Does this start to open CloudFlare up to legal issues for all the sites they host? I was under the impression they were more of an infrastructure/utility type service, and weren't liable for what took place, the same way gun manufacturers aren't liable for shootings or gas stations for car crashes.
But if now they're manually deciding who goes on their network and who doesn't, it seems like they're more responsible for everything else that's on it that they allow.
They're a private company and I support them choosing to do business with whoever they want, but I thought there was some sort of legal distinction if they were totally agnostic to what travels over their wires. Is that not the case?
You may be thinking of the "CDA 230" nonsense that will not die, where people claim that companies can't moderate their customers because they'd be liable for what they post.
The opposite is true. CDA 230 makes it clear that companies can moderate their content without becoming responsible for it.
I've never heard anyone claim that companies can't moderate content without becoming responsible for it. I've heard people say that if publishers show themselves to be capable of censoring, then the legal protections should be rescinded and they should decide if they are a platform or a publisher.
They've kicked people off their service before for content based reasons (eg, Daily Stormer), so this changes nothing. In any case:
> I thought there was some sort of legal distinction if they were totally agnostic to what travels over their wires. Is that not the case?
Not as far as I'm aware, no. The closest thing I can think of is if they were discriminating based on people's membership in a protected class, eg, if they announced a strict "no female clients" policy. This is clearly vastly different.
From a PR point of view, yes, every time they kick someone off for being bad, the more their failing to kick someone off will be seen as an implicit endorsement. But again, that ship has sailed.
They've also removed sex worker websites (including a forum that was just sex workers talking to each other), but for some reason no one complains about it.
You would think but apparently that doesn't apply anymore. You can control the content and still get the protections of a common carrier.
I just know I'll remember that cloudflare could pull the pulg on my site if one of my users posts something they don't like. I don't think I can recommend their service to any of clients because of that.
On the one hand, I like the idea of a free, open, and distributed internet, where no one company or government has the power to control what is distributed or discussed. As the great John Gilmore said, more aspirationally than accurately even then: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
On the other hand, we don't live in that world, and I don't know how well it would work in practice if we did. In this world, corporations and governments have enormous power. Cloudflare has made it clear that it will use that power in a fairly limited and restrained way, but it will use it as it sees fit.
Given that, this seems like a reasonable exercise of that power, and that's about the best we can hope for.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
As if "The Net" is a perfect, neutral, self-supporting entity that behaves with mathematic predictability rather than a projection of the chaotic human society on which its existence depends.
There is a widespread habit among futurists and technologists, perhaps arising from an appreciation for semantic economy and the anonymizing instinct to downplay associations between oneself and one's assertions, to use the passive voice when concocting reductive maxims of this sort.
I believe many of the moral blind spots of technocratic thinking are connected to the peculiar tendency - revealed by this passive voice framing habit - to overlook or outright dismiss the role that human inputs play in the complex systems futurists propose as solutions to human problems.
This is extra funny because in general anyone's internet access is trivially easy to take down with just a bunch of well sent and crafted routing control packets.
Internet was not designed in an adversarial model.
I don't think this statement is ignoring human input. It's extrapolating the result based on what we have observed about the interaction of the technology and the participating humans so far, viewing them as a single system. The passive voice is in recognition that an individual has almost no control over this system as a whole.
We lived in that world until media pushed mentally ill people to the front.
Look at the graphs reporting on racism and the surge of terror.
They basically revived nationalistic movements for clicks. Not wanting to reverse cause and effect but there is ample evide ce that the call for censorship massivle accelerated occurrences like shootings.
> Not wanting to reverse cause and effect but there is ample evide ce that the call for censorship massivle accelerated occurrences like shootings.
That is interesting, but just saying that it is so doesn't lend any credibility to the conclusion. If there is ample evidence, surely you should be able to present it?
>Given that, this seems like a reasonable exercise of that power, and that's about the best we can hope for.
Maybe, this event may become the precedent for all future hosting providers of unpopular opinions and where denial of service attacks become used against these hosting providers. Losing protection from anti-ddos service(s) becomes a process to eliminate the unpopular opinions being expressed.
I think this is dangerous recourse and even if there are competitor services like cloudfare. There are limits in services available and state actors can understand this problem. Then make it impossible for unpopular opinions to be expressed by either orchestrating what's needed to get the anti-ddos services to resent their customers or by other means.
Me personally, I'm alright with 8chan being deleted from the internet but I don't think that will even solve the problem. People with poor quality of life will continue being radicalized and do these acts of revenge in their eyes against a system that made them live in pain (somehow unjust to their views). I think we just need to improve quality of life for people equally without leaving some people left behind because of whatever circumstances. Otherwise people feel the need to leave with sometimes a couple bangs.
