8chan is among the more than 19 million Internet properties that use Cloudflare's service. We just sent notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time. The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit.
You know, this wouldn't be so rage inducing if not for the fact that the CEO openly stated that he was obligated to keep working with 8chan a day prior. Pretending that you weren't dragged to this decision is disgusting.
We reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible, but we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design. 8chan has crossed that line. It will therefore no longer be allowed to use our services.
Have you not been paying attention? 8chan was literally built on being the place to go when 4chan is too politically conservative. This decision was not made because of a line - it was made because (like the Daily Stormer issue prior) CloudFlare's reputation was in danger.
I have little doubt we'll see the same happen with 8chan. While removing 8chan from our network takes heat off of us, it does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online. It does nothing to address why mass shootings occur. It does nothing to address why portions of the population feel so disenchanted they turn to hate. In taking this action we've solved our own problem, but we haven't solved the Internet's.
You're no longer working with and enabling terrorists and those who abet them. And if more people did that, it would solve the internet's problem.
Among other things, that resulted in us cooperating around monitoring potential hate sites on our network and notifying law enforcement when there was content that contained an indication of potential violence. We will continue to work within the legal process to share information when we can to hopefully prevent horrific acts of violence. We believe this is our responsibility and, given Cloudflare's scale and reach, we are hopeful we will continue to make progress toward solving the deeper problem.
Beyond this undermining some of your later arguments, saying "we have to work with terrorists and bigots to monitor them" doesn't absolve you of your responsibility in enabling the damage they do, much the same way the FBI held responsibility for looking the other way for Whitey Bulger.
Instead our concern has centered around another much more universal idea: the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law requires policies be transparent and consistent. While it has been articulated as a framework for how governments ensure their legitimacy, we have used it as a touchstone when we think about our own policies.
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
We have been successful because we have a very effective technological solution that provides security, performance, and reliability in an affordable and easy-to-use way. As a result of that, a huge portion of the Internet now sits behind our network. 10% of the top million, 17% of the top 100,000, and 19% of the top 10,000 Internet properties use us today. 10% of the Fortune 1,000 are paying Cloudflare customers
Let's be honest - this is why we're here. In the end, you chose to let 8chan go because this was threatened by CloudFlare's relationship to them. Which is perfectly fine - just don't pretend that this is about anything else.
Cloudflare is not a government. While we've been successful as a company, that does not give us the political legitimacy to make determinations on what content is good and bad. Nor should it. Questions around content are real societal issues that need politically legitimate solutions. We will continue to engage with lawmakers around the world as they set the boundaries of what is acceptable in their countries through due process of law. And we will comply with those boundaries when and where they are set.
First off, you've already touted working as an agent of the government earlier and using said judgment to refer matters to law enforcement, so you don't get to wash your hands of it now. But beyond that, of course you have the legitimacy to decide what you will and will not tolerate - that's how that whole "freedom of association" thing works. You want to play Pontius Pilate with the basin, go ahead - but don't expect others to play along with your handwashing.
What's hard is defining the policy that we can enforce transparently and consistently going forward.
It's not that hard at all. It just requires taking an actual stand for something, instead of supporting anything.
Few things that I disagree on here.
1) It seems self-defeating to slam a company for doing what you've been asking them to do all along. Like what is the point of yelling at someone that is finally coming around, for not coming around fast enough or hard enough? Cause if I'm cloudfare the lesson I'm learning from that is they will never overcome the reputation they already have so why bother?
2) I think there is a pretty wide consensus on these forums that internet service is something of an essential need. You can't on the one hand say that internet service should be heavily regulated (Title II) because it is essential, and on the other hand claim that they are not the government so they should be allowed to do whatever they want (ban whatever sites they want).
3) You are severely underestimating how important transparency is for companies that can control public discourse, perception, engagement, etc. Given how central the internet is in modern lives, I think it is extremely important for the companies that control it to be clear and consistent on how and why decisions (like banning a site) are made, and I strongly disagree that this consistency is somehow a bad thing or a function of stupid people.
For (1), CloudFlare isn't coming around. They didn't drop 8chan of their own volition - the CEO was on the record Saturday as saying that he was obliged to work with 8chan for a number of nonsense reasons. The sudden 180 (much like the one he did a few years ago with the Daily Stormer) was purely because Prince folds like a cheap suit when he faces real accountability for his free speech absolutism.
As for (2), people aren't asking for CloudFlare to ban "whatever sites they want", they're asking them to not do business with Nazis and terrorists. Which isn't that much of an ask.
Finally, for (3),note that the quote is about foolish consistency. And "don't work with Nazis" isn't opposed to transparency at all.
1) It just seems weird to denounce actions you want, for whatever reason. To be clear I am not saying CloudFlare is an icon of hate speech reduction, just that if what you want is for them to be more involved, mocking them for finally doing what you want seems counter productive (even if they were forced into it).
2) You are asking for companies to ban sites based on something beside legality. Frame it however you want, but I think CloudFare has a point here. Who should be the arbiter of what is and isn't allowed on the internet at large? For a small business you would say it's the businesses responsibility to kick out shitbirds. Because it's not reasonable or feasible for the government to have that much control. For internet service providers (of which I am including lots of different infrastructure companies like CloudFare), because it is such an essential service and so far reaching, it may be more appropriate for the government to decide what is and isn't allowed. I certainly don't want comcast, verizon, amazon, etc, deciding what content is reasonable (or profitable) for me to see.
3) You correction doesn't change my opinion on the quote. Consistency is something to be valued. I don't think you have to mock consistency to suggest that you think a company should change. Nor do I think a company saying they are trying to be consistent means they are not willing to work on issues. To bring this back to CloudFare specifically, I don't think it's fair to pick and choose websites and say fuck the rules CloudFare should not host this site. Instead what we should be asking is that CloudFare changes their policies globally in such a way as to eliminate the things we don't want consistently. Which is harder, and will take more time, than a gut reaction and insta-ban.
1) Again, they're not doing what I want. I want CloudFlare to not work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists. The fact that they were forced into it illustrates that they are not doing what I want, because they have to be dragged kicking and screaming (in some cases literally, look up Prince's little diatribe after the Daily Stormer fiasco) into doing the right thing. Nothing about 8chan changed between Saturday, when Prince argued for working with them and Sunday, when he pulled the plug - all that changed was the pressure that Prince was under. Which is why he needs to go.
2) Yes, yes I am - I want companies to not do business with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists. Prince's attempt to create a slippery slope here doesn't work, because it turns out that when you rewrite Niemuller's famous statement to start with "First, they came for the Nazis", it doesn't actually work. In fact, as Karl Popper explained with his Paradox of Tolerance, we should be intolerant of the intolerant to protect our tolerant society.
3) There's a demotivator poster that expresses why consistency is not in of itself a virtue:
We should not hold so fast to consistency that we lose sight of what's actually important. Besides, don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is consistent and easy to understand. But it means standing for something.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
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Here's a tweets from Dan Olson, an Internet person who sometimes does investigates and journalisms. In case tweets don't show, it's in response to Cloudflare's announcement that they're cutting ties with 8chan.
Hey remember when you dickheads forwarded my name, email address, and IP number to 8chan after we sent you a report about the child pornography ring they were hosting? You get no credit for doing the right thing five years late.
This wasn't an automated system, either. The leadership at Cloudflare made a conscious, human decision to forward the information. Brennan posted the bespoke "lol, these people tried to report you" email that he received from them.
I'm perfectly fine with not giving Cloudflare credit for anything.
Here's a tweets from Dan Olson, an Internet person who sometimes does investigates and journalisms. In case tweets don't show, it's in response to Cloudflare's announcement that they're cutting ties with 8chan.
Hey remember when you dickheads forwarded my name, email address, and IP number to 8chan after we sent you a report about the child pornography ring they were hosting? You get no credit for doing the right thing five years late.
This wasn't an automated system, either. The leadership at Cloudflare made a conscious, human decision to forward the information. Brennan posted the bespoke "lol, these people tried to report you" email that he received from them.
I'm perfectly fine with not giving Cloudflare credit for anything.
This also happened with the Daily Stormer, by the way.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
Well, IMO if the point is to get them to take that step without having to be forcibly dragged to it, there needs to be some positive reinforcement, even if you do it in the most passive-aggressive manner you want (like, "Thank you for finally doing the right thing after your reputation and business was under threat of suffering permanently for your idiotic and unpopular stance. We hope you will act more quickly next time.")
That being said, I don't really believe that "we have to be nice if we want them to do it without having to scream at them" applies here. Or at least, it stopped applying when Voxility dropped the company using their hardware hours after 8chan secured them as their new host. Positive Reinforcement, I believe, is most important when the person you want to change is the only actor that could make that change; when there are other examples who can also act and do so, then I'm ok with reserving praise to those who acted first/quickest, especially if they did so with very little prompting.
EDIT: I made this post before seeing the tweets above, so yeah, totally okay with Fuck Cloudflare.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
First off, a free speech argument doesn't magically become not a free speech argument just because it's in the Internet Policy thread. But beyond that, why is it a bad idea for Comcast, CloudFlare, or any business to have a policy of "we will not condone or work with Nazis, bigots, or terrorists" (like this very website that you're posting on)? And don't extrapolate - that's just jumping down the slippery slope and expecting others to follow you. If you think it's a bad idea for Comcast or CloudFlare to not work with hate, you need to defend that specific point, because that's what people are asking for. And I think that the fact that you've repeatedly jumped to extrapolate shows that you don't actually have an argument there, so you move the goalposts and hope nobody notices.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
No, the quote is aimed at putting consistency above everything else, hence why the first word is foolish. If you argue for consistency while people are being hurt, it should be no surprise when you get viewed as foolish rather than principled. Besides, this isn't the first time CloudFlare has been here, and the nature of 8chan is not some secret. Matthew Prince doesn't win any points for being consistent about "we have to work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists because freedom", because it's a fucking goosey position.
