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If you have to be dragged kicking and screaming by public outcry before you cancel Nazis, you support Nazis. But you know what happened as well as I do, so your framing of events that way is interesting...
If the only way you can say that Cloudflare actively supported nazis was because they didn’t cancel them, it sounds to me like Cloudflare didn’t actively support nazis. Why is it so hard to say “Cloudflare didn’t cancel nazis” instead of lying and saying they “actively supported” them?
Yes, I do, which is why I’m confused as to why any reasonable person would think that Cloudflare’s actions here are in any way problematic.
Cloudflare considers themselves to be akin to a public utility. Do you think that public utilities should be able to refuse to provide their services to law-abiding nazis? I’m talking phone lines, electricity, gas for heat, water, etc.. If so, why? Should it be limited to nazis? How do you ensure that only nazis are prevented from having running water and electricity?
Because ultimately this comes down to a company treating themselves as a public utility, and structuring their processes for determining if they would offer services to a company or individual under that basis, and then, having an established process, being resistant to making an exception to that process to refuse service to a group of nazis. Cloudflare said that there was a huge uptick in the amount of takedown requests that they received after they took down 8chan and The Daily Stormer. If their process were amended to prohibit certain kinds of legal speech, they would face increased pressure to take down even more sites, and not just sites belonging to nazis.
Again, this is all about the ability to have a website on the internet and not about being able to have a platform on social media, Youtube, Spotify, etc.. The sites, effectively, are buildings, but the internet is like the land. I’m not saying anyone should be required to let a nazi in their building. Criticizing Facebook for not de-platforming nazis is fine. This is about access to what are effectively essential public services.
I see being able to run a website as an extension of the right to free speech. Because hosting a website on the internet requires the involvement of companies - domain name registrars, DNS hosting services, ISPs and the network, etc. - if you are consistently refused one of these services by these companies, you’re effectively denied this right. If you try to go start up your own domain registrar, you still have to deal with a company - the domain name registry. If you try to start up your own domain name registry, you still have to deal with a company - ICANN. The assets of these companies are protected by the government, and if you were to try to force your site onto the internet, the government would stop you. This probably isn’t technically government censorship, but it serves that same effective purpose. No, it isn’t government directed, but being directed by the market is just as bad, and in some cases, worse.
If you’re fine with a company refusing service in this instance, with the rationale being because they fundamentally disagree with the site’s content, it follows that it should be fine for such a company to refuse service to sites of politicians they don’t like (or who are in a race with one of their bigger customers or donors), anti-fascist forums, far-left and far-right forums, sites providing information on abortions, sites dedicated to open source projects that they or one of their stakeholders don’t like, storefronts for products they dislike, etc..
Maybe you think that would all be fine? I don’t. I think that sounds like something out of a dystopian late stage capitalism short story, and I want nothing to do with it.
If you’re not at least in agreement that it wouldn’t be fine, then I don’t know what to say. Why do you disagree?
If you are in agreement: it follows that access to internet services should generally be treated like access to public utilities, even if the companies aren’t technically considered to be public utilities. Legally prohibiting such companies from refusing service without actually classifying the companies as public utilities would itself be a violation of free speech. But it is still reasonable for them to behave like public utilities.
And given that this is reasonable, saying “Cloudflare supports nazis because they behaved like a public utility and didn’t ban these sites run by nazis, even though there was a huge public outcry” is a nonsensical statement. It’s basically “Cloudflare supports nazis because they did something reasonable, even when nazis were involved.” By that logic, “Cloudflare supports Hillary Clinton because they provide services to her site” is a reasonable statement. Does Cloudflare support every site that they provide services to? No, obviously not. Do they support every site that they’ve refused to honor a takedown request against? Again, no. Why is that answer different when nazis are involved?
I was looking for a quote from the EFF and found this article that covers the topic from Cloudflare’s perspective: https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/ - it’s worth a read, IMO.
