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"[W]e strongly believe that what GoDaddy, Google, and Cloudflare did here was dangerous. That’s because, even when the facts are the most vile, we must remain v

"[W]e strongly believe that what GoDaddy, Google, and Cloudflare did here was dangerous. That’s because, even when the facts are the most vile, we must remain vigilant when platforms exercise these rights. Because Internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world." Well said. I'm glad EFF is not burrying their heads in the sand and hiding behind the "but they're nazis!" Excuse.

Overtonwindow 9y ago
One more quote because I think it sums things up very well: "Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected. We do it because we believe that no one—not the government and not private commercial enterprises—should decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t."
- infinite8s 9y ago
  Although the only thing actually protected by the First Amendment is protection against censorship of speech by the government. Private commercial enterprises can do what they want (since technically you should be able to move to a competitor).
  - BearGoesChirp 9y ago
    1. Even if the First Amendment is only limited to the government, the concept of free speech predates and extends far beyond the First Amendment. 2. Does the Constitution apply if the government allows private entities to take over roles of the government? There is the concept of utilities and common carriers that extend upon this logic. 3. Even without the above points, one should still be able to see a double standard being applied to violent/extremist speech. Saying a company can do whatever it wants doesn't explain what the company actually wants. If the company is applying a double standard to what speech it allows, then the true wants of the company is something we need to discuss and decide do we want to tolerate.
    - Overtonwindow 9y ago
      An interesting example for your comment might be the use of private prisons, and probation companies.
  - base698 9y ago
    This is also dangerous for clear reasons. If speech deemed bad is censored we may have no examples with which to contrast good ideas. Think of free speech as natural selection for ideas. John Stuart Mill thought free speech should extend into the private world: Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    This is precisely true. The Constitution does not offer protection from the vagaries of capital, but capital realizes that certain ideologies, like brands, are toxic. Thus the New Yorker and Economist covers this week depicting the President' relationship to extremism.
  - stillhere 9y ago
    What happens when corporations have more power and influence than the government? Furthermore, what happens when the government do not protect free speech themselves, which is exactly what happened in Charlottesville? The protesters had a permit to be there, the legal right, but the permit was revoked once the protest began. The police did not protect the protesters and funneled them straight into the violent mob. It is a frightening situation where there is literally no place for dissenting viewpoints.
  - namlem 9y ago
    Why not? If I own a bar I shouldn't be allowed to decide what entertainment I hire based on their content? We can't have a society where all speech is protected, even from private actors.
johnrichardson 9y ago
Indeed. It seems as though the entire West has lost its collective mind about the importance of free speech and free expression as bedrock principles which ensure peace, stability and prosperity. Additionally, I view these acts of censorship as a great opportunity for blockchain and other nascent decentralized web technologies to take off. It's a classic case of the innovator's dilemma - when a company or industry seems ascendant, it becomes complacent to new threats, and the seeds of its destruction are sown right underneath it. Sometimes it even assists in the process. (Microsoft's neglect of IE, allowing Mozilla to flourish in the mid-2000s, is one of my favorite examples.) With their suppression of speech, these centralized services are quite possibly hastening their own demise.
- netsharc 9y ago
  Someone needs to invent a Godwin-like rule about the word "blockchain" being used in Internet conversations...
  - firmgently 9y ago
    I don't understand how Godwin's rule is useful. Its only effect on arguments is that on top of the inevitable "Hitler" comment you now also get an inevitable "Godwin" follow-up, usually delivered with the air of having somehow won the argument. It's beyond redundant IMO.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      There's no such thing as "Godwin's Rule" - it's "Godwin's Law" and it said nothing about winning arguments; only that as the length of an argument increased, the probability that a comparison with the Nazis would appear approached 1. You can't invoke it either. It's a statistical observation.
      - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
        How is that a useful observation, though? As the length of any internet argument grows, the probability of anything being said would approach 1.
leggomylibro 9y ago
It was dangerous, but also their right to do. The CEO of Cloudflare called out his own action as capricious and not good practice, but he still did it. Because hey, they're literally nazis. And anyways, one of Cloudflare's major services is filtering out spam, noise, and malicious traffic...
- gcp 9y ago
  The situation was called out clearly for what it was. It was his right to do it, and it was understandable that he did it, and he should be able to do it. The problem is that the centralization of these services gives them so much power that it's problematic for free speech that they do it. The latter is the problem.
mc32 9y ago
Can't agree more. Today it's Nazis, tomorrow it's not showing enough support for the chosen candidate. This is the one slippery slope. It's evident in PC-speech. Today's PC speech is not the PC speech from the 90s. And it's not that I don't like Pc speech. I prefer it. But I also don't want it to be the only kind of speech one can use for discussion. Try and have any good philosophical argument without breaking PC boundaries. It's a scary thing when one group controls the narrative of what is acceptable and unacceptable speech.
- dandersh 9y ago
  No, there is no slippery slope. This is a group that advocates an ideology that, when it was put in place, resulted in catastrophe for mankind. In other words, what they advocate is what exists at the bottom of the slope. You know, Godwin's Law and all that?
  - mc32 9y ago
    So, what next, the communists or Marxists because the ideology they espouse caused even more deaths? I agree they are a hateful group. An odious group of people possibly only superseded in their vileness by extremist religious fanatics who won't hesitate to kill, but we're not shutting their speech down, are we? In my view, this is one of those things that is binary. Either you have free speech, or you don't. There is no in between, finessing it. You end up with lese majeste and other nonsense bullshit.
    - dandersh 9y ago
      This post is wrong on so many levels. Those ideologies did not have the hatred and violence at their core that Nazism did. That's why there is no "Godwins Law" when it comes to Marxism. That's my point: This is the most reviled philosophy that currently exists, and people are complaining about "free speech" when previously they would shriek "Godwins Law" whenever comparisons are made. That's how far we've fallen. Saying that free speech is binary is incredibly misguided and a root cause of the problem. It's overly simplistic and absolutist and quite frankly, is complete and total nonsense. At some point something will be uttered that you or some other "free speech absolutist" will object to.
mar77i 9y ago
It can't be phrased clearer while still distancing themselves from the cause clearly and coherently... unlike other people. On that same note: Good riddance. Policy and processes are probably in no case ever too slow to take effect. Thanks to Google and GoDaddy for Pavlov'ing me towards reasonable human understanding, and thanks for EFF for making me aware that that there's a problem with "learning" things that way.
mcbruiser3 9y ago
because it takes balls to stick up for freedom these days and let's be honest, most people just don't have the balls these days. fear is winning.
novaleaf 9y ago
except they are. They say "we agree with the ban" but then say "it's dangerous!" of course it's dangerous, and yes, the speech is vile. but freedom of speech doesn't stop when we are insulted.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

