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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.
If it's a "good" website lots of people want to access, any private entity that stands in the way of freely accessing that site = evil.
If it's a "bad" website lots of people don't want to access, any private entity that supports freely accessing that site = evil.
Any questions?
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.
Yep, and what happened back then? They moved the culture until all anti fascist voices in Germany were outside the realm of 'acceptable discourse', just like pro Nazi comments are on Cloudflare. The best defense against totalitarian ideals is free speech, where all discourse is acceptable.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
"The people I don't like are all bad and deserve to die!"
Signed
All Nazis and Weirdly Rabid 'AntiNazis' Who Never Understand How Nazi-ish They Are
It's retard shaming.
I can't say that I agree with or support neo-nazi beliefs in any way. But I do believe in free speech. If they are so retarded, then why do you think they need to be removed from the internet? If they are so stupid that anyone can easily see it, what's the need to remove them from a place that you have to go look for them to even hear/read what they have to say? Why allow them to even try to claim some kind of victimhood?
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?
As much as I can't stand the content, the content should be there so that people can see for themselves how bad it is.
--
It's a bird, it's a plane!
It's EASY to say "that offends me, ban it!"
It's harder to say "that offends me, but I need to stand against it on its merits, not just because I have the power to ban it."
-Styopa
So long as an ISP is just a "series of tubes" (actually fibers and routers such) through which anyone can send anything, they can't well be blamed for what one person requests or sends. As soon as they start exercising any editorial control, they start opening themselves up to be held not responsible not only in the court of public opinion, but LEGALLY.
I think the right move for Cloudflare would have been to condemn what was said while pointing out that they only operate caches. The site is actually hosted by a different company. If the hosting company is known for housing Nazi propaganda and that sort of thing, perhaps say so. Name the hosting company if appropriate, but don't start getting into making editorial decisions about what can and can't flow through your pipes, unless you want to turn into a company that sells only a flowers and rainbows subset of the internet.
Some elected Democrats have said REALLY nasty things about Trump. Trump has said offensive things. Is Cloudflare going to get into deciding which of those things can be seen through their proxies? Things said by both sides could certainly be called "hate speech". I don't think Cloudflare wants to get into the business of deciding which hate speech is okay with them.
Al Sharpton talks about "offing [killing] copsâ and "crackers", is Cloudflare going to ban him? Never should have started down this road.
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.
When private companies own and operate the internet, it seems like a very slippery slope to curbing free speech. Who is to say that Google or the like, won't be told by the shareholders to not host content because it offends their advertisers.
This seems like a very real consequence of allowing private companies to be gate keepers of the information on the internet, who can choose what content to offer without impunity.
--
"Bad boys, bad boys, what you going to do? What you going to do when they come for you?" -- Inner Circle
Because I'm not an *anything* absolutist. Things like absolutism and zero tolerance are attractive because they make decision making easy in a complex world -- too easy. Sometimes you ought to be forced to wrestle with tough calls; to choose the lesser of two evils or between alternative goods when you can't have both.
And for that reason the way Daily Stormer was forced off the Internet disturbed me, even though I *despise* those people. It's the easy call: here's a problem that's attracting a lot of negative attention, so let's make it go away, and by "go away" we mean sweep it under the rug so someone else has to deal with it. Does anyone think that will make those people disappear? That it will stop others from becoming radicalized? I for one think it will work in their favor. Authoritarians love to view themselves as victims just as much as they love to be victimizers; those are two halves of the same coin for them. They adore being wronged, because in their very tiny minds that gives them permission to wrong others.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think he was being informative, actually. Because the socialists are the ones with the really big death toll on their hands, and they're still given places of privilege in places like US institutions of higher education.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Actual history. The idiotic tiki-torch-carrying wannabes have nothing on socialists when it comes to death. And the socialists are getting coddled, right now, in schools around you.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
b-b-but it wasn't REAL communism!
tl;dr for anyone else reading through this
Kicking speech I don't like off the internet isn't a bad thing. If he applied that to speech I DO like, that would eventually become a bad thing, but it would take a while.
FTFY.