Anyway, here’s the EFF bit:
Another topic the article covers - not in EFF’s words, but in the CEO of Cloudflare’s - is that beyond just the “intermediaries” like Cloudflare making these calls, you have vigilante cyberattackers who DDOS the sites of people they don’t agree with:
I agree with this, as well as with the EFF’s take, and as far as I can tell there simply isn’t a rational criticism of Cloudflare’s resistance to banning The Daily Stormer that doesn’t literally require accepting that free speech isn’t all that important.
Yeah yeah, freeze peach etc.
I prioritise the safety of my community more than I value trying to conflate free speech with private monopolies acting in their own self interest, especially whilst they're actively sustaining harm against vulnerable folk.
I’m not talking about the free speech of Cloudflare, aside from like one paragraph. I’m talking about the free speech of law abiding US citizens.
Cloudflare isn’t a monopoly. Why do you think it is?
Cloudflare acted against their self interest by not taking down TDS sooner. It would have been in their self interest from a public image perspective to do so. Why would you suggest otherwise?
Why do you think that both the EFF and I are the ones who are confused here?
I don't think you're confused. I think you have different expectations than me.
You value an ideal of free speech that in my mind doesn't exist, and you think the harm that can be done in trying to attain it is not the biggest issue.
I see it that other way around. I think that private monopolies actively protecting platforms used to spread hate is a bigger issue, because it's causing real world harm right here and now.
You don’t think that the concept of free speech exists?
Exactly. There is no such thing as complete free speech. Every implementation of free speech is speech with limits influenced by societal norms. So in my mind, arguing for an ideal that doesn't and never will exist is a pretty poor reason to sustain harm to vulnerable folk.
So your stance is basically “We can’t be perfect, so why even try?”
Would you prefer a world without the first amendment in the US, for the UN to abandon the idea of freedom of expression as a human right, and all that entails? Or is it just censorship by corporations that you’re cool with?
I don't consider complete free speech to be perfection.
I'd prefer a world in which we protect the vulnerable rather than protecting the folk who are trying to hurt the vulnerable
So your stance is “We can’t be perfect when it comes to implementing free speech, so why even bother defending people’s right to freedom of expression at all?”
Encouraging censorship would hurt more marginalized people than it would help.
You think free speech is an unattainable ideal, but when you’re asked to clarify whether you’re talking about government censorship, too, or “just” corporate censorship, you reply with this fairytale nonsense?
Even if we limit the scope of that to just Cloudflare and other internet infrastructure companies, they’d basically have to stop offering their services to anyone to the political right of Bernie Sanders. Not that I’d have a problem with that, but it’s never going to happen. Sure, a single company could do that, but that wouldn’t change the fact that the rest of them don’t.
Being upset about Cloudflare “protecting” nazis is misplaced anger. It’s like being upset because the police stop you from hurting nazis. Like, there are so many reasons to be anti-police, but this isn’t one of them. Being frustrated because they’re in your way is one thing, but saying they’re shitty people because they protect people (even when those people are nazis) is toddler level logic.
Are there things to be angry about with TDS? Absolutely. There’s the nazis. There’s Trump. And there’s the people whose actual responsibility it was to protect the vulnerable - law enforcement, mostly, but government in general here - and who did nothing, as far as I can tell.
No, I think the thing that you're calling free speech isn't free speech at all because there is no such thing implemented anywhere that works. A genuine implementation of it would be explicitly more harmful than helpful.
What we have is speech restricted by the norms of our societies. All you're arguing for is shifting the line to a different (more harmful) place, in the name of hypothetical ideal
And what we have with CloudFlare is a private entity that is virtually a monopoly, sustaining literal hate speech despite the harm hate speech does and doing so for the same reasons you're here defending them. Because you value chasing an ideal that doesn't exist over the needs of real people.
It's also interesting that you conflate "anything to the right of Sanders" with Nazis and other hate groups. The fact that you're painting my issue with the latter as being equivalent is cheap.
I don't give a fuck whether you agree with me. I answered the OPs question. You're not going to magically convince me that actually, hate speech is ok sometimes and should be protected.