Comment by jacquesm
9 years ago
I'm not a fan of cloudflare, I think the net would be better without them. That said I think this was the right call to make. Being the CEO of a company carries with it the weight of having the ultimate responsibility for each and every action of the company and to be an unwilling vehicle for the Neo Nazi movement is something that no company should want to aspire to.
Where I have a problem is that ostensibly this did not happen because the CEO grew a conscience and a backbone (how about those booter and malware sites then?), but because the Neo Nazi's claimed that Cloudflare was secretly in league with them. If that was the real reason then the whole thing sounds hollow and more as an attempt at damage control than a case of a moral line being crossed.
Anyway, from a strictly technical point of view Cloudflare is absolutely optional so no harm done, without the cloak of Cloudflare to protect it the Daily Stormer will have to go through life now as the Daily Naked Stormer.
> and to be an unwilling vehicle for the Neo Nazi movement is something that no company should want to aspire to.
Does that also apply to pornography? What about atheism? What about lgbt content?
The concerted effort by the pro-censorship crowd to exploit nazis to promote censorship is rather worrying.
The concerted effort to equate Neo Nazis to pornographers, atheists and lgbt people is rather worrying as well.
If you can't see the difference between those groups then the problem is on your end.
Hint: Neo Nazis wish to return to the good old days of 1939 or so where Jews and people of color are either dead, outcast, deported, enslaved or stuck in camps while white men rule the land as is their god given right.
So just in case it needs explaining: that's not the moral equivalent of pornographers, atheists or lgbt related material and I'm surprised that that needs spelling out.
Yeah, this whole "Nazi flags == rainbow flag" or "this is a slippery slope" thing the right-wing has been pushing is ludicrous. There's nothing controversial in saying that Nazi ideals are really fucked up. Porn and LGBT people don't kill other people, Nazis did and would do again if given the chance.
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I don't think grandparent was equating them, but rather pointing out that someone in a position of power could one day equate them. If the rule is going to be "your website only exists if one of a handful of powerful people don't veto its existence," then you have to worry that one of those powerful people would someday decide that LGBT advocacy turns his stomach in the same way that Daily Stormer pissed off Matthew Prince.
If, on the other hand, the rule is "your website exists as long as the courts don't decide otherwise," then both LGBT sites and Nazi sites are safer.
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> Hint: Neo Nazis wish to return to the good old days of 1939 or so where Jews and people of color are either dead, outcast, deported, enslaved or stuck in camps while white men rule the land as is their god given right.
Hint: In other words, neo-nazis have no shot right? So let the neo-nazis have their say.
People like you are so shortsighted that it is bizarre.
We have free speech so that neo-nazis CAN'T win. You start limiting free speech and that's why you have nazi germany.
As my jewish philosophy professor said, nazi germany happened because of censorship. That's why she adamantly supported neo-nazis, kkk, etc having marches and even giving speeches in colleges/forums/etc. And as she said, as long as the most offensive forms of speech are protected, then she knows everyone, including her free speech, is protected.
> The concerted effort to equate Neo Nazis to pornographers, atheists and lgbt people is rather worrying as well.
It's worrying if you don't understand what free speech is about.
The reason why I support free speech for neo-nazis isn't because I agree with them. It's because I don't agree with them.
It's not a matter of just censoring neo-nazis. It's a matter of setting precedence. Okay? If you say it's okay to censor one ideology or one form of speech, then you make a mockery of free speech and nobody has free speech.
If people who disagree with neo-nazis are in power and they censor neo-nazis, then how do we protect ourselves when people who hate porn or gays or atheists are in power? Hmmm? Have you thought about this or are you just going by "emotions"?
The reason why nazi germany happened is because germany had censorship laws. So when hitler won a small minority of votes and he took over the government, he could ban political parties and political speech. If germany had free speech and you couldn't silence the 80% of non-nazis voters, nazi germany could never have happened.
"Saying I support censorship because I find X offensive" is justification for saudis censoring atheists, chinese censoring pro-democracy groups and thais censoring anti-royalty speech.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15035308
Okay? So please take a course in philosophy and try to learn what is really at stake. Because if people like you were in charge in the 1950s, 1960s, etc, we never would have had lgbt movement or atheist movement or the civil rights movement. Because they all would have been censored because they were offensive.
Believe it or not, there was a time in america when lgbt, atheist and civil rights speech was deemed more offensive than nazi speech. Thank god people like you weren't in charge and thank god we had free speech rights so that lgbt, atheists and civil rights groups could speak and express their ideas.
And oddly enough, the pro-censorship people like you are more like nazis since the nazis loved censorship. If you truly are disgusted by nazis, then you should be disgusted by censorship.
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What about white nationalists or separatists? People who want a white ethnic country with restricted immigration. Are they outside our moral tolerance as well? AFAIU, a lot of these so-called Nazis are just white nationalists who want to assert their superiority, but not in a Hitler way.
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> The concerted effort by the pro-censorship crowd to exploit nazis to promote censorship is rather worrying.
This, right here, is a straw-man that I've seen repeated countless times. I am not pro-censorship, but I'm sure as hell not for forcing companies to provide services to Nazis and other scum.
There's a huge, gaping difference between those two things and I'd appreciate it if you stopped conflating them.
There's a huge, gaping difference between those two things
Is there? If you need companies to effectively publish on the internet, then those companies refusing to work with you means you can't publish. Do you consider that censorship?
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> Does that also apply to pornography?
Private internet services of many kinds prohibiting use for “adult” content much more broadly than pornography is routine, and has been for a long time.
But what's the end game? Do service providers have to morally support those who they provide service to? Because that's how things are looking. I wish we could just pretend these sites don't exist and stop giving them free publicity and advertisement. Trump is president because he's profitable to hate. Seems like we're repeating our mistakes. The only people who win by manufacturing outrage is the media.
> Do service providers have to morally support those who they provide service to? Because that's how things are looking.
No, but there are obvious limits on what companies would like to be seen to be associating with. Cloudflare is a lot more lenient than most in this respect, but that got interpreted as 'there is no line they will not cross'. That assumption seems to not have borne fruit.
I'm reminded of the 'Slashdot will not censor posts' outrage a number of years ago because, yes, Slashdot did have that power and used it once. Of course for the absolutists that once was the sign that the end was neigh, only that's not how it played out.
> I wish we could just pretend these sites don't exist and stop giving them free publicity and advertisement. Trump is president because he's profitable to hate. Seems like we're repeating our mistakes. The only people who win by manufacturing outrage is the media.
Very astute observation, and definitely a thing to remember when looking at media output.
> No, but there are obvious limits on what companies would like to be seen to be associating with.
This was a PR stunt. If anything CF should terminate the account and not publish the hate groups name to their blog (it's even embedded in the URL for SEO bonus points. WTF!!).
> Of course for the absolutists that once was the sign that the end was neigh, only that's not how it played out.
But that's exactly how it played out for Digg. Sometimes is pays to have a spine (sorry Kevin). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...
As time goes on the more I'm convinced the media is the enemy of the public. What's good for the news is not good for the people. Division is profitable. Fear earns clicks. Hate generates inbound links.
If 10 years ago a group of 1000 rallied for a stupid cause I'd never even hear about it. Now it's front and center going viral. Since I choose not to fill my brain with this garbage I'm "willfully ignorant". Somehow I don't see it that way.
> Do service providers have to morally support those who they provide service to?
Companies can be fined and executives imprisoned for say, selling weapons to terrorists. There's no magic hard line between "moral" / "amoral" in commerce; in a capitalist society consumption/sale are inherently moral concerns.