20 ms·

Absolutely correct. He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every othe

by genon 9y ago

Absolutely correct. He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare. The excuse he uses for terminating TDS is an absolute crock; if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim. It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like. Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.

derefr 9y ago
> if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim. The damage of libel is reputational damage. Getting the libelous claim retracted after the claim has been seen by the public doesn't undo or erase the damage the claim does. Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation.
- leereeves 9y ago
  If TDS did make such a claim publicly enough to cause reputational damage, there should be evidence we can all see. Anyone know where that evidence is?
  - jachee 9y ago
    Why are you being a Nazi sympathizer?
  - mjevans 9y ago
    Assuming good faith on all parties (including in this discussion)... The public posting was probably on their website, which is now likely blackholed due to being DDoSed after they were no longer protected by a CDN. The Internet is broken when some terrorists can get together and decide to blockaid someone else; even if that someone else is nearly universally agreed upon to vile. I agree with that user on Twitter that wants to make (the racist) individuals /infamous/ so that they can receive the blowback they deserve for their public behavior.
- genon 9y ago
  > Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim Yes, that something is called suing for libel and proving it is libel in a court. Simply claiming something is libel (which Prince doesn't even do in his blog post) doesn't make it libel. > Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation. Because of Cloudflare's action there are now 1000 times as many people, including myself, who are aware of TDS's claim who otherwise wouldn't have heard of it.
- cestith 9y ago
  It doesn't even have to cause reputational damage yet I don't think. IANAL, but the contracts one signs with this sort of company tends to include things like not claiming endorsement of the content by the provider.
vaishaksuresh 9y ago
>Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then. I get what you’re saying and agree with you, but please don’t compare gay people and neo-nazi. They’re not same or even similar.
- genon 9y ago
  If you get what I'm saying - comparing two well-known instances from different parts of the political spectrum where businesses try and refuse custom for ideological reasons - why are you pretending I'm comparing gay people to neo-Nazis?
  - vaishaksuresh 9y ago
    Because you choose to be a neo nazi, you don’t choose to be gay. I’m not talking about denying service. I’m saying one of them did not choose to be what they are.
    - leereeves 9y ago
      It's not clear that people choose their beliefs - or anything else. That's essentially the free will debate, which is still unsettled.
    - edraferi 9y ago
      > Because you choose to be a neo nazi, you don’t choose to be gay. I agree with you, but many people do not, making it a political statement. Things get very complicated as soon as you abandon the bright line test of "you must serve the whole public."
    - Stratoscope 9y ago
      No one is comparing gay people with neo-nazis or saying there is some equivalence, they were just two very different examples to illustrate a point. In fact, what makes it such a good illustration is how different they are from each other. Let me change it to an example more dear to my own heart: > Don't wanna hire old programmers or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then. I certainly didn't choose to be an old programmer! It seems to have just happened, maybe by some law of nature. But I'm not offended by being mentioned in the same sentence with pro-Nazi sites. It's pretty obvious that no comparison is being made between the two.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lern_too_spel 9y ago
False equivalence. Gay people don't choose to be gay, and gay people aren't harming others. A business can refuse to serve skateboarders, shirtless people, and other people who are being a nuisance; and it can certainly refuse to serve people who bring violence wherever they go.
- dane-pgp 9y ago
  If you're saying that Nazis choose to be Nazis, then could you choose to become a Nazi? I don't mean pretend to be one, or act like one, but actually believe their disgusting ideology. If you couldn't choose to do that, then presumably they didn't choose to either, and they couldn't choose to not believe their ideology. And maybe gay people could choose not to enter gay relationships, and maybe them having that ability still isn't a good reason for businesses to discriminate against them.
- mnglkhn2 9y ago
  You seem to contradict the recent view in the LGBTQ. community that gender is a social construct and that you can choose which gender feels right for you! Your implication that being gay has to do with biology and hence it has a hereditary component is at odds with what we are currently hearing from everywhere. Which view is it the valid one? To me these are exclusive so in the community should choose just one discourse.
  - dashundchen 9y ago
    Wow, grossly misrepresented and mischarachaterized. As a member of the LGBTQ community I have met zero trans people who feel that they chose their gender expression, and zero people who felt they chose their sexual orientation, instead of being born and growing into their identities over time. I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I highly, doubt it's anywhere close to a plurality much less a majority. Where exactly have you heard that most trans people are "choosing" their expressed gender? And why do you think there is one view for many people to "choose"?