Yep, and what happened back then? They moved the culture until all anti fascist voices in Germany were outside the realm of 'acceptable discourse', just like pro Nazi comments are on Cloudflare. The best defense against totalitarian ideals is free speech, where all discourse is acceptable.
It also gives law enforcement a much easier task of keeping an eye on them.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
Granted, in the USA the concern is perhaps that people or the government might not actually be able to really determine fairly and objectively what is evil and what is good in speech. That hence one should just allow all of it.
In the US the stance (among people with at least half a brain) is that all speech is free speech, the laws apply especially for things you personally detest. It is meant to give the most hated minorities of society the chance to get their ideas out, the good bits to grow and the bad bits to be reasoned out instead of festering until the people holding those ideas snap. All governments want to remove free speech, all major corporations want to control free speech and argue it is within their right to do so (nevermind their existence is predicated on the government saying they are entities and the government doesn't have that right, yet they have somehow been granted such a right which is illegal for the government to grant.) In the short term free speech can cause a bit of chaos, in the long term free speech increases stability by a huge factor, politicians, shareholders, and bureaucrats only think in the short term and hence they mostly despise free speech and will latch on to whichever jackass has the most revolting opinion of the day to call for banning it.
I agree with Mr. Prince, and I respect that he's willing to risk his name and company to stand behind his beliefs.
The Anarchist's cookbook is Illegal in Australia. Possession of the book is enough to get you arrested in the UK. China's great firewall is tighter than ever. Censorship is alive and well in the modern world, and I do not see that as progress.
What happened to: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."?
Being placed in prison/forced labor (in a konzentrationslager - sometimes in a vernichtungslager) or killed without a trial is now the same as not being allowed to spread hate on a specific platform?
(German used to differentiate from concentration camp which is a large camp or group of camps)
Repeat after me:
"Free speech encompasses the 1st Amendment, not the other way"
"Free speech encompasses the 1st Amendment, not the other way"
"Free speech encompasses the 1st Amendment, not the other way"
Words can be infectious to a population that isn't taught to be critical thinkers.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
If you think your ISP, which I'm guessing is AOL, is the only type of ISP there is, turn in YOUR geek card.
The relevant law lays out four types of ISPs, network engineers split them up slightly differently, but still into four types.
17 USC Â 512(k)(1)(A) defines the general term Internet service provider:
(A)As used in subsection (a), the term "service provider" means an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the userâ(TM)s choosing, without modification to the content of the material as sent or received.
512(a) through 512(d) lay out the four types recognized by law, each with slightly different requirements to have Safe Harbor:
A) Transitory ISPs (transit backbones and access providers)
These ISPs move data, but never store it for long periods. Note that just as your local ISP provides their customers internet access at home, the backbones provide internet access to their customers, the customers' data centers. Network engineers split access and transit into two types.
B) Caching ISPs
These operate caches and do not materially alter the nature of the content. These provide a *buffered* connection to the internet - requests coming in from the internet are sometimes satisfied by the ISP re-sending the response their customer provided earlier.
C) Hosting ISPs
Store data at the direction of the user. These provide highly reliable internet connections for customer software, with hardware also provided.
D) Search engines and indexes. Provide access to the internet not as a wire, but as a means of locating the desired internet-accessible resources. Legally an ISP, not an ISP from a network engineering perspective.
The Constitution does not protect against consumer demand.
So that means NOTHING should?
That means there is no principle behind the law?
These are what leftists and many moderates implicitly argue. They refuse to address the reason for the law's existence: to maintain society. But it can only do so much. Society still needs to be maintained by the will of the people. So let's look at the law, understand it, and use it as inspiration to restore the will of the people.
Leftists and most moderates have abandoned liberalism completely. They have no concept of liberty at all, only authority. They have no free will to speak of. Those of us who can see this need to schism or society, we need to distance ourselves from these slave-minded people and put up firm barriers.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
people can choose which of you sound stupider.
Simple: the Nazis sound stupider.
When the fuck did being a Nazi become OK again somehow? Probably when most of the people who fought them last time died off.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What happens when they democratically seize power and exterminate a lot of people? We'll just be fine with it because it was all following democracy and freedom of expression? Just to be clear this is not fiction, it has happened before and they want it to happen again.
The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.
