Comment by Cyberdog
4 years ago
Both times, people organized a social media campaign to try to get CF to drop services for a site they disliked, and both times CF first refused in the interest of free speech, safe harbor, let law enforcement handle it, etc, then flipped like a switch and dropped their services when the mob didn't go away fast enough.
Now you can hate Stormfront's message (I do), and you can hate what people are allowed to say and do on Kiwi Farms, and in that light you can feel that CF's actions are just fine. But just be aware that if your site becomes the next pariah of the internet some way or some how, CF is prone to drop your services as well.
And it's their right to do so, of course, but the way they're saying stuff like "The policies we articulated last Wednesday remain our policies" and that this is a special case are rather ridiculous. How many more times will this happen before it stops being a particularly special case?
"Hate the message" is a huge oversimplification.
People don't want Stormfront gone for aesthetic reasons. They want Stormfront and similar sites gone because they encourage physical violence against certain peoples.
It is, IMO, a huge strawman to say that people just "don't like" these sites.
And it's a huge strawman to imply I said people just wanted SF gone for aesthetic reasons.
At any rate, if "hate the message" of SF is inappropriate, what would you suggest instead? I, and many other people, strongly disagree with the ideas that most people on SF advocate for. I think that "hate their message" works just fine there.
How about stop the violence and harassment?
It's not just a message or speech. It involves IRL stocking, harassment, and violence against people they target based on hate and discrimination.
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If encouraging violence against people is the standard you're on, then any website should be gone, including HN.
What you actually mean is that as long as its against people you personally dislike, then you're ok with that.
Exactly. You can go on Reddit right now and find calls for violence, extermination of various groups, etc etc etc, but you’ll never see cloudfare take action then.
Censorship always starts with the undesirables. It never ends there.
Generally in agreement with you here, but are you aware the specifics around why CF dropped services for Stormfront?
CF were holding the line until Stormfront's people claimed that CF were secretly supporters of Stormfront's ideology... which seems like a totally valid reason to drop their services.
Just as if you hired security guards and started being an abusive jerk to them every day, it seems like a reasonable decision for the security agency to drop their services.
I guess what makes it difficult in this case is that the amount of power CF has is so great that any use of that power is immediately troubling.
It's a bit like if pretty much all security guards were under the control of a single company and that company denied services to a person under threat, and in this analogy there's no government to fill the gap.
But there are alternatives, cloudflare isn’t the government, they don’t even have a monopoly.
How is this different from people complaining about facebook not hosting their content - take your stuff to some other private entity that wants to do business with you, these are not institutions which have any obligation or mission beyond making money - even if they like to make PR noises that may be misconstrued otherwise.
“Sir, this is a Wendy’s”
> But just be aware that if your site becomes the next pariah of the internet some way or some how, CF is prone to drop your services as well.
There's a dril tweet for everything.
https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312
>”wow, if they could do that to nazis they could do that to me (not a nazi)!”
Yes, that is literally the concern. Activists hurl around the Nazi label with reckless abandon, showing little to no restraint when foisting the label on people they disagree with. There is also a sentiment taking hold that not being enthusiastically anti-Nazi makes you a Nazi sympathizer.
So yes, people have some reasonable reservations about where this could go, without having any real Nazi sympathies.
”wow, if they could do that to heretics, they could do the same thing to me (not a heretic)!”
personally, i'd solve that by being enthusiastically anti-nazi, but if you can't muster up the strength to say nazis are bad, thats something you'll have to figure out on your own.
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This is a serious suggestion: if you are concerned about blanket accusations, it’s helpful to avoid blanket statements like “Activists hurl around the Nazi label…”
Some people do use that term with insufficient care. Some people use it carefully. Some people use it carefully but disagree with you about who it reasonably applies to.
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