    - mnglkhn2 9y ago
urbanj 9y ago
Fuck off Nazi apologist
wyager 9y ago
> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like. I don't think that Cloudflare (or any company) should be legally obligated to work with someone they don't like. (Besides, do you really want your wedding cake baked by someone who hates you?) However, I think it's a moral and practical travesty that companies have the ability to effectively deplatform people from the modern internet. It's our responsibility as technologists to make sure that you cannot be silenced, whether you're a persecuted minority or someone who would persecute minorities. Having political gatekeepers to the internet is bad for everyone in the long run.
pessimizer 9y ago
Nazis aren't a protected class, yet. Do you think that businesses shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against skateboarders, or people who refuse to wear shirts and shoes? Not that you can't think that, but it's a weird personal ideology that calls for explanation and argument, not some pronouncement of what should or should not be done. I'm pretty sure you can make the argument why gay people, women and racial or religious minorities shouldn't be discriminated against. Make the same argument for skateboarders if you don't want to make it for Nazis. Do you have an similar argument for why Nazis shouldn't be fired, or why we shouldn't consider whether the people that we do business with employ, or are, Nazis?
- gbarc888 9y ago
  Political affiliation is a protected class. I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis. Unless a person registered with the NSDAP prior to 1945, technically they are not a Nazi.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    The folks in question seem to eagerly and happily apply the word "Nazi" to themselves and embrace the so-called ideals of the German Third Reich. So if you'd like to nitpick over the semantics of "Nazi" versus "adherent of a Nazi-Party-of-Germany-inspired philosophy", be my guest. But I'll be busy opposing them with my every breath, because that's what we do to Nazis.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    > I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis. This coyness about the dilution of meaning is utterly irrelevant here. We're not discussing figurative Nazis or the erosion of the term. We're discussing people literally waving modern variants of historical Nazi flags, historically used Nazi flags, inventing new similar flags, chanting english versions of Nazi slogans, publishing extensive content about racially motivated violence that cites pre-existing Nazi dogma, and cheering acts of spontaneous and fatal violence against those that oppose them. This is not some case of the excluded middle. The word "Nazi" is used judiciously here and no one seems to be feigning confusion except the people who think it should be okay to endorse acts that even our conservatively run justice department things could be categorized as hate crimes. And forgive me, but it's difficult to not hear a note of falseness in this kind of protest. Many of these people in these rallies self-identify as Neo-Nazis, and use slogans that have been associated with violent white-supremacist movements for decades. A powerful deductive intellect is not required to make the connection here. If all that's required to make this right in your book is the prefix "neo-" then please, let me offer you a chrome or firefox plugin to tighten up everyone's language to match one you'll understand. So I ask: are you actually confused here or is this simply a rhetorical tactic?
rayiner 9y ago
> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like. > Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then. Work and business is an enormous part of human life: exempting businesses from Constitutional protections dramatically limit the scope of those protections. Should federal agents be able to raid a business without regard for the Fourth Amendment? Should Texas be able to take legal action against Amazon, Microsoft, etc. for speaking out against the anti-bathroom bill? In America, you get to run a business with whatever political views you have, subject to very narrow restrictions of a handful of anti-discrimination statutes (which are, incidentally, all based on the much-maligned Commerce Clause).
KirinDave 9y ago
> He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare. Well... Yeah. I'm not sure why people think this is not how the internet works. It's a knit of private industry in most of the west and with the exception of a few (eroding) laws, private industries do all kinds of things. The problem for DS is: there aren't many sites that WILL CDN them now that are as good as the alternatives that will surely not. We can talk about strengthening guarantees of access to internet services and hosting, but that'd almost certainly be government mandated. Very few governments in a position to dictate this kind of policy to a global entity like the internet are terribly friendly to outright fascist, nazi policy. So you can pick your poison: inconsistent rules from private entities or more consistent but more likely unfavorable and less mutable rules from government mandate (probably with the weight of government survey and law enforcement). > Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then. The difference here is that neo-nazis make a decision to be bigots. They could stop. Most LGBT people consider their status to be a matter of birth. Even for deeply held religious beliefs, we've long recognized a difference in fairness between discriminating on the circumstances and nature of birth vs. the circumstances and nature of choices made. I think CDNs are a problem in general (their existence speaks to the self-inflicted wounds of an ultimately lawless internet, bad actors contained within gradually destroying it from abuse). It's a bad thing if they start consistently policing content. But I think it's much worse to vigorously justify murder of people exercising their rights to free speech. Ultimately, people opting out of the tit-for-tat game of free speech and engaging in spontaneous acts of violence are opting out of society as a whole, and will start finding themselves exiled and imprisoned formally. And it's difficult to see any other way to proceed.
- fghvbnvbnfe 9y ago
  > The difference here is that neo-nazis make a decision to be bigots. They could stop. Most LGBT people consider their status to be a matter of birth. I don't understand why this argument gets thrown about so often. Obviously not so much about neo-nazis in particular, but whenever a comparison is made to LGBT people. And before anybody jumps to conclusions, I am not about to argue that sexual orientation is a choice. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of all kinds, from all sorts of sources, there are people that seem to honestly believe the earth is flat. There is no way to make a reasoned decision to believe that. It must be something they are not in control of. It could be something they were born with, something in their experiences, or both, but it's clearly something they are not rationally deciding. I'm not certain it can be said that the neo-nazis are definitely making a choice. It seems to be a pretty vehement emotional response, which would indicate it's not. I don't mean to say we should tolerate neo-nazis in the sense that we just let them do their thing. But I do think we might be better off treating them as people that have some predisposition to being neo-nazis than as people that just decided to be one.
foxylad 9y ago
> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like. I have a problem with this, because in effect it is saying that if you want to be in business, you have to check your principles at the entrance. I do run a business, and I do reserve the right to withhold service from people whose principles I find offensive. Just as as an employee, I would reserve the right to withdraw my service (resign) from an employer whose principles I disagreed with. All this is very healthy for our society - it provides excellent feedback about your views, in both directions. The business owner losing business if they are overly intolerant, and the customer loses a valuable service if they are overly offensive. The system works pretty well - much better than any legal solution could.
- lovich 9y ago
  I think that your point would be correct if businesses did not wield the enormous amount of power that they currently do. Who competes with Cloudfare right now? Who competes with AWS? There's already jokes about how if one of those services is down then the internet is down. While everyone might agree currently with getting rid of the Daily Stormer because they are assholes, the precedent and power is now set. For the same reason is not ok for a public business to not make cakes for gay couples, we should not allow public businesses to pick and choose who is allowed to be part of the economy. If you want to argue against that, that is fine, but you have to accept it when people with the completely opposite set of morals start discriminating against _you_ edit: In case it wasn't clear, I am not a fan of Nazis, but I don't want to even set up the opportunity for businesses to have the power to just exclude me from normal day to day activity just because the CEO has decided he doesn't like whatever group I am in
  - Larrikin 9y ago
    Somebody started these companies. They are free to setup their own Nazi friendly servers and compete head to head.
    - charia 9y ago
nardi 9y ago
Gender, race, age, sexual orientation, etc. are “protected classes” that you can’t discriminate on. Being a Nazi is not a protected class. If you have a business, you can feel free to discriminate against Nazis. And you probably should.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  If you operate on public infrastructure, like being granted public right of ways to lay fiber, I think you lose the right to discriminate. This feels good because Nazis are assholes but it sets a very dangerous precedent. This is why the ACLU has a long history of defending Nazis and their ilk. Because one day it will be you on the other side. We should all discriminate against Nazis by denouncing them, ignoring them, etc. Public infrastructure should not.
  - Larrikin 9y ago
    What happened last time the Nazis were ignored?
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      You mean when the redshirts rioted and killed 24 people which pushed the public towards the brownshirts and ultra-nationalism? Was that when we're imagining the Nazis were ignored?
      - anarazel 9y ago
        There's this event called the second world war.
        novembermike 9y ago
        He's referring to the fact that a major catalyst for the Nazis gaining power was German communists engaging in what was practically open warfare with them.
ixtli 9y ago
To be fair if being the single worst nazi site on the internet is the thing that gets him so angry he removes a site, thats an exceptionally high bar.
susanrigetti 9y ago
I never once in my life imagined that one of the first comments on a front-page HN post would be one that claimed that refusing service to Nazis was "spurious" and "bigoted" and that said comment was not flagged-to-oblivion. For anyone reading this thread, please know that this is NOT the majority opinion within the tech industry - not by a long shot. We are not Nazi sympathizers, and we do not think this is normal. It's not normal.
- genon 9y ago
  I'm surprised at how many people are pretending not to understand what I wrote, seemingly in order to proclaim how anti-Nazi they are. When I was a teenager and first read Chomsky, being anti-censorship was a left-wing thing. I don't think Chomsky has changed his opinion on censorship, or his political persuasion, and neither have I. It's a pity that people who believe in fascistic ideals (censorship and discrimination based on political beliefs) are what is deemed "the left" these days. IMO, if you believe in censorship and do not support free speech you are not left-wing. > claimed that refusing service to Nazis was "spurious" and "bigoted" Do you seriously need me to explain that "bigoted" referred to the cake example? Seriously? As for the rest. Cloudflare did not refuse service to "Nazis". Had they done so, they would have not had to remove that service, under the entirely spurious reason that Matthew Prince woke up in a bad mood and claims they wrote something he didn't like. They're still providing service to Stormfront, and who knows how many other "Nazi" sites.
  - davedx 9y ago
    I've also read Chomsky and lived in a country (the UK) with 'incitement to racial hatred' laws for most of my adult life. There are many countries like this. I have a carefully held belief that there should indeed be certain limits on free speech, and these countries get it more or less right. Believe it or not, you can actually be 'left' or 'right' wing (or anything else) and hold more subtle positions than absolute, black and white. I think this is a huge problem in discourse in the USA right now. People believe that everyone is completely divided and polarised at opposite extremes. It's incredibly ridiculous. You can hold many varying positions, and I think people who are completely absolutist are in the absolute minority. Just look at this thread.
pgorczak 9y ago
OTOH if you're a private business, refusing service to someone can be a way to express your political opinion. It's easy to call out injustice and oppression for many categories (race, gender, ...) but that case is harder to make for categories like "political ideology that actually favors oppression". Of course this should not result in human rights violations and being restricted from communicating your beliefs to the world is one of them. Especially in infrastructure, we rely on private companies to fulfill basic needs that are protected by human rights. If your infrastructure company is huge and as powerful as a public institution, and is able to single-handedly mess with people's human rights, you should of course not be allowed to have a political agenda. Not selling cakes to Nazis in your corner shop is something completely different.
matt4077 9y ago
> He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare A -> B does not imply !B -> !A Example: if you eat an Apple, saying "hey, that's one good-looking Apple!", it does not require you to heretofore eat every good-looking Apple you come across.
- tr352 9y ago
  > A -> B does not imply !B -> !A A -> B does imply !B -> !A. The error in reasoning here seems to be that attitude towards a website is assumed to be a binary "like/not like" variable, while in reality one can also neither like nor dislike something.
  - snovv_crash 9y ago
    No it doesn't. Just because you tell me you don't like to get shot doesn't mean you are ok with being stabbed.
    - matt4077 9y ago
      While it pains me to admit: They're actually right, and I was wrong above.
    - tr352 9y ago
      Yes it does. In fact, in classical logic, A->B is equivalent to !B->!A. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition
      - spookyuser 9y ago
        Exactly. A consequence of this being true is the Raven Paradox [1], seemingly the OP has solved the classic riddle in a HN thread. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox
abalone 9y ago
> if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim. I'd go a step further. If cloudflare were a branch of the government like the literal internet police, then it would be immaterial if an entity claimed they supported them. The response would be to simply ignore or refute the claim, not demand that they withdraw it lest they lose police protection. Cloudflare is essentially performing the function of the police protecting the KKK's right to march, just like they protect the right of civil rights marchers to be free of denial-of-marchedness. The core issue here is that government-like functions on the internet are handled by an amalgamation of private entities, who are not bound to the same constitutional requirements.
- icebraining 9y ago
  I have the right to police protection, but that doesn't mean I get to have a cop patrolling my building 24/7. That's why businesses hire private security. Likewise, DDoS is a crime and TDS has every right to present a criminal complaint. Cloudflare is just the Internet equivalent of private security.
  - abalone 9y ago
    Where that analogy fails is that IRL you still do enjoy police protection even if you can't afford private security. Even if they're not patrolling 24/7, the cops should still show up if someone's trying to burn down your unpopular place.
dang 9y ago
Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN, nor are accounts that use the site primarily for ideological battle. That isn't what HN is for, and it destroys what it is for. Therefore we ban such accounts, and I've banned this one. Would you please stop creating accounts to break HN's guidelines with? We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032227 and marked it off-topic.