Here's a tweets from Dan Olson, an Internet person who sometimes does investigates and journalisms. In case tweets don't show, it's in response to Cloudflare's announcement that they're cutting ties with 8chan.
Hey remember when you dickheads forwarded my name, email address, and IP number to 8chan after we sent you a report about the child pornography ring they were hosting? You get no credit for doing the right thing five years late.
This wasn't an automated system, either. The leadership at Cloudflare made a conscious, human decision to forward the information. Brennan posted the bespoke "lol, these people tried to report you" email that he received from them.
I'm perfectly fine with not giving Cloudflare credit for anything.
This also happened with the Daily Stormer, by the way.
I'm pretty sure Cloudflare's default response to anyone submitting a complaint about any of their sites is to sic the offending site on whoever wrote the complaint. The best part about that in their eyes is that it eventually reduces the number of complaints they have to deal with, since as the word gets around about that people decide it's safer to stay off some peoples' radars.
Here's a tweets from Dan Olson, an Internet person who sometimes does investigates and journalisms. In case tweets don't show, it's in response to Cloudflare's announcement that they're cutting ties with 8chan.
Hey remember when you dickheads forwarded my name, email address, and IP number to 8chan after we sent you a report about the child pornography ring they were hosting? You get no credit for doing the right thing five years late.
This wasn't an automated system, either. The leadership at Cloudflare made a conscious, human decision to forward the information. Brennan posted the bespoke "lol, these people tried to report you" email that he received from them.
I'm perfectly fine with not giving Cloudflare credit for anything.
I would think if there is any action that should land you outside the safe harbor provision, responding to allegations of people using a site you host to break the law by doxing them would probably be it.
Though, if that's your default stance, I wouldn't be surprised if the court documents you would submit would be signed in red ink with a thumbprint.
Here's a tweets from Dan Olson, an Internet person who sometimes does investigates and journalisms. In case tweets don't show, it's in response to Cloudflare's announcement that they're cutting ties with 8chan.
Hey remember when you dickheads forwarded my name, email address, and IP number to 8chan after we sent you a report about the child pornography ring they were hosting? You get no credit for doing the right thing five years late.
This wasn't an automated system, either. The leadership at Cloudflare made a conscious, human decision to forward the information. Brennan posted the bespoke "lol, these people tried to report you" email that he received from them.
I'm perfectly fine with not giving Cloudflare credit for anything.
This also happened with the Daily Stormer, by the way.
I'm pretty sure Cloudflare's default response to anyone submitting a complaint about any of their sites is to sic the offending site on whoever wrote the complaint. The best part about that in their eyes is that it eventually reduces the number of complaints they have to deal with, since as the word gets around about that people decide it's safer to stay off some peoples' radars.
In the process of standing guard outside its clients’ websites, Cloudflare’s filters sometimes trap legitimate complaints against these sites, the majority of which involve copyright infringement. Someone uploads a catchy song to a website without permission from the artist. Eventually, the songwriter takes notice, but her lawyer can’t present a cease-and-desist notice because the copyright violator is behind the Cloudflare shield. And so, over time, Cloudflare had developed a policy of passing along any complaint to its customers and letting them deal with the requests.
But a system designed to address copyright infringement proved to be less adept at dealing with Nazis. Ordinary people disturbed by the hate speech on the Daily Stormer would seek to register their complaints about the site to Cloudflare, the host. But instead of directly addressing the complaint, Cloudflare, following its usual policy, would pass those complaints, with the senders’ contact information, along to the Daily Stormer.
In early May, another story came out—one that Cloudflare could not ignore. The article, by ProPublica, revealed that people who had complained to Cloudflare about the Daily Stormer were getting harassing and threatening calls and emails, including one that told the recipient to “fuck off and die.” The ProPublica piece quoted a blog post under Anglin’s name: “We need to make it clear to all of these people that there are consequences for messing with us. We are not a bunch of babies to be kicked around. We will take revenge. And we will do it now.” It looked as if Cloudflare had ratted out decent people to an army of fascist trolls.
@Jebus314 - this is what foolish consistency looks like.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
First off, a free speech argument doesn't magically become not a free speech argument just because it's in the Internet Policy thread. But beyond that, why is it a bad idea for Comcast, CloudFlare, or any business to have a policy of "we will not condone or work with Nazis, bigots, or terrorists" (like this very website that you're posting on)? And don't extrapolate - that's just jumping down the slippery slope and expecting others to follow you. If you think it's a bad idea for Comcast or CloudFlare to not work with hate, you need to defend that specific point, because that's what people are asking for. And I think that the fact that you've repeatedly jumped to extrapolate shows that you don't actually have an argument there, so you move the goalposts and hope nobody notices.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
No, the quote is aimed at putting consistency above everything else, hence why the first word is foolish. If you argue for consistency while people are being hurt, it should be no surprise when you get viewed as foolish rather than principled. Besides, this isn't the first time CloudFlare has been here, and the nature of 8chan is not some secret. Matthew Prince doesn't win any points for being consistent about "we have to work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists because freedom", because it's a fucking goosey position.
On the consistency point I don't think there is much more to debate. I think we agree that there is a right way and a wrong way to seek change, and we both agree CloudFlare should change their TOS if the want to target Nazis, rather than just banning sites with no additional information other than a two word announcment of "fuck Nazi's."
If you want to argue that you were not implying that consistency is always bad, just "foolish consistency" which puts consistency above doing the right thing, then that's fine. It's not what I read from you're original post but if that is what you meant, then as I have already said, I agree you should not value consistency above doing the right thing.
But I will just leave it out there (not as a direct comment towards anyone specific) that consistency does have value and we should be aware of that when structuring our complaints of a companies actions.
As for the free speech part, my point is that it doesn't matter where you want to draw the line about free speech vs regulated or banned speech. Even if you want a massive amount of bans for a wide range of speech (which does not apply to anyone here, probably), there is a legitimate question about who would be best equipped to make the site by site judgement calls in a fair and equitable manner. In that sense it's not really about free speech or slippery slopes. It's about the transparency of execution, transparency of rule generation, and ease of control (by which I mean the ability to affect change in the rules) by affected parties. All of those things seem like they will be done poorly by a private company and done at least better by government or someother neutral third party.
You can certainly disagree that private companies can't or shouldn't be the arbiter, but it's not about the fucking place where you draw the line for what is and isn't free speech. We need not even mention Nazi's at all to have that debate.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
Here's a tweets from Dan Olson, an Internet person who sometimes does investigates and journalisms. In case tweets don't show, it's in response to Cloudflare's announcement that they're cutting ties with 8chan.
Hey remember when you dickheads forwarded my name, email address, and IP number to 8chan after we sent you a report about the child pornography ring they were hosting? You get no credit for doing the right thing five years late.
This wasn't an automated system, either. The leadership at Cloudflare made a conscious, human decision to forward the information. Brennan posted the bespoke "lol, these people tried to report you" email that he received from them.
I'm perfectly fine with not giving Cloudflare credit for anything.
This also happened with the Daily Stormer, by the way.
I'm pretty sure Cloudflare's default response to anyone submitting a complaint about any of their sites is to sic the offending site on whoever wrote the complaint. The best part about that in their eyes is that it eventually reduces the number of complaints they have to deal with, since as the word gets around about that people decide it's safer to stay off some peoples' radars.
In the process of standing guard outside its clients’ websites, Cloudflare’s filters sometimes trap legitimate complaints against these sites, the majority of which involve copyright infringement. Someone uploads a catchy song to a website without permission from the artist. Eventually, the songwriter takes notice, but her lawyer can’t present a cease-and-desist notice because the copyright violator is behind the Cloudflare shield. And so, over time, Cloudflare had developed a policy of passing along any complaint to its customers and letting them deal with the requests.
But a system designed to address copyright infringement proved to be less adept at dealing with Nazis. Ordinary people disturbed by the hate speech on the Daily Stormer would seek to register their complaints about the site to Cloudflare, the host. But instead of directly addressing the complaint, Cloudflare, following its usual policy, would pass those complaints, with the senders’ contact information, along to the Daily Stormer.
In early May, another story came out—one that Cloudflare could not ignore. The article, by ProPublica, revealed that people who had complained to Cloudflare about the Daily Stormer were getting harassing and threatening calls and emails, including one that told the recipient to “fuck off and die.” The ProPublica piece quoted a blog post under Anglin’s name: “We need to make it clear to all of these people that there are consequences for messing with us. We are not a bunch of babies to be kicked around. We will take revenge. And we will do it now.” It looked as if Cloudflare had ratted out decent people to an army of fascist trolls.
@Jebus314 - this is what foolish consistency looks like.
DCMA takedown requests are just like "hey, you're hosting actual Nazis", amirite?
Here's a tweets from Dan Olson, an Internet person who sometimes does investigates and journalisms. In case tweets don't show, it's in response to Cloudflare's announcement that they're cutting ties with 8chan.
