4 ms·

Didn't you argue that CF should exercise control over content when the Daily Stormer account was terminated? My comment you replied to is still sitting at -4 :

Didn't you argue that CF should exercise control over content when the Daily Stormer account was terminated? My comment you replied to is still sitting at -4 :( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032696

nugi 9y ago
This is a great reminder for those who question the logic of free speech.
- ad_hominem 9y ago
  This is a great reminder to not auto-upvote an HN darling when you see the handle. It's pathetic this comment pointing out their hypocrisy is buried at the bottom of the thread.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    And where did you see me advocating in this thread that they should not exercise editorial control? I merely pointed out the consequences of exercising editorial control: that once you show you can do it you lose any kind of argument based on your ability to do it or that you are only taking down content when the law requires it, such as when ordered to do so on account of a ruling by a judge. My position is pretty consistent: - Cloudflare for the longest used a broken argument to leave all kinds of crap websites up longer than they should have (for instance: booter sites) - Their argumentation was that they would not censor sites based on content unless a court order was presented to them - And so they were aiding and abetting many illegal schemes, which were too costly for the people suffering from those schemes to prosecute (for instance: because they were abroad) - But when the Daily Stormer thing happened Cloudflare crossed their self imposed line - At the time I pointed out that they would regret this, just like Slashdot folding for Scientology would regret it. - And now we've come to the end of that line and Cloudflare now takes down sites because some vested commercial interest is harmed, as predicted. So, I argue that they should exercise editorial control, and that they never had any shot at achieving common carrier protection (because (a) they are not a phone company and (b) because they are not essential, and (c) they never litigated that). In this case it would have been nice for them to make a stand. Unfortunately for Cloudflare the publishing houses can now point at Cloudflare taking down the Daily Stormer without a court order, and there is no helping them for that. But just like before, Cloudflare simply is a commercial service, they have the ability (and sometimes the responsibility) to take down content. They are simply bad at picking their battles. Then finally, I see the likes of Cloudflare as a cancer on the web. Way too much power in the hands of one entity in a jurisdiction that is too expensive to litigate in for the vast majority of the world. I hope the net/webservers will get fast enough and that bandwidth on the server side will get cheap enough that we do not need CDNs anymore.
    - ad_hominem 9y ago
      Apologies, I misread what you originally wrote. You are consistent after all.
- hedora 9y ago
  I want to ironically downvote this, but I won’t.
jacquesm 9y ago
Yes I did. And where do you see me arguing for the opposite?
- smokeyj 9y ago
  > The argument that they are 'just a common carrier' and have no influence over the content they serve went out the window that day. I thought you were taking the position that CF should be a common carrier. Which to me seems like the logical stance. Upthread you mentioned CF as not being essential, but based on the current limitations of the web - DoS protection is essential for small publishers. It would be too easy to silence marginalized communities with a small botnet. Leaving it up to CF to be the judge jury and executioner is too much power for one company. We have democratic courts for this sort of thing. The web is broken and until then I think DoS protection is essential in exercising our first amendment.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > I thought you were taking the position that CF should be a common carrier. CF took that position, in the past to defend their leaving all kinds of outright illegal stuff such as booter websites (sites that offer easy to use interfaces to DDOS tools) up and running. > Which to me seems like the logical stance. But that makes your argument more a strawman than anything else. No, I don't think CF is special in any way, not until they litigate that and get an official stamp of approval that they are not going to have to comply with 'regular' takedown requests, since normally aiding and abetting criminals is bad. CF does not have to provide service to every comer and they have gone out of their way to prove this. > Leaving it up to CF to be the judge jury and executioner is too much power for one company. That I agree with, but this is no different from Facebook, Google or any other tech giant. Cloudflare claimed to be somehow special in this respect, I've yet to see FB or Google make such an argument. Though, Google to some extent tried to do this by claiming for a while that only their algorithms determined what is visible without human input. Nowadays human input is as important a signal as the algorithms and it has final say too. > We have democratic courts for this sort of thing. The web is broken and until then I think DoS protection is essential in exercising our first amendment. Unfortunately, your point of view is still US centric, which means you are missing an important piece of the puzzle here. The web is much larger than the United States, 'first amendment' protections do not apply outside of the US, and Cloudflare is routinely hiding behind that first amendment in a way that makes it very hard to prosecute - or even do anything about - the criminals they enable. Cloudflare wishes to have it both ways: to claim first amendment rights when it suits them and to play judge, jury and executioner when it does not. And in the meantime the rest of the world has to dance to their tune because they are not in the jurisdiction of the victims. That's not a tenable stance in the long term and the Elsevier case shows you quite nicely just how hypocritical this is.

