying you should be immune from criticism, surely? FWIW: yes, you should totally be able to say whatever you want, even if it's bigoted, flat-out wrong, outdated, whatever; as long as I'm free to say that it's dumb and bigoted, flat-out wrong, outdated, whatever ;)

I think you're perfectly within your rights to criticise Digital Ocean. And I am perfectly within my rights to argue about the nature of Digital Ocean's actions.

The others, to clarify, in that case being: a court.