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> and we all know how short is the distance between technical capability and doing it Fact-less conspiranoia. The CIA has the operators, equipment, and info t

> and we all know how short is the distance between technical capability and doing it Fact-less conspiranoia. The CIA has the operators, equipment, and info to be able to kill almost any US citizen in a couple of hours for arbitrary reasons. How many times have they done it? You are overweighing how much technical capability factors in and very much underweighing the costs of doing something like that. Opportunity costs, collateral damage, unintended consequences, reputation costs, brand harm. Hell even ethics and morals of those involved. Who do you know would want to work for a company that did that? Who do you know would program that feature and not say anything about it? Why do you believe that CloudFlare would have so many of those kinds of people working there, but you know so few? Why not make the same complaint about your ISP, your hardware manufacturer, your OS manufacturer? You have exactly the same amount of evidence they are doing this or could do this. Remember that US criminal system attributes 3 elements to a crime: {means, motive, and opportunity} and even then we use evidence and an assumption of innocence. You just threw out every part except “means”. I’m not defending CloudFlare here so much as tired of conspiracy theories and paranoia and social panics. We have enough of those things right now.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
philwelch 4y ago
> The CIA has the operators, equipment, and info to be able to kill almost any US citizen in a couple of hours for arbitrary reasons. How many times have they done it? How would we know?
- thephyber 4y ago
  How would we know if a homeless person was the second coming of Jesus Christ? Non-falsifiable claims are easy and limitless. Their credibility without evidence should be proportional.
  - philwelch 4y ago
    > How would we know if a homeless person was the second coming of Jesus Christ? I think the eschaton would be pretty hard to miss, what with the rapture and the final battle at Armageddon and the horsemen and whatnot. The CIA’s entire bailiwick is covert operations. A government agency that’s been specially trained to engage in illegal covert operations involving lethal force without getting caught isn’t going to leave too much evidence, which means a lack of evidence doesn’t really tell you anything either way. That having been said, the CIA was involved in the Obama-era drone strike program that ended up killing four US citizens (only one of whom was deliberately targeted). Frank Olson also died in suspicious circumstances connected to MKULTRA in 1953.
smsm42 4y ago
> Fact-less conspiranoia. I love how people reflectively answer with cries of "no evidence!" to something that presents the evidence about exactly the thing they are claiming has no evidence. I get a distinct impression that the only person they're trying to convince is themselves, by self-hypnotically denying the reality in public. There's a fact of CF booting sites, there's a fact of CF having IP blacklist, there's a fact of getting into IP blacklist being a very frustrating experience, there's a fact of various activists itching to make the lives of their political enemies a very unpleasant experience and launching successful pressure campaigns to do exactly that. Did that happen with CF and IP blocking? No, I explicitly said it didn't, at least - I don't know any cases of it. But there's a lot of facts confirming there's a capability and motivation to do so. You may not believe it would happen, and you have a right to believe so, but when you are denying known facts, I don't think your beliefs are based on anything but wishful thinking. Your argument would be strong if you showed that, despite the known facts, it still couldn't happen. But instead to claim it couldn't happen you have to deny the facts. > How many times have they done it? Probably more than I know, but it's too big to bother with me, so I'm not too concerned about it right now. Maybe if I was in the same business as Assange, I'd be worried more. > very much underweighing the costs of doing something like that. Like what costs? You mean to say, no major provider would dare to boot the person from the Internet? Like Facebook, Twitter, Paypal, Venmo, Gofundme, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Mailchimp, Tiktok, etc. would not dare to block people for political dissent and expressing unpopular opinions? Because, you know, opportunity costs, collateral damage, unintended consequences, reputation costs, brand harm. That' just couldn't happen. All that is fact-less conspiranoia. > Why not make the same complaint about your ISP, your hardware manufacturer, your OS manufacturer I can buy different hardware. I can install different OS. With some effort, but I can connect to a different ISP. Any of that won't help if Cloundflare would refuse to talk to me. > Remember that US criminal system attributes 3 elements to a crime Oh, but that's not a crime. That's the beauty of it - remember, it's a private action of a free enterprise, and you have no rights there. And even if the government would hold weekly meetings with Cloudflare suggesting them who exactly needs to be banned, it's still free enterprise, right? I mean, excluding the fact that the government would never do something like that, because reputation costs, brand harm, etc. That's another instance of fact-less conspiranoia, of course. > I’m not defending CloudFlare here so much as tired of conspiracy theories and paranoia and social panics. That's nothing. Imagine how tired you'd be when it turns out everything you thought is "paranoia" is actually happening. Of course, it would never happen to you - you'd never disagree with the government, or any people in power, or voice any unpopular opinions in public, would you now?
smsm42 4y ago
> Who do you know would want to work for a company that did that? Pretty much anyone who works for Twitter, Facebook, Google, Paypal, Venmo, Amazon, Microsoft, Gofundme, Mailchimp, Tiktok, Reddit, Nextdoor, and many other tech companies routinely engaging in censorship and unpersoning. The idea that people in tech are some kind of high morals freedom lovers that would never work for a company that censors doesn't suffer even minimal scrutiny. If anything, they'd refuse to work for a company that doesn't censor enough - Twitter workers were in utter screaming panic when they thought Musk could but Twitter and relax the censorship a bit. So if anything you just disproven your own argument - maybe what will force CF to censor is not external pressure but the internal one. I don't see why Cloudflare workers would be any better than Twitter ones.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

