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> But we can't build free and open source tools that protect journalists, human rights activists, and ordinary people around the world if we also control who us

> But we can't build free and open source tools that protect journalists, human rights activists, and ordinary people around the world if we also control who uses those tools. Tor is designed to defend human rights and privacy by preventing anyone from censoring things, even us. I feel like this is what cloudflare should have said. I understand they changed their mind after TDS claimed CloudFlare supported them - but based on the internal memos it seemed to be more of a "I was grumpy and they're jerks" decision. The major problem with that being that once you make one decision like that - even if you're well-intentioned, the next person that comes after you might do it to the wrong people. Maybe letting racists have a platform isn't great, but it's better than hand-by-hand justification of what is and isn't "appropriate" to host.

ajross 9y ago
> Maybe letting racists have a platform [is] better than hand-by-hand justification of what is and isn't "appropriate" to host. Or, maybe it's not? I don't see that that follows. Yes, there's the slippery slope argument that someday a host could make a decision we don't agree with. But (1) hosts do that anyway, all the time, and (2) if fucking white power racism isn't on solid, level ground above the slope, then what else could be? The solution to private sector choice about hosting and distribution of controversial content can't be a blanket protection for all speech. The first amendment is about public law, because of the reach of the government and the potential damage from abuse. The solution in the end really can only be a case-by-case determination, individually by every host, as to what they are comfortable seeing on their systems. Which is exactly what we have here, even if CloudFlare's internal process was exposed as messier than we'd like to see.
- dcow 9y ago
  Or, the internet has matured enough that we consider it a public utility and seriously form legislation that protects peoples' constitutional rights even on the internet. I literally don't see how anything TDS says is physically harming anyone. I've never been to the site, I don't give them my traffic, money, anything.. If you don't like them and find them so vile it's causing you mental stress then just navigate away and ignore the vile scum.
  - djtriptych 9y ago
    Works for well-adjusted, rational adults (hopefully). Not so much for children. It's moral pornography. The idea that public utilities (e.g. public broadcast spectrums) must conform to a negotiated standard of decency is well-established even at the court level. It wouldn't necessarily be protected free speech, even if the publically-accessible internet were a public utility (which it isn't), especially if private alternatives exist (which they do, e.g. tor).
    - dcow 9y ago
      This is why well adjusted rational adults are responsible for raising children. You teach a child what is right and what is wrong and then hope beyond all else that when they set out on their own you've given them a strong moral compass. You don't neglect the responsibility and blame the government for not censoring all the bad things on the internet from them when they screw up later in adulthood. Are you really arguing society should be 100% childproof? We can't put anything on the internet that someone might find objectionable to a child.
  - mozumder 9y ago
    > I literally don't see how anything TDS says is physically harming anyone. That's your fault for not knowing about their propensity to violence. Their rally this week resulted in 3 deaths.
- alethiophile 9y ago
  The answer is that this is, in fact, a slippery slope, because though TDS seem to be something that could be reasonably called actual Nazis (I honestly haven't investigated them to determine the validity of the accusation), we've also got an enormous cottage industry with a thriving amateur sideline of political activists calling anyone they disagree with Nazis. And it's entirely possible for the "X is a Nazi" narrative to get off the ground and self-perpetuate without any actual truth to it, with no one involved actually examining the claim. A lie can run around the world, &c. If you agree to censor any category of thing, then you'll immediately have a large group of unscrupulous people attempting to cast all their enemies as that thing. The only general countermeasure is to not censor anything.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    We can solve that easily: We just call people Nazis who call themselves Nazis. Problem solved.
    - joelrunyon 9y ago
      This would be great. Unfortunately, people especially in large groups don't seem to have the emotional strength to withhold from doing that. These mass conversations quickly devolve from debates to name-calling and the click-incentivized media is quick to encourage it (more outrage = more clicks = more ads = more $)
      - ajross 9y ago
        Given that this is the first time in several decades that white racism and "neo-nazi" beliefs have broken through into a national news story, I'm going to say that you're flat wrong on this. Being called e.g. a feminazi by right wing nutjobs happens every day. I don't believe CloudFlare has ever canceled the registration of a feminist site because of it. This situation was different. It was more serious. The crimes were more obvious, and more hateful. And it's simply not about the name-calling that you think you see against whoever your favorite group (gonna guess "not feminists") on the internet is. And when serious evil shit happens, I want to live in a world where I can trust moral people to agree that it's serious and evil, and not equivocate to make a bunch of glibertarians feel better.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
schmichael 9y ago
One significant difference between CloudFlare and Tor is that Tor has no choice. Tor's technology is explicitly designed to prevent censorship. Any change to that would make it fundamentally a different product/project altogether. CloudFlare on the other hand has no such limitations and has many stakeholders exerting varying levels of influence over who they accept as customers. From adhering to various laws to terms of service violations to more fuzzy reasons for terminating an account, these are decisions every business has to make quite often using a wide variety of inputs.
- joelrunyon 9y ago
  Point noted. However, up until this point, Cloudflare made a big deal that it was 'content neutral.' It will be harder for them to argue that in the future given this precedent.
  - alexandercrohde 9y ago
    And this is the merit of Tor, that is content neutral because it has no other choice. This is good design. When you're in an incredibly emotional place, you'll wish you had infinite power to crush the demons. But once the emotions subside, you'll remember that there are no demons, just other emotional people (like yourself) and be glad your calm-minded self put barriers around what extreme-emotion-you can do. In a sense, it's worth asking if extreme-emotion is the root cause of modern violence (nationalism, us-vs-them, victimhood rhetoric [Nazi's perceived themselves victims of Jews]). When we lean-in to our emotional reactions, it's easy for the emotional reaction (e.g. War in Iraq) to be worse than the original spark (9/11).
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      War in Iraq was absolutely a nonsense response to 9/11. At the same time, the ghosts of 6 million dead Jews and untold numbers of dead allied soldiers would like a word with you about whether or not they died in vain or if we maybe did learn a lesson.

