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Cloudflare may not be a monopoly, but they don't necessarily need to be a monopoly to be able to effectively police speech. A duopoly or oligopoly can be just a

Cloudflare may not be a monopoly, but they don't necessarily need to be a monopoly to be able to effectively police speech. A duopoly or oligopoly can be just as effective at that task, provided all competitors have similar rules about what sort of speech they disallow. Now maybe we're not quite at that point yet (after all, the Daily Stormer did eventually find a CDN that would take them), but we may very well be getting close; there are only so many CDNs big enough to effectively shrug off large-scale DDOS attacks after all. You also have to consider how difficult it is to match the quality of service provided by Cloudflare, and the hassle involved in switching to a new CDN. Cloudflare's refusal to service some organizations on the basis of ideology might have a chilling effect on Free Speech, even if it's not an insurmountable barrier. I agree there is a balance between Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association. The question is: where do we draw the line?

themagician 7y ago
Free Speech doesn’t require a CDN. Lol. It’s not like the First Amendment comes with a 99.999% uptime guarantee. Some of you are so dense. Free speech is about not being dragged off in the middle of the night and sent to a gulag. There’s no fine line here, no slippery slope. Everyone on 8chan is free to continue publishing whatever they want. It just won’t be published over a high availability CDN. It also won’t show up in Times Square.
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  There is a fine line, and I think that's easily illustrated with a few hypothetical counterexamples. If you truly believe that "free speech is about not being dragged off in the middle of the night and sent to a gulag", and that that's all it's about for you, then would you, for example, be okay with a law stating that social media companies in the US are required to automatically filter any content critical of actions taken by the US military, and not display that content to people inside the US? Yes, that's an extreme example, and yes it'd be illegal under the current US constitution, but it would be consistent with the extremely narrow definition of Free Speech you specified in your previous comment. So, assuming that's not actually where you draw the line, where do you draw it? How much suppression of speech are you willing to tolerate before you would consider it unacceptable?
  - themagician 7y ago
    Your example is the gulag example. If you don’t do what the law says, stormtroopers come in and take you away. Thats a free speech issue, but that’s not what’s happening here. It’s not even close. It’s not a slippery slope. It’s just… nothing. Nothing is happening here. I tolerate zero suppression. But that’s not what’s at issue here. We are talking about a CDN company refusing business of someone they don’t like, because it exposes them to bad PR and likely liability as well. No one is required to publish your content. I can post my dick all over Facebook, and that’s fine, because that’s not suppression of free speech. I can’t walk into CNN and demand airtime under a flag of free speech either. The closest thing we ever had to an issue of free speech on the Internet was when ICANN was handing over domains to the feds over piracy issues. In that case their was a thin line. In that case there was a discussion to be had. Property was being seized by the government and people were being arrested and imprisoned for what some considered speech. Here there is nothing. Just whiny, uneducated people with no concept of what free speech actually refers to.
    - Ajedi32 7y ago
      No gulag. No stormtroopers. Your message criticizing the military just won't be seen anyone, because the platform you're posting on will censor it. That's suppression of free speech; regardless of whether it's a government or a corporation that's doing it.
