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> It really isn't. This is the usual ignorance of social contagion that we see from free speech purists who can't fathom that spoken ideas can spread and motiva

> It really isn't. This is the usual ignorance of social contagion that we see from free speech purists who can't fathom that spoken ideas can spread and motivate catastrophic outcomes. Have you considered how many ideas have been spread this same way by sharing tweets or Facebook posts or YouTube videos? Why haven’t there been big campaigns to ban Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube from the internet? Do you see how preposterous it sounds? I can understand banning individual people from a forum or taking legal action if what they did could be a crime, but removing an entire forum for the actions of a small percentage of their users is crazy. > in reality incitement would've been the mere tipping point, in which case the specific duration that the incitement was up for is mostly irrelevant. It is entirely relevant since that was the main justification Cloudflare provided for de-platforming the site. Your original post suggested that it is unlikely Cloudflare would lie about their motivations. If the original post was the reason, then why didn’t they take action days ago? Instead they published a piece saying why they would not remove Kiwi Farms. My point is that something must have changed in the last 48 hours that made them change their mind, and I don’t think it is related to “targeted threats escalating”.

hackerlight 4y ago
First, there have been campaigns against the larger companies to improve their moderation. And they've been doing that. Second, I've elsewhere addressed how disanalogous such comparisons are. These other sites actively try to ban the harassment that KF freely allows, and the purpose of their sites and majority of their content isn't hate. Trying to draw analogies between very different examples is terrible thinking and violates the prescription to evaluate each case from first principles. Also, it is not a small percentage of users. The harassment, which is the critical context behind the decision, is literally thousands of pages. "It is entirely relevant since that was the main justification Cloudflare provided for de-platforming the site." You're confusing proximate reason with main reason. The incitement was the proximate reason, and the harassment formed the backdrop context that gives meaning to that proximate reason. Please don't tell me you expect them to spell out the basic context that is staring you in the face. You don't have the mind of a child. You very well know that if the identical bomb threat was posted on a Justin Bieber fan club forum, Cloudfare would not be disabling anything. And you know this because you implicitly understand that context is an actual thing. "If the original post was the reason, then why didn’t they take action days ago? Instead they published a piece saying why they would not remove Kiwi Farms. My point is that something must have changed in the last 48 hours that made them change their mind, and I don’t think it is related to “targeted threats escalating”." Because a literal bomb threat was issued after that previous post. I'll repeat again. There is such a thing as a metaphorical dam that breaks after sufficient pressure. You don't go "A-ha! That was just one extra drop of water! I wonder why the dam broke?" No, this is beyond childish.
- yanderekko 4y ago
  Incitement is a term with legal weight. If my legitimate criticism of someone online leads a third party to engage in a bomb threat against that person, then these mere facts will not lead to me being found guilty of incitement of violence or terroristic threats or whatever. Furthermore, if all someone has to do to get a speaker they dislike to shut up is to manufacture a threat on that speaker's behalf everywhere on the internet, then mass censorship is not only possible but inevitable. Anyone can throw away a burner account making a terroristic threat on any number of websites. The fact that these threats will only be taken seriously when they confirm the narratives of those in power is a major problem. Cloudflare was right to point to due process being the mechanism to prevent this sort of biased treatment, but then immediately opened up a giant loophole that allows for people to avoid it!
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    > Furthermore, if all someone has to do to get a speaker they dislike to shut up is to manufacture a threat on that speaker's behalf everywhere on the internet It's not. The speaker also must (in general) have a history of tolerance of / implicit support of / explicit support of / creation of vile content, and (history suggests) the corporation making the call to pull the plug has to be feeling the pressure to either act or to be seen as also implicitly supporting such vile content, which will have financial ramifications down the road as they're seen as "Those KiwiFarms guys" and people of their own free will choose to do business with Instart instead. The laws that force association in a corporate setting are extremely narrowly-tailored (at least in the US), and "harassers" isn't a protected class. For everything else, there's the First Amendment... The one that guarantees freedom of association. And the Internet is, at the end of the day, actually made of corporations and institutions that voluntarily associate with each other... Or don't.
    - yanderekko 4y ago
      Sure, I was mostly speaking hypothetically. The reality right now is that for this sort of false flag attack to work the speaker must be deeply unpopular, especially with media figures. This is why due process is important to prevent inequitable treatment, but woke ideology is ironically demanding that companies abandon due process if this would be harmful to shareholder value. The idea that left-wing activists would be flirting with Friedmanite shareholder primary would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. So much for corporate social responsibility!

