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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

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.
      - Ajedi32 7y ago
        Again, Free Speech is not a law, it's a principle. The question of whether or not this hypothetical law would be legal under the current version of the US constitution is irrelevant. To repeat my previous point: assume the same law was passed in North Korea instead of the US. Would the law then be "not a violation of Free Speech" because North Korea has no legal protections for Free Speech?

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.
    - Ajedi32 7y ago
      Again, Free Speech is not a law, it's a principle. The question of whether or not this hypothetical law would be legal under the current version of the US constitution is irrelevant. To repeat my previous point: assume the same law was passed in North Korea instead of the US. Would the law then be "not a violation of Free Speech" because North Korea has no legal protections for Free Speech?