      - themagician 7y ago
        You totally misunderstand the way the legal system works in the United States. Let’s go ahead and examine your example. Say that a law was passed that required Facebook and others to remove posts critical of the US military. In this example, if Facebook fails to comply, people will be arrested. Facebook would sue the government, saying that the law is unconstitutional as it violates the First Amendment. This would likely become know as something like Facebook et al. vs The United States. Unless we are in a bizarro universe, Facebook would win. In this example, Facebook’s rights, as a publisher, are the ones being trampled on, not yours. It’s not a people’s case. In this scenario you likely don’t even have standing to sue (debatable, I suppose, but that’s a separate discussion entirely). It’s worth noting that the closest thing to this scenario was with the ACSS key years ago. Not quite the same, but similar parties involved along a similar line of thinking. But the issue at hand with Cloudflare isn’t the same. There is no constitutional issue at all. It’s just one business dropping a client. In fact, the only way this could ever turn into a free speech issue, even in principle, is if a law was passed that forced Cloudflare to continue to host 8chan’s content. You should really do some reading about what free speech actually means. You are so far off the mark it’s hard to take you seriously.
kickopotomus 7y ago
Nobody has a right to a CDN or a right to DDOS protection. Cloudflare is a private company offering a service in exchange for money. They may deny service to whomever they wish (with exceptions for certain protected classes). Political leanings and ideologies do not constitute a protected class. Neither Cloudflare, nor Google, nor FaceBook, nor Reddit, nor HN for that matter have any legal or moral obligation to grant a platform to anyone. A private platform reserves all rights to the content on their platform. If you have an issue with how that is policed or moderated then you are free to create your own competing service.
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  You're falling back on the legal argument again. Again: Free Speech is not a law, it's a principle. Sure, even without a CDN a sufficiently well-funded organization could spend millions of dollars on the infrastructure necessary to resist a powerful DDOS attack. But if that's enough in your mind to satisfy the principle of free speech, then you're essentially saying that it's okay if it costs millions of dollars to speak freely on the internet. I'm not sure that's a good policy.
  - kickopotomus 7y ago
    I clearly said no moral obligation. That covers your claim of Free Speech as a principle. A private organization does not owe you their bandwidth. > then you're essentially saying that it's okay if it costs millions of dollars to speak freely on the internet. No. Go buy a RaspberryPi for $35. Now you can host your own site and say whatever you would like on the internet. Again, nobody owes you anything. Nobody is obliged to carry my message. You have a right speak freely. You do not have a right to be heard.
    - Ajedi32 7y ago
      A Raspberry Pi can be trivially overloaded with a simple DOS attack. (Not even DDOS.) If you've got anything remotely controversial to say, I wouldn't count on that being sufficient to keep your site online. The infrastructure necessary to remain online during a coordinated attack isn't cheap; that's why Cloudflare advertises DDOS protection as one of the many services they offer: https://www.cloudflare.com/ddos/ https://www.cloudflare.com/ddos/ Whether or not a cloud infrastructure company "owes" content-neutral treatment to their customers is a matter which, I think, is up for debate. Particularly in this day and age where the internet has become such an important venue for political speech.