> Maybe, this event may become the precedent for all future hosting providers of unpopular opinions
Maybe it won't!
I feel like every time a controversial site gets shut down message boards are flooded with slippery slope arguments, but by and large I haven't seen it ever transpire.
This feels like a misunderstanding of the word freedom. Freedom in speech means that I can say what I want.
It does _not_ mean that a hosting company has to host it or that a CDN has to optimize it or that a search company has to rank it or that an ad-network has to monetize it. Each of those players is free to do what they think is best with their time, resources, etc.; which often includes thinking of what "the public" will think of them doing (or not doing) a thing.
Freedom does not mean that I have the "right" to be heard or the "right" to be amplified—either as much as the next person or at all.
The net, as in a network of computers, is quite close to free. Being a part of a society is not.
Ted Kaczynski was not arrested for writing manifestos beyond the pale of normative capitalism from a self-built cabin in Montana. He was arrested for sending bombs. The moment one person freely decides to harmfully affect others, those others can do something about it.
It seems much of the hand-wringing about freedom—when we talk about the internet and corporations—is that extremist speech does not have access to the same megaphone, the same means of monetization (and therefore survival). And that…well that's what living in a society is all about.
Are there bad parts about tech as we see it today? Absolutely! But it hardly seems like the problem is "not enough shit is allowed on the internet." I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.
No one has the "right" to have their speech amplified by 3rd parties. However, I don't think Cloudflare is in the business of providing amplification, they are in the business of providing access, which I think is closer to censorship than restricting amplification.
Access means people who WANT this content can get it easily. If you're making it harder for people who voluntarily choose to view 8chan content, you're restricting access.
Amplification means getting content in front of new eyeballs that wouldn't have otherwise seen it. E.g. if Facebook determined that given this user's age, race, zip-code, and favorite TV shows they might be in interested in this racist-meme sharing group that one of their friends joined, and then surfaces that content, that's amplification.
Should that mean a power company can cut off your power because they don't like what you've said?
Should that mean the water company can cut your water off for criticizing them?
Should that mean that a bank can refuse to give you a loan, because you said something bad, even if your credit is more than acceptable?
-------------------------------
Remember this: its the extremist that the law is made around. And soon enough, the law will be wrapped around non-extremists and used as let another tool of influence and control. The worst part is that anyone who speaks against this sort of law is seen to be defending the extremists, and is seen as a despicable person - yet the criticizers never stop to think about the average Joe and Jane.
When you use the tired, old "businesses can refuse to serve anybody they want" argument, understand that you are using the same arguments used in the past to refuse business to various races, creeds, orientations etc. that are now protected classes. That really ought to make you queasy and perhaps you should contemplate why.
By the way, some states are now recognizing that political affiliation needs to be a protected class as well: https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/political-aff.... It may not be in keeping with modern progressive thought but is certainly in the spirit of classical liberalism as well as an important first step in depolarizing the country.
It can be checked through lawsuit -- 8chan could conceivably sue Cloudflare under numerous doctrines, starting with breach of promise / breach of contract.
Another service provider could step up, as was the case with Daily Stormer, and is extensively commented upon in Prince's commentary, and provide services.
Regulatory or legal procedures could be established to specifically address this situation or provide redress.
Public outcry, market sanctions, or labour actions might be taken against providers who exercise such power in manners which are seen as morally reprehensible. For similar examples, see Google employees over Dragonfly or Edleman's emplyee backlash over a contract with a border-wall services company.
The question to be asked, the question we all have to ask, is whether or not individuals, groups, companies, or inchoate movements which are themselves dedicated to abolition or denial of civil order and rule of law are themselves deserving of its full protections in pursuing those ends. And a considerable case can be made for "no".
It's not unchecked- they are free to move to a different service. Why should Cloudflare be forced to keep all customers no matter what? That infringes on their rights as a private business to run their business as they see fit. There is no "freedom of platform" where your right to a platform is being infringed. You have no right to a platform.
Do we really need to talk about closing down a site where people encourage each other to kill other people (no matter who does it)? Why is it so important that there are no exceptions to freedom of speech?
Seriously, I just don’t get how the purity of the concept of freedom of speech can be so important that it beats common sense.
But the power that Cloudflare has, is being one of the only services to offer protection against modern DoS attacks. If you're a somewhat controversial site (be it right extremist or LGBTQ or sex worker forum) you are going to be suffering these attacks. And then Cloudflare is your only option, or suffer being DoS-ed off line constantly.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Cloudflare is the only serious option against heavy modern DoS attacks, right?