And they were well within their rights to take action to stop someone from using their own platform against them. If I may opine, I'd say it's literally the only legitimate reason to boot someone off such a service; if you're going to slander someone, it's wise to not do so on their own platform, after all.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
A slight correction: nobody has any obligation to him to provide an education; but, society has an obligation to itself to eradicate ignorance. The simplest means by which to do that is to educate at every opportunity. The less ignorance and apathy there is in the world, the better the world is for all of us.
Like right now: you seem to be ignorant of the above, so I've educated you despite having no obligation to you to do so. Why? Because the fewer people exist who exhibit that level of ignorance, the less frequently I am likely to encounter them, which is a net gain for everyone, including me.
When we openly educate each other, we literally all win.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.
Cloudflare didn't care if the world called them Nazi supporters, so long as they weren't using Cloudflare to do so. The Daily Stormer used Cloudflare to call Cloudflare Nazi supporters, so Cloudflare gave them the boot.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I got news for you. Marxists killed many, many more people in the 20th century than Nazis and Fascists combined!
Because it was only a twelve year Reich.
A lot less than you think. Eventually people will just use the excuse in order to silence somebody else’s view. By then people will just willingly accept that they were taken out due to “offensive comments“. It run similar to the argument about gun control. Nobody wants to give a crazy person a gun. But having a law that says that people that arereported by their doctor are revoked of their Second Amendment rights Has already resulted in false reports by doctors who were simply anti-gun. Unfortunately, there was no oversight or proper due process to get yourself off of the list if you were put in there for political reasons. These type of infringement a really a very small step from imprisoning political opponents. I think the CEO woke up scared shitless that he created a president of a police state.
Think of it like somebody that you only marginally know comes forward and accuses you of rape. Within a day 80% of people you interact with on a daily basis have already convicted you as a rapist before the first piece of evidence is even examined. 100% of the people that don’t know you already convinced you’re guilty. Violating somebody’s due process is probably the single most egregious crime we can can commit against the Constitution. If you take away due process, people can invent mini “acceptable“ reasons for denying you every other liberty.
"I'm not an authoritarian tyrant" - every authoritarian tyrant.
No. And I really don't understand how people can persistently misunderstand net neutrality so badly.
Cloudflare is a CDN, not an ISP.
You're confused. No one "misunderstands" Net Neutrality, we just think selectively applying it only to ISPs is a bad notion and doesn't result in Net Neutrality at all, only a subset of it. If you push for Neutrality from ISPs, you should also expect it from CDNs and Content Hosts.
Only Content creators should be absolved of Neutrality.
That, or get ready for Anti-trust action that breaks up the many content host monopolies out there. You think Microsoft was bad in the 90s ? Youtube, Twitter, Facebook are just as bad now, if not worse (at least Windows, as bad as it was, was content agnostic).
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Here is an example of what you speak of. Not that it will matter.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It's called self preservation. You have a natural obligation to do what's best for yourself and society has the same. A society that fails to live up to that obligation soon fails, as we're beginning to see over the past few decades.
It's a slow process, but it's happening. We put ourselves in a position where we believed we could stop teaching out kids common sense, so we stopped; now, we have people dying while taking selfies and walking int traffic while texting instead of looking where they're going. When those of us who know better eventually die of natural causes or fall victim to this idiocy, there will be nobody left to protect the special snowflakes and the decline will accelerate at an alarming rate.
This, my friend, is the part the skipped over in Idiocracy.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Personally, I don't think the application of force and the brutal abuses of power to gain and maintain power are the sole province of any part of the political spectrum. History has shown that, no matter what ethnicity, culture or political inclinations, people with too much power can find ways to justify their prejudices and excuses to commit atrocities. The best way we have managed to come up with for avoiding those abuses is two-fold : First, freedom of speech (includes freedom of the press) and second, inclusive democracy. A well functioning democracy seeks to implement polices that are for the benefit of all and freedom of speech helps insure that when polices are abusive or unjust, that those in power can be called on it. As distasteful as the rhetoric of the far right is, as flatly unacceptable as their proposed solutions are, they still serve democracy by speaking up. Think of them as societies warrant canary. As long as even the extremists from either end of the spectrum can find a place to speak, we know that free speech still exists.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj