8 ms·

So much for believing in "due process".

bnjms 9y ago
Much like free speech due process concerns citizens and their government rather than people and any public organization.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  Even when one explicitly calls it out as something they believe in?
- zcombo432 9y ago
  He said so himself in May that every website deserves due process before taking it offline. “Whenever you have a private organization which is making what are essentially law enforcement decisions, that is a risk to due process. And I think due process is important,” Prince said in the interview.
  - thinkfurther 9y ago
    "Yup, they're Nazis". What more due process do you require?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - noir_lord 9y ago
      There was a post on twitter earlier that said "Take your first name and your last name, that's your Nazi-fighting name". I asked "Actual Nazi's like National Socialists with a Eugenics campaign, or people we just don't like". Did not go well. We should be careful to a) not call everything Nazi and thereby dilute the effect b) call people are actual Nazi's whatever the fuck you want, they can all go die quietly for all I care.
      - fiblye 9y ago
        Point A is something people don't realize they need to be careful with. The terms "racist" and "sexist" have been so overused and reduced to meaninglessness in the past few years, that true sexism and racism have been allowed to grow and become publicly visible. People can just brush off or even proudly own up to accusations because it's been so wrongly applied so often. "Nazi" used to be a thing that people used to call politicians they didn't like online. Now everyone is calling everybody a nazi everywhere. It'll get to a "Who cares if they're a nazi?" point pretty quickly.
        noir_lord 9y ago
        Yep and you lose (in a general sense) a convenient way of summarising a narrow and dangerous political ideology for a moments gratification in saying "Don't listen them, they are a Nazi". I don't call someone a Nazi unless they are literally a Nazi, I don't call them a Fascist unless they are literally a Fascist and I don't call them a Communist because they think that maybe corporations shouldn't have the game rigged in their favour and own the pitch. The part I really like is when I've been attacked by people with largely similar views to my own for sticking up for the rights of people to hold different views. If you think your argument is stronger, then make the damn argument, don't resort to name calling and lazy "but he's a Foo and we all know that Foo's can never be right, stupid Foo's". There are people on the hard-right in the UK I can't stand and there are some who have some valid points, you can accept the validity of some points without accepting the argument. Also while I'm venting, I fucking hate "what aboutism", "Foo's have been doing <bad things>" "yeah but what about what the Bars did"...yeah both Foo and Bar can be cunts at the same time, We are talking about Foo in this instance, lets get to Bar's later. My philosophy is "You have a right to think whatever you want, You don't have any rights to make me think it". I'd rather have reasonable debate over a wide range of issues than furious debate over a narrow spectrum as Chomsky warned about in Manufacturing Consent (I think, I need to re-read that book).
        thinkfurther 9y ago
        > I don't call someone a Nazi unless they are literally a Nazi What's a "literal Nazi" to you then? A member of the historical NSDAP? edit: Also, note while you're all talking to each other and patting yourself on the back about how you're so great at discussing ideas, none of you even tried answer my question: what more due process do you require? Do you disagree with the assessment? This reminds me of a comment on HN I read recently, where someone said they had to insert a delay into a website so customers would think they're doing some really serious data crunching (which they did, but just too quickly for it to "feel" that way -- for people who don't know what's going on, at all).
    - Ygg2 9y ago
      > What more due process do you require? That sounds like something a Nazi would say.
      - thinkfurther 9y ago