Hey remember when you dickheads forwarded my name, email address, and IP number to 8chan after we sent you a report about the child pornography ring they were hosting? You get no credit for doing the right thing five years late.
This wasn't an automated system, either. The leadership at Cloudflare made a conscious, human decision to forward the information. Brennan posted the bespoke "lol, these people tried to report you" email that he received from them.
I'm perfectly fine with not giving Cloudflare credit for anything.
This also happened with the Daily Stormer, by the way.
I'm pretty sure Cloudflare's default response to anyone submitting a complaint about any of their sites is to sic the offending site on whoever wrote the complaint. The best part about that in their eyes is that it eventually reduces the number of complaints they have to deal with, since as the word gets around about that people decide it's safer to stay off some peoples' radars.
Seems like a pretty easy system to manipulate. Send complaints to said sites with cloudfares C*O's info as the complainer, watch as within 24 hours those sites are taken down when they receive the threats instead.
+2
Options
Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
Get your site hosted on cloudflare, complain about another site hosted on cloudflare, get the harraser's contact info as well.
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
First off, a free speech argument doesn't magically become not a free speech argument just because it's in the Internet Policy thread. But beyond that, why is it a bad idea for Comcast, CloudFlare, or any business to have a policy of "we will not condone or work with Nazis, bigots, or terrorists" (like this very website that you're posting on)? And don't extrapolate - that's just jumping down the slippery slope and expecting others to follow you. If you think it's a bad idea for Comcast or CloudFlare to not work with hate, you need to defend that specific point, because that's what people are asking for. And I think that the fact that you've repeatedly jumped to extrapolate shows that you don't actually have an argument there, so you move the goalposts and hope nobody notices.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
No, the quote is aimed at putting consistency above everything else, hence why the first word is foolish. If you argue for consistency while people are being hurt, it should be no surprise when you get viewed as foolish rather than principled. Besides, this isn't the first time CloudFlare has been here, and the nature of 8chan is not some secret. Matthew Prince doesn't win any points for being consistent about "we have to work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists because freedom", because it's a fucking goosey position.
On the consistency point I don't think there is much more to debate. I think we agree that there is a right way and a wrong way to seek change, and we both agree CloudFlare should change their TOS if the want to target Nazis, rather than just banning sites with no additional information other than a two word announcment of "fuck Nazi's."
If you want to argue that you were not implying that consistency is always bad, just "foolish consistency" which puts consistency above doing the right thing, then that's fine. It's not what I read from you're original post but if that is what you meant, then as I have already said, I agree you should not value consistency above doing the right thing.
But I will just leave it out there (not as a direct comment towards anyone specific) that consistency does have value and we should be aware of that when structuring our complaints of a companies actions.
As for the free speech part, my point is that it doesn't matter where you want to draw the line about free speech vs regulated or banned speech. Even if you want a massive amount of bans for a wide range of speech (which does not apply to anyone here, probably), there is a legitimate question about who would be best equipped to make the site by site judgement calls in a fair and equitable manner. In that sense it's not really about free speech or slippery slopes. It's about the transparency of execution, transparency of rule generation, and ease of control (by which I mean the ability to affect change in the rules) by affected parties. All of those things seem like they will be done poorly by a private company and done at least better by government or someother neutral third party.
You can certainly disagree that private companies can't or shouldn't be the arbiter, but it's not about the fucking place where you draw the line for what is and isn't free speech. We need not even mention Nazi's at all to have that debate.
You're basically echoing Prince's position, and given how it's now blown up twice in his face, that should be a signal that it's not working. "We shouldn't be picking who gets heard" turns out to be a poor excuse for defending working with hate.
The Atlantic just published a piece about the whole matter, and there was one part that seems emblematic of the whole problem:
In 2017, Prince worried that, by taking the first step along the road of moderating vile but legal content at all, it would be “harder for us to argue against a government somewhere pressuring us into taking down a site they don’t like.” This weekend, he cited regular requests from Middle Eastern governments to take down the sites of an LGBTQ support group because they are “corrupting the children.” Companies might feel justified in rejecting such requests on human-rights grounds. But especially in less clear-cut cases, who is Matthew Prince to determine from San Francisco the legitimacy of a government’s insistence that something is harmful a world away? How can he justify his decisions as more than arbitrary? This is no doubt why he wants someone else—legislators, legal scholars, an independent oversight board, somebody—to provide a framework.
The source of this is the same as the problems at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. - leadership is unwilling to take a stand, so they desperately ask for others to do it for them. Prince wants the power that being CEO of CloudFlare gives him - but he refuses to accept the responsibilities that go along with it.
As was pointed out above, CloudFlare has done business with 8chan for five years now, and it is only now that they see them as "lawless". This is a failure on their part, and it is long past time for Prince to accept and acknowledge his failure.
The other thing, as I acknowledged up-thread, is that law and precedent will not protect anyone from actual (non-hypothetical) despots; they'll just do it.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
First off, a free speech argument doesn't magically become not a free speech argument just because it's in the Internet Policy thread. But beyond that, why is it a bad idea for Comcast, CloudFlare, or any business to have a policy of "we will not condone or work with Nazis, bigots, or terrorists" (like this very website that you're posting on)? And don't extrapolate - that's just jumping down the slippery slope and expecting others to follow you. If you think it's a bad idea for Comcast or CloudFlare to not work with hate, you need to defend that specific point, because that's what people are asking for. And I think that the fact that you've repeatedly jumped to extrapolate shows that you don't actually have an argument there, so you move the goalposts and hope nobody notices.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
No, the quote is aimed at putting consistency above everything else, hence why the first word is foolish. If you argue for consistency while people are being hurt, it should be no surprise when you get viewed as foolish rather than principled. Besides, this isn't the first time CloudFlare has been here, and the nature of 8chan is not some secret. Matthew Prince doesn't win any points for being consistent about "we have to work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists because freedom", because it's a fucking goosey position.
On the consistency point I don't think there is much more to debate. I think we agree that there is a right way and a wrong way to seek change, and we both agree CloudFlare should change their TOS if the want to target Nazis, rather than just banning sites with no additional information other than a two word announcment of "fuck Nazi's."
If you want to argue that you were not implying that consistency is always bad, just "foolish consistency" which puts consistency above doing the right thing, then that's fine. It's not what I read from you're original post but if that is what you meant, then as I have already said, I agree you should not value consistency above doing the right thing.
But I will just leave it out there (not as a direct comment towards anyone specific) that consistency does have value and we should be aware of that when structuring our complaints of a companies actions.
As for the free speech part, my point is that it doesn't matter where you want to draw the line about free speech vs regulated or banned speech. Even if you want a massive amount of bans for a wide range of speech (which does not apply to anyone here, probably), there is a legitimate question about who would be best equipped to make the site by site judgement calls in a fair and equitable manner. In that sense it's not really about free speech or slippery slopes. It's about the transparency of execution, transparency of rule generation, and ease of control (by which I mean the ability to affect change in the rules) by affected parties. All of those things seem like they will be done poorly by a private company and done at least better by government or someother neutral third party.
You can certainly disagree that private companies can't or shouldn't be the arbiter, but it's not about the fucking place where you draw the line for what is and isn't free speech. We need not even mention Nazi's at all to have that debate.
You're basically echoing Prince's position, and given how it's now blown up twice in his face, that should be a signal that it's not working. "We shouldn't be picking who gets heard" turns out to be a poor excuse for defending working with hate.
The Atlantic just published a piece about the whole matter, and there was one part that seems emblematic of the whole problem:
In 2017, Prince worried that, by taking the first step along the road of moderating vile but legal content at all, it would be “harder for us to argue against a government somewhere pressuring us into taking down a site they don’t like.” This weekend, he cited regular requests from Middle Eastern governments to take down the sites of an LGBTQ support group because they are “corrupting the children.” Companies might feel justified in rejecting such requests on human-rights grounds. But especially in less clear-cut cases, who is Matthew Prince to determine from San Francisco the legitimacy of a government’s insistence that something is harmful a world away? How can he justify his decisions as more than arbitrary? This is no doubt why he wants someone else—legislators, legal scholars, an independent oversight board, somebody—to provide a framework.
The source of this is the same as the problems at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. - leadership is unwilling to take a stand, so they desperately ask for others to do it for them. Prince wants the power that being CEO of CloudFlare gives him - but he refuses to accept the responsibilities that go along with it.
As was pointed out above, CloudFlare has done business with 8chan for five years now, and it is only now that they see them as "lawless". This is a failure on their part, and it is long past time for Prince to accept and acknowledge his failure.
Social media has blown up in people's faces for lots of reasons. Most of the time for terrible reasons. I don't take that as a convincing argument of anything.
At some point we are just going to have to agree to disagree I think, because I read that atlantic piece and Prince's point is a very good one. Why the fuck would I want some rando deciding what is and is not harmful, especially considering his incentives are going to be all kinds of fucked. Censuring/banning/deplatforming speech is something that we should be deciding as a community/society together, and honestly the only way that really works with an oversight community that is controlled by society (like governments that get voted in).