hackerlight 4y ago

First, there have been campaigns against the larger companies to improve their moderation. And they've been doing that. Second, I've elsewhere addressed how disanalogous such comparisons are. These other sites actively try to ban the harassment that KF freely allows, and the purpose of their sites and majority of their content isn't hate. Trying to draw analogies between very different examples is terrible thinking and violates the prescription to evaluate each case from first principles. Also, it is not a small percentage of users. The harassment, which is the critical context behind the decision, is literally thousands of pages. "It is entirely relevant since that was the main justification Cloudflare provided for de-platforming the site." You're confusing proximate reason with main reason. The incitement was the proximate reason, and the harassment formed the backdrop context that gives meaning to that proximate reason. Please don't tell me you expect them to spell out the basic context that is staring you in the face. You don't have the mind of a child. You very well know that if the identical bomb threat was posted on a Justin Bieber fan club forum, Cloudfare would not be disabling anything. And you know this because you implicitly understand that context is an actual thing. "If the original post was the reason, then why didn’t they take action days ago? Instead they published a piece saying why they would not remove Kiwi Farms. My point is that something must have changed in the last 48 hours that made them change their mind, and I don’t think it is related to “targeted threats escalating”." Because a literal bomb threat was issued after that previous post. I'll repeat again. There is such a thing as a metaphorical dam that breaks after sufficient pressure. You don't go "A-ha! That was just one extra drop of water! I wonder why the dam broke?" No, this is beyond childish.

yanderekko 4y ago
Incitement is a term with legal weight. If my legitimate criticism of someone online leads a third party to engage in a bomb threat against that person, then these mere facts will not lead to me being found guilty of incitement of violence or terroristic threats or whatever. Furthermore, if all someone has to do to get a speaker they dislike to shut up is to manufacture a threat on that speaker's behalf everywhere on the internet, then mass censorship is not only possible but inevitable. Anyone can throw away a burner account making a terroristic threat on any number of websites. The fact that these threats will only be taken seriously when they confirm the narratives of those in power is a major problem. Cloudflare was right to point to due process being the mechanism to prevent this sort of biased treatment, but then immediately opened up a giant loophole that allows for people to avoid it!
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  > Furthermore, if all someone has to do to get a speaker they dislike to shut up is to manufacture a threat on that speaker's behalf everywhere on the internet It's not. The speaker also must (in general) have a history of tolerance of / implicit support of / explicit support of / creation of vile content, and (history suggests) the corporation making the call to pull the plug has to be feeling the pressure to either act or to be seen as also implicitly supporting such vile content, which will have financial ramifications down the road as they're seen as "Those KiwiFarms guys" and people of their own free will choose to do business with Instart instead. The laws that force association in a corporate setting are extremely narrowly-tailored (at least in the US), and "harassers" isn't a protected class. For everything else, there's the First Amendment... The one that guarantees freedom of association. And the Internet is, at the end of the day, actually made of corporations and institutions that voluntarily associate with each other... Or don't.
  - yanderekko 4y ago
    Sure, I was mostly speaking hypothetically. The reality right now is that for this sort of false flag attack to work the speaker must be deeply unpopular, especially with media figures. This is why due process is important to prevent inequitable treatment, but woke ideology is ironically demanding that companies abandon due process if this would be harmful to shareholder value. The idea that left-wing activists would be flirting with Friedmanite shareholder primary would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. So much for corporate social responsibility!