ajross 9y ago

> Maybe letting racists have a platform [is] better than hand-by-hand justification of what is and isn't "appropriate" to host. Or, maybe it's not? I don't see that that follows. Yes, there's the slippery slope argument that someday a host could make a decision we don't agree with. But (1) hosts do that anyway, all the time, and (2) if fucking white power racism isn't on solid, level ground above the slope, then what else could be? The solution to private sector choice about hosting and distribution of controversial content can't be a blanket protection for all speech. The first amendment is about public law, because of the reach of the government and the potential damage from abuse. The solution in the end really can only be a case-by-case determination, individually by every host, as to what they are comfortable seeing on their systems. Which is exactly what we have here, even if CloudFlare's internal process was exposed as messier than we'd like to see.

dcow 9y ago
Or, the internet has matured enough that we consider it a public utility and seriously form legislation that protects peoples' constitutional rights even on the internet. I literally don't see how anything TDS says is physically harming anyone. I've never been to the site, I don't give them my traffic, money, anything.. If you don't like them and find them so vile it's causing you mental stress then just navigate away and ignore the vile scum.
- djtriptych 9y ago
  Works for well-adjusted, rational adults (hopefully). Not so much for children. It's moral pornography. The idea that public utilities (e.g. public broadcast spectrums) must conform to a negotiated standard of decency is well-established even at the court level. It wouldn't necessarily be protected free speech, even if the publically-accessible internet were a public utility (which it isn't), especially if private alternatives exist (which they do, e.g. tor).
  - dcow 9y ago
    This is why well adjusted rational adults are responsible for raising children. You teach a child what is right and what is wrong and then hope beyond all else that when they set out on their own you've given them a strong moral compass. You don't neglect the responsibility and blame the government for not censoring all the bad things on the internet from them when they screw up later in adulthood. Are you really arguing society should be 100% childproof? We can't put anything on the internet that someone might find objectionable to a child.
- mozumder 9y ago
  > I literally don't see how anything TDS says is physically harming anyone. That's your fault for not knowing about their propensity to violence. Their rally this week resulted in 3 deaths.
alethiophile 9y ago
The answer is that this is, in fact, a slippery slope, because though TDS seem to be something that could be reasonably called actual Nazis (I honestly haven't investigated them to determine the validity of the accusation), we've also got an enormous cottage industry with a thriving amateur sideline of political activists calling anyone they disagree with Nazis. And it's entirely possible for the "X is a Nazi" narrative to get off the ground and self-perpetuate without any actual truth to it, with no one involved actually examining the claim. A lie can run around the world, &c. If you agree to censor any category of thing, then you'll immediately have a large group of unscrupulous people attempting to cast all their enemies as that thing. The only general countermeasure is to not censor anything.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  We can solve that easily: We just call people Nazis who call themselves Nazis. Problem solved.
  - joelrunyon 9y ago
    This would be great. Unfortunately, people especially in large groups don't seem to have the emotional strength to withhold from doing that. These mass conversations quickly devolve from debates to name-calling and the click-incentivized media is quick to encourage it (more outrage = more clicks = more ads = more $)
    - ajross 9y ago
      Given that this is the first time in several decades that white racism and "neo-nazi" beliefs have broken through into a national news story, I'm going to say that you're flat wrong on this. Being called e.g. a feminazi by right wing nutjobs happens every day. I don't believe CloudFlare has ever canceled the registration of a feminist site because of it. This situation was different. It was more serious. The crimes were more obvious, and more hateful. And it's simply not about the name-calling that you think you see against whoever your favorite group (gonna guess "not feminists") on the internet is. And when serious evil shit happens, I want to live in a world where I can trust moral people to agree that it's serious and evil, and not equivocate to make a bunch of glibertarians feel better.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

schmichael 9y ago

One significant difference between CloudFlare and Tor is that Tor has no choice. Tor's technology is explicitly designed to prevent censorship. Any change to that would make it fundamentally a different product/project altogether. CloudFlare on the other hand has no such limitations and has many stakeholders exerting varying levels of influence over who they accept as customers. From adhering to various laws to terms of service violations to more fuzzy reasons for terminating an account, these are decisions every business has to make quite often using a wide variety of inputs.

joelrunyon 9y ago
Point noted. However, up until this point, Cloudflare made a big deal that it was 'content neutral.' It will be harder for them to argue that in the future given this precedent.
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  And this is the merit of Tor, that is content neutral because it has no other choice. This is good design. When you're in an incredibly emotional place, you'll wish you had infinite power to crush the demons. But once the emotions subside, you'll remember that there are no demons, just other emotional people (like yourself) and be glad your calm-minded self put barriers around what extreme-emotion-you can do. In a sense, it's worth asking if extreme-emotion is the root cause of modern violence (nationalism, us-vs-them, victimhood rhetoric [Nazi's perceived themselves victims of Jews]). When we lean-in to our emotional reactions, it's easy for the emotional reaction (e.g. War in Iraq) to be worse than the original spark (9/11).
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    War in Iraq was absolutely a nonsense response to 9/11. At the same time, the ghosts of 6 million dead Jews and untold numbers of dead allied soldiers would like a word with you about whether or not they died in vain or if we maybe did learn a lesson.