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
First off, a free speech argument doesn't magically become not a free speech argument just because it's in the Internet Policy thread. But beyond that, why is it a bad idea for Comcast, CloudFlare, or any business to have a policy of "we will not condone or work with Nazis, bigots, or terrorists" (like this very website that you're posting on)? And don't extrapolate - that's just jumping down the slippery slope and expecting others to follow you. If you think it's a bad idea for Comcast or CloudFlare to not work with hate, you need to defend that specific point, because that's what people are asking for. And I think that the fact that you've repeatedly jumped to extrapolate shows that you don't actually have an argument there, so you move the goalposts and hope nobody notices.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
No, the quote is aimed at putting consistency above everything else, hence why the first word is foolish. If you argue for consistency while people are being hurt, it should be no surprise when you get viewed as foolish rather than principled. Besides, this isn't the first time CloudFlare has been here, and the nature of 8chan is not some secret. Matthew Prince doesn't win any points for being consistent about "we have to work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists because freedom", because it's a fucking goosey position.
On the consistency point I don't think there is much more to debate. I think we agree that there is a right way and a wrong way to seek change, and we both agree CloudFlare should change their TOS if the want to target Nazis, rather than just banning sites with no additional information other than a two word announcment of "fuck Nazi's."
If you want to argue that you were not implying that consistency is always bad, just "foolish consistency" which puts consistency above doing the right thing, then that's fine. It's not what I read from you're original post but if that is what you meant, then as I have already said, I agree you should not value consistency above doing the right thing.
But I will just leave it out there (not as a direct comment towards anyone specific) that consistency does have value and we should be aware of that when structuring our complaints of a companies actions.
As for the free speech part, my point is that it doesn't matter where you want to draw the line about free speech vs regulated or banned speech. Even if you want a massive amount of bans for a wide range of speech (which does not apply to anyone here, probably), there is a legitimate question about who would be best equipped to make the site by site judgement calls in a fair and equitable manner. In that sense it's not really about free speech or slippery slopes. It's about the transparency of execution, transparency of rule generation, and ease of control (by which I mean the ability to affect change in the rules) by affected parties. All of those things seem like they will be done poorly by a private company and done at least better by government or someother neutral third party.
You can certainly disagree that private companies can't or shouldn't be the arbiter, but it's not about the fucking place where you draw the line for what is and isn't free speech. We need not even mention Nazi's at all to have that debate.
You're basically echoing Prince's position, and given how it's now blown up twice in his face, that should be a signal that it's not working. "We shouldn't be picking who gets heard" turns out to be a poor excuse for defending working with hate.
The Atlantic just published a piece about the whole matter, and there was one part that seems emblematic of the whole problem:
In 2017, Prince worried that, by taking the first step along the road of moderating vile but legal content at all, it would be “harder for us to argue against a government somewhere pressuring us into taking down a site they don’t like.” This weekend, he cited regular requests from Middle Eastern governments to take down the sites of an LGBTQ support group because they are “corrupting the children.” Companies might feel justified in rejecting such requests on human-rights grounds. But especially in less clear-cut cases, who is Matthew Prince to determine from San Francisco the legitimacy of a government’s insistence that something is harmful a world away? How can he justify his decisions as more than arbitrary? This is no doubt why he wants someone else—legislators, legal scholars, an independent oversight board, somebody—to provide a framework.
The source of this is the same as the problems at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. - leadership is unwilling to take a stand, so they desperately ask for others to do it for them. Prince wants the power that being CEO of CloudFlare gives him - but he refuses to accept the responsibilities that go along with it.
As was pointed out above, CloudFlare has done business with 8chan for five years now, and it is only now that they see them as "lawless". This is a failure on their part, and it is long past time for Prince to accept and acknowledge his failure.
Social media has blown up in people's faces for lots of reasons. Most of the time for terrible reasons. I don't take that as a convincing argument of anything.
At some point we are just going to have to agree to disagree I think, because I read that atlantic piece and Prince's point is a very good one. Why the fuck would I want some rando deciding what is and is not harmful, especially considering his incentives are going to be all kinds of fucked. Censuring/banning/deplatforming speech is something that we should be deciding as a community/society together, and honestly the only way that really works with an oversight community that is controlled by society (like governments that get voted in).
Let me note that you're talking on a site where what is and isn't allowed is dictated by three "randos" (specifically Mike, Jerry, and Tube,) and the result has been that this forum has become a more inclusive place because of their decisions. Conversely, you have places like Reddit where the owners have given that decision over to the community, and the result has been a continuous struggle with hate and white supremacy (there was a point where Reddit was the largest white supremacist website because of the number of white supremacist subreddits.)
Again, Prince has been working with and turning a blind eye to 8chan for five years, and their nature has changed little over that time. What did change was the willingness of people to treat Prince's argument as legitimate.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
First off, a free speech argument doesn't magically become not a free speech argument just because it's in the Internet Policy thread. But beyond that, why is it a bad idea for Comcast, CloudFlare, or any business to have a policy of "we will not condone or work with Nazis, bigots, or terrorists" (like this very website that you're posting on)? And don't extrapolate - that's just jumping down the slippery slope and expecting others to follow you. If you think it's a bad idea for Comcast or CloudFlare to not work with hate, you need to defend that specific point, because that's what people are asking for. And I think that the fact that you've repeatedly jumped to extrapolate shows that you don't actually have an argument there, so you move the goalposts and hope nobody notices.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
No, the quote is aimed at putting consistency above everything else, hence why the first word is foolish. If you argue for consistency while people are being hurt, it should be no surprise when you get viewed as foolish rather than principled. Besides, this isn't the first time CloudFlare has been here, and the nature of 8chan is not some secret. Matthew Prince doesn't win any points for being consistent about "we have to work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists because freedom", because it's a fucking goosey position.
On the consistency point I don't think there is much more to debate. I think we agree that there is a right way and a wrong way to seek change, and we both agree CloudFlare should change their TOS if the want to target Nazis, rather than just banning sites with no additional information other than a two word announcment of "fuck Nazi's."
If you want to argue that you were not implying that consistency is always bad, just "foolish consistency" which puts consistency above doing the right thing, then that's fine. It's not what I read from you're original post but if that is what you meant, then as I have already said, I agree you should not value consistency above doing the right thing.
But I will just leave it out there (not as a direct comment towards anyone specific) that consistency does have value and we should be aware of that when structuring our complaints of a companies actions.
As for the free speech part, my point is that it doesn't matter where you want to draw the line about free speech vs regulated or banned speech. Even if you want a massive amount of bans for a wide range of speech (which does not apply to anyone here, probably), there is a legitimate question about who would be best equipped to make the site by site judgement calls in a fair and equitable manner. In that sense it's not really about free speech or slippery slopes. It's about the transparency of execution, transparency of rule generation, and ease of control (by which I mean the ability to affect change in the rules) by affected parties. All of those things seem like they will be done poorly by a private company and done at least better by government or someother neutral third party.
You can certainly disagree that private companies can't or shouldn't be the arbiter, but it's not about the fucking place where you draw the line for what is and isn't free speech. We need not even mention Nazi's at all to have that debate.
You're basically echoing Prince's position, and given how it's now blown up twice in his face, that should be a signal that it's not working. "We shouldn't be picking who gets heard" turns out to be a poor excuse for defending working with hate.
The Atlantic just published a piece about the whole matter, and there was one part that seems emblematic of the whole problem:
In 2017, Prince worried that, by taking the first step along the road of moderating vile but legal content at all, it would be “harder for us to argue against a government somewhere pressuring us into taking down a site they don’t like.” This weekend, he cited regular requests from Middle Eastern governments to take down the sites of an LGBTQ support group because they are “corrupting the children.” Companies might feel justified in rejecting such requests on human-rights grounds. But especially in less clear-cut cases, who is Matthew Prince to determine from San Francisco the legitimacy of a government’s insistence that something is harmful a world away? How can he justify his decisions as more than arbitrary? This is no doubt why he wants someone else—legislators, legal scholars, an independent oversight board, somebody—to provide a framework.
The source of this is the same as the problems at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. - leadership is unwilling to take a stand, so they desperately ask for others to do it for them. Prince wants the power that being CEO of CloudFlare gives him - but he refuses to accept the responsibilities that go along with it.
As was pointed out above, CloudFlare has done business with 8chan for five years now, and it is only now that they see them as "lawless". This is a failure on their part, and it is long past time for Prince to accept and acknowledge his failure.
Social media has blown up in people's faces for lots of reasons. Most of the time for terrible reasons. I don't take that as a convincing argument of anything.
At some point we are just going to have to agree to disagree I think, because I read that atlantic piece and Prince's point is a very good one. Why the fuck would I want some rando deciding what is and is not harmful, especially considering his incentives are going to be all kinds of fucked. Censuring/banning/deplatforming speech is something that we should be deciding as a community/society together, and honestly the only way that really works with an oversight community that is controlled by society (like governments that get voted in).
Let me note that you're talking on a site where what is and isn't allowed is dictated by three "randos" (specifically Mike, Jerry, and Tube,) and the result has been that this forum has become a more inclusive place because of their decisions. Conversely, you have places like Reddit where the owners have given that decision over to the community, and the result has been a continuous struggle with hate and white supremacy (there was a point where Reddit was the largest white supremacist website because of the number of white supremacist subreddits.)
Again, Prince has been working with and turning a blind eye to 8chan for five years, and their nature has changed little over that time. What did change was the willingness of people to treat Prince's argument as legitimate.