Cause if you can go somewhere else, then sure Cloudflare do it's thing. But if you can't ... then that is way too much power for a random company to hold the gate over any kind of controversial group, anywhere on the political, cultural or global spectrum. Because we really needed another US corporation with runaway power, that'll balance things.
Cloudflare is committing itself to do as they are told by the governments, in the spirit of upholding the law [0] on govts' behalf (despite under no obligation to do so), if they deem fit.
Whether this makes them reasonable, time will tell. Full marks to Cloudflare for so eloquently addressing this and covering themselves with as much grace as they could muster. If one reads between the lines, censorship is coming. This isn't different from what jgrahamc said a few months back in the news [1].
Signals a new era for Cloudflare, going from protector to arbitrator [2], for better or for worse.
[0] for instance, it was and still is a crime to be a minority in some countries.
"the speed with which tech cos change after a bad PR cycle seems like solid proof that none of this is abt principles but abt trying to keep from making hard choices as long as possible. earlier today they argued that keeping 8chan within its network is a “moral obligation”"
This always has been and always will be about publicity. 8ch started getting mentioned on national television, and there started to be questions directed at cloudflare. Reddit used to happily host discriminatory, violent communities, and only banned them once people started paying attention and companies became afraid to advertise on reddit because of its perceived connections to hate by the public. The message to hate communities is to lay low and not get noticed by the media.
To the downvoters: speech cannot be violent, by definition. Using your own private definition of a word—in this case, violence—without making an explicit disclaimer is inherently deceitful.
Cloudflare in the past was a staunch defender of free speech when people tried to get them to take down a website that was an outlet for pro-ISIS propaganda (I think the quote from the CEO was "A website is speech. It is not a bomb").
When they stopped hosting the neo-Nazi website they mentioned in the link, they made a big deal about how it was a one-off decision and they'll never again again stop serving a website because of its content. Clearly they've changed their minds about that.
When I was younger I thought I was a few speech absolutist. Then I went to where was free speech was absolute and saw what was discussed. Now I favor moderation.
> Then I went to where was free speech was absolute and saw what was discussed.
That suffers from a selection effect. Since not many sites prioritize free speech and only allow things within some narrower region of the overton window to be discussed it follows that the more extreme positions get pushed to sites that allow more.
If, hypothetically, every site were tolerant then you wouldn't have that association.
Also note that even 8chan is still moderated, each sub-board has its own rules and there also are global rules. What it really enables is a diversity of rules, set by each sub-community.
What people seem to want is for sub-communities not to be allowed to exist even though they're not illegal. And that seems pretty dangerous.
I disagree: Free speech absolutism will still involve community sorting.
In the long-term, without moderation and community standards, the bad drives out the good. If you work in a place with an absolute asshole, and nothing is being done to deal with this person, you're more likely to quietly leave for greener pastures. Meanwhile other assholes might find a kindred spirit, and join up. Repeat these interactions for a while, and you're left with a community of assholes and a toxic culture.
If, hypothetically, every site were tolerant then you wouldn't have that association.
Sure, you'd just have extreme content widely distributed, but it would still cluster within sites. Birds of a feather flock together, as the saying goes.
>When I was younger I thought I was a few speech absolutist. Then I went to where was free speech was absolute and saw what was discussed. Now I favor moderation.
How do you determine what speech is "good" and what speech is "bad"? I feel like there is no absolute way to determine this. (I am being genuine in asking, I want to know what caused this change and how you see "free speech")
All speech is good in my opinion. Some actions are bad. 8chan is supporting these actions, they've crossed the line.
> How do you determine what speech is "good" and what speech is "bad"?
Ultimately the courts determine which speech is "good" or "bad" by interpreting the law, but all property owners can determine what speech is permitted on their property (like what cloudflare is doing).
I accept some limits on free speech. I think you shouldn't be able to start a panic without cause (yelling fire in a crowded theater). I think conspiracy is a crime. I think threats are a crime. I support the idea of copyright laws even if I think our current system is bad.
From an internet freedom standpoint I think this signals we have an over dependence on cloudflare, not that we have a free speech problem.
>How do you determine what speech is "good" and what speech is "bad"?
Speech becomes bad when it infringes on the rights of another group or individual. Where that specific line is drawn does vary, but the underlying principle is the same and one that seemingly everyone agrees with. The US happens to be near the absolute extreme to where this line is drawn.
Whether you think hate speech infringes on the rights of the targeted group is up for debate. People don't have an inherent right to not be offended (which is why I am against the few western countries that still have blasphemy laws). However, hate speech on sites like 8chan does often lead to speech that incites violence. There can be no debate that people have a right to safety. Speech that incites violence infringes on that right.
