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> TBH, services like Cloudflare should be free to operate as they please. A publisher is simply not entitled to a CDN If a CDN is necessary to support the site

by onli 7y ago

> TBH, services like Cloudflare should be free to operate as they please. A publisher is simply not entitled to a CDN If a CDN is necessary to support the site being a public platform that's not a given. This whole "A private company should be able to act like it pleases" that Cloudflare mirrors in their news is an ideological standpoint, not an absolute truth. It's certainly possible to see it differently: If a company becomes a public platform important for the public discourse or for the function of journalism, regulation and laws can limit what a company can do. Like Germany does with Facebook. Edit: Thinking about this a bit more, I'm really frustrated with Cloudflare about this. With the announcement they are causing the political discourse after the massacre to be about free speech, while the one thing important here is gun control. This stuff happens in the US because the easy access to guns allows murderers to act like this. It does not matter whether 8chan falls now or whether it survives or whether the US limits their extreme stance on free speech as long the US society continues to accept that those massacres happen in favor of having guns available to everyone.

Faark 7y ago
> If a company becomes a public platform important for the public discourse or for the function of journalism, regulation and laws can limit what a company can do. Only if there are good arguments for this to be necessary. You didn't mention any. Just being "big" is no reason to get rid of the "free market". Are they abusing their market dominance? Is this a natural monopoly? Are strong network effects in play, as with Facebook? The best argument for a market failure I can think of is high initial investment. Yeah, I'm not convinced gov needs to write rules for Cloudflare specifically. > With the announcmenet they are causing the political discourse after the massacre to be about free speech As it should. Simplified, slaughtering = hate guns*. There is no way to get rid of guns in the US any time soon, so most talk about it is a wasted opportunity cost. The hateful and divisive rhetoric, on the other hand, seems to be sharply on the rise, with even the president making it permissible and using it to his one's ends. This seems like a way more promising attempt to stop the probably upcoming civil war.
- Luff 7y ago
  "We can't get rid of guns, so lets get rid of free speech instead"?
sokoloff 7y ago
It would be far more concerning to me if Cloudflare used this moment to express a business opinion on gun control rather than a freedom of speech/association argument to permit them to cease doing business with a group they revile. Do I need to know Cloudflare’s opinion on gun control, religion, abortion, or any number of other irrelevant topics? Nope. Do I appreciate that they terminated 8chan? 95% yes and 5% reluctant yes. In conjunction with that, so I want to know their policy stance on freedom of content on their platform? 100% yes.
BillyBadA 7y ago
"This stuff happens in the US because the easy access to guns allows murderers to act like this. It does not matter whether 8chan falls now or whether it survives or whether the US limits their extreme stance on free speech as long the US society continues to accept that those massacres happen in favor of having guns available to everyone." We will never surrender our weapons. Sure some may, but a good majority of us will not. We had a European government here once, but it became oppressive, so we booted them out. We did so because we had weapons to do so. We have the 2nd Amendment because we want the government to fear the population, not the other way around. Unless you want the U.S. to look like Alepo, it's just best to not go there. Gun's are not the problem either. The problem is people, and total lack of respect. Everyone wants to force everyone in the country to love everyone, which is nice, sure. But how can you accomplish that when you can't even respect your neighbor.
distantsounds 7y ago
cloudflare isn't in the gun business, arguably it's in the speech business. why are you disappointed that they took action over part of the problem they have control over?
- onli 7y ago
  Because they just influenced public discourse in a negative way. They shouldn't have taken any action now. In two month would still be time to act on this if it's still deemed the right choice then.
  - brewdad 7y ago
    In two months there will have been another mass shooting. Are they then supposed to wait another 2 months before acting? Given the current state of the US, Cloudflare will never have a window where it is appropriate to do anything according to your standard. So yes, let's all sit on our hands say there's nothing we can do and now isn't the right time to have this discussion and wonder why these tragedies continue to happen.
jumbopapa 7y ago
I genuinely do not believe the access to the guns are the issue here. There are plenty of ways to accomplish something like this without a gun, so removing the guns from the picture would just change the method. It's lazy to just say that "gun control will fix this" because you're ignoring solving the actual problem of why people are doing this.
- onli 7y ago
  I believe you that it's genuine. But no. Look at other countries. Look at the history of gun control laws in Germany or other countries and their effect. Shootings like this are 100% caused by the easy access to guns. If someone does not have access to guns, it's harder to do something like this. It gives time to think again. Organizing different attacks gives law enforcement a chance to catch someone planning it beforehand. HN is not the right forum to discuss this in detail, so I won't go further into this. But it's better to think about this than to follow Cloudflares lead.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    > HN is not the right forum to discuss this Then why are you doing it? Don't reply to me though, HN isn't the place to discuss it.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    France has pretty strict gun controls laws which have not proven to be much of a protection against terrorism, who used AK47, explosives or simply trucks to cause mass casualties.
    - dgellow 7y ago
      We don’t know how different the situation would be if France didn’t have the current regulations, but I personally think the death toll would be higher. For sure you cannot completely remove the risk of mass killing, but you can make it more expensive/difficult for attackers to do a lot of victims.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
FactolSarin 7y ago
Freedom of speech is not unlimited. Different countries set it in different places. In the US there aren't many limits, beyond the old "shouting 'fire!' in a crowded theater" thing. But in Germany you can't deny the holocaust, for instance. Maybe we as a society need to decide that some things are just beyond the pale. Trying to indoctrinate young people into ideologies of hatred doesn't promote free and open discourse, it shuts it down. Let's just take sites like his off the Internet - nothing of value will be lost.
jshowa3 7y ago
The Internet, at least in the US and probably the world, is not a public utility. It's run by a conglomerate of private corporations that have just as much rights as an individual, at least according to US law. Cloudflare is a CDN just like many ISP's. And ISP's have had the right to control traffic how they like for decades (within reason of course based on a stipulated contract). They do not provide journalistic services, or speech services, or editorial services. They provide infrastructure. So it's not like Facebook or Twitter which are discussion areas.

