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Comment by icpmacdo | Hacker News Reader

"the speed with which tech cos change after a bad PR cycle seems like solid proof that none of this is abt principles but abt trying to keep from making hard choices as long as possible. earlier today they argued that keeping 8chan within its network is a “moral obligation”"

https://twitter.com/cwarzel/status/1158193462459506693

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This always has been and always will be about publicity. 8ch started getting mentioned on national television, and there started to be questions directed at cloudflare. Reddit used to happily host discriminatory, violent communities, and only banned them once people started paying attention and companies became afraid to advertise on reddit because of its perceived connections to hate by the public. The message to hate communities is to lay low and not get noticed by the media.

Speech cannot be violent.

To the downvoters: speech cannot be violent, by definition. Using your own private definition of a word—in this case, violence—without making an explicit disclaimer is inherently deceitful.

Buy a dictionary. Volence doesn't have to use physical force.

Violence does refer to direct physical harm. There's a subset of people, predominantly in the social sciences, that is trying to redefine violence to include things like "economic violence" and "social violence" (e.g. breaking up with an SO you don't like, or not being friends with someone anymore). This is not the average person's understanding of the word, and personally I feel that it drastically washes down the meaning of violence.

If these things constitute violence then lots of violence is completely legal. In fact, you commit violence probably every day when you decide who to be friends with and who not to be friends with, who gets hired, etc.

It explicitly does. But it doesent always even infer harm. I can swing my arms violently, and not hurt anyone.

Having checked one, I found this: "the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy"

Would you care to offer a different definition?

Where did CloudFlare make or where was CloudFlare quoted as making the “moral obligation” argument? That just looks like a random tweet to me.

Edit: Looks like CEO comment to the Guardian earlier today

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/04/mass-shoo...

Cloudflare in the past was a staunch defender of free speech when people tried to get them to take down a website that was an outlet for pro-ISIS propaganda (I think the quote from the CEO was "A website is speech. It is not a bomb").

When they stopped hosting the neo-Nazi website they mentioned in the link, they made a big deal about how it was a one-off decision and they'll never again again stop serving a website because of its content. Clearly they've changed their minds about that.

That they abandoned those principles due to PR pressure does not mean it was not about principles. I dislike such motivated, deceitful arguments.

You're arguing that their abandonment of their principles, was due to principles.

Not even close. I am arguing that they have principles, but compromised on them due to too high a cost.

What kind of tortured logic do you need to employ where one can only claim to have principles if they hold on to them no matter the cost?

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