I also feel that there is no absolute way to determine what is good speech and what is bad speech, yet I also realize that the distinction exists.
Sometimes, there are clear markers. Supporting or promoting acts of violence is a poor fit for civil societies. The same can be said for other forms of harm. Yet I also view the use of speech to suppress speech as being a danger to civil societies since the intent is to discourage discourse.
Other cases are more ambiguous, mostly because I would like to live in a fairy tale world where facts and reason will win the day. This is land where others can say things that I find reprehensible and vice versa so that we can eventually arrive upon the truth. The freedom of speech is necessary in this case because we all have our preconceived notions, some of which will ultimately prove to be wrong. If the preconceived notions of individuals and societies are not challenged, it will be nearly impossible to arrive upon the truth.
The thing is that we don't live in that fairy tale world. The words of some people have more weight. That may be due to social status, connections, wealth, or other factors. Other people intentionally convey falsehoods in order to manipulate outcomes to reflect their motivations. People are also more likely to be swayed by emotion than reason, or to manipulate emotions to override reason.
Where does that leave us? I really don't know. Perhaps the freedom of speech should be regarded as an aspiration rather than as an absolute.
You're correct that there's no absolute way to determine what speech is good and bad. We can only muddle through, making value judgments. Some will be right, and some will be wrong, and hopefully we'll learn from the times we screw up.
I'd rather people have the courage to take a moral/ethical stance than to just not care about anything and ignore the negative impacts technology can have on society. If Cloudflare is wrong in this instance, or in any future instance, hopefully there will be enough backlash that they'll learn and walk it back. If they fail at learning, then we have to resort to government regulation, and hope that our governments are up to the task of doing the right thing.
At the end of the day, it's just people making decisions, all the way from the top, down to the bottom. We're all flawed and do the wrong thing sometimes, but my (perhaps naive) hope is that we're slowly converging on more right than wrong.
You're in favour of censorship. Moderation is keeping discussion civil and on-topic, which interestingly enough mostly happens by itself in 'absolute free speech' spaces.
What you support is the selective suppression of ideas that you don't like. Don't call it moderation. Call it by its name. Censorship.
Cloudflare isn't 'moderating' 8chan. It's deplatforming it and enacting censorship.
"Absolute free speech" is like anarchism. I've yet to meet someone who fully practices them both yet they will preach it and condemn others with their self-righteous hypocrisy. Would you want me to come up to your kid and cuss him out for no reason? Your mom? I wouldn't even have to use foul language to bother them. Any number of reasons I could really annoy you or your loved ones with free speech and in some cases really make them fear for their life, legal or not, especially if I was famous and had an internet army to "play" with them.
Free speech is the equivalent of "utopia". It doesn't exist because even the most ardent endorsers have shown kinks in their armor where they don't want people to use it against them at certain times and certain ways. You argue against the selective suppression of ideas yet you may reply to me and tell me this idea needs suppressed. Most people already see the kinks of hypocrisy in it and have long realized it, like all other freedoms, are best used moderately so as not to infringe on the freedoms of others.
You supported free speech until you came into contact with groups that freely spoke about things you disagreed with, and now you are against free speech? This line of thought is incongruent, you could be a democrat attending republican rallies, a white supremacist attending an LGBT conference, or a POC attending a KKK rally and this sentiment would apply anywhere.
And at the end of day that's fine, because that opinion is protected under free speech
Of course it will be true on its face that "bad speech" will be disliked by the people claiming it is bad.
This phrase suggests that ALL speech that non-absolutists dislike will be categorized as harmful enough to society to be disallowed. That is a view nobody I've ever met holds.
I am not a free speech absolutist. I believe 99.9999% of speech I dislike, even speech I dislike intensely and believe is harmful to society, should still be allowed by society. That I think 0.00001% crosses a line where its harm outweighs the benefit of an zero-tolerance, non-negotiable absolute freedom of speech.
Throwing off a facile "oh, you'll just ban speech you don't like" is just jingoism. It's no different than saying people who favour less immigration are Nazis, or people who favour universal health care are communists.
CloudFlare is not a notice board. They are practically a utility. PG&E aren’t a government, and they can’t cut off your electricity because you’re an extremist.
What about ISPs? Should Cox, Comcast, Frontier, etc be liable for what flows through their pipes? Media companies say yes, but what do you do when your ISP says “bye” because you visit 4chan? Go to another ISP? In most areas of the US, you can’t
Cloudflare is a CDN. 8chan has free choice to pick another. It's not a common carrier or a public service in any way. It's just big, which isn't the same thing.
What happens if all other providers refuse you as well on same basis? What if Comcast refuse you to provide any internet service because they don't like your views on net neutrality?
