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> What if Kamala Harris used cloudflare in front of her website? Is cloudflare now supporting the Democratic party? What if Trump did? Same thing? Hosting cont

by eli 2y ago

> What if Kamala Harris used cloudflare in front of her website? Is cloudflare now supporting the Democratic party? What if Trump did? Same thing? Hosting content isn't the same as endorsing every word of it. Newspapers print op-eds that run counter to what the editorial board believes. But providing a platform to someone is still a choice, yes. > By your logic, it seems like cloudflare would have to review the content of every page on every site and only host it if they agree with it. Nah, what is allowed vs how you enforce it are two different things. Believe it or not, the decision of how to enforce the rules is political too. Nothing about having a ToS that bans certain content necessarily requires pre-review of content any more than the rule that bans phishing sites or pirated movies does. > You really don't think a neutral position would be to just not care what the content is, and just host everybody regardless who they are, what they believe, etc? Absolutely it isn't. Declaring that you don't care about offensive hate speech and will not remove it when made aware of it is a choice. It's a deeply political choice. (Also, this is a bit of a straw man: surely you can't "not care what the content is" when something potentially illegal)

freedomben 2y ago
Thanks, you make some good points. You've won me over somewhat. I agree that there's always at least some politics in choice/policy/enforcement because for any given value there are going to be people that oppose that value, but I don't think that means we should just embrace the political nature of it all and not try to be as "neutral" as possible. (To be clear I'm not suggesting that you are advocating for this, but I think it is the logical conclusion of accepting that everything is equally political). Some people's politics include free speech absolutism, and others include significant speech limitations, so a largely "we allow all legal speech" is a political stance when viewed that way, though it also strikes me as also the most "neutral" a platform can be, and I think that is mostly coincidental. There are plenty of political parties that disagree on many things for example, yet mostly agree that free speech and ability to express oneself is a good thing. To be clear, I despise hate speech and I hate when people say offensive things. But trying to define hate speech is a recipe for sadness. The Israel/Palestine conflict has really shown that recently where some people consider it "hate speech" to criticize the government of either side. When it's a company or a newspaper or something, the cost of getting it wrong (either too tight or too loose) is much lower than when it's a platform that controls vast swathes of the public square. Also, at what level does/should this matter? For example, should ISPs be pulling the plug if the customer has or shares content that they deem to be hate speech? Should power companies cut off electricity to those people? I fully agree btw that Daily Stormer really messed up by claiming that CF supported them, but CF could have left their website in place and C&D'ed or sued for libel. I don't know what I would have done in their position though. There's a pretty good chance I would have done the same thing they did. It's hard to really know when you aren't in the soup.
- eli 2y ago
  Appreciate your comments. "We allow all legal free speech*" has the benefit of being very succinct. But when someone says, "hey one of your customers is encouraging violence and hostility against my family" and you keep it up anyway because it's legal, that is 100% as much a political choice as taking it down. "Well sorry, we're free speech absolutists" doesn't absolve you of the decision to host that site. (* Though of course that's not really the policy anyway. You probably mean more like, "speech that, in our opinion, is likely to be ruled illegal" right? You're not waiting for someone to bring charges and a court to issue a final ruling. Making that determination isn't so easy. Whose laws are we following on a global internet anyway? Content moderation has no easy answers)

by eli 2y ago

freedomben 2y ago

Thanks, you make some good points. You've won me over somewhat. I agree that there's always at least some politics in choice/policy/enforcement because for any given value there are going to be people that oppose that value, but I don't think that means we should just embrace the political nature of it all and not try to be as "neutral" as possible. (To be clear I'm not suggesting that you are advocating for this, but I think it is the logical conclusion of accepting that everything is equally political). Some people's politics include free speech absolutism, and others include significant speech limitations, so a largely "we allow all legal speech" is a political stance when viewed that way, though it also strikes me as also the most "neutral" a platform can be, and I think that is mostly coincidental. There are plenty of political parties that disagree on many things for example, yet mostly agree that free speech and ability to express oneself is a good thing. To be clear, I despise hate speech and I hate when people say offensive things. But trying to define hate speech is a recipe for sadness. The Israel/Palestine conflict has really shown that recently where some people consider it "hate speech" to criticize the government of either side. When it's a company or a newspaper or something, the cost of getting it wrong (either too tight or too loose) is much lower than when it's a platform that controls vast swathes of the public square. Also, at what level does/should this matter? For example, should ISPs be pulling the plug if the customer has or shares content that they deem to be hate speech? Should power companies cut off electricity to those people? I fully agree btw that Daily Stormer really messed up by claiming that CF supported them, but CF could have left their website in place and C&D'ed or sued for libel. I don't know what I would have done in their position though. There's a pretty good chance I would have done the same thing they did. It's hard to really know when you aren't in the soup.

eli 2y ago
Appreciate your comments. "We allow all legal free speech*" has the benefit of being very succinct. But when someone says, "hey one of your customers is encouraging violence and hostility against my family" and you keep it up anyway because it's legal, that is 100% as much a political choice as taking it down. "Well sorry, we're free speech absolutists" doesn't absolve you of the decision to host that site. (* Though of course that's not really the policy anyway. You probably mean more like, "speech that, in our opinion, is likely to be ruled illegal" right? You're not waiting for someone to bring charges and a court to issue a final ruling. Making that determination isn't so easy. Whose laws are we following on a global internet anyway? Content moderation has no easy answers)