themagician 7y ago

Free Speech doesn’t require a CDN. Lol. It’s not like the First Amendment comes with a 99.999% uptime guarantee. Some of you are so dense. Free speech is about not being dragged off in the middle of the night and sent to a gulag. There’s no fine line here, no slippery slope. Everyone on 8chan is free to continue publishing whatever they want. It just won’t be published over a high availability CDN. It also won’t show up in Times Square.

Ajedi32 7y ago
There is a fine line, and I think that's easily illustrated with a few hypothetical counterexamples. If you truly believe that "free speech is about not being dragged off in the middle of the night and sent to a gulag", and that that's all it's about for you, then would you, for example, be okay with a law stating that social media companies in the US are required to automatically filter any content critical of actions taken by the US military, and not display that content to people inside the US? Yes, that's an extreme example, and yes it'd be illegal under the current US constitution, but it would be consistent with the extremely narrow definition of Free Speech you specified in your previous comment. So, assuming that's not actually where you draw the line, where do you draw it? How much suppression of speech are you willing to tolerate before you would consider it unacceptable?
- themagician 7y ago
  Your example is the gulag example. If you don’t do what the law says, stormtroopers come in and take you away. Thats a free speech issue, but that’s not what’s happening here. It’s not even close. It’s not a slippery slope. It’s just… nothing. Nothing is happening here. I tolerate zero suppression. But that’s not what’s at issue here. We are talking about a CDN company refusing business of someone they don’t like, because it exposes them to bad PR and likely liability as well. No one is required to publish your content. I can post my dick all over Facebook, and that’s fine, because that’s not suppression of free speech. I can’t walk into CNN and demand airtime under a flag of free speech either. The closest thing we ever had to an issue of free speech on the Internet was when ICANN was handing over domains to the feds over piracy issues. In that case their was a thin line. In that case there was a discussion to be had. Property was being seized by the government and people were being arrested and imprisoned for what some considered speech. Here there is nothing. Just whiny, uneducated people with no concept of what free speech actually refers to.
  - Ajedi32 7y ago
    No gulag. No stormtroopers. Your message criticizing the military just won't be seen anyone, because the platform you're posting on will censor it. That's suppression of free speech; regardless of whether it's a government or a corporation that's doing it.
    - themagician 7y ago
      You totally misunderstand the way the legal system works in the United States. Let’s go ahead and examine your example. Say that a law was passed that required Facebook and others to remove posts critical of the US military. In this example, if Facebook fails to comply, people will be arrested. Facebook would sue the government, saying that the law is unconstitutional as it violates the First Amendment. This would likely become know as something like Facebook et al. vs The United States. Unless we are in a bizarro universe, Facebook would win. In this example, Facebook’s rights, as a publisher, are the ones being trampled on, not yours. It’s not a people’s case. In this scenario you likely don’t even have standing to sue (debatable, I suppose, but that’s a separate discussion entirely). It’s worth noting that the closest thing to this scenario was with the ACSS key years ago. Not quite the same, but similar parties involved along a similar line of thinking. But the issue at hand with Cloudflare isn’t the same. There is no constitutional issue at all. It’s just one business dropping a client. In fact, the only way this could ever turn into a free speech issue, even in principle, is if a law was passed that forced Cloudflare to continue to host 8chan’s content. You should really do some reading about what free speech actually means. You are so far off the mark it’s hard to take you seriously.

kickopotomus 7y ago

Nobody has a right to a CDN or a right to DDOS protection. Cloudflare is a private company offering a service in exchange for money. They may deny service to whomever they wish (with exceptions for certain protected classes). Political leanings and ideologies do not constitute a protected class. Neither Cloudflare, nor Google, nor FaceBook, nor Reddit, nor HN for that matter have any legal or moral obligation to grant a platform to anyone. A private platform reserves all rights to the content on their platform. If you have an issue with how that is policed or moderated then you are free to create your own competing service.

Ajedi32 7y ago
You're falling back on the legal argument again. Again: Free Speech is not a law, it's a principle. Sure, even without a CDN a sufficiently well-funded organization could spend millions of dollars on the infrastructure necessary to resist a powerful DDOS attack. But if that's enough in your mind to satisfy the principle of free speech, then you're essentially saying that it's okay if it costs millions of dollars to speak freely on the internet. I'm not sure that's a good policy.
- kickopotomus 7y ago
  I clearly said no moral obligation. That covers your claim of Free Speech as a principle. A private organization does not owe you their bandwidth. > then you're essentially saying that it's okay if it costs millions of dollars to speak freely on the internet. No. Go buy a RaspberryPi for $35. Now you can host your own site and say whatever you would like on the internet. Again, nobody owes you anything. Nobody is obliged to carry my message. You have a right speak freely. You do not have a right to be heard.
  - Ajedi32 7y ago
    A Raspberry Pi can be trivially overloaded with a simple DOS attack. (Not even DDOS.) If you've got anything remotely controversial to say, I wouldn't count on that being sufficient to keep your site online. The infrastructure necessary to remain online during a coordinated attack isn't cheap; that's why Cloudflare advertises DDOS protection as one of the many services they offer: https://www.cloudflare.com/ddos/ https://www.cloudflare.com/ddos/ Whether or not a cloud infrastructure company "owes" content-neutral treatment to their customers is a matter which, I think, is up for debate. Particularly in this day and age where the internet has become such an important venue for political speech.