Let us not pretend like this forum is so inclusive outside of a certain set of forum culture supported ideas and positions entirely separate from advocating white supremacy or racism. There is a pretty narrow political culture fostered here which is situated pretty strongly in the center left space with a few specific policy preferences pulled from SocDems, and loudly and proudly shouts down and dismisses out of hand anyone to the right or left as either racist or antagonizing troublemakers. You can see it unfold in real time in any of the political threads.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
First off, a free speech argument doesn't magically become not a free speech argument just because it's in the Internet Policy thread. But beyond that, why is it a bad idea for Comcast, CloudFlare, or any business to have a policy of "we will not condone or work with Nazis, bigots, or terrorists" (like this very website that you're posting on)? And don't extrapolate - that's just jumping down the slippery slope and expecting others to follow you. If you think it's a bad idea for Comcast or CloudFlare to not work with hate, you need to defend that specific point, because that's what people are asking for. And I think that the fact that you've repeatedly jumped to extrapolate shows that you don't actually have an argument there, so you move the goalposts and hope nobody notices.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
No, the quote is aimed at putting consistency above everything else, hence why the first word is foolish. If you argue for consistency while people are being hurt, it should be no surprise when you get viewed as foolish rather than principled. Besides, this isn't the first time CloudFlare has been here, and the nature of 8chan is not some secret. Matthew Prince doesn't win any points for being consistent about "we have to work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists because freedom", because it's a fucking goosey position.
On the consistency point I don't think there is much more to debate. I think we agree that there is a right way and a wrong way to seek change, and we both agree CloudFlare should change their TOS if the want to target Nazis, rather than just banning sites with no additional information other than a two word announcment of "fuck Nazi's."
If you want to argue that you were not implying that consistency is always bad, just "foolish consistency" which puts consistency above doing the right thing, then that's fine. It's not what I read from you're original post but if that is what you meant, then as I have already said, I agree you should not value consistency above doing the right thing.
But I will just leave it out there (not as a direct comment towards anyone specific) that consistency does have value and we should be aware of that when structuring our complaints of a companies actions.
As for the free speech part, my point is that it doesn't matter where you want to draw the line about free speech vs regulated or banned speech. Even if you want a massive amount of bans for a wide range of speech (which does not apply to anyone here, probably), there is a legitimate question about who would be best equipped to make the site by site judgement calls in a fair and equitable manner. In that sense it's not really about free speech or slippery slopes. It's about the transparency of execution, transparency of rule generation, and ease of control (by which I mean the ability to affect change in the rules) by affected parties. All of those things seem like they will be done poorly by a private company and done at least better by government or someother neutral third party.
You can certainly disagree that private companies can't or shouldn't be the arbiter, but it's not about the fucking place where you draw the line for what is and isn't free speech. We need not even mention Nazi's at all to have that debate.
You're basically echoing Prince's position, and given how it's now blown up twice in his face, that should be a signal that it's not working. "We shouldn't be picking who gets heard" turns out to be a poor excuse for defending working with hate.
The Atlantic just published a piece about the whole matter, and there was one part that seems emblematic of the whole problem:
In 2017, Prince worried that, by taking the first step along the road of moderating vile but legal content at all, it would be “harder for us to argue against a government somewhere pressuring us into taking down a site they don’t like.” This weekend, he cited regular requests from Middle Eastern governments to take down the sites of an LGBTQ support group because they are “corrupting the children.” Companies might feel justified in rejecting such requests on human-rights grounds. But especially in less clear-cut cases, who is Matthew Prince to determine from San Francisco the legitimacy of a government’s insistence that something is harmful a world away? How can he justify his decisions as more than arbitrary? This is no doubt why he wants someone else—legislators, legal scholars, an independent oversight board, somebody—to provide a framework.
The source of this is the same as the problems at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. - leadership is unwilling to take a stand, so they desperately ask for others to do it for them. Prince wants the power that being CEO of CloudFlare gives him - but he refuses to accept the responsibilities that go along with it.
As was pointed out above, CloudFlare has done business with 8chan for five years now, and it is only now that they see them as "lawless". This is a failure on their part, and it is long past time for Prince to accept and acknowledge his failure.
Social media has blown up in people's faces for lots of reasons. Most of the time for terrible reasons. I don't take that as a convincing argument of anything.
At some point we are just going to have to agree to disagree I think, because I read that atlantic piece and Prince's point is a very good one. Why the fuck would I want some rando deciding what is and is not harmful, especially considering his incentives are going to be all kinds of fucked. Censuring/banning/deplatforming speech is something that we should be deciding as a community/society together, and honestly the only way that really works with an oversight community that is controlled by society (like governments that get voted in).
Let me note that you're talking on a site where what is and isn't allowed is dictated by three "randos" (specifically Mike, Jerry, and Tube,) and the result has been that this forum has become a more inclusive place because of their decisions. Conversely, you have places like Reddit where the owners have given that decision over to the community, and the result has been a continuous struggle with hate and white supremacy (there was a point where Reddit was the largest white supremacist website because of the number of white supremacist subreddits.)
Again, Prince has been working with and turning a blind eye to 8chan for five years, and their nature has changed little over that time. What did change was the willingness of people to treat Prince's argument as legitimate.
I specifically said that I think internet service providers (in which I am including other infrastructure companies like CloudFlare) are different from individual sites. Were this the only site (or one of only a very small handful of sites) for communicating on the internet then it would be analogous. But it isn't.
Also, reddit is explicitly not controlled by the community. There is no infrastructure for any regular poster to have input on rules imposed either globally on the site, or for any given subreddit that they aren't a moderator of. This would be the exact opposite of what I am talking about. If, on the other hand, the government started writing laws about rules that sites like reddit must follow, then any given poster could vote/campaign/donate/participate in the political process to try and shape those laws/rules to their whim. Which seems a damn site better to me than hoping that the owners of reddit will do the right thing (whatever that is) because of tweet storms.
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
Do you want me to stand the strawman back up?
Does this mean you agree de-platforming Stormfront and 8chan was the right decision?
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
Do you want me to stand the strawman back up?
Does this mean you agree de-platforming Stormfront and 8chan was the right decision?
Did I argue it wasn't?
Edit: I think Cloudflare can de-platform (which in this case it wasn't really a deplatforming, 8chan still exists, Cloudflare is just no longer providing its security and archiving services to 8chan) whoever they want, they are a private entity who provides a service.
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
Do you want me to stand the strawman back up?
Does this mean you agree de-platforming Stormfront and 8chan was the right decision?
Did I argue it wasn't?
What an odd non-answer! Do you agree, or not? It seems like a pretty straightforward question.
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
Do you want me to stand the strawman back up?
Does this mean you agree de-platforming Stormfront and 8chan was the right decision?
Did I argue it wasn't?
What an odd non-answer! Do you agree, or not? It seems like a pretty straightforward question.
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
Do you want me to stand the strawman back up?
Does this mean you agree de-platforming Stormfront and 8chan was the right decision?
Did I argue it wasn't?
Edit: I think Cloudflare can de-platform (which in this case it wasn't really a deplatforming, 8chan still exists, Cloudflare is just no longer providing its security and archiving services to 8chan) whoever they want, they are a private entity who provides a service.
Thank you for clarifying. That said, I'm not sure you understand what de-platforming means: it doesn't mean "ensure such-and-such never has a platform anywhere in existence", it means "don't give such-and-such a platform".
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
Do you want me to stand the strawman back up?
Does this mean you agree de-platforming Stormfront and 8chan was the right decision?
Did I argue it wasn't?
What an odd non-answer! Do you agree, or not? It seems like a pretty straightforward question.
Him asking you to show where he's argued that? No, no that's seems like a perfectly reasonable answer.
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
Do you want me to stand the strawman back up?
Does this mean you agree de-platforming Stormfront and 8chan was the right decision?
Did I argue it wasn't?
What an odd non-answer! Do you agree, or not? It seems like a pretty straightforward question.
Him asking you to show where he's argued that? No, no that's seems like a perfectly reasonable answer.
That seems a pretty strange idea. If I ask you a simple yes or no question, I'm obligated to first find an instance of you arguing one way or the other? I was genuinely curious, because it wasn't clear to me what he really thought on that particular issue, which is clearly a core component of the broader discussion. Not everything is some elaborate rhetorical trap. If he'd outright rejected it rather than hewing to the good old strawman proclamation, I would not have needed to ask.
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
Do you want me to stand the strawman back up?
Does this mean you agree de-platforming Stormfront and 8chan was the right decision?
Did I argue it wasn't?
What an odd non-answer! Do you agree, or not? It seems like a pretty straightforward question.
Him asking you to show where he's argued that? No, no that's seems like a perfectly reasonable answer.
You're right, this community is far from perfect. And as it is an imperfect and flawed creation, it must be dismissed as wholly without merit.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
Do you want me to stand the strawman back up?
Does this mean you agree de-platforming Stormfront and 8chan was the right decision?
Did I argue it wasn't?
What an odd non-answer! Do you agree, or not? It seems like a pretty straightforward question.
Him asking you to show where he's argued that? No, no that's seems like a perfectly reasonable answer.
That seems a pretty strange idea. If I ask you a simple yes or no question, I'm obligated to first find an instance of you arguing one way or the other? I was genuinely curious, because it wasn't clear to me what he really thought on that particular issue, which is clearly a core component of the broader discussion. Not everything is some elaborate rhetorical trap. If he'd outright rejected it rather than hewing to the good old strawman proclamation, I would not have needed to ask.
My response was based on another forumer replying as if I had made the argument they were attributing to me. I am not obligated to prostrate myself before another forumer so that posters are aware that I don't think the wrong things.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
First off, a free speech argument doesn't magically become not a free speech argument just because it's in the Internet Policy thread. But beyond that, why is it a bad idea for Comcast, CloudFlare, or any business to have a policy of "we will not condone or work with Nazis, bigots, or terrorists" (like this very website that you're posting on)? And don't extrapolate - that's just jumping down the slippery slope and expecting others to follow you. If you think it's a bad idea for Comcast or CloudFlare to not work with hate, you need to defend that specific point, because that's what people are asking for. And I think that the fact that you've repeatedly jumped to extrapolate shows that you don't actually have an argument there, so you move the goalposts and hope nobody notices.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
No, the quote is aimed at putting consistency above everything else, hence why the first word is foolish. If you argue for consistency while people are being hurt, it should be no surprise when you get viewed as foolish rather than principled. Besides, this isn't the first time CloudFlare has been here, and the nature of 8chan is not some secret. Matthew Prince doesn't win any points for being consistent about "we have to work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists because freedom", because it's a fucking goosey position.
On the consistency point I don't think there is much more to debate. I think we agree that there is a right way and a wrong way to seek change, and we both agree CloudFlare should change their TOS if the want to target Nazis, rather than just banning sites with no additional information other than a two word announcment of "fuck Nazi's."
If you want to argue that you were not implying that consistency is always bad, just "foolish consistency" which puts consistency above doing the right thing, then that's fine. It's not what I read from you're original post but if that is what you meant, then as I have already said, I agree you should not value consistency above doing the right thing.
But I will just leave it out there (not as a direct comment towards anyone specific) that consistency does have value and we should be aware of that when structuring our complaints of a companies actions.
As for the free speech part, my point is that it doesn't matter where you want to draw the line about free speech vs regulated or banned speech. Even if you want a massive amount of bans for a wide range of speech (which does not apply to anyone here, probably), there is a legitimate question about who would be best equipped to make the site by site judgement calls in a fair and equitable manner. In that sense it's not really about free speech or slippery slopes. It's about the transparency of execution, transparency of rule generation, and ease of control (by which I mean the ability to affect change in the rules) by affected parties. All of those things seem like they will be done poorly by a private company and done at least better by government or someother neutral third party.
You can certainly disagree that private companies can't or shouldn't be the arbiter, but it's not about the fucking place where you draw the line for what is and isn't free speech. We need not even mention Nazi's at all to have that debate.
You're basically echoing Prince's position, and given how it's now blown up twice in his face, that should be a signal that it's not working. "We shouldn't be picking who gets heard" turns out to be a poor excuse for defending working with hate.
The Atlantic just published a piece about the whole matter, and there was one part that seems emblematic of the whole problem:
In 2017, Prince worried that, by taking the first step along the road of moderating vile but legal content at all, it would be “harder for us to argue against a government somewhere pressuring us into taking down a site they don’t like.” This weekend, he cited regular requests from Middle Eastern governments to take down the sites of an LGBTQ support group because they are “corrupting the children.” Companies might feel justified in rejecting such requests on human-rights grounds. But especially in less clear-cut cases, who is Matthew Prince to determine from San Francisco the legitimacy of a government’s insistence that something is harmful a world away? How can he justify his decisions as more than arbitrary? This is no doubt why he wants someone else—legislators, legal scholars, an independent oversight board, somebody—to provide a framework.
The source of this is the same as the problems at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. - leadership is unwilling to take a stand, so they desperately ask for others to do it for them. Prince wants the power that being CEO of CloudFlare gives him - but he refuses to accept the responsibilities that go along with it.
As was pointed out above, CloudFlare has done business with 8chan for five years now, and it is only now that they see them as "lawless". This is a failure on their part, and it is long past time for Prince to accept and acknowledge his failure.
Social media has blown up in people's faces for lots of reasons. Most of the time for terrible reasons. I don't take that as a convincing argument of anything.
At some point we are just going to have to agree to disagree I think, because I read that atlantic piece and Prince's point is a very good one. Why the fuck would I want some rando deciding what is and is not harmful, especially considering his incentives are going to be all kinds of fucked. Censuring/banning/deplatforming speech is something that we should be deciding as a community/society together, and honestly the only way that really works with an oversight community that is controlled by society (like governments that get voted in).
Currently, 30% of society (the crazification factor) has decided that at least half of society shouldn't have free speech (minorities make up a bit more than half of US citizens, women make up a bit more than half, LGBT make up some percent, single mothers make up some percent, etc, etc). How can you or others continue to protect the free speech rights of nazis and racists when they have a stated goal of taking speech away from others?
And if you don't think they are taking speech from others, you're not paying attention. Probably the most basic way we have to express ourselves in our democracy is by voting, and Republicans have been working for decades to take away voting rights of felons (disproportionately minorities) via disenfranchisement, the poor (disproportionately minorities) via underfunding services, minorities in general via gerrymandering, etc, etc.
My response was based on another forumer replying as if I had made the argument they were attributing to me. I am not obligated to prostrate myself before another forumer so that posters are aware that I don't think the wrong things.
Posters asking for a deeper explanation of your opinions and getting it isn't "prostrating," it's making communication abundantly clear when two parties have misread each other. We're on a website forum, everything hinges on communication being transparent or there is no discussion there's simply people talking past each other. Sometimes it helps to provide incentive that you're speaking genuinely, too, since trust is important in these exchanges, too. This goes both ways.
1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
First off, a free speech argument doesn't magically become not a free speech argument just because it's in the Internet Policy thread. But beyond that, why is it a bad idea for Comcast, CloudFlare, or any business to have a policy of "we will not condone or work with Nazis, bigots, or terrorists" (like this very website that you're posting on)? And don't extrapolate - that's just jumping down the slippery slope and expecting others to follow you. If you think it's a bad idea for Comcast or CloudFlare to not work with hate, you need to defend that specific point, because that's what people are asking for. And I think that the fact that you've repeatedly jumped to extrapolate shows that you don't actually have an argument there, so you move the goalposts and hope nobody notices.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
As the saying goes, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The rule of law, to be just and legitimate, must serve and protect the people under it.
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
No, the quote is aimed at putting consistency above everything else, hence why the first word is foolish. If you argue for consistency while people are being hurt, it should be no surprise when you get viewed as foolish rather than principled. Besides, this isn't the first time CloudFlare has been here, and the nature of 8chan is not some secret. Matthew Prince doesn't win any points for being consistent about "we have to work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists because freedom", because it's a fucking goosey position.
On the consistency point I don't think there is much more to debate. I think we agree that there is a right way and a wrong way to seek change, and we both agree CloudFlare should change their TOS if the want to target Nazis, rather than just banning sites with no additional information other than a two word announcment of "fuck Nazi's."
If you want to argue that you were not implying that consistency is always bad, just "foolish consistency" which puts consistency above doing the right thing, then that's fine. It's not what I read from you're original post but if that is what you meant, then as I have already said, I agree you should not value consistency above doing the right thing.
But I will just leave it out there (not as a direct comment towards anyone specific) that consistency does have value and we should be aware of that when structuring our complaints of a companies actions.
As for the free speech part, my point is that it doesn't matter where you want to draw the line about free speech vs regulated or banned speech. Even if you want a massive amount of bans for a wide range of speech (which does not apply to anyone here, probably), there is a legitimate question about who would be best equipped to make the site by site judgement calls in a fair and equitable manner. In that sense it's not really about free speech or slippery slopes. It's about the transparency of execution, transparency of rule generation, and ease of control (by which I mean the ability to affect change in the rules) by affected parties. All of those things seem like they will be done poorly by a private company and done at least better by government or someother neutral third party.
You can certainly disagree that private companies can't or shouldn't be the arbiter, but it's not about the fucking place where you draw the line for what is and isn't free speech. We need not even mention Nazi's at all to have that debate.
You're basically echoing Prince's position, and given how it's now blown up twice in his face, that should be a signal that it's not working. "We shouldn't be picking who gets heard" turns out to be a poor excuse for defending working with hate.
The Atlantic just published a piece about the whole matter, and there was one part that seems emblematic of the whole problem:
In 2017, Prince worried that, by taking the first step along the road of moderating vile but legal content at all, it would be “harder for us to argue against a government somewhere pressuring us into taking down a site they don’t like.” This weekend, he cited regular requests from Middle Eastern governments to take down the sites of an LGBTQ support group because they are “corrupting the children.” Companies might feel justified in rejecting such requests on human-rights grounds. But especially in less clear-cut cases, who is Matthew Prince to determine from San Francisco the legitimacy of a government’s insistence that something is harmful a world away? How can he justify his decisions as more than arbitrary? This is no doubt why he wants someone else—legislators, legal scholars, an independent oversight board, somebody—to provide a framework.
The source of this is the same as the problems at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. - leadership is unwilling to take a stand, so they desperately ask for others to do it for them. Prince wants the power that being CEO of CloudFlare gives him - but he refuses to accept the responsibilities that go along with it.
As was pointed out above, CloudFlare has done business with 8chan for five years now, and it is only now that they see them as "lawless". This is a failure on their part, and it is long past time for Prince to accept and acknowledge his failure.
Social media has blown up in people's faces for lots of reasons. Most of the time for terrible reasons. I don't take that as a convincing argument of anything.
