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This is a bad analogy. Cloudflare is not inspecting individual packets for hate speech. They are refusing to do business with an organization that negatively

This is a bad analogy. Cloudflare is not inspecting individual packets for hate speech. They are refusing to do business with an organization that negatively affects their brand (The Daily Stormer). They should have the right to make that choice as a private entity. Funny you bring up Fedex: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/business/fedex-washington-redskins/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/business/fedex-washington-red...

jariel 6y ago
"They should have the right to make that choice as a private entity." No they should not. And the analogy works: if you're getting filtered on the basis of your content - at the packet level or not - then it's fundamentally against Net Neutrality. Wait until the PR team at Verizon decides they don't want to publish your content because you're too vocal about BLM. Or, they will only support you if you do support BLM, or something rubbish. And now your VPN, your server host, caching technology provider, Telco, wireless provider, Visa/Amex, Video-conf provider - it's completely absurd. FedEx won't ship 'PlanB' because it's a 'controversial' medicine? But they will in 3 states? USPS will ship condoms everywhere but not in Utah where the local Union forbids it? Alaska Big Oil gets their local VPN owners to ban Greentech related sites? Trump's buddies on the Board of AT&T get them to threaten anyone hosting 'fake news' about Trump? California Teachers Union Pension Fund presses Cloudflare to ban all hosting of anything related to law enforcement? And FYI nobody is acting 'morally' - they're scared executives just trying to do whatever to hush people up and continue making money - a system which hands arbitrary power to arbitrary groups. This is not what anyone wants. For services that are inherently 'content neutral' - the content should not be allowed to be a basis of discrimination. For Social Media it's different, as there is an inherent association between the platform and it's users, but not for Cloudflare, or AWS or Verizon, Gmail for example. There is no end to the insanity otherwise; we need basic, smart and clear regulation. Edit: I should add 'and that's just the US'. Imagine when a very vocal, organised group wants to ban Arabs living in what is commonly referred to as 'Palestine' from using the term 'Palestine'. Or Serbian authorities from hosting content using the term 'Kosovo' in any way that reflects its supposed 'autonomy'. Or Greek companies ganging up on Macedonia's usage of the term 'Macedonia'. Or Greens in Germany from banning pro-Nuclear energy content. There are at least a handful of Tweeters who would want those things. It gets infinitely messy, very quickly.
- kazagistar 6y ago
  There is clear regulation in many countries: nazi speech gets you thrown in jail, the rest is mostly fine. See njmerious european countries like Germany that aren't some dystopia hellscape. That reflects a lot of what happens voluntarily today anyway, but it can't of course be formalized into regulatory law in the USA, because such regulation is restricted by the first amendment. Your panic is unwarranted anyways, because many of those countries do allow free speech restrictions, yet no runaway crazy banning has happened yet. Its just a fictional slippery slope made up to protect hate speech. Words don't protect against tyrany anyways; actually fighting against tyranny does.
  - jariel 6y ago
    "Its just a fictional slippery slope made up to protect hate speech" Ah, and there is the ugly, authoritarian, Stalinist argument right there. "We only ban, denounce, destroy those who are GUILTY of Hate Crimes, so how could you have any worry about that?" People are banned all day long on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Stripe, comments sections etc. for any and all sorts of made up reasons that have nothing to do with hate speech. And FYI you can say things that are essentially hate speech, but in a political context may not be, so it's fine i.e. "White People Are a Disease" is a common thing on Twitter. No problems there apparently. And speaking as a former German resident, they have some real Nazis there, none of this kind of 'made up suff' like in the US. This is a problem that needs to be addressed. 'Freedom of Expression' is the #1 Amendment to the US Constitution and the #1 thing in the relatively new Canadian constitution (#11 in EU) for a very good reason: it took thousands of years for 'every day people' to be able to speak their minds without being shot. We can't leave this issue up to corporate CEO's, mostly trying to read the Twitter tea leaves.
    - kazagistar 6y ago
      > We can't leave this issue up to corporate CEO I agree completely. I think democratizing speech so that it cannot be controlled by any source of power, government or financial, does have real importance. But its not the most important right, compared to life or wellbeing: instead, its important because it supports what's actually important. But I have a message of good news: it turns out speech can be lightly restricted while leading to less authoritarianism or cronyism, as can be seen from numerous examples, by simply restricting speech in a way that is kept controlled by the specific people who are subject to it.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> They should have the right to make that choice as a private entity. The question isn't whether they should be allowed to do that, it's whether they should be forced to do that by other people.
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  Who forced cloudflare to do anything here?
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Their cited reasoning for dropping them was outside pressure to not be associated with them.