One more quote because I think it sums things up very well: "Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected. We do it because we believe that no one—not the government and not private commercial enterprises—should decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t."

infinite8s 9y ago
Although the only thing actually protected by the First Amendment is protection against censorship of speech by the government. Private commercial enterprises can do what they want (since technically you should be able to move to a competitor).
- BearGoesChirp 9y ago
  1. Even if the First Amendment is only limited to the government, the concept of free speech predates and extends far beyond the First Amendment. 2. Does the Constitution apply if the government allows private entities to take over roles of the government? There is the concept of utilities and common carriers that extend upon this logic. 3. Even without the above points, one should still be able to see a double standard being applied to violent/extremist speech. Saying a company can do whatever it wants doesn't explain what the company actually wants. If the company is applying a double standard to what speech it allows, then the true wants of the company is something we need to discuss and decide do we want to tolerate.
  - Overtonwindow 9y ago
    An interesting example for your comment might be the use of private prisons, and probation companies.
- base698 9y ago
  This is also dangerous for clear reasons. If speech deemed bad is censored we may have no examples with which to contrast good ideas. Think of free speech as natural selection for ideas. John Stuart Mill thought free speech should extend into the private world: Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  This is precisely true. The Constitution does not offer protection from the vagaries of capital, but capital realizes that certain ideologies, like brands, are toxic. Thus the New Yorker and Economist covers this week depicting the President' relationship to extremism.
- stillhere 9y ago
  What happens when corporations have more power and influence than the government? Furthermore, what happens when the government do not protect free speech themselves, which is exactly what happened in Charlottesville? The protesters had a permit to be there, the legal right, but the permit was revoked once the protest began. The police did not protect the protesters and funneled them straight into the violent mob. It is a frightening situation where there is literally no place for dissenting viewpoints.
- namlem 9y ago
  Why not? If I own a bar I shouldn't be allowed to decide what entertainment I hire based on their content? We can't have a society where all speech is protected, even from private actors.