        I'm not saying it, I'm asking it. What more do you need than swastikas and glorification of the holocaust and so on? I love how the bar there seems to be raised so high that even Adolf Hitler might not qualify as Nazi to some people here, but I simply ask a question, and that's being like a Nazi. I can do and am things a Nazi cannot do and isn't. I also can be brutal and hateful, like when I get sick of all these snakes on this motherfucking plane. I can do everything they can, but also so much more. That is the difference.
        Ygg2 9y ago
        Well Adolf would need to be pro and against abortion, pro and against LGBT rights, since that was the usage for Nazi before this started. A political slur. If everyone is Nazi, no one is. I was more warning of general, "He is a Nazi he doesn't have any rights", sentiment. Any bad actor can devise an identity that isn't Nazi, and prey on vulnerable by making them look like Nazis. I mean it wouldn't be hard to make ACLU look like Nazis for defending neo-Nazis.
- jessriedel 9y ago
  No. The 1st amendment is specific to the government, but free speech is a much broader normative concept. It is about cordoning off the market place of ideas from reprisals in meatspace. A canonical defense is John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" (available free online).
  - dguaraglia 9y ago
    It might be a canonical concept, but it's not encoded in law.
    - lmm 9y ago
      Indeed. The law does not completely protect free speech; the first amendment prevents the federal government from infringing it, but it's up to us to defend it when it's threatened by other private citizens or organizations.
- ruleabidinguser 9y ago
  Do you honestly believe this is a good argument?
vacri 9y ago
> So much for believing in "due process". Due process is not a synonym for don't do anything nor no consequences.
- kgwgk 9y ago
  Due process is not a synonym for "I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet" either.
dguaraglia 9y ago
Due process? For what? It's a private company, deciding to terminate the contract with a shitty customer that is ruining their image. Worst case scenario the Nazis might have a case for breach of contract, but they won't get much out of it. Also, I'd love to see them show up in court to try to defend this as a "freedom of speech" case, and get told what a bunch of abhorrent human beings they are and to GTFO.
- leereeves 9y ago
  Due process is something the CloudFlare CEO mentioned believing in. I didn't see how it was relevant either.
- maxlybbert 9y ago
  The CEO's explanation includes a section titled "freedom of speech < due process." But he defines "due process" as, roughly, predictable decision making. Legally speaking, due process involves a lot more than that. The CEO doesn't describe any process that Cloudflare intends to follow that will provide predictable decisions. So the original comment is correct: the explanation doesn't describe anything similar to due process, even though the CEO explicitly says that is/will be Cloudflare's guiding light. For what it's worth, I think Cloudflare has a strong argument for canceling based on the Daily Stormer's claim that Cloudflare supported them or endorsed them or whatever ( http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-15-commerce-and-trade/15-usc-sect-1125.html http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-15-commerce-and-trade/15-u... ). But the explanation promises to go beyond that, and doesn't deliver.
  - dguaraglia 9y ago
    Gotcha, when he said "due process" he didn't mean it in the legal sense, but in the "we have to follow the right procedures internally to make sure what we are doing is right" sense.
    - maxlybbert 9y ago
      Right. But I don't see where he describes those internal procedures. Basically, the post amounts to "we were upset that these guys claimed we supported them, so we canceled their account." There's a discussion about how important it is to not make decisions on a whim, but no discussion about how this decision wasn't made on a whim.
specialist 9y ago
His only mistake is explaining himself. If it were my call, every hate group's content would have inexplicable persistent problems. I'd use the Simple Sabotage Field Manual as my playbook.
- vixen99 9y ago
  And the hate group would be defined as such by whom?
  - root_axis 9y ago
    Sometimes we yield idealism for the sake of pragmatism. Yes, the definition of "hate group" is subjective and also political, but most people recognize that self-described nazis and members of the KKK meet that definition.