At some point we are just going to have to agree to disagree I think, because I read that atlantic piece and Prince's point is a very good one. Why the fuck would I want some rando deciding what is and is not harmful, especially considering his incentives are going to be all kinds of fucked. Censuring/banning/deplatforming speech is something that we should be deciding as a community/society together, and honestly the only way that really works with an oversight community that is controlled by society (like governments that get voted in).
Let me note that you're talking on a site where what is and isn't allowed is dictated by three "randos" (specifically Mike, Jerry, and Tube,) and the result has been that this forum has become a more inclusive place because of their decisions. Conversely, you have places like Reddit where the owners have given that decision over to the community, and the result has been a continuous struggle with hate and white supremacy (there was a point where Reddit was the largest white supremacist website because of the number of white supremacist subreddits.)
Again, Prince has been working with and turning a blind eye to 8chan for five years, and their nature has changed little over that time. What did change was the willingness of people to treat Prince's argument as legitimate.
Let us not pretend like this forum is so inclusive outside of a certain set of forum culture supported ideas and positions entirely separate from advocating white supremacy or racism. There is a pretty narrow political culture fostered here which is situated pretty strongly in the center left space with a few specific policy preferences pulled from SocDems, and loudly and proudly shouts down and dismisses out of hand anyone to the right or left as either racist or antagonizing troublemakers. You can see it unfold in real time in any of the political threads.
This forum is INCREDIBLY inclusive. More so than anywhere I've ever seen. It just so happens that if you come here supporting GOP policy, odds are that you are supporting bad policy and are told such in no uncertain terms. You also have to be arguing in pretty bad faith to support a lot of GOP policy which is also frowned upon.
There are some blindspots and/or problems when it comes to the community here, but bringing them up in this discussion isn't because you want to have this community improved, it's to try and act as though because this community has some issues, we cannot point to it as an example of something much better than what's going on in the chans, etc., ignoring the basic fact that the issues faced are of an entirely different magnitude than on those boards.
@NSDFRand please tell me if you disagree with this statement: The Penny Arcade message board administration and moderation practices are better at fostering a diverse community than the administration and moderation practices of 4chan.
Also tell me if you disagree with this statement: The Penny Arcade message boards are a less-inclusive space than 4chan.
It's really hard for forums to be both inclusive to minorities and Republicans. If you want to be inclusive to minorities you need to ban opinions like "black people are lazy and violent" which means a lot of Republicans can't express their political opinions. Forums always end up having to pick one or the other. I tend to avoid the ones that allow Republicans to express opinions honestly as all the hate floating around makes me anxious and upset, even though I am not a minority in any way.
I don't think we're not inclusive of Republicans, persay. But those self-identified Republicans are essentially RINO if they don't agree with the decisions and policies of the Republican lawmakers currently in power, which begs the question of why they still wish to label themselves Republican, if no one representing the party in an official capacity is catering to their wishes.
These sorts of lines of questioning that may be appropriate when it comes to one's self-identified political affiliations, however, are not appropriate when it comes to being a person of color, or a Muslim, or being LGBTQ+, or being a woman, or, or, or... and we all already intrinsically understand why.
So I'm not a fan of equivocating being a Republican with being a member of an actual minority/outgroup.
I don't think we're not inclusive of Republicans, persay. But those self-identified Republicans are essentially RINO if they don't agree with the decisions and policies of the Republican lawmakers currently in power, which begs the question of why they still wish to label themselves Republican, if no one representing the party in an official capacity is catering to their wishes.
These sorts of lines of questioning that may be appropriate when it comes to one's self-identified political affiliations, however, are not appropriate when it comes to being a person of color, or a Muslim, or being LGBTQ+, or being a woman, or, or, or... and we all already intrinsically understand why.
So I'm not a fan of equivocating being a Republican with being a member of an actual minority/outgroup.
As one of those RINOs, its mostly to have access to influence the republican primaries. I trust democrats to field someone sane. Clearly we cannot do that with republicans anymore, at least not at the state and national level. Our local Rs are often on one side or another of more tangible issues, like the rural boundary or funding this or that with limited budgets, which make them sometimes the better choice.
But for everything else? Hell no. I haven't seen a republican worth backing since the Bush years (not Bush, though).
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1) I guess I'd just say agree to disagree here. I think it is preferable, no matter how they arrived there, to laud companies for doing something we want, rather than criticize them for not doing it more often. Which isn't to say you shouldn't continue to criticize them for having bad decision making rules or whatever, just that for the brief moment where they finally do something right, it's maybe not the best time to lay into them for the things they still do wrong.
2) My point here is not a free speech argument. It's that we often see the internet as whole as fundamentally different than any specific part of it. Which is why we often seek to impose more rigorous control over those companies who control access/availability/etc of the internet experience. I don't think we necessarily want to embrace the mindset that these giant corporations should be the ones controlling the internet, and what we can see.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be regulated somehow in terms of what is allowed. Just that it's far easier for abuse to occur with a company that controls access to the internet at all than with a company that's just doing business on the internet. Maybe this doesn't apply as much to CloudFlare since it's not as obviously a monopoly as say comcast, but I don't think it is unreasonable for CloudFlare to say that as an essential service provider it is more appropriate for the government to decide what is and is not fit to be seen.
3) I understand that consistency does not trump rightfulness. Being consistently wrong is obviously not something to be happy about, and using consistency as an argument against change is ridiculous.
But you're arguments all make consistency seem pointless, which I would strongly disagree with. There is a benefit there. And to the extent that we want a business like CloudFlare to change, what we should NOT be doing is saying "fuck whatever rules you have and just do what I want." What we should be saying is "change your rules, in a consistent and transparent way, to achieve better outcomes."
1) No, we should not reward companies who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. They aren't actually doing what we want them to do unless forced to. Again, nothing about 8chan changed between Prince arguing that he was obligated to work with them because freedom and to make them better citizens; and Prince saying that 8chan was "lawless" and thus he was cutting ties. What changed was the pressure on Prince, and his loss of reputation - and like with the Daily Stormer fiasco, Prince folded like a cheap suit once it was his personal reputation on the line.
Why should I respect or commend that?
2) Here's the thing - you keep talking about how having CloudFlare stop working with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists is the first step on a slippery slope leading to corporate control of the internet, while ignoring that the blind eye we've turned towards 8chan resulted in 22 people dead. I think that we shouldn't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists and that the paradox of tolerance explains why their views cannot be treated as legitimate if we want to preserve a tolerant society. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why hate needs to be legitimized.
3) Nobody is saying CloudFlare shouldn't have rules. What people are pointing out is that "don't work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists" is a pretty good rule to have, and that after getting caught with their pants down twice, perhaps they should adopt it.
2) I don't think I am ignoring anything. If you want to debate free speech we can go to the free speech thread. But in this thread, I do think there is something worth noting about who should be expected to make decisions on content. Should comcast be in charge of deciding what content is good and bad, and take active steps towards removing content it sees as unfit? Because that seems like a terrible idea to me.
Wherever you stand on free speech vs regulated speech, I don't think I want Comcast or CloudFlare to be the arbiters. The same way I wouldn't want say a private but regulated electrical company to try to remove a business by refusing to provide electricity. It's not the right avenue.
3) Points 2 and 3 are separate points to me. Specifically, I am saying, that even if I agreed with you that CloudFlare should be refusing to host websites based on content, I still think consistency and transparency in how the approach it are essential. And before you say you are totally fine with them consistently banning Nazi's, this is the original quote I was responding too:
I simply take exception to the quote because I think it trivializes the importance of consistency. It seems like you're saying if the laws don't get you what you want, then you should just ignore them and do whatever you want. In this case we are talking about CloudFlare's TOS instead of an actual law, and the ignoring would be CloudFlare ignoring their own TOS and banning sites whenever they felt "justified."
That seems like a bad idea to me. I think we should fight to change their TOS, not demand they ban whatever site we want regardless of their TOS. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but I think it is an important distinction.
I'm perfectly fine with not giving Cloudflare credit for anything.
This also happened with the Daily Stormer, by the way.
Well, IMO if the point is to get them to take that step without having to be forcibly dragged to it, there needs to be some positive reinforcement, even if you do it in the most passive-aggressive manner you want (like, "Thank you for finally doing the right thing after your reputation and business was under threat of suffering permanently for your idiotic and unpopular stance. We hope you will act more quickly next time.")
That being said, I don't really believe that "we have to be nice if we want them to do it without having to scream at them" applies here. Or at least, it stopped applying when Voxility dropped the company using their hardware hours after 8chan secured them as their new host. Positive Reinforcement, I believe, is most important when the person you want to change is the only actor that could make that change; when there are other examples who can also act and do so, then I'm ok with reserving praise to those who acted first/quickest, especially if they did so with very little prompting.
EDIT: I made this post before seeing the tweets above, so yeah, totally okay with Fuck Cloudflare.
First off, a free speech argument doesn't magically become not a free speech argument just because it's in the Internet Policy thread. But beyond that, why is it a bad idea for Comcast, CloudFlare, or any business to have a policy of "we will not condone or work with Nazis, bigots, or terrorists" (like this very website that you're posting on)? And don't extrapolate - that's just jumping down the slippery slope and expecting others to follow you. If you think it's a bad idea for Comcast or CloudFlare to not work with hate, you need to defend that specific point, because that's what people are asking for. And I think that the fact that you've repeatedly jumped to extrapolate shows that you don't actually have an argument there, so you move the goalposts and hope nobody notices.
