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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.
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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
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.
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"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.
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."?
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.