Comment by toomuchtodo
9 years ago
Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky.
The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways.
Edit: I was proud of Cloudflare not turning them off after their domain was deregistered. Now, so disappointed. Freedom of speech is rarely the speech we agree with. Or even speech we find palatable.
> Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky.
When the internet is no longer privatized and is guaranteed as a public service by law, then this argument will have a leg to stand on.
We've taken it for granted for a long time that the folks at the top of the data food chain are benevolent despots. This is a belief that is ultimately not rational.
Maintaining an internet made of actors who are ultimately private corporations providing a service enables these decisions.
The thing is, I suspect if we made the internet a public service in each country, then its speech laws would actually be substantially more restrictive than what CF, Google and others are doing.
Case in point:
> The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways.
Yeah. Although sideways? Let's not forget that an horrific act of fatal violence branded as domestic terrorism that was specifically targeted at suppressing free speech to further a regime of racially motivated violence and hate. Daily Stormer put up 2 distinct articles arguing this was okay. They then defamed a private organization by claiming they too supported that vile sentiment.
I mean, don't get me wrong. DDoS gangs are extortionists. But at the end of the day money is just money. Human rights are fundamental.
I'm cringing at the cognitive dissonance. Every major silicon valley tech company helps China oppress it citizens on an unparalleled scale to allow them to continue to operate in the country, but one "terrorist attack" (unplanned murder with a vehicle, a hate crime) occurs in a state in the US and suddenly the gloves are off.
Edit: This country isn't getting fixed without empathy, understanding, and compromise on a national scale. Without that, we're all just yelling how lovely the moral high ground is when we're all wallowing in the mud.
We might agree on a few points but trying to clarify that the murder wasn't a terrorist attack, that it was just "unplanned murder with a vehicle", makes me want to re-examine my opinions on the points where we agree.
The murderer may not have woken up that morning and pulled out a binder full of detailed notes on vehicular murder from under his bed, but he did not accidentally drive into that crowd of people. When he got into the car and plowed into that group, he did so because he stopped regarding them as fellow human beings, because he disagreed with their opinions on some issues, and because he hated them.
It was an act of terrorism, identical in purpose and outcome to other acts of terrorism in the UK.
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I'm sorry, is it empathy to agree with folks that, "yes" it is okay to kill? Should we not call that act of violence and act of violence?
This seems to me like a category error that you're making here.
It's possible to be upset about treatment of citizens in China but also strongly disagree with racially motivated violence in the United States. People walking around with torches chanting blood and soil art literal, not figurative, Nazis. They have a very clear agenda. That agenda claimed a life and injured many others. Daily Stormer then supported it. This doesn't seem like a very grey zone to me.
I'm also not entirely sure that I agree with your characterization of the Chinese government has a fascist government. There are degrees of Badness in the world.
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> but one "terrorist attack" (unplanned murder with a vehicle, a hate crime) occurs in a state in the US and suddenly the gloves are off.
There's no "unplanned murder". Intent, and (depending on jurisdiction) premeditation are requirements for a murder charge.
Terrorism is defined as "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims".
So we have three requirements:
- "unlawful": Intentionally driving a car into a crowd is obviously unlawful
- "violence": yes, equally obvious
- "in the pursuit of political aims": He was a participant in a white supremacist march, and drove into a group of people opposing his politics.
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> but one "terrorist attack" (unplanned murder with a vehicle) occurs in a state in the US and suddenly the gloves are off.
> According to the Government Accountability Office of the United States, 73% of violent extremist incidents that resulted in deaths since September 12, 2001 were caused by right wing extremists groups.[41][42]
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>unplanned murder with a vehicle
Hold up here.
Substantiate your claim, where does it come from, how do you quantify it?
On it's face you seem to be agreeing with the Nazis that he just 'accidentally' gained ramming speed into the demonstrators his group was attacking earlier.
You wouldn't be doing that would you?
> This country isn't getting fixed without empathy, understanding, and compromise on a national scale
They are nazis. We do not compromise with nazis. The only understanding necessary is that they are nazis.
How about refusing to take down ISIS? They stuff they say is much worse and much more violent than anything that recently happened in US.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-opisis-cloudflare-refuses...
"Individuals have decided that there is content they disagree with but the right way to deal with this is to follow the established law enforcement procedures. There is no society on Earth that tolerates mob rule because the mob is fickle," Prince said.
Evidently the line that was crossed here was defaming Cloudflare itself?
I tend to agree with CF that they're a bad place to invest with censor power, but I also tend to agree that if you defame a company you do business with you shouldn't be surprised if they decline further business with you.
> They then defamed a private organization by claiming they too supported that vile sentiment.
This for me is the only real defense for taking them down.
> When the internet is no longer privatized and is guaranteed as a public service by law, then this argument will have a leg to stand on.
Fine, lets talk about that then.
As I said though, I don't think this ends up getting what a small segment of people want.
Governments these days aren't terribly friendly to fascism as a protected idea set.
> Freedom of speech is rarely the speech we agree with.
Speech that the majority agrees with has no need to be protected. Even North Korea will let you agree as much as you want with the party line.
> The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways.
Yes people whose namesake is derived from a group of people that committed genocide is where I draw my line. Do you even hear yourself right now? What kind of mental gymnastics did you have to perform to equate internet vandalism and theft to hate groups who call for a return to Nazi practices?
people whose namesake is derived from a group of people that committed genocide is where I draw my line
Jacobinmag has no trouble with its host.
Ditto "The Young Turks"
History is written by the winners.
And there is controversy insofar as whether they truly committed a genocide with many scholars saying they didn't. There is no controversy with regard to Nazis. If you did 10 minutes of research you could find as much.
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That's quite the stretch to say the Jacobins committed "genocide".
> Jacobinmag has no trouble with its host.
Neither the various groups calling themselves "Young Turks". It's like historical atrocities have an expiration date, after which they lose any power to scandalise.
> Yes people whose namesake is derived from a group of people that committed genocide is where I draw my line
Man, then you'd have to include all the communists, including Mao's party (that's still in power in China).
Brown guy here in case you feel like calling me a Nazi as well
"The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways."
Are you implying that The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are worse than actual, literal Nazis? Because that's the only way I can see to read it, but that can't possibly be what you meant.
I'm saying Cloudflare has made a decision which criminal conduct they're willing to allow, which is dramatically different then "we turn off no one".
And why is it a surprise that media pirates or gangs weren't enough to change their minds, but Nazis are?
Your phrasing implies that if they're willing to kick out Nazis, they should be willing to kick out media pirates. That's bizarre!
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Yeah, I guess they draw the line at "people who actually want to kill other people." I don't know you but I think it's a pretty solid line.
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The Pirate Bay is fine. DDOS gangs however? I would argue that they are worse than people who express a fascist ideology online.
Please do. I'd like to see it.
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What about being upfront about a lack of principles and also marketing a the company as critical internet infrastructure?
I've pretty much reached the point where when someone vehemently declares their adherence to a principle I decide they probably haven't thought about it a lot.
Even in the US where there is a strong, fundamental legal protection of speech, it can't be said to be a principle. There's all sorts of places where it is compromised.
> Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky.
"Icky"? They provoked this response by using CloudFlare's name in their cause. What would be the appropriate response?
Maybe a press release saying "Hey, we're not nazis, but we also have this policy that says we won't shut off service to people with whom we disagree politically" would have done the trick?
You think appealing to principles and fairness is enough to quell the mob mentality that's consumed America the past few days? Have you not been watching/reading the news? I've been learning all week that Trump and everyone who voted for Trump is no different than a Nazi.
>Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky.
Don't use critical internet infrastructure to wage a campaign of hate and to organize rallies that ultimately culminate in a terrorist ramming attack against unarmed demonstrators?
>The worlds gone sideways.
There was a torchlit rally where people shouted "Jews will not replace us" and "Heil Trump." One of those in attendance was Matthew Heimbach, a white nationalist leader who previously assaulted someone at a Trump rally[1]. Heimbach has urged violence before and cheered stabbings[2] by his fellow Nazis as well.
Part of Trump's base is engaging is white nationalist violence in the open. I agree, the world has gone sideways.
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-...
[2] http://archive.is/ZBOOa
Cloudfare used to market itself not too long ago ago as an entity that didn't censor speech. I guess things have changed.
“A website is speech. It is not a bomb,” Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a 2013 blog post defending his company’s stance. “There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/service-provider-boots-ha...
Inciting violence has never been a protected form of speech.
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Yeah, if you don't see the difference between a Nazi website and Pirate Bay you have some serious problems.
Freedom of speech does not cover incitement nor hate speech.
> nor hate speech
better tell the Supreme Court
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
In the US, "hate speech" is not a recognized category of speech and therefore protected, and even incitement has to meet a high bar, including immediacy.
Hate speech is a fake category, recently invented (in the historical time scope of US speech debate) as a means to instigate tighter speech controls by the government. The definition of hate speech is entirely arbitrary, you'll notice it has approximately as many definitions as there are people discussing it. That's by design, it's meant to have any definition desired at any time, to be of maximum use in destroying freedom of speech in the US. The effort is succeeding and accelerating rapidly. Freedom of speech in the US has less than a decade left, the vise grip will start with things that are very hard to defend, and move down the ladder often varying by who is in power.
By the time speech is brought under tighter government regulation, the people pushing for 'hate speech' controls today will be terrified as they watch what a worse version of Trump does with the new power (a serious theocrat for example). That outcome is inevitable, it's what happens every time people don't think through the consequences of handing massive new powers to a very aggressive government.
The Pirate Bay and Lizard Squad aren't an existential threat to our society. Neither is ISIS. Fascism and white supremacy is.
That's just hyperbolic. An ideology that has as few individuals as white supremacy does is hardly an existential crisis. Unless, of course, there is reason to believe more people will be pushed to white supremacy in the future, which is proposterous. For what reason would more and more people be pushed to extreme ends of identity politics? Truly a mystery.
Let's say you're right.
I'd think that isolating this group is a poor strategy.
Look at terrorist camps in Pakistan where children are indoctrinated from a young age with radical ideas.
Is the solution here to build a wall or to improve education and spread new ideas?
The truth is that you can never build a high enough wall.
"We often meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it."
who said it had to be either or. It can be both.
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So you think we should be debating the nazis about whether or not we should consider genocide?
The problem is that there aren't two sides here. Even engaging, at all, legitimizes the notion that this type of idea is up for debate. It's not.
We can try to stem the flow of people into radicalization and extremism. Guess how that's done? By shifting the window of acceptable rhetoric--ie, ignoring their offered ideas and debate--until it's very clearly not within social bounds to be a nazi. And we're trying to do that.
But to engage with the nazis themselves, no. We need to make it such that espousing those ideas--visibly being a neonazi, running hate sites like the daily stormer--means being lonely, isolated, and powerless. And by showing that when nazis try to pry their way in, they will be hurt, there will be violence, and nobody will be sympathetic. Make it so nobody will join them, ever. and we do that by stamping out their propaganda, by not allowing a single resource to be used by them.
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