jariel 6y ago

"They should have the right to make that choice as a private entity." No they should not. And the analogy works: if you're getting filtered on the basis of your content - at the packet level or not - then it's fundamentally against Net Neutrality. Wait until the PR team at Verizon decides they don't want to publish your content because you're too vocal about BLM. Or, they will only support you if you do support BLM, or something rubbish. And now your VPN, your server host, caching technology provider, Telco, wireless provider, Visa/Amex, Video-conf provider - it's completely absurd. FedEx won't ship 'PlanB' because it's a 'controversial' medicine? But they will in 3 states? USPS will ship condoms everywhere but not in Utah where the local Union forbids it? Alaska Big Oil gets their local VPN owners to ban Greentech related sites? Trump's buddies on the Board of AT&T get them to threaten anyone hosting 'fake news' about Trump? California Teachers Union Pension Fund presses Cloudflare to ban all hosting of anything related to law enforcement? And FYI nobody is acting 'morally' - they're scared executives just trying to do whatever to hush people up and continue making money - a system which hands arbitrary power to arbitrary groups. This is not what anyone wants. For services that are inherently 'content neutral' - the content should not be allowed to be a basis of discrimination. For Social Media it's different, as there is an inherent association between the platform and it's users, but not for Cloudflare, or AWS or Verizon, Gmail for example. There is no end to the insanity otherwise; we need basic, smart and clear regulation. Edit: I should add 'and that's just the US'. Imagine when a very vocal, organised group wants to ban Arabs living in what is commonly referred to as 'Palestine' from using the term 'Palestine'. Or Serbian authorities from hosting content using the term 'Kosovo' in any way that reflects its supposed 'autonomy'. Or Greek companies ganging up on Macedonia's usage of the term 'Macedonia'. Or Greens in Germany from banning pro-Nuclear energy content. There are at least a handful of Tweeters who would want those things. It gets infinitely messy, very quickly.

kazagistar 6y ago
There is clear regulation in many countries: nazi speech gets you thrown in jail, the rest is mostly fine. See njmerious european countries like Germany that aren't some dystopia hellscape. That reflects a lot of what happens voluntarily today anyway, but it can't of course be formalized into regulatory law in the USA, because such regulation is restricted by the first amendment. Your panic is unwarranted anyways, because many of those countries do allow free speech restrictions, yet no runaway crazy banning has happened yet. Its just a fictional slippery slope made up to protect hate speech. Words don't protect against tyrany anyways; actually fighting against tyranny does.
- jariel 6y ago
  "Its just a fictional slippery slope made up to protect hate speech" Ah, and there is the ugly, authoritarian, Stalinist argument right there. "We only ban, denounce, destroy those who are GUILTY of Hate Crimes, so how could you have any worry about that?" People are banned all day long on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Stripe, comments sections etc. for any and all sorts of made up reasons that have nothing to do with hate speech. And FYI you can say things that are essentially hate speech, but in a political context may not be, so it's fine i.e. "White People Are a Disease" is a common thing on Twitter. No problems there apparently. And speaking as a former German resident, they have some real Nazis there, none of this kind of 'made up suff' like in the US. This is a problem that needs to be addressed. 'Freedom of Expression' is the #1 Amendment to the US Constitution and the #1 thing in the relatively new Canadian constitution (#11 in EU) for a very good reason: it took thousands of years for 'every day people' to be able to speak their minds without being shot. We can't leave this issue up to corporate CEO's, mostly trying to read the Twitter tea leaves.
  - kazagistar 6y ago
    > We can't leave this issue up to corporate CEO I agree completely. I think democratizing speech so that it cannot be controlled by any source of power, government or financial, does have real importance. But its not the most important right, compared to life or wellbeing: instead, its important because it supports what's actually important. But I have a message of good news: it turns out speech can be lightly restricted while leading to less authoritarianism or cronyism, as can be seen from numerous examples, by simply restricting speech in a way that is kept controlled by the specific people who are subject to it.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> They should have the right to make that choice as a private entity. The question isn't whether they should be allowed to do that, it's whether they should be forced to do that by other people.

jonny_eh 6y ago
Who forced cloudflare to do anything here?
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Their cited reasoning for dropping them was outside pressure to not be associated with them.