Telecom companies like AT&T aren't providing "essential service". Being able to call/text someone is not a "essential service". Yet they are not supposed to ban people because they are merely the carrier.
They kinda are. DDoS protection is only viable at massive scale, but is table stakes for any website with content that someone out there might find objectionable.
And all that is addressed in the article. Specifically the paragraph that starts with "We do not take this decision lightly"
The point is that what 8chan is doing is egregious enough for them to step in and cease doing business with them. This isn't a slippery slope kind of thing.
They literally said that they would not kick someone off their platform anymore after they did it to The Daily Storm. Then they did to 8chan because enough people threw a hissy fit
There are two connected but distinct problems this thread touches on, freedom of speech and the actual utility nature of modern internet companies. Both are problems here and of course, the internet companies don't want to face either. Although the Cloudfare case is a bit different since it isn't quite a monopoly, yet.
That pseudointellectual appeal to "rule of law" was painful to read. If a website really engages in illegal activities, then the FBI gets a court order, raids its servers and that's the end of it.
What really happened: Cloudfare came under PR fire from the Washington Post, made a quick cost/benefit analysis and dropped 8Chan.
Tor's onion service will always there to provide hosting to the less popular ideas. The censorship-resistant network is there. Make sure to give it some love.
Last time I checked, people were discussing how to murder, exchanging nazi manifestos and conspiracy theories. I was looking for anarchist discussions but I actually ended up having these on reddit.
Don't get fooled by the current positioning of IT firms, it only depends on a fistful of people who will transmit their power to their biological offspring, no matter how fucked up they are.
The shooters in Poway, Christchurch and El Paso didn't post their screeds via Tor, and weren't radicalized on onion sites. They went to 8chan, because that was more easily understood, widely accessed, and had a larger community. It's the community that matters here, not the technology.
The issue isn't whether or not it's possible for two nutjobs to converse in some way, obviously they can. It's whether or not there is a group of nutjobs all feeding on each others' nutjobbery to the point where someone gets radicalized into dangerous behavior.
Those communities will just be driven underground, more than likely, to Tor sites and be much harder to track. At least once 4Chan and 8Chan are pushed out.
I am actually quite surprised how complicit the media is in not reporting what goes on Reddit. It's the one place on the "mainstream" internet I run into where you can see calls for political assassinations in default subs, sub-reddits devoted to theft, ethno-nationalism, terrorism, and all sorts of content that makes 4chan seem tame in comparison.
Then there is the huge cross-polination of moderators with radical ideas, who just happen to moderate radical sub-reddits and some prominent default/mainstream sub-reddits.
If advertisers only paid attention. If journalists only cared.
Reddit is an independent subsidiary of Condé Nast's parent company, Advance Publications. They are a large part of what is commonly referred to as "the media."
Just sayin.
Journalists do care but it's hard to get those stories the attention they deserve. To the general public a lot of these discussions seem like a tempest in a teacup, much as many people dismissed climate change and other problematic issues because they seemed too abstract.
What's missing is the v3 version of tor2web. Currently only v2 is supported. If v3 was supported, people on the clear internet would see more of those sites as well.
This isn't about silencing the bad actors, it's about muffling them enough that they don't contaminate daily discourse. Fine: let them be on onion boards. We know de-platforming works.
You think the situation improved in recent years? Seriously? That aside, I happily muffle the discourse of anyone in favor of deplatforming, since I have seen that used against completely innocent people from some cliques that think they own the place. But don't mind me.
Readit News
But if now they're manually deciding who goes on their network and who doesn't, it seems like they're more responsible for everything else that's on it that they allow.
They're a private company and I support them choosing to do business with whoever they want, but I thought there was some sort of legal distinction if they were totally agnostic to what travels over their wires. Is that not the case?
The opposite is true. CDA 230 makes it clear that companies can moderate their content without becoming responsible for it.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190507/16484342160/one-t...
Are you sure you heard the argument correctly?
> I thought there was some sort of legal distinction if they were totally agnostic to what travels over their wires. Is that not the case?
Not as far as I'm aware, no. The closest thing I can think of is if they were discriminating based on people's membership in a protected class, eg, if they announced a strict "no female clients" policy. This is clearly vastly different.
From a PR point of view, yes, every time they kick someone off for being bad, the more their failing to kick someone off will be seen as an implicit endorsement. But again, that ship has sailed.
For the record, gender isn't a protected class in a place of public accommodation and it's why clubs in Las Vegas can charge Men more than Women.
I just know I'll remember that cloudflare could pull the pulg on my site if one of my users posts something they don't like. I don't think I can recommend their service to any of clients because of that.
