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I'm in favor of extra-legal filtering, according to a company's morals, as long as market alternatives exists. If speech crosses the line, law enforcement shou
by ethbro 7y ago
I'm in favor of extra-legal filtering, according to a company's morals, as long as market alternatives exists.
If speech crosses the line, law enforcement should pursue and prosecute.
Short of that (e.g. the "we were just joking" crowd), the best possible aggregate outcome seems like it would be companies making independent moral judgements and acting on them.
If Cloudflare doesn't want to be associated with 8chan, they refuse them as a customer.
Other customers are then free to judge Cloudflare for that action and use / not use them as they decide.
This seems far preferable to more draconian, government-enforced options.
Companies are inherently political, and a diversity of options is the healthiest ecosystem.
Not, this requires that we have functioning alternatives. For something like 8chan, Cloudflare's services are probably avoidable, but there's a market penetration at with "must serve" should be considered.
E.g. if Facebook banned a political party
- davesmith1983 7y agoGenerally I agree however > Companies are inherently political I am fed up of everything be political. I know someone is going to make Doom Eternal political somehow when the game is about a man that is too angry to die taking on the legions of the hell dimension (that is literally the plot of the game). Gilette have tried making how I remove hair from my face political. I want companies to sell their product and as long are people are using it legally they should probably not take a political stance.
- ethbro 7y agoMy point is more that the zeitgeist is inherently political. Ergo, merely by selling to the market and interacting with it, companies make political choices. These choices may be more or less obvious, but they're always there. The apolitical company is a myth. Note: I am using political in the greater, rather than "red vs blue" sense.
- davesmith1983 7y agoThis is nonsense. This is the same warped view of the world along the lines of "the person is political" and is a thought worm that has to be binned. I don't buy bog roll as a political decision, I buy it so I can wipe my arse.
- ethbro 7y agoYou may not. But others certainly do. Otherwise recycled toilet paper wouldn't be stocked. Beyond that, to use the same analogy, one brand might be dump their bleaching agents in the ocean. It's up to the companies if they want to trumpet their behavior loudly or say nothing about it. And it's up to consumers if they care about whatever type of behavior is involved.
- davesmith1983 7y agoWell that is up to other people. It doesn't make the company inherently political. This logic as previously stated is a horrible mind worm that infests everything and ruins a great many things that are just useful (razor blades) or fun (video games). Politics is a set of power games done by people we call politicians and promoted by their activists. It has nothing to do with right and wrong.
- ethbro 7y agoI would define politics as the myriad of ways we reach agreement over differences without shooting each other. Without politicians, politics would still exist.
- davesmith1983 7y agoIt is an overly broad definition.
- ethbro 7y agoAnd so we've arrived at the crux of our disagreement. If only politics were so clean.