5 ms·

> Those who are censored are free to make their own websites to host their speech. I'm very sympathetic to this argument. Seems fair to me. But then Cloudflar

> Those who are censored are free to make their own websites to host their speech. I'm very sympathetic to this argument. Seems fair to me. But then Cloudflare, and any host big enough to withstand DDoS attacks, is strongly pressured by seemingly most people on the Web and in the US, to kick "bad websites" by "bad people" off their platform. So we can't just let bad people have their own website which we don't visit? I kinda wish we could. If most people hate that bad people can have public websites, just say that this is the best we can do, at least they're not on your parent's facebook/twitter.

paxys 3y ago
There is a very valid argument in favor of treating ISPs and hosting providers the same as your electricity and water company, and prevent them from being able to ban users on a whim. However the companies that are currently being targeted are still a few levels removed from that. In fact the party advocating for this is also the one opposed to net neutrality.
kevingadd 3y ago
Cloudflare is a weird example to pick here, since kicking i.e. stormfront or kiwifarms off CF doesn't deprive them of the ability to host a website, it just deprives them of obfuscation and a free CDN - effectively, the service CF is offering to them is not hosting but cost reduction and insulation from the consequences of their speech. It's reasonable in an abstract sense to think that it's a good thing if CF offers those Bad People services like that based on philosophical goals or political alignment, but it's very distinct from 'having a public website'. AFAIK it's still possible for anybody to put up a linux box with nginx on it and put any content they want there, other than the fact that a lot of consumer ISPs don't allow you to run servers anymore. But that's a different problem and cloudflare can't fix it.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  > effectively, the service CF is offering to them is not hosting but cost reduction and insulation from the consequences of their speech. This is somewhat tongue-in-cheek on my part, to be clear, but this raises an interesting point about whether orchestrating a DDoS attack is a form of free speech. I'm inclined to say "yes" more than "no." (You could draw a parallel, for example, to counter-protestors who try to drown out Westboro Baptst Church picketers by holding up their own signs....)
  - andrewflnr 3y ago
    You could try to draw a parallel, but it would fail. The most technically rigorous difference is that a protest and counter-protest are aimed at the same audience, whereas a DDoS is aimed at the first "speaker". Less rigorously but more practically, a "message" intended to cause technical malfunction is not "speech" and we all know it. It's even less "speech" than an extortion threat, which is already not protected. The "parallel" would be feeding the Westboro Baptists cognitohazards and crying "free speech" when they go insane and you get prosecuted.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      It's much closer to trying to be so loud they're drowned out than that weird analogy. I'd say even "malfunction" is a stretch. DDoS isn't hacking.
      - andrewflnr 3y ago
        Hacking isn't the only way to cause a malfunction; a hammer tends to do it. You can't deny that one of the functions of a server is to reply to good-faith requests, and that a DDoS intentionally degrades that function. What is that if not causing malfunction? You're looking for nuance where there is none. (And yes, it's a weird analogy. It was the closest I could come up with on short notice, and I think that's illustrative of the dangers of analogic reasoning. FWIW yours fails on the same audience/targeting aspect as the first one.)
        spondylosaurus 3y ago
        One of the functions of a mailbox is to receive/reply to good-faith messages, but 10,000 people can get together and decide to send postcards that say "YOU SUCK." to a single recipient. That person's mailman might not be pleased, but all the mail is conveyed through legitimate channels and legitimate means...
        andrewflnr 3y ago
- numpad0 3y ago
  It's not weird, it's just an example of how the modern society treat anything with sufficient scale as public resources just by scale and reach, and how little it cares about private corporate rights. You run the water to a town and the town now owns it. If it didn't, the town regulates it to the point you're essentially owned by the town, and the result is the same.
troyvit 3y ago
Good example with Cloudflare, and they offer an interesting flip side with Project Galileo, where they offer their Business tier product for free to groups they deem vulnerable: > Any qualified vulnerable public interest site can seek participation in Project Galileo. Examples of participants include, but are not limited to, minority rights organizations, human rights organizations, independent media outlets, arts groups, and democracy protection programs. The place I work for qualifies, and it has kept us afloat. It's another example where they change the landscape for a group they select (I'm just super glad they did). [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/galileo/ https://www.cloudflare.com/galileo/
Dylan16807 3y ago
I understand the slippery slope argument for cloudflare. But, right now, they have kicked off well under one website per year. That is not a threat to free speech.