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On the other hand, we don't live in that world, and I don't know how well it would work in practice if we did. In this world, corporations and governments have enormous power. Cloudflare has made it clear that it will use that power in a fairly limited and restrained way, but it will use it as it sees fit.
Given that, this seems like a reasonable exercise of that power, and that's about the best we can hope for.
As if "The Net" is a perfect, neutral, self-supporting entity that behaves with mathematic predictability rather than a projection of the chaotic human society on which its existence depends.
There is a widespread habit among futurists and technologists, perhaps arising from an appreciation for semantic economy and the anonymizing instinct to downplay associations between oneself and one's assertions, to use the passive voice when concocting reductive maxims of this sort.
I believe many of the moral blind spots of technocratic thinking are connected to the peculiar tendency - revealed by this passive voice framing habit - to overlook or outright dismiss the role that human inputs play in the complex systems futurists propose as solutions to human problems.
Internet was not designed in an adversarial model.
Deleted Comment
Look at the graphs reporting on racism and the surge of terror.
They basically revived nationalistic movements for clicks. Not wanting to reverse cause and effect but there is ample evide ce that the call for censorship massivle accelerated occurrences like shootings.
That is interesting, but just saying that it is so doesn't lend any credibility to the conclusion. If there is ample evidence, surely you should be able to present it?
http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Maybe, this event may become the precedent for all future hosting providers of unpopular opinions and where denial of service attacks become used against these hosting providers. Losing protection from anti-ddos service(s) becomes a process to eliminate the unpopular opinions being expressed.
I think this is dangerous recourse and even if there are competitor services like cloudfare. There are limits in services available and state actors can understand this problem. Then make it impossible for unpopular opinions to be expressed by either orchestrating what's needed to get the anti-ddos services to resent their customers or by other means.
Me personally, I'm alright with 8chan being deleted from the internet but I don't think that will even solve the problem. People with poor quality of life will continue being radicalized and do these acts of revenge in their eyes against a system that made them live in pain (somehow unjust to their views). I think we just need to improve quality of life for people equally without leaving some people left behind because of whatever circumstances. Otherwise people feel the need to leave with sometimes a couple bangs.
Maybe it won't!
I feel like every time a controversial site gets shut down message boards are flooded with slippery slope arguments, but by and large I haven't seen it ever transpire.
It does _not_ mean that a hosting company has to host it or that a CDN has to optimize it or that a search company has to rank it or that an ad-network has to monetize it. Each of those players is free to do what they think is best with their time, resources, etc.; which often includes thinking of what "the public" will think of them doing (or not doing) a thing.
Freedom does not mean that I have the "right" to be heard or the "right" to be amplified—either as much as the next person or at all.
The net, as in a network of computers, is quite close to free. Being a part of a society is not. Ted Kaczynski was not arrested for writing manifestos beyond the pale of normative capitalism from a self-built cabin in Montana. He was arrested for sending bombs. The moment one person freely decides to harmfully affect others, those others can do something about it.
It seems much of the hand-wringing about freedom—when we talk about the internet and corporations—is that extremist speech does not have access to the same megaphone, the same means of monetization (and therefore survival). And that…well that's what living in a society is all about.
Are there bad parts about tech as we see it today? Absolutely! But it hardly seems like the problem is "not enough shit is allowed on the internet." I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.
Access means people who WANT this content can get it easily. If you're making it harder for people who voluntarily choose to view 8chan content, you're restricting access.
Amplification means getting content in front of new eyeballs that wouldn't have otherwise seen it. E.g. if Facebook determined that given this user's age, race, zip-code, and favorite TV shows they might be in interested in this racist-meme sharing group that one of their friends joined, and then surfaces that content, that's amplification.
Should that mean the water company can cut your water off for criticizing them?
Should that mean that a bank can refuse to give you a loan, because you said something bad, even if your credit is more than acceptable?
-------------------------------
Remember this: its the extremist that the law is made around. And soon enough, the law will be wrapped around non-extremists and used as let another tool of influence and control. The worst part is that anyone who speaks against this sort of law is seen to be defending the extremists, and is seen as a despicable person - yet the criticizers never stop to think about the average Joe and Jane.
By the way, some states are now recognizing that political affiliation needs to be a protected class as well: https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/political-aff.... It may not be in keeping with modern progressive thought but is certainly in the spirit of classical liberalism as well as an important first step in depolarizing the country.
It can be checked through lawsuit -- 8chan could conceivably sue Cloudflare under numerous doctrines, starting with breach of promise / breach of contract.
Another service provider could step up, as was the case with Daily Stormer, and is extensively commented upon in Prince's commentary, and provide services.
Regulatory or legal procedures could be established to specifically address this situation or provide redress.