by genon 9y ago

derefr 9y ago

> if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim. The damage of libel is reputational damage. Getting the libelous claim retracted after the claim has been seen by the public doesn't undo or erase the damage the claim does. Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation.

leereeves 9y ago
If TDS did make such a claim publicly enough to cause reputational damage, there should be evidence we can all see. Anyone know where that evidence is?
- jachee 9y ago
  Why are you being a Nazi sympathizer?
- mjevans 9y ago
  Assuming good faith on all parties (including in this discussion)... The public posting was probably on their website, which is now likely blackholed due to being DDoSed after they were no longer protected by a CDN. The Internet is broken when some terrorists can get together and decide to blockaid someone else; even if that someone else is nearly universally agreed upon to vile. I agree with that user on Twitter that wants to make (the racist) individuals /infamous/ so that they can receive the blowback they deserve for their public behavior.
genon 9y ago
> Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim Yes, that something is called suing for libel and proving it is libel in a court. Simply claiming something is libel (which Prince doesn't even do in his blog post) doesn't make it libel. > Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation. Because of Cloudflare's action there are now 1000 times as many people, including myself, who are aware of TDS's claim who otherwise wouldn't have heard of it.
cestith 9y ago
It doesn't even have to cause reputational damage yet I don't think. IANAL, but the contracts one signs with this sort of company tends to include things like not claiming endorsement of the content by the provider.

vaishaksuresh 9y ago

>Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then. I get what you’re saying and agree with you, but please don’t compare gay people and neo-nazi. They’re not same or even similar.

genon 9y ago
If you get what I'm saying - comparing two well-known instances from different parts of the political spectrum where businesses try and refuse custom for ideological reasons - why are you pretending I'm comparing gay people to neo-Nazis?
- vaishaksuresh 9y ago
  Because you choose to be a neo nazi, you don’t choose to be gay. I’m not talking about denying service. I’m saying one of them did not choose to be what they are.
  - leereeves 9y ago
    It's not clear that people choose their beliefs - or anything else. That's essentially the free will debate, which is still unsettled.
  - edraferi 9y ago
    > Because you choose to be a neo nazi, you don’t choose to be gay. I agree with you, but many people do not, making it a political statement. Things get very complicated as soon as you abandon the bright line test of "you must serve the whole public."
  - Stratoscope 9y ago
    No one is comparing gay people with neo-nazis or saying there is some equivalence, they were just two very different examples to illustrate a point. In fact, what makes it such a good illustration is how different they are from each other. Let me change it to an example more dear to my own heart: > Don't wanna hire old programmers or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then. I certainly didn't choose to be an old programmer! It seems to have just happened, maybe by some law of nature. But I'm not offended by being mentioned in the same sentence with pro-Nazi sites. It's pretty obvious that no comparison is being made between the two.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lern_too_spel 9y ago

False equivalence. Gay people don't choose to be gay, and gay people aren't harming others. A business can refuse to serve skateboarders, shirtless people, and other people who are being a nuisance; and it can certainly refuse to serve people who bring violence wherever they go.

dane-pgp 9y ago
If you're saying that Nazis choose to be Nazis, then could you choose to become a Nazi? I don't mean pretend to be one, or act like one, but actually believe their disgusting ideology. If you couldn't choose to do that, then presumably they didn't choose to either, and they couldn't choose to not believe their ideology. And maybe gay people could choose not to enter gay relationships, and maybe them having that ability still isn't a good reason for businesses to discriminate against them.
mnglkhn2 9y ago
You seem to contradict the recent view in the LGBTQ. community that gender is a social construct and that you can choose which gender feels right for you! Your implication that being gay has to do with biology and hence it has a hereditary component is at odds with what we are currently hearing from everywhere. Which view is it the valid one? To me these are exclusive so in the community should choose just one discourse.
- dashundchen 9y ago
  Wow, grossly misrepresented and mischarachaterized. As a member of the LGBTQ community I have met zero trans people who feel that they chose their gender expression, and zero people who felt they chose their sexual orientation, instead of being born and growing into their identities over time. I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I highly, doubt it's anywhere close to a plurality much less a majority. Where exactly have you heard that most trans people are "choosing" their expressed gender? And why do you think there is one view for many people to "choose"?
  - mnglkhn2 9y ago

urbanj 9y ago

Fuck off Nazi apologist

wyager 9y ago

> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like. I don't think that Cloudflare (or any company) should be legally obligated to work with someone they don't like. (Besides, do you really want your wedding cake baked by someone who hates you?) However, I think it's a moral and practical travesty that companies have the ability to effectively deplatform people from the modern internet. It's our responsibility as technologists to make sure that you cannot be silenced, whether you're a persecuted minority or someone who would persecute minorities. Having political gatekeepers to the internet is bad for everyone in the long run.