Much like free speech due process concerns citizens and their government rather than people and any public organization.

jlgaddis 9y ago
Even when one explicitly calls it out as something they believe in?
zcombo432 9y ago
He said so himself in May that every website deserves due process before taking it offline. “Whenever you have a private organization which is making what are essentially law enforcement decisions, that is a risk to due process. And I think due process is important,” Prince said in the interview.
- thinkfurther 9y ago
  "Yup, they're Nazis". What more due process do you require?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    There was a post on twitter earlier that said "Take your first name and your last name, that's your Nazi-fighting name". I asked "Actual Nazi's like National Socialists with a Eugenics campaign, or people we just don't like". Did not go well. We should be careful to a) not call everything Nazi and thereby dilute the effect b) call people are actual Nazi's whatever the fuck you want, they can all go die quietly for all I care.
    - fiblye 9y ago
      Point A is something people don't realize they need to be careful with. The terms "racist" and "sexist" have been so overused and reduced to meaninglessness in the past few years, that true sexism and racism have been allowed to grow and become publicly visible. People can just brush off or even proudly own up to accusations because it's been so wrongly applied so often. "Nazi" used to be a thing that people used to call politicians they didn't like online. Now everyone is calling everybody a nazi everywhere. It'll get to a "Who cares if they're a nazi?" point pretty quickly.
      - noir_lord 9y ago
        Yep and you lose (in a general sense) a convenient way of summarising a narrow and dangerous political ideology for a moments gratification in saying "Don't listen them, they are a Nazi". I don't call someone a Nazi unless they are literally a Nazi, I don't call them a Fascist unless they are literally a Fascist and I don't call them a Communist because they think that maybe corporations shouldn't have the game rigged in their favour and own the pitch. The part I really like is when I've been attacked by people with largely similar views to my own for sticking up for the rights of people to hold different views. If you think your argument is stronger, then make the damn argument, don't resort to name calling and lazy "but he's a Foo and we all know that Foo's can never be right, stupid Foo's". There are people on the hard-right in the UK I can't stand and there are some who have some valid points, you can accept the validity of some points without accepting the argument. Also while I'm venting, I fucking hate "what aboutism", "Foo's have been doing <bad things>" "yeah but what about what the Bars did"...yeah both Foo and Bar can be cunts at the same time, We are talking about Foo in this instance, lets get to Bar's later. My philosophy is "You have a right to think whatever you want, You don't have any rights to make me think it". I'd rather have reasonable debate over a wide range of issues than furious debate over a narrow spectrum as Chomsky warned about in Manufacturing Consent (I think, I need to re-read that book).
        thinkfurther 9y ago
        > I don't call someone a Nazi unless they are literally a Nazi What's a "literal Nazi" to you then? A member of the historical NSDAP? edit: Also, note while you're all talking to each other and patting yourself on the back about how you're so great at discussing ideas, none of you even tried answer my question: what more due process do you require? Do you disagree with the assessment? This reminds me of a comment on HN I read recently, where someone said they had to insert a delay into a website so customers would think they're doing some really serious data crunching (which they did, but just too quickly for it to "feel" that way -- for people who don't know what's going on, at all).
  - Ygg2 9y ago
    > What more due process do you require? That sounds like something a Nazi would say.
    - thinkfurther 9y ago
      I'm not saying it, I'm asking it. What more do you need than swastikas and glorification of the holocaust and so on? I love how the bar there seems to be raised so high that even Adolf Hitler might not qualify as Nazi to some people here, but I simply ask a question, and that's being like a Nazi. I can do and am things a Nazi cannot do and isn't. I also can be brutal and hateful, like when I get sick of all these snakes on this motherfucking plane. I can do everything they can, but also so much more. That is the difference.
      - Ygg2 9y ago
        Well Adolf would need to be pro and against abortion, pro and against LGBT rights, since that was the usage for Nazi before this started. A political slur. If everyone is Nazi, no one is. I was more warning of general, "He is a Nazi he doesn't have any rights", sentiment. Any bad actor can devise an identity that isn't Nazi, and prey on vulnerable by making them look like Nazis. I mean it wouldn't be hard to make ACLU look like Nazis for defending neo-Nazis.
jessriedel 9y ago
No. The 1st amendment is specific to the government, but free speech is a much broader normative concept. It is about cordoning off the market place of ideas from reprisals in meatspace. A canonical defense is John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" (available free online).
- dguaraglia 9y ago
  It might be a canonical concept, but it's not encoded in law.
  - lmm 9y ago
    Indeed. The law does not completely protect free speech; the first amendment prevents the federal government from infringing it, but it's up to us to defend it when it's threatened by other private citizens or organizations.
ruleabidinguser 9y ago
Do you honestly believe this is a good argument?

vacri 9y ago

> So much for believing in "due process". Due process is not a synonym for don't do anything nor no consequences.

kgwgk 9y ago
Due process is not a synonym for "I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet" either.

dguaraglia 9y ago

Due process? For what? It's a private company, deciding to terminate the contract with a shitty customer that is ruining their image. Worst case scenario the Nazis might have a case for breach of contract, but they won't get much out of it. Also, I'd love to see them show up in court to try to defend this as a "freedom of speech" case, and get told what a bunch of abhorrent human beings they are and to GTFO.

leereeves 9y ago
Due process is something the CloudFlare CEO mentioned believing in. I didn't see how it was relevant either.
maxlybbert 9y ago
The CEO's explanation includes a section titled "freedom of speech < due process." But he defines "due process" as, roughly, predictable decision making. Legally speaking, due process involves a lot more than that. The CEO doesn't describe any process that Cloudflare intends to follow that will provide predictable decisions. So the original comment is correct: the explanation doesn't describe anything similar to due process, even though the CEO explicitly says that is/will be Cloudflare's guiding light. For what it's worth, I think Cloudflare has a strong argument for canceling based on the Daily Stormer's claim that Cloudflare supported them or endorsed them or whatever ( http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-15-commerce-and-trade/15-usc-sect-1125.html http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-15-commerce-and-trade/15-u... ). But the explanation promises to go beyond that, and doesn't deliver.
- dguaraglia 9y ago
  Gotcha, when he said "due process" he didn't mean it in the legal sense, but in the "we have to follow the right procedures internally to make sure what we are doing is right" sense.
  - maxlybbert 9y ago
    Right. But I don't see where he describes those internal procedures. Basically, the post amounts to "we were upset that these guys claimed we supported them, so we canceled their account." There's a discussion about how important it is to not make decisions on a whim, but no discussion about how this decision wasn't made on a whim.

specialist 9y ago

His only mistake is explaining himself. If it were my call, every hate group's content would have inexplicable persistent problems. I'd use the Simple Sabotage Field Manual as my playbook.

vixen99 9y ago
And the hate group would be defined as such by whom?
- root_axis 9y ago
  Sometimes we yield idealism for the sake of pragmatism. Yes, the definition of "hate group" is subjective and also political, but most people recognize that self-described nazis and members of the KKK meet that definition.