Public outcry, market sanctions, or labour actions might be taken against providers who exercise such power in manners which are seen as morally reprehensible. For similar examples, see Google employees over Dragonfly or Edleman's emplyee backlash over a contract with a border-wall services company.
The question to be asked, the question we all have to ask, is whether or not individuals, groups, companies, or inchoate movements which are themselves dedicated to abolition or denial of civil order and rule of law are themselves deserving of its full protections in pursuing those ends. And a considerable case can be made for "no".
A government funded Reddit?
Which government would fund it? How would it be run?
You clearly are okay with it because you are posting on a forum with unchecked, active moderation.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Cloudflare is the only serious option against heavy modern DoS attacks, right?
Cause if you can go somewhere else, then sure Cloudflare do it's thing. But if you can't ... then that is way too much power for a random company to hold the gate over any kind of controversial group, anywhere on the political, cultural or global spectrum. Because we really needed another US corporation with runaway power, that'll balance things.
Whether this makes them reasonable, time will tell. Full marks to Cloudflare for so eloquently addressing this and covering themselves with as much grace as they could muster. If one reads between the lines, censorship is coming. This isn't different from what jgrahamc said a few months back in the news [1].
Signals a new era for Cloudflare, going from protector to arbitrator [2], for better or for worse.
[0] for instance, it was and still is a crime to be a minority in some countries.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19774347
[2] Not an expert, but it'd be nice if they allowed 30 to 90 day time period before termination, rather than doing it overnight?
They kicked off The Daily Stormer 2 years ago. I'm not sure anything changed today.
Do you have examples in mind?
I have no doubt that this is the case, but I can't think of any examples.
https://twitter.com/cwarzel/status/1158193462459506693
To the downvoters: speech cannot be violent, by definition. Using your own private definition of a word—in this case, violence—without making an explicit disclaimer is inherently deceitful.
Edit: Looks like CEO comment to the Guardian earlier today
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/04/mass-shoo...
When they stopped hosting the neo-Nazi website they mentioned in the link, they made a big deal about how it was a one-off decision and they'll never again again stop serving a website because of its content. Clearly they've changed their minds about that.
Dead Comment
That suffers from a selection effect. Since not many sites prioritize free speech and only allow things within some narrower region of the overton window to be discussed it follows that the more extreme positions get pushed to sites that allow more.
If, hypothetically, every site were tolerant then you wouldn't have that association.
Also note that even 8chan is still moderated, each sub-board has its own rules and there also are global rules. What it really enables is a diversity of rules, set by each sub-community. What people seem to want is for sub-communities not to be allowed to exist even though they're not illegal. And that seems pretty dangerous.
In the long-term, without moderation and community standards, the bad drives out the good. If you work in a place with an absolute asshole, and nothing is being done to deal with this person, you're more likely to quietly leave for greener pastures. Meanwhile other assholes might find a kindred spirit, and join up. Repeat these interactions for a while, and you're left with a community of assholes and a toxic culture.
Or are you just making a slippery-slope argument that this might be a precedent for some hypothetical future censorship of something worthwhile?
Sure, you'd just have extreme content widely distributed, but it would still cluster within sites. Birds of a feather flock together, as the saying goes.
How do you determine what speech is "good" and what speech is "bad"? I feel like there is no absolute way to determine this. (I am being genuine in asking, I want to know what caused this change and how you see "free speech")
All speech is good in my opinion. Some actions are bad. 8chan is supporting these actions, they've crossed the line.
Ultimately the courts determine which speech is "good" or "bad" by interpreting the law, but all property owners can determine what speech is permitted on their property (like what cloudflare is doing).
I accept some limits on free speech. I think you shouldn't be able to start a panic without cause (yelling fire in a crowded theater). I think conspiracy is a crime. I think threats are a crime. I support the idea of copyright laws even if I think our current system is bad.
From an internet freedom standpoint I think this signals we have an over dependence on cloudflare, not that we have a free speech problem.
Speech becomes bad when it infringes on the rights of another group or individual. Where that specific line is drawn does vary, but the underlying principle is the same and one that seemingly everyone agrees with. The US happens to be near the absolute extreme to where this line is drawn.
Whether you think hate speech infringes on the rights of the targeted group is up for debate. People don't have an inherent right to not be offended (which is why I am against the few western countries that still have blasphemy laws). However, hate speech on sites like 8chan does often lead to speech that incites violence. There can be no debate that people have a right to safety. Speech that incites violence infringes on that right.
It looks like you've just made a determination of what you consider is bad speech.
Sometimes, there are clear markers. Supporting or promoting acts of violence is a poor fit for civil societies. The same can be said for other forms of harm. Yet I also view the use of speech to suppress speech as being a danger to civil societies since the intent is to discourage discourse.
