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I think it’s somewhat misleading to refer to those who support genocide and child abuse as simply “political undesirables.”

nine_k 7y ago
They are beyond a certain line; some very-very far past it, some just crossed it. It makes them unsupportable by any corporation that aims to look decent.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bitwize 7y ago
It's not just supporting. Taking a neutral stance on censoring these things, or not being adequately proactive on hate speech, is now seen as condoning. You either censor your user base, or upstream will censor you. Gone are the days of "The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." The new policy is "The net interprets wrongthink as noise and filters it out."
- wwright 7y ago
  It’s not censorship: they are not suppressing information, they just aren’t allowing their resources to be used to spread it. It would be “censorship” if they actively antagonized any attempt to spread the information, such as by lawsuit or DMCA notice. They are just refusing to participate. And given that the “information” is definitively known to be child pornography and violent white supremacy propaganda presented as news, I would personally say refusing to participate is the only responsible action.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  > Gone are the days of "The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." But it's clear that it matters just what's being censored. Surely you wouldn't say the same trite clever-sounding hackerspeak if we're talking about censorship of threats, assault and child pornography, would you?
the8472 7y ago
Genocide has been and still is a political tool. It is extreme, but ultimately something that people consider and carry out as part of political processes, not a special category of its own. And realpolitik is to continue dealing with countries that practice genocide. Consider Burma or China. Cloudflare simply has the luxury of choosing which politically disagreeable parties they do not want to associate with because they are insignificant customers. Pretending that this is not due to differences in politics and moral judgment is semantic smoke and mirrors. Anyway, the point is that they are not a neutral carrier/providers. Unlike banks or telecoms which are required by regulation to accept any legal business. CF styles itself as neutral infrastructure, until they decide they are not. The risk of getting deplatformed due to someone's moral judgment is quite real, even for an entity such as Wikipedia. For example they were blocked in the UK because the Virgin Killer album cover landed it on a block list used by major ISP.
- wwright 7y ago
  I didn’t say it wasn’t political, but it’s not just undesirable for immediate political reasons — it’s undesirable for nearly universally-agreed moral and ethical reasons. So implying it’s only inconvenient for politics is, in my opinion, misleading.
  - the8472 7y ago
    The political tends to encompass or at least subsume the moral and ethical aspects, as I tried to allude to with the realpolitik aspect. But again, this is just a tangent. The core argument is that it is best not to rely on providers that have the freedom to make political/moral decisions who they deal with because that freedom makes them susceptible to moral denial of service attacks. You are one moral outrage away from being deplatformed.
    - wwright 7y ago
      I can see that mentality, but what I’m saying is that, personally, if I become a Nazi, I think I should be deplatformed.

nine_k 7y ago

They are beyond a certain line; some very-very far past it, some just crossed it. It makes them unsupportable by any corporation that aims to look decent.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bitwize 7y ago

It's not just supporting. Taking a neutral stance on censoring these things, or not being adequately proactive on hate speech, is now seen as condoning. You either censor your user base, or upstream will censor you. Gone are the days of "The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." The new policy is "The net interprets wrongthink as noise and filters it out."

wwright 7y ago
It’s not censorship: they are not suppressing information, they just aren’t allowing their resources to be used to spread it. It would be “censorship” if they actively antagonized any attempt to spread the information, such as by lawsuit or DMCA notice. They are just refusing to participate. And given that the “information” is definitively known to be child pornography and violent white supremacy propaganda presented as news, I would personally say refusing to participate is the only responsible action.
claudiawerner 7y ago
> Gone are the days of "The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." But it's clear that it matters just what's being censored. Surely you wouldn't say the same trite clever-sounding hackerspeak if we're talking about censorship of threats, assault and child pornography, would you?

the8472 7y ago

Genocide has been and still is a political tool. It is extreme, but ultimately something that people consider and carry out as part of political processes, not a special category of its own. And realpolitik is to continue dealing with countries that practice genocide. Consider Burma or China. Cloudflare simply has the luxury of choosing which politically disagreeable parties they do not want to associate with because they are insignificant customers. Pretending that this is not due to differences in politics and moral judgment is semantic smoke and mirrors. Anyway, the point is that they are not a neutral carrier/providers. Unlike banks or telecoms which are required by regulation to accept any legal business. CF styles itself as neutral infrastructure, until they decide they are not. The risk of getting deplatformed due to someone's moral judgment is quite real, even for an entity such as Wikipedia. For example they were blocked in the UK because the Virgin Killer album cover landed it on a block list used by major ISP.

wwright 7y ago
I didn’t say it wasn’t political, but it’s not just undesirable for immediate political reasons — it’s undesirable for nearly universally-agreed moral and ethical reasons. So implying it’s only inconvenient for politics is, in my opinion, misleading.
- the8472 7y ago
  The political tends to encompass or at least subsume the moral and ethical aspects, as I tried to allude to with the realpolitik aspect. But again, this is just a tangent. The core argument is that it is best not to rely on providers that have the freedom to make political/moral decisions who they deal with because that freedom makes them susceptible to moral denial of service attacks. You are one moral outrage away from being deplatformed.
  - wwright 7y ago
    I can see that mentality, but what I’m saying is that, personally, if I become a Nazi, I think I should be deplatformed.