johnrichardson 9y ago

Indeed. It seems as though the entire West has lost its collective mind about the importance of free speech and free expression as bedrock principles which ensure peace, stability and prosperity. Additionally, I view these acts of censorship as a great opportunity for blockchain and other nascent decentralized web technologies to take off. It's a classic case of the innovator's dilemma - when a company or industry seems ascendant, it becomes complacent to new threats, and the seeds of its destruction are sown right underneath it. Sometimes it even assists in the process. (Microsoft's neglect of IE, allowing Mozilla to flourish in the mid-2000s, is one of my favorite examples.) With their suppression of speech, these centralized services are quite possibly hastening their own demise.

netsharc 9y ago
Someone needs to invent a Godwin-like rule about the word "blockchain" being used in Internet conversations...
- firmgently 9y ago
  I don't understand how Godwin's rule is useful. Its only effect on arguments is that on top of the inevitable "Hitler" comment you now also get an inevitable "Godwin" follow-up, usually delivered with the air of having somehow won the argument. It's beyond redundant IMO.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    There's no such thing as "Godwin's Rule" - it's "Godwin's Law" and it said nothing about winning arguments; only that as the length of an argument increased, the probability that a comparison with the Nazis would appear approached 1. You can't invoke it either. It's a statistical observation.
    - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
      How is that a useful observation, though? As the length of any internet argument grows, the probability of anything being said would approach 1.

leggomylibro 9y ago

It was dangerous, but also their right to do. The CEO of Cloudflare called out his own action as capricious and not good practice, but he still did it. Because hey, they're literally nazis. And anyways, one of Cloudflare's major services is filtering out spam, noise, and malicious traffic...

gcp 9y ago
The situation was called out clearly for what it was. It was his right to do it, and it was understandable that he did it, and he should be able to do it. The problem is that the centralization of these services gives them so much power that it's problematic for free speech that they do it. The latter is the problem.

mc32 9y ago

Can't agree more. Today it's Nazis, tomorrow it's not showing enough support for the chosen candidate. This is the one slippery slope. It's evident in PC-speech. Today's PC speech is not the PC speech from the 90s. And it's not that I don't like Pc speech. I prefer it. But I also don't want it to be the only kind of speech one can use for discussion. Try and have any good philosophical argument without breaking PC boundaries. It's a scary thing when one group controls the narrative of what is acceptable and unacceptable speech.

dandersh 9y ago
No, there is no slippery slope. This is a group that advocates an ideology that, when it was put in place, resulted in catastrophe for mankind. In other words, what they advocate is what exists at the bottom of the slope. You know, Godwin's Law and all that?
- mc32 9y ago
  So, what next, the communists or Marxists because the ideology they espouse caused even more deaths? I agree they are a hateful group. An odious group of people possibly only superseded in their vileness by extremist religious fanatics who won't hesitate to kill, but we're not shutting their speech down, are we? In my view, this is one of those things that is binary. Either you have free speech, or you don't. There is no in between, finessing it. You end up with lese majeste and other nonsense bullshit.
  - dandersh 9y ago
    This post is wrong on so many levels. Those ideologies did not have the hatred and violence at their core that Nazism did. That's why there is no "Godwins Law" when it comes to Marxism. That's my point: This is the most reviled philosophy that currently exists, and people are complaining about "free speech" when previously they would shriek "Godwins Law" whenever comparisons are made. That's how far we've fallen. Saying that free speech is binary is incredibly misguided and a root cause of the problem. It's overly simplistic and absolutist and quite frankly, is complete and total nonsense. At some point something will be uttered that you or some other "free speech absolutist" will object to.

mar77i 9y ago

It can't be phrased clearer while still distancing themselves from the cause clearly and coherently... unlike other people. On that same note: Good riddance. Policy and processes are probably in no case ever too slow to take effect. Thanks to Google and GoDaddy for Pavlov'ing me towards reasonable human understanding, and thanks for EFF for making me aware that that there's a problem with "learning" things that way.

mcbruiser3 9y ago

because it takes balls to stick up for freedom these days and let's be honest, most people just don't have the balls these days. fear is winning.

novaleaf 9y ago

except they are. They say "we agree with the ban" but then say "it's dangerous!" of course it's dangerous, and yes, the speech is vile. but freedom of speech doesn't stop when we are insulted.