No, the quote is aimed at putting consistency above everything else, hence why the first word is foolish. If you argue for consistency while people are being hurt, it should be no surprise when you get viewed as foolish rather than principled. Besides, this isn't the first time CloudFlare has been here, and the nature of 8chan is not some secret. Matthew Prince doesn't win any points for being consistent about "we have to work with Nazis, bigots, and terrorists because freedom", because it's a fucking goosey position.
I'm pretty sure Cloudflare's default response to anyone submitting a complaint about any of their sites is to sic the offending site on whoever wrote the complaint. The best part about that in their eyes is that it eventually reduces the number of complaints they have to deal with, since as the word gets around about that people decide it's safer to stay off some peoples' radars.
I would think if there is any action that should land you outside the safe harbor provision, responding to allegations of people using a site you host to break the law by doxing them would probably be it.
Though, if that's your default stance, I wouldn't be surprised if the court documents you would submit would be signed in red ink with a thumbprint.
No, the answer is much more fucking stupid than that:
@Jebus314 - this is what foolish consistency looks like.
On the consistency point I don't think there is much more to debate. I think we agree that there is a right way and a wrong way to seek change, and we both agree CloudFlare should change their TOS if the want to target Nazis, rather than just banning sites with no additional information other than a two word announcment of "fuck Nazi's."
If you want to argue that you were not implying that consistency is always bad, just "foolish consistency" which puts consistency above doing the right thing, then that's fine. It's not what I read from you're original post but if that is what you meant, then as I have already said, I agree you should not value consistency above doing the right thing.
But I will just leave it out there (not as a direct comment towards anyone specific) that consistency does have value and we should be aware of that when structuring our complaints of a companies actions.
As for the free speech part, my point is that it doesn't matter where you want to draw the line about free speech vs regulated or banned speech. Even if you want a massive amount of bans for a wide range of speech (which does not apply to anyone here, probably), there is a legitimate question about who would be best equipped to make the site by site judgement calls in a fair and equitable manner. In that sense it's not really about free speech or slippery slopes. It's about the transparency of execution, transparency of rule generation, and ease of control (by which I mean the ability to affect change in the rules) by affected parties. All of those things seem like they will be done poorly by a private company and done at least better by government or someother neutral third party.
You can certainly disagree that private companies can't or shouldn't be the arbiter, but it's not about the fucking place where you draw the line for what is and isn't free speech. We need not even mention Nazi's at all to have that debate.
DCMA takedown requests are just like "hey, you're hosting actual Nazis", amirite?
Seems like a pretty easy system to manipulate. Send complaints to said sites with cloudfares C*O's info as the complainer, watch as within 24 hours those sites are taken down when they receive the threats instead.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
You're basically echoing Prince's position, and given how it's now blown up twice in his face, that should be a signal that it's not working. "We shouldn't be picking who gets heard" turns out to be a poor excuse for defending working with hate.
The Atlantic just published a piece about the whole matter, and there was one part that seems emblematic of the whole problem:
The source of this is the same as the problems at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. - leadership is unwilling to take a stand, so they desperately ask for others to do it for them. Prince wants the power that being CEO of CloudFlare gives him - but he refuses to accept the responsibilities that go along with it.
As was pointed out above, CloudFlare has done business with 8chan for five years now, and it is only now that they see them as "lawless". This is a failure on their part, and it is long past time for Prince to accept and acknowledge his failure.
Social media has blown up in people's faces for lots of reasons. Most of the time for terrible reasons. I don't take that as a convincing argument of anything.
At some point we are just going to have to agree to disagree I think, because I read that atlantic piece and Prince's point is a very good one. Why the fuck would I want some rando deciding what is and is not harmful, especially considering his incentives are going to be all kinds of fucked. Censuring/banning/deplatforming speech is something that we should be deciding as a community/society together, and honestly the only way that really works with an oversight community that is controlled by society (like governments that get voted in).
Let me note that you're talking on a site where what is and isn't allowed is dictated by three "randos" (specifically Mike, Jerry, and Tube,) and the result has been that this forum has become a more inclusive place because of their decisions. Conversely, you have places like Reddit where the owners have given that decision over to the community, and the result has been a continuous struggle with hate and white supremacy (there was a point where Reddit was the largest white supremacist website because of the number of white supremacist subreddits.)
Again, Prince has been working with and turning a blind eye to 8chan for five years, and their nature has changed little over that time. What did change was the willingness of people to treat Prince's argument as legitimate.
Let us not pretend like this forum is so inclusive outside of a certain set of forum culture supported ideas and positions entirely separate from advocating white supremacy or racism. There is a pretty narrow political culture fostered here which is situated pretty strongly in the center left space with a few specific policy preferences pulled from SocDems, and loudly and proudly shouts down and dismisses out of hand anyone to the right or left as either racist or antagonizing troublemakers. You can see it unfold in real time in any of the political threads.
Zero moderation, the free marketplace of ideas, that's the only way that true tolerance can be formed!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I specifically said that I think internet service providers (in which I am including other infrastructure companies like CloudFlare) are different from individual sites. Were this the only site (or one of only a very small handful of sites) for communicating on the internet then it would be analogous. But it isn't.
Also, reddit is explicitly not controlled by the community. There is no infrastructure for any regular poster to have input on rules imposed either globally on the site, or for any given subreddit that they aren't a moderator of. This would be the exact opposite of what I am talking about. If, on the other hand, the government started writing laws about rules that sites like reddit must follow, then any given poster could vote/campaign/donate/participate in the political process to try and shape those laws/rules to their whim. Which seems a damn site better to me than hoping that the owners of reddit will do the right thing (whatever that is) because of tweet storms.
So it is either the very narrow and not actually as inclusive as espoused forum culture here or free for all anarchy?
I mean if you're arguing Stormfront and 8chan can't be kicked off you might as well argue for anarchy. Because that would be better than the status quo, where those sites are protected but vastly tamer sites aren't.
Do you want me to stand the strawman back up?
Does this mean you agree de-platforming Stormfront and 8chan was the right decision?
Did I argue it wasn't?
Edit: I think Cloudflare can de-platform (which in this case it wasn't really a deplatforming, 8chan still exists, Cloudflare is just no longer providing its security and archiving services to 8chan) whoever they want, they are a private entity who provides a service.
What an odd non-answer! Do you agree, or not? It seems like a pretty straightforward question.
I edited my post.
Thank you for clarifying. That said, I'm not sure you understand what de-platforming means: it doesn't mean "ensure such-and-such never has a platform anywhere in existence", it means "don't give such-and-such a platform".
Him asking you to show where he's argued that? No, no that's seems like a perfectly reasonable answer.
That seems a pretty strange idea. If I ask you a simple yes or no question, I'm obligated to first find an instance of you arguing one way or the other? I was genuinely curious, because it wasn't clear to me what he really thought on that particular issue, which is clearly a core component of the broader discussion. Not everything is some elaborate rhetorical trap. If he'd outright rejected it rather than hewing to the good old strawman proclamation, I would not have needed to ask.
My response was based on another forumer replying as if I had made the argument they were attributing to me. I am not obligated to prostrate myself before another forumer so that posters are aware that I don't think the wrong things.
Currently, 30% of society (the crazification factor) has decided that at least half of society shouldn't have free speech (minorities make up a bit more than half of US citizens, women make up a bit more than half, LGBT make up some percent, single mothers make up some percent, etc, etc). How can you or others continue to protect the free speech rights of nazis and racists when they have a stated goal of taking speech away from others?
And if you don't think they are taking speech from others, you're not paying attention. Probably the most basic way we have to express ourselves in our democracy is by voting, and Republicans have been working for decades to take away voting rights of felons (disproportionately minorities) via disenfranchisement, the poor (disproportionately minorities) via underfunding services, minorities in general via gerrymandering, etc, etc.
Posters asking for a deeper explanation of your opinions and getting it isn't "prostrating," it's making communication abundantly clear when two parties have misread each other. We're on a website forum, everything hinges on communication being transparent or there is no discussion there's simply people talking past each other. Sometimes it helps to provide incentive that you're speaking genuinely, too, since trust is important in these exchanges, too. This goes both ways.
This forum is INCREDIBLY inclusive. More so than anywhere I've ever seen. It just so happens that if you come here supporting GOP policy, odds are that you are supporting bad policy and are told such in no uncertain terms. You also have to be arguing in pretty bad faith to support a lot of GOP policy which is also frowned upon.
@NSDFRand please tell me if you disagree with this statement: The Penny Arcade message board administration and moderation practices are better at fostering a diverse community than the administration and moderation practices of 4chan.
Also tell me if you disagree with this statement: The Penny Arcade message boards are a less-inclusive space than 4chan.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
These sorts of lines of questioning that may be appropriate when it comes to one's self-identified political affiliations, however, are not appropriate when it comes to being a person of color, or a Muslim, or being LGBTQ+, or being a woman, or, or, or... and we all already intrinsically understand why.
So I'm not a fan of equivocating being a Republican with being a member of an actual minority/outgroup.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
As one of those RINOs, its mostly to have access to influence the republican primaries. I trust democrats to field someone sane. Clearly we cannot do that with republicans anymore, at least not at the state and national level. Our local Rs are often on one side or another of more tangible issues, like the rural boundary or funding this or that with limited budgets, which make them sometimes the better choice.
But for everything else? Hell no. I haven't seen a republican worth backing since the Bush years (not Bush, though).