Other cases are more ambiguous, mostly because I would like to live in a fairy tale world where facts and reason will win the day. This is land where others can say things that I find reprehensible and vice versa so that we can eventually arrive upon the truth. The freedom of speech is necessary in this case because we all have our preconceived notions, some of which will ultimately prove to be wrong. If the preconceived notions of individuals and societies are not challenged, it will be nearly impossible to arrive upon the truth.
The thing is that we don't live in that fairy tale world. The words of some people have more weight. That may be due to social status, connections, wealth, or other factors. Other people intentionally convey falsehoods in order to manipulate outcomes to reflect their motivations. People are also more likely to be swayed by emotion than reason, or to manipulate emotions to override reason.
Where does that leave us? I really don't know. Perhaps the freedom of speech should be regarded as an aspiration rather than as an absolute.
I'd rather people have the courage to take a moral/ethical stance than to just not care about anything and ignore the negative impacts technology can have on society. If Cloudflare is wrong in this instance, or in any future instance, hopefully there will be enough backlash that they'll learn and walk it back. If they fail at learning, then we have to resort to government regulation, and hope that our governments are up to the task of doing the right thing.
At the end of the day, it's just people making decisions, all the way from the top, down to the bottom. We're all flawed and do the wrong thing sometimes, but my (perhaps naive) hope is that we're slowly converging on more right than wrong.
Dead Comment
You don’t know anything about the chans if you think 8chan collectively supports shootings.
What you support is the selective suppression of ideas that you don't like. Don't call it moderation. Call it by its name. Censorship.
Cloudflare isn't 'moderating' 8chan. It's deplatforming it and enacting censorship.
Free speech is the equivalent of "utopia". It doesn't exist because even the most ardent endorsers have shown kinks in their armor where they don't want people to use it against them at certain times and certain ways. You argue against the selective suppression of ideas yet you may reply to me and tell me this idea needs suppressed. Most people already see the kinks of hypocrisy in it and have long realized it, like all other freedoms, are best used moderately so as not to infringe on the freedoms of others.
The entire topic of this post -- 8chan -- is a fine counterexample to your idea there.
And at the end of day that's fine, because that opinion is protected under free speech
Everything else is up for debate. But this single exception I hope every human being can agree on.
This phrase suggests that ALL speech that non-absolutists dislike will be categorized as harmful enough to society to be disallowed. That is a view nobody I've ever met holds.
I am not a free speech absolutist. I believe 99.9999% of speech I dislike, even speech I dislike intensely and believe is harmful to society, should still be allowed by society. That I think 0.00001% crosses a line where its harm outweighs the benefit of an zero-tolerance, non-negotiable absolute freedom of speech.
Throwing off a facile "oh, you'll just ban speech you don't like" is just jingoism. It's no different than saying people who favour less immigration are Nazis, or people who favour universal health care are communists.
It avoids thinking by name-calling.
What about ISPs? Should Cox, Comcast, Frontier, etc be liable for what flows through their pipes? Media companies say yes, but what do you do when your ISP says “bye” because you visit 4chan? Go to another ISP? In most areas of the US, you can’t
LOL. They are not.
The point is that what 8chan is doing is egregious enough for them to step in and cease doing business with them. This isn't a slippery slope kind of thing.
Dead Comment
What really happened: Cloudfare came under PR fire from the Washington Post, made a quick cost/benefit analysis and dropped 8Chan.
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Last time I checked, people were discussing how to murder, exchanging nazi manifestos and conspiracy theories. I was looking for anarchist discussions but I actually ended up having these on reddit.
Don't get fooled by the current positioning of IT firms, it only depends on a fistful of people who will transmit their power to their biological offspring, no matter how fucked up they are.
The issue isn't whether or not it's possible for two nutjobs to converse in some way, obviously they can. It's whether or not there is a group of nutjobs all feeding on each others' nutjobbery to the point where someone gets radicalized into dangerous behavior.
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I am actually quite surprised how complicit the media is in not reporting what goes on Reddit. It's the one place on the "mainstream" internet I run into where you can see calls for political assassinations in default subs, sub-reddits devoted to theft, ethno-nationalism, terrorism, and all sorts of content that makes 4chan seem tame in comparison.
Then there is the huge cross-polination of moderators with radical ideas, who just happen to moderate radical sub-reddits and some prominent default/mainstream sub-reddits.
If advertisers only paid attention. If journalists only cared.
"They are no longer Cloudflare's problem, but they remain the Internet's problem."
These sites are breeding grounds for extremism, more and more I feel this free for all on the internet probably hasn't been a net positive.