Comment by mbrock
9 years ago
Let's say you own a café. The local political youth group "Club Hitler" submits a proposal to have their weekly meetups in your venue. You agree, and they host a number of meetups. They then begin to publicize your venue's support for the Nazi cause as part of their promotional materials.
At what point in this process do you think it would be been morally appropriate for you to cancel your service to this group?
There exist laws which were explicitly written to address that kind of specific situation. If someone communicate a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual person, business, product, or group, that someone can be charged under defamation laws.
Let say a local youth group submits a proposal to have their weekly meetups in your venue. They then begin to shoplift. What is the rational behavior to address this issue?
I would start by calling the police and report the crime. I could then start denying service to them (which casinos are known to do). But if I start to do general statements about any people which share identity, belief, political membership, or sexual orientation with the local youth group then I am likely stepping a bit to far into the realm of discrimination.
In a perfect world I think Cloudflare should have filed a police complaint in regard to the daily stormer and then canceled the account. Such decision would have nothing to do with regulating content, censorship, vigilante justice, or freedom of speech. It would just be a simple matter of a customer not obeying the law.
After I warn them that I will cancel the service if they don't stop falsely claiming I endorse the Nazi cause, and they ignore my warning.
Would it be an important matter of principle for you that you give them sufficient time to retract their claims, instead of terminating their service immediately?
Of course. Otherwise why even provide a service in the first place?