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Comment by lsmarigo | Hacker News Reader

I know you guys took major issue with the Cloudlfare takedown of DailyStormer but try to look at the big picture. Mankind has never had a tool as powerful as the internet. The advent of the printing press played a key role in the lead up to the Salem Witch Trials. How big a role the internet played in the mess we find ourselves in today as a country, that's up to future historians to argue, but make no mistake the impact is massive and unlike anything we've ever seen. The spread of hate and bigotry on the internet left unchecked has now lead to real loss of life which is what prompted CloudFlare/Reddit/Facebook to push these new policies. How, in the face of actual murders can you contend that these companies are wrong to take down these websites?

Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech?

Tech companies didn't choose to be the society police, yet here we are.

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> Mankind has never had a tool as powerful as the internet. The advent of the printing press played a key role in the lead up to the Salem Witch Trials.

Name one person harmed by the site?

If you have ever seen a page of DailyStormer, you'd either laugh or go away.

No one has ever killed anyone after reading a few paragraphs on that site.

Putting in the argument of "Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech" is not an honest way of describing censorship of content that is silly at its worst and dumb at its best.

But clearly when a huge crowd of Antifas are overwhelming and attacking a relative small crowd of stupid nazis, with bats, and one guy try to make it out of there before his car is smashed to bits (with the obvious tragic accident waiting to happen)...

Clearly it’s the nazis who are out of control and we need to take down their websites. Freedom of speech be damned!

Seriously. This was a harmless, stupid, non-violent demo for nazis to out themselves in, before the antifa turned up and got people killed.

Are their websites being taken down? No? How come?

Disclaimer: think nazis are about as stupid as it gets.

Edit: not exactly expecting upvotes for this post, but this thread clearly needs some balance.

These are the guys who rushed a non-violent demo. These are the people you are defending: https://mobile.twitter.com/PoliticalShort/status/90191505521...

> Edit: not exactly expecting upvotes for this post, but this thread clearly needs some balance.

It doesn't. Seriously, you're making excuses for a murderous white supremacist asshole.

Good points, I want to add:

We just witnessed something very significant, when Russia interfered. They had an express goal and they carried it out with technologies we know.

A medium that is absolutely free of censorship is not in your best interest, because it can and will be used to compromise you.

The solutions are difficult, but what is clear (especially to folks who have had to moderate even a small channel or forum) is that a policy of no-censorship never scales in the real world, the question is how you do it, where to draw the line, etc..

I'm facing this situation right now. I've peeked in the discord channel of the ones who want to post edgy memes on our forums and they see themselves as martyrs for getting banned or quitting the forums.

It sounds like you're just dealing with teens who want to be edgy.

That’s what The Daily Stormer was. Stormfront is still up.

> Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech?

Yes, this decision has already been made. Freedom (of speech and more) is fought for and won through struggle and sacrifice. We have already lost much human life to defend these rights and continue to do so.

Bad actions will be dealt with the appropriate consequences, as they always have, but that does not mean we should start limiting rights. This is the foundation of the justice system and society itself.

That's the problem though. Cloudflare did not terminate DailyStormer because of the content. Cloudflare hosts over 40 ISIS related websites, which they continue to do and have not terminated.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/anti-terrorist-hacker-group-re...

> There's clearly some undefined standard here, known only in the head of Cloudflare's CEO.

Cloudflare was quite clear on the criteria they used.

> The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

You can disagree with that criteria, and you can question whether this is the true criteria Cloudflare used. For the later, you need to provide evidence in opposition to this case.

Yes, they were extremely clear on the criteria they used: the CEOs emotional state.

“Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision.“

https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...

As I mentioned above (in another subthread), thanks for the link!

ok, fair enough. but the parent to my post said this was about the content.. it's clearly not the content, even that tidbit is clear it's not about the content.

If you're going to weigh in on a contentious issue, particularly if you're going to correct someone, please take the time to do so with some evidence, regardless of what any other poster has commented. You can't control other's comments, but you certainly can control your own. That includes refraining from further muddying the issue.

> "Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech?"

Just because one has freedom of speech does not mean one is free of consequence. So actual murderers should be punished. People believe what they choose to believe, and if it's not the DailyStormer it's some other hate mongering source (that's not exclusive to the internet).

> Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech?

lots of people would say yes.

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