by onli 7y ago

Faark 7y ago

> If a company becomes a public platform important for the public discourse or for the function of journalism, regulation and laws can limit what a company can do. Only if there are good arguments for this to be necessary. You didn't mention any. Just being "big" is no reason to get rid of the "free market". Are they abusing their market dominance? Is this a natural monopoly? Are strong network effects in play, as with Facebook? The best argument for a market failure I can think of is high initial investment. Yeah, I'm not convinced gov needs to write rules for Cloudflare specifically. > With the announcmenet they are causing the political discourse after the massacre to be about free speech As it should. Simplified, slaughtering = hate guns*. There is no way to get rid of guns in the US any time soon, so most talk about it is a wasted opportunity cost. The hateful and divisive rhetoric, on the other hand, seems to be sharply on the rise, with even the president making it permissible and using it to his one's ends. This seems like a way more promising attempt to stop the probably upcoming civil war.

Luff 7y ago
"We can't get rid of guns, so lets get rid of free speech instead"?

sokoloff 7y ago

It would be far more concerning to me if Cloudflare used this moment to express a business opinion on gun control rather than a freedom of speech/association argument to permit them to cease doing business with a group they revile. Do I need to know Cloudflare’s opinion on gun control, religion, abortion, or any number of other irrelevant topics? Nope. Do I appreciate that they terminated 8chan? 95% yes and 5% reluctant yes. In conjunction with that, so I want to know their policy stance on freedom of content on their platform? 100% yes.

BillyBadA 7y ago

"This stuff happens in the US because the easy access to guns allows murderers to act like this. It does not matter whether 8chan falls now or whether it survives or whether the US limits their extreme stance on free speech as long the US society continues to accept that those massacres happen in favor of having guns available to everyone." We will never surrender our weapons. Sure some may, but a good majority of us will not. We had a European government here once, but it became oppressive, so we booted them out. We did so because we had weapons to do so. We have the 2nd Amendment because we want the government to fear the population, not the other way around. Unless you want the U.S. to look like Alepo, it's just best to not go there. Gun's are not the problem either. The problem is people, and total lack of respect. Everyone wants to force everyone in the country to love everyone, which is nice, sure. But how can you accomplish that when you can't even respect your neighbor.

distantsounds 7y ago

cloudflare isn't in the gun business, arguably it's in the speech business. why are you disappointed that they took action over part of the problem they have control over?

onli 7y ago
Because they just influenced public discourse in a negative way. They shouldn't have taken any action now. In two month would still be time to act on this if it's still deemed the right choice then.
- brewdad 7y ago
  In two months there will have been another mass shooting. Are they then supposed to wait another 2 months before acting? Given the current state of the US, Cloudflare will never have a window where it is appropriate to do anything according to your standard. So yes, let's all sit on our hands say there's nothing we can do and now isn't the right time to have this discussion and wonder why these tragedies continue to happen.

jumbopapa 7y ago

I genuinely do not believe the access to the guns are the issue here. There are plenty of ways to accomplish something like this without a gun, so removing the guns from the picture would just change the method. It's lazy to just say that "gun control will fix this" because you're ignoring solving the actual problem of why people are doing this.

onli 7y ago
I believe you that it's genuine. But no. Look at other countries. Look at the history of gun control laws in Germany or other countries and their effect. Shootings like this are 100% caused by the easy access to guns. If someone does not have access to guns, it's harder to do something like this. It gives time to think again. Organizing different attacks gives law enforcement a chance to catch someone planning it beforehand. HN is not the right forum to discuss this in detail, so I won't go further into this. But it's better to think about this than to follow Cloudflares lead.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  > HN is not the right forum to discuss this Then why are you doing it? Don't reply to me though, HN isn't the place to discuss it.
- cm2187 7y ago
  France has pretty strict gun controls laws which have not proven to be much of a protection against terrorism, who used AK47, explosives or simply trucks to cause mass casualties.
  - dgellow 7y ago
    We don’t know how different the situation would be if France didn’t have the current regulations, but I personally think the death toll would be higher. For sure you cannot completely remove the risk of mass killing, but you can make it more expensive/difficult for attackers to do a lot of victims.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago

FactolSarin 7y ago

Freedom of speech is not unlimited. Different countries set it in different places. In the US there aren't many limits, beyond the old "shouting 'fire!' in a crowded theater" thing. But in Germany you can't deny the holocaust, for instance. Maybe we as a society need to decide that some things are just beyond the pale. Trying to indoctrinate young people into ideologies of hatred doesn't promote free and open discourse, it shuts it down. Let's just take sites like his off the Internet - nothing of value will be lost.

jshowa3 7y ago

The Internet, at least in the US and probably the world, is not a public utility. It's run by a conglomerate of private corporations that have just as much rights as an individual, at least according to US law. Cloudflare is a CDN just like many ISP's. And ISP's have had the right to control traffic how they like for decades (within reason of course based on a stipulated contract). They do not provide journalistic services, or speech services, or editorial services. They provide infrastructure. So it's not like Facebook or Twitter which are discussion areas.