philwelch 4y ago

> The CIA has the operators, equipment, and info to be able to kill almost any US citizen in a couple of hours for arbitrary reasons. How many times have they done it? How would we know?

thephyber 4y ago
How would we know if a homeless person was the second coming of Jesus Christ? Non-falsifiable claims are easy and limitless. Their credibility without evidence should be proportional.
- philwelch 4y ago
  > How would we know if a homeless person was the second coming of Jesus Christ? I think the eschaton would be pretty hard to miss, what with the rapture and the final battle at Armageddon and the horsemen and whatnot. The CIA’s entire bailiwick is covert operations. A government agency that’s been specially trained to engage in illegal covert operations involving lethal force without getting caught isn’t going to leave too much evidence, which means a lack of evidence doesn’t really tell you anything either way. That having been said, the CIA was involved in the Obama-era drone strike program that ended up killing four US citizens (only one of whom was deliberately targeted). Frank Olson also died in suspicious circumstances connected to MKULTRA in 1953.

smsm42 4y ago

> Fact-less conspiranoia. I love how people reflectively answer with cries of "no evidence!" to something that presents the evidence about exactly the thing they are claiming has no evidence. I get a distinct impression that the only person they're trying to convince is themselves, by self-hypnotically denying the reality in public. There's a fact of CF booting sites, there's a fact of CF having IP blacklist, there's a fact of getting into IP blacklist being a very frustrating experience, there's a fact of various activists itching to make the lives of their political enemies a very unpleasant experience and launching successful pressure campaigns to do exactly that. Did that happen with CF and IP blocking? No, I explicitly said it didn't, at least - I don't know any cases of it. But there's a lot of facts confirming there's a capability and motivation to do so. You may not believe it would happen, and you have a right to believe so, but when you are denying known facts, I don't think your beliefs are based on anything but wishful thinking. Your argument would be strong if you showed that, despite the known facts, it still couldn't happen. But instead to claim it couldn't happen you have to deny the facts. > How many times have they done it? Probably more than I know, but it's too big to bother with me, so I'm not too concerned about it right now. Maybe if I was in the same business as Assange, I'd be worried more. > very much underweighing the costs of doing something like that. Like what costs? You mean to say, no major provider would dare to boot the person from the Internet? Like Facebook, Twitter, Paypal, Venmo, Gofundme, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Mailchimp, Tiktok, etc. would not dare to block people for political dissent and expressing unpopular opinions? Because, you know, opportunity costs, collateral damage, unintended consequences, reputation costs, brand harm. That' just couldn't happen. All that is fact-less conspiranoia. > Why not make the same complaint about your ISP, your hardware manufacturer, your OS manufacturer I can buy different hardware. I can install different OS. With some effort, but I can connect to a different ISP. Any of that won't help if Cloundflare would refuse to talk to me. > Remember that US criminal system attributes 3 elements to a crime Oh, but that's not a crime. That's the beauty of it - remember, it's a private action of a free enterprise, and you have no rights there. And even if the government would hold weekly meetings with Cloudflare suggesting them who exactly needs to be banned, it's still free enterprise, right? I mean, excluding the fact that the government would never do something like that, because reputation costs, brand harm, etc. That's another instance of fact-less conspiranoia, of course. > I’m not defending CloudFlare here so much as tired of conspiracy theories and paranoia and social panics. That's nothing. Imagine how tired you'd be when it turns out everything you thought is "paranoia" is actually happening. Of course, it would never happen to you - you'd never disagree with the government, or any people in power, or voice any unpopular opinions in public, would you now?

smsm42 4y ago

> Who do you know would want to work for a company that did that? Pretty much anyone who works for Twitter, Facebook, Google, Paypal, Venmo, Amazon, Microsoft, Gofundme, Mailchimp, Tiktok, Reddit, Nextdoor, and many other tech companies routinely engaging in censorship and unpersoning. The idea that people in tech are some kind of high morals freedom lovers that would never work for a company that censors doesn't suffer even minimal scrutiny. If anything, they'd refuse to work for a company that doesn't censor enough - Twitter workers were in utter screaming panic when they thought Musk could but Twitter and relax the censorship a bit. So if anything you just disproven your own argument - maybe what will force CF to censor is not external pressure but the internal one. I don't see why Cloudflare workers would be any better than Twitter ones.