pessimizer 9y ago

Nazis aren't a protected class, yet. Do you think that businesses shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against skateboarders, or people who refuse to wear shirts and shoes? Not that you can't think that, but it's a weird personal ideology that calls for explanation and argument, not some pronouncement of what should or should not be done. I'm pretty sure you can make the argument why gay people, women and racial or religious minorities shouldn't be discriminated against. Make the same argument for skateboarders if you don't want to make it for Nazis. Do you have an similar argument for why Nazis shouldn't be fired, or why we shouldn't consider whether the people that we do business with employ, or are, Nazis?

gbarc888 9y ago
Political affiliation is a protected class. I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis. Unless a person registered with the NSDAP prior to 1945, technically they are not a Nazi.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  The folks in question seem to eagerly and happily apply the word "Nazi" to themselves and embrace the so-called ideals of the German Third Reich. So if you'd like to nitpick over the semantics of "Nazi" versus "adherent of a Nazi-Party-of-Germany-inspired philosophy", be my guest. But I'll be busy opposing them with my every breath, because that's what we do to Nazis.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  > I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis. This coyness about the dilution of meaning is utterly irrelevant here. We're not discussing figurative Nazis or the erosion of the term. We're discussing people literally waving modern variants of historical Nazi flags, historically used Nazi flags, inventing new similar flags, chanting english versions of Nazi slogans, publishing extensive content about racially motivated violence that cites pre-existing Nazi dogma, and cheering acts of spontaneous and fatal violence against those that oppose them. This is not some case of the excluded middle. The word "Nazi" is used judiciously here and no one seems to be feigning confusion except the people who think it should be okay to endorse acts that even our conservatively run justice department things could be categorized as hate crimes. And forgive me, but it's difficult to not hear a note of falseness in this kind of protest. Many of these people in these rallies self-identify as Neo-Nazis, and use slogans that have been associated with violent white-supremacist movements for decades. A powerful deductive intellect is not required to make the connection here. If all that's required to make this right in your book is the prefix "neo-" then please, let me offer you a chrome or firefox plugin to tighten up everyone's language to match one you'll understand. So I ask: are you actually confused here or is this simply a rhetorical tactic?

rayiner 9y ago

> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like. > Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then. Work and business is an enormous part of human life: exempting businesses from Constitutional protections dramatically limit the scope of those protections. Should federal agents be able to raid a business without regard for the Fourth Amendment? Should Texas be able to take legal action against Amazon, Microsoft, etc. for speaking out against the anti-bathroom bill? In America, you get to run a business with whatever political views you have, subject to very narrow restrictions of a handful of anti-discrimination statutes (which are, incidentally, all based on the much-maligned Commerce Clause).

KirinDave 9y ago

> He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare. Well... Yeah. I'm not sure why people think this is not how the internet works. It's a knit of private industry in most of the west and with the exception of a few (eroding) laws, private industries do all kinds of things. The problem for DS is: there aren't many sites that WILL CDN them now that are as good as the alternatives that will surely not. We can talk about strengthening guarantees of access to internet services and hosting, but that'd almost certainly be government mandated. Very few governments in a position to dictate this kind of policy to a global entity like the internet are terribly friendly to outright fascist, nazi policy. So you can pick your poison: inconsistent rules from private entities or more consistent but more likely unfavorable and less mutable rules from government mandate (probably with the weight of government survey and law enforcement). > Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then. The difference here is that neo-nazis make a decision to be bigots. They could stop. Most LGBT people consider their status to be a matter of birth. Even for deeply held religious beliefs, we've long recognized a difference in fairness between discriminating on the circumstances and nature of birth vs. the circumstances and nature of choices made. I think CDNs are a problem in general (their existence speaks to the self-inflicted wounds of an ultimately lawless internet, bad actors contained within gradually destroying it from abuse). It's a bad thing if they start consistently policing content. But I think it's much worse to vigorously justify murder of people exercising their rights to free speech. Ultimately, people opting out of the tit-for-tat game of free speech and engaging in spontaneous acts of violence are opting out of society as a whole, and will start finding themselves exiled and imprisoned formally. And it's difficult to see any other way to proceed.

