3 ms·
>Free speech does not require that we give people a platform. That's true! Unfortunately it gets a little more complicated than that. As providers enjoy PLAT
by SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
>Free speech does not require that we give people a platform.
That's true!
Unfortunately it gets a little more complicated than that.
As providers enjoy PLATFORM protections that align with the ideas of free speech. Meaning they will enjoy legal immunity from content they host so long as they won't decide who gets a voice or why so long as the content is legally allowed. They aren't liable because they didn't have a say in what it was. They are required to remove illegal things of course.
The issue here is the PLATFORMS are now deciding they're going to keep these legal protections they basically require in order to exist - while also acting a PUBLISHERS that curate otherwise legal content to be aligned with their views.
Admit that many of the same people celebrating "they're a private company they can do what they want!" were also yelling "make the cake you bigots!"
This may be a cake-centric issue now that I think about it. Because CF, SV, FAANG are Having Cake + Eating Cake.
- dd36 7y agoCloudflare is not acting as a publisher.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y agoAre they curating otherwise legal content because they don't like it? Isn't that the topic here? Help me understand.
- dd36 7y agoIt’s not clearly legal and Cloudflare is under no requirement to provide its service to everyone that wants it.
- cortesoft 7y agoI think it is ridiculous to hold the position that you aren't allowed to block ANY content if you don't want to be held liable for things people say on your platform. We can't hold a platform liable for content because it is technically impossible to perfectly block infringing content, so we realize it is unfair to hold platforms accountable. However, this doesn't mean a platform can't make ANY effort to control what content is on their system without losing this protection. YouTube doesn't lose safe harbor protection just because they have contentid...
- SlowRobotAhead 7y agoWhy? Those publisher protections are directly modeled after the first amendment. This was literally the idea. I didn't make this up, it's the entire intent of the system.
- cortesoft 7y agoIf we are talking about the DMCA safe harbor stuff, which is what I was talking about, it was not modeled after the first amendment at all. What makes you think they were?