paxys 3y ago

There is a very valid argument in favor of treating ISPs and hosting providers the same as your electricity and water company, and prevent them from being able to ban users on a whim. However the companies that are currently being targeted are still a few levels removed from that. In fact the party advocating for this is also the one opposed to net neutrality.

kevingadd 3y ago

Cloudflare is a weird example to pick here, since kicking i.e. stormfront or kiwifarms off CF doesn't deprive them of the ability to host a website, it just deprives them of obfuscation and a free CDN - effectively, the service CF is offering to them is not hosting but cost reduction and insulation from the consequences of their speech. It's reasonable in an abstract sense to think that it's a good thing if CF offers those Bad People services like that based on philosophical goals or political alignment, but it's very distinct from 'having a public website'. AFAIK it's still possible for anybody to put up a linux box with nginx on it and put any content they want there, other than the fact that a lot of consumer ISPs don't allow you to run servers anymore. But that's a different problem and cloudflare can't fix it.

spondylosaurus 3y ago
> effectively, the service CF is offering to them is not hosting but cost reduction and insulation from the consequences of their speech. This is somewhat tongue-in-cheek on my part, to be clear, but this raises an interesting point about whether orchestrating a DDoS attack is a form of free speech. I'm inclined to say "yes" more than "no." (You could draw a parallel, for example, to counter-protestors who try to drown out Westboro Baptst Church picketers by holding up their own signs....)
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  You could try to draw a parallel, but it would fail. The most technically rigorous difference is that a protest and counter-protest are aimed at the same audience, whereas a DDoS is aimed at the first "speaker". Less rigorously but more practically, a "message" intended to cause technical malfunction is not "speech" and we all know it. It's even less "speech" than an extortion threat, which is already not protected. The "parallel" would be feeding the Westboro Baptists cognitohazards and crying "free speech" when they go insane and you get prosecuted.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    It's much closer to trying to be so loud they're drowned out than that weird analogy. I'd say even "malfunction" is a stretch. DDoS isn't hacking.
    - andrewflnr 3y ago
      Hacking isn't the only way to cause a malfunction; a hammer tends to do it. You can't deny that one of the functions of a server is to reply to good-faith requests, and that a DDoS intentionally degrades that function. What is that if not causing malfunction? You're looking for nuance where there is none. (And yes, it's a weird analogy. It was the closest I could come up with on short notice, and I think that's illustrative of the dangers of analogic reasoning. FWIW yours fails on the same audience/targeting aspect as the first one.)
      - spondylosaurus 3y ago
        One of the functions of a mailbox is to receive/reply to good-faith messages, but 10,000 people can get together and decide to send postcards that say "YOU SUCK." to a single recipient. That person's mailman might not be pleased, but all the mail is conveyed through legitimate channels and legitimate means...
        andrewflnr 3y ago
numpad0 3y ago
It's not weird, it's just an example of how the modern society treat anything with sufficient scale as public resources just by scale and reach, and how little it cares about private corporate rights. You run the water to a town and the town now owns it. If it didn't, the town regulates it to the point you're essentially owned by the town, and the result is the same.

troyvit 3y ago

Good example with Cloudflare, and they offer an interesting flip side with Project Galileo, where they offer their Business tier product for free to groups they deem vulnerable: > Any qualified vulnerable public interest site can seek participation in Project Galileo. Examples of participants include, but are not limited to, minority rights organizations, human rights organizations, independent media outlets, arts groups, and democracy protection programs. The place I work for qualifies, and it has kept us afloat. It's another example where they change the landscape for a group they select (I'm just super glad they did). [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/galileo/ https://www.cloudflare.com/galileo/

Dylan16807 3y ago

I understand the slippery slope argument for cloudflare. But, right now, they have kicked off well under one website per year. That is not a threat to free speech.