fghvbnvbnfe 9y ago
> The difference here is that neo-nazis make a decision to be bigots. They could stop. Most LGBT people consider their status to be a matter of birth. I don't understand why this argument gets thrown about so often. Obviously not so much about neo-nazis in particular, but whenever a comparison is made to LGBT people. And before anybody jumps to conclusions, I am not about to argue that sexual orientation is a choice. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of all kinds, from all sorts of sources, there are people that seem to honestly believe the earth is flat. There is no way to make a reasoned decision to believe that. It must be something they are not in control of. It could be something they were born with, something in their experiences, or both, but it's clearly something they are not rationally deciding. I'm not certain it can be said that the neo-nazis are definitely making a choice. It seems to be a pretty vehement emotional response, which would indicate it's not. I don't mean to say we should tolerate neo-nazis in the sense that we just let them do their thing. But I do think we might be better off treating them as people that have some predisposition to being neo-nazis than as people that just decided to be one.

foxylad 9y ago

> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like. I have a problem with this, because in effect it is saying that if you want to be in business, you have to check your principles at the entrance. I do run a business, and I do reserve the right to withhold service from people whose principles I find offensive. Just as as an employee, I would reserve the right to withdraw my service (resign) from an employer whose principles I disagreed with. All this is very healthy for our society - it provides excellent feedback about your views, in both directions. The business owner losing business if they are overly intolerant, and the customer loses a valuable service if they are overly offensive. The system works pretty well - much better than any legal solution could.

lovich 9y ago
I think that your point would be correct if businesses did not wield the enormous amount of power that they currently do. Who competes with Cloudfare right now? Who competes with AWS? There's already jokes about how if one of those services is down then the internet is down. While everyone might agree currently with getting rid of the Daily Stormer because they are assholes, the precedent and power is now set. For the same reason is not ok for a public business to not make cakes for gay couples, we should not allow public businesses to pick and choose who is allowed to be part of the economy. If you want to argue against that, that is fine, but you have to accept it when people with the completely opposite set of morals start discriminating against _you_ edit: In case it wasn't clear, I am not a fan of Nazis, but I don't want to even set up the opportunity for businesses to have the power to just exclude me from normal day to day activity just because the CEO has decided he doesn't like whatever group I am in
- Larrikin 9y ago
  Somebody started these companies. They are free to setup their own Nazi friendly servers and compete head to head.
  - charia 9y ago

nardi 9y ago

Gender, race, age, sexual orientation, etc. are “protected classes” that you can’t discriminate on. Being a Nazi is not a protected class. If you have a business, you can feel free to discriminate against Nazis. And you probably should.

Consultant32452 9y ago
If you operate on public infrastructure, like being granted public right of ways to lay fiber, I think you lose the right to discriminate. This feels good because Nazis are assholes but it sets a very dangerous precedent. This is why the ACLU has a long history of defending Nazis and their ilk. Because one day it will be you on the other side. We should all discriminate against Nazis by denouncing them, ignoring them, etc. Public infrastructure should not.
- Larrikin 9y ago
  What happened last time the Nazis were ignored?
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    You mean when the redshirts rioted and killed 24 people which pushed the public towards the brownshirts and ultra-nationalism? Was that when we're imagining the Nazis were ignored?
    - anarazel 9y ago
      There's this event called the second world war.
      - novembermike 9y ago
        He's referring to the fact that a major catalyst for the Nazis gaining power was German communists engaging in what was practically open warfare with them.

ixtli 9y ago

To be fair if being the single worst nazi site on the internet is the thing that gets him so angry he removes a site, thats an exceptionally high bar.

susanrigetti 9y ago

I never once in my life imagined that one of the first comments on a front-page HN post would be one that claimed that refusing service to Nazis was "spurious" and "bigoted" and that said comment was not flagged-to-oblivion. For anyone reading this thread, please know that this is NOT the majority opinion within the tech industry - not by a long shot. We are not Nazi sympathizers, and we do not think this is normal. It's not normal.