nugi 9y ago

This is a great reminder for those who question the logic of free speech.

ad_hominem 9y ago
This is a great reminder to not auto-upvote an HN darling when you see the handle. It's pathetic this comment pointing out their hypocrisy is buried at the bottom of the thread.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  And where did you see me advocating in this thread that they should not exercise editorial control? I merely pointed out the consequences of exercising editorial control: that once you show you can do it you lose any kind of argument based on your ability to do it or that you are only taking down content when the law requires it, such as when ordered to do so on account of a ruling by a judge. My position is pretty consistent: - Cloudflare for the longest used a broken argument to leave all kinds of crap websites up longer than they should have (for instance: booter sites) - Their argumentation was that they would not censor sites based on content unless a court order was presented to them - And so they were aiding and abetting many illegal schemes, which were too costly for the people suffering from those schemes to prosecute (for instance: because they were abroad) - But when the Daily Stormer thing happened Cloudflare crossed their self imposed line - At the time I pointed out that they would regret this, just like Slashdot folding for Scientology would regret it. - And now we've come to the end of that line and Cloudflare now takes down sites because some vested commercial interest is harmed, as predicted. So, I argue that they should exercise editorial control, and that they never had any shot at achieving common carrier protection (because (a) they are not a phone company and (b) because they are not essential, and (c) they never litigated that). In this case it would have been nice for them to make a stand. Unfortunately for Cloudflare the publishing houses can now point at Cloudflare taking down the Daily Stormer without a court order, and there is no helping them for that. But just like before, Cloudflare simply is a commercial service, they have the ability (and sometimes the responsibility) to take down content. They are simply bad at picking their battles. Then finally, I see the likes of Cloudflare as a cancer on the web. Way too much power in the hands of one entity in a jurisdiction that is too expensive to litigate in for the vast majority of the world. I hope the net/webservers will get fast enough and that bandwidth on the server side will get cheap enough that we do not need CDNs anymore.
  - ad_hominem 9y ago
    Apologies, I misread what you originally wrote. You are consistent after all.
hedora 9y ago
I want to ironically downvote this, but I won’t.

jacquesm 9y ago

Yes I did. And where do you see me arguing for the opposite?

smokeyj 9y ago
> The argument that they are 'just a common carrier' and have no influence over the content they serve went out the window that day. I thought you were taking the position that CF should be a common carrier. Which to me seems like the logical stance. Upthread you mentioned CF as not being essential, but based on the current limitations of the web - DoS protection is essential for small publishers. It would be too easy to silence marginalized communities with a small botnet. Leaving it up to CF to be the judge jury and executioner is too much power for one company. We have democratic courts for this sort of thing. The web is broken and until then I think DoS protection is essential in exercising our first amendment.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > I thought you were taking the position that CF should be a common carrier. CF took that position, in the past to defend their leaving all kinds of outright illegal stuff such as booter websites (sites that offer easy to use interfaces to DDOS tools) up and running. > Which to me seems like the logical stance. But that makes your argument more a strawman than anything else. No, I don't think CF is special in any way, not until they litigate that and get an official stamp of approval that they are not going to have to comply with 'regular' takedown requests, since normally aiding and abetting criminals is bad. CF does not have to provide service to every comer and they have gone out of their way to prove this. > Leaving it up to CF to be the judge jury and executioner is too much power for one company. That I agree with, but this is no different from Facebook, Google or any other tech giant. Cloudflare claimed to be somehow special in this respect, I've yet to see FB or Google make such an argument. Though, Google to some extent tried to do this by claiming for a while that only their algorithms determined what is visible without human input. Nowadays human input is as important a signal as the algorithms and it has final say too. > We have democratic courts for this sort of thing. The web is broken and until then I think DoS protection is essential in exercising our first amendment. Unfortunately, your point of view is still US centric, which means you are missing an important piece of the puzzle here. The web is much larger than the United States, 'first amendment' protections do not apply outside of the US, and Cloudflare is routinely hiding behind that first amendment in a way that makes it very hard to prosecute - or even do anything about - the criminals they enable. Cloudflare wishes to have it both ways: to claim first amendment rights when it suits them and to play judge, jury and executioner when it does not. And in the meantime the rest of the world has to dance to their tune because they are not in the jurisdiction of the victims. That's not a tenable stance in the long term and the Elsevier case shows you quite nicely just how hypocritical this is.