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Cloudflare's CEO Has a Plan To Never Censor Hate Speech Again (arstechnica.com)
"Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince hated cutting off service to the infamous neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer in August," reports Ars Technica. "And he's determined not to do it again. 'I'm almost a free-speech absolutist.' Prince said at an event at the New America Foundation last Wednesday. But in a subsequent interview with Ars, Prince argued that in the case of the Daily Stormer, the company didn't have much choice." From the report: Prince's response was to cut Daily Stormer off while laying the groundwork to make sure he'd never have to make a decision like that again. In a remarkable company-wide email sent shortly after the decision, Prince described his own actions as "arbitrary" and "dangerous." "I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet," Prince wrote in August. "It was a decision I could make because I'm the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company." He argued that "it's important that what we did today not set a precedent." Prior to August, Cloudflare had consistently refused to police content published by its customers. Last week, Prince made a swing through DC to help ensure that the Daily Stormer decision does not, in fact, set a precedent. He met with officials from the Federal Communications Commission and with researchers at the libertarian Cato Institute and the left-of-center New America Foundation -- all in an effort to ensure that he'd have the political cover he needed to say no next time he came under pressure to take down controversial content.
The law is strongly on Cloudflare's side here. Internet infrastructure providers like Cloudflare have broad legal immunity for content created by their customers. But legal rights may not matter if Cloudflare comes under pressure from customers to take down content. And that's why Prince is working to cultivate a social consensus that infrastructure providers like Cloudflare should not be in the censorship business -- no matter how offensive its customers' content might be.
The law is strongly on Cloudflare's side here. Internet infrastructure providers like Cloudflare have broad legal immunity for content created by their customers. But legal rights may not matter if Cloudflare comes under pressure from customers to take down content. And that's why Prince is working to cultivate a social consensus that infrastructure providers like Cloudflare should not be in the censorship business -- no matter how offensive its customers' content might be.
Censorship pretty much always ends up being abused. Let the neo-nazis spew their hate, and most people will recognize them for the raving lunatics they are. But don't censor them. That road doesn't lead to anywhere good.
It took 50 million deaths last time those fucks got power, this time we need to kill them all a lot sooner.
I got news for you. Marxists killed many, many more people in the 20th century than Nazis and Fascists combined!
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
It took 50 million deaths last time those fucks got power, this time we need to kill them all a lot sooner.
Let's put this in a perspective:
(This combines counts for ideologies with multiple denominations, thus putting in one bucket Mao+Stalin+Lenin+Pol Pot+Kims+Ho Chi Minh+misc African soviet-sponsored groups+etc -- without combining, China is 1st, Soviets 2nd; wars that are attributable to both secular and ideological reasons are attributed partially, with a weighted estimation so 10% religious gives only 1/10 of kill count. All of these figures are hotly contested, but ordering is pretty solid.)
Thus, Nazis are pretty evil (21M deaths is nothing we can forget), but they're boy scouts compared to some ideologies still in power (or, in case of Putin, called "our glorious past").
Thus, let's not discriminate between "kill all unbelievers, people of wrong skin color, shape of genitals, etc" ideologies and fight them either equally or based on actual harm done rather than on how reviled by those currently in power they are.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
that seems unreasonable to include as the same idealogy that is in charge now. China has done a very good job of allowing enough of a market economy to not do that type of thing.
Like, herding Falun Gong practitioners for organ harvesting? Or keeping the majority of population as a caste deprived of most rights (hukou)?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.