genon 9y ago
I'm surprised at how many people are pretending not to understand what I wrote, seemingly in order to proclaim how anti-Nazi they are. When I was a teenager and first read Chomsky, being anti-censorship was a left-wing thing. I don't think Chomsky has changed his opinion on censorship, or his political persuasion, and neither have I. It's a pity that people who believe in fascistic ideals (censorship and discrimination based on political beliefs) are what is deemed "the left" these days. IMO, if you believe in censorship and do not support free speech you are not left-wing. > claimed that refusing service to Nazis was "spurious" and "bigoted" Do you seriously need me to explain that "bigoted" referred to the cake example? Seriously? As for the rest. Cloudflare did not refuse service to "Nazis". Had they done so, they would have not had to remove that service, under the entirely spurious reason that Matthew Prince woke up in a bad mood and claims they wrote something he didn't like. They're still providing service to Stormfront, and who knows how many other "Nazi" sites.
- davedx 9y ago
  I've also read Chomsky and lived in a country (the UK) with 'incitement to racial hatred' laws for most of my adult life. There are many countries like this. I have a carefully held belief that there should indeed be certain limits on free speech, and these countries get it more or less right. Believe it or not, you can actually be 'left' or 'right' wing (or anything else) and hold more subtle positions than absolute, black and white. I think this is a huge problem in discourse in the USA right now. People believe that everyone is completely divided and polarised at opposite extremes. It's incredibly ridiculous. You can hold many varying positions, and I think people who are completely absolutist are in the absolute minority. Just look at this thread.

pgorczak 9y ago

OTOH if you're a private business, refusing service to someone can be a way to express your political opinion. It's easy to call out injustice and oppression for many categories (race, gender, ...) but that case is harder to make for categories like "political ideology that actually favors oppression". Of course this should not result in human rights violations and being restricted from communicating your beliefs to the world is one of them. Especially in infrastructure, we rely on private companies to fulfill basic needs that are protected by human rights. If your infrastructure company is huge and as powerful as a public institution, and is able to single-handedly mess with people's human rights, you should of course not be allowed to have a political agenda. Not selling cakes to Nazis in your corner shop is something completely different.

matt4077 9y ago

> He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare A -> B does not imply !B -> !A Example: if you eat an Apple, saying "hey, that's one good-looking Apple!", it does not require you to heretofore eat every good-looking Apple you come across.

tr352 9y ago
> A -> B does not imply !B -> !A A -> B does imply !B -> !A. The error in reasoning here seems to be that attitude towards a website is assumed to be a binary "like/not like" variable, while in reality one can also neither like nor dislike something.
- snovv_crash 9y ago
  No it doesn't. Just because you tell me you don't like to get shot doesn't mean you are ok with being stabbed.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    While it pains me to admit: They're actually right, and I was wrong above.
  - tr352 9y ago
    Yes it does. In fact, in classical logic, A->B is equivalent to !B->!A. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition
    - spookyuser 9y ago
      Exactly. A consequence of this being true is the Raven Paradox [1], seemingly the OP has solved the classic riddle in a HN thread. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox

abalone 9y ago

> if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim. I'd go a step further. If cloudflare were a branch of the government like the literal internet police, then it would be immaterial if an entity claimed they supported them. The response would be to simply ignore or refute the claim, not demand that they withdraw it lest they lose police protection. Cloudflare is essentially performing the function of the police protecting the KKK's right to march, just like they protect the right of civil rights marchers to be free of denial-of-marchedness. The core issue here is that government-like functions on the internet are handled by an amalgamation of private entities, who are not bound to the same constitutional requirements.

icebraining 9y ago
I have the right to police protection, but that doesn't mean I get to have a cop patrolling my building 24/7. That's why businesses hire private security. Likewise, DDoS is a crime and TDS has every right to present a criminal complaint. Cloudflare is just the Internet equivalent of private security.
- abalone 9y ago
  Where that analogy fails is that IRL you still do enjoy police protection even if you can't afford private security. Even if they're not patrolling 24/7, the cops should still show up if someone's trying to burn down your unpopular place.

dang 9y ago

Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN, nor are accounts that use the site primarily for ideological battle. That isn't what HN is for, and it destroys what it is for. Therefore we ban such accounts, and I've banned this one. Would you please stop creating accounts to break HN's guidelines with? We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032227 and marked it off-topic.