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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

IMHO this reflects poorly on CloudFlare.

The supreme court has ruled time and time again that the right to free speech implies the right to be heard.

While CloudFlare obviously isn't legally required to serve 8chan, the only service they are really providing is making it so that 8chan can't be DDOS'd. And DDOS'ing is very clearly a tactic that violates the first amendment. So really by no longer serving 8chan, the only thing they are doing is allowing and/or encouraging others to violate 8chan's constitutional rights.

It reminds me a lot of Charlottesville, where people showed up to try to shout over the white nationalists and it just ended up with a bunch of people getting run over by a car. As if something like that happening wasn't entirely predictable.

If 8chan is inciting violence or doing other things not covered by the first amendment then it should be the government's job to police that.

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> It reminds me a lot of Charlottesville, where people showed up to try to shout over the white nationalists and it just ended up with a bunch of people getting run over by a car. As if something like that happening wasn't entirely predictable.

Wait, what are you trying to say here? That these people deserved to get run over because they dared to shout at white nationalists??

I'm saying that I think allowing people to DDOS 8chan will result in more violence.

>> I'm saying that I think allowing people to DDOS 8chan will result in more violence.

Violence happens because these people follow a hateful, violent ideology whose specific articulated intent is to deprive others of liberty, life, and land. People looking for excuses to be violent will find them.

Also, refusing to provide commercial DDOS mitigation technologies to hostile entities is not the same as "allowing people to DDOS" them.

So we should allow them to have their way, and we should enlist third party private entities to mandate assistance be provided?

CloudFlare is providing a basic service that the government should be providing itself.

If colleges need to guarantee first amendment rights since they are partially government funded, and the Internet itself is partially government funded, then I think there is a decent case for the government being required to provide a public solution for mitigating DDOS attacks if the market can't sort it out.

I've seen this line being trotted out by people supporting 8chan and their ilk a lot lately. "If you censor them they'll get even more violent." Regardless of your opinions on free speech, it sounds to me that cutting off the hub for these groups to network, encourage, indoctrinate and manipulate is much more likely to reduce violence than incite it.

The First Amendment is completely irrelevant to this situation. No relation whatsoever.

CloudFlare is a private company.

When Facebook and Twitter started de-platforming right-wing types like Alex Jones and Milo Yannopoulis, the actions-of-a-private-company-are-beyond-criticism types immediately defended them with “it’s not like they’re being thrown off the internet entirely - they can always create their own websites!” Well now, they are being thrown off the internet entirely. And a disturbingly large number of people think this is a positive thing.

But they're not being thrown off the internet entirely! There are other services they can create or use (voat, gab). The internet itself is still open for them to use.

... until the hosting providers stop hosting voat, for the same reason, and start blocking gab via deep packet inspection... for the same reason.

Who's throwing them off the internet? Their vile racist garbage is still accessible to everyone.

If anything, Cloudflare actually exercised their right to freedom of association (or disassociation, in this case) by dropping 8chan.

The right to free speech in the context of the Constitution only applies when it's the government trying to restrict it.

Devil's advocate:

The moral reasoning behind restraining the government from denying speech and other rights is that the government is a monopoly (in this case of force). This reasoning extends to restrictions on the ability of other monopolies, such as local utilities, to deny service.

If every service provider with the capacity to serve the needs of Website X were to deny service, the DE FACTO effect is precisely the same as a single monopoly doing so. In which case, the moral reasoning behind restraint of government and other monopolies comes into play.

Does an individual have an inalienable right to run a web forum?

The de facto effect is the same. But is a decision independently reached by multiple parties really the same as a decision by a single monopoly?

I can't confidently say one way or another, but it feels more acceptable to me.

Assuming each company did reach that decision independently (and that's a big assumption) and not as a result of bad PR brought on by an angry internet mob.

> the DE FACTO effect is precisely the same as a single monopoly doing so

The effect is the same, but the legal interpretation of the situation isn't, as long as new players are free to join the game.

You can find lots of examples where two cases of real-world events are the same, but are interpreted differently by law, depending on the context that is purely juridical.

> the moral reasoning behind restraint of government and other monopolies comes into play.

Governments hold the monopoly on violence, thus they are fundamentally different from any other entity.

The real reason for restraining the government from restricting speech is the hope that people use the soap box, and the ballot box, instead of the bullet box to make the changes they want to see in the world.

The monopoly on violence does not necessarily have much to do with this.

A tale as old as the Internet (older!) is people arguing about how we represent our morality through legal code.

The First Amendment is a law, but it's an imperfect representation of an idea, and that idea is that everyone has a right to (among other things) express ideas free from organized oppression. A lot of people see "organized oppression" to be exclusively possible by a governing body, but some others see that to mean the platforms themselves.

"The First Amendment" is oftentimes used as a conversational shortcut to talk about the moral right of expression. Is it entirely accurate? No, and accuracy matters. However, the conversation doesn't die when the correction is made. Here, it's true that CloudFlare isn't in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, however the argument being made is that they have a moral obligation to stay a "dumb pipe", to prevent the oppression of a minority voice.

I'm not making that argument, I just wanted to point out the nuance of invoking "The First Amendment" here, that it's often not literally a reference to the legal authority of the private entity in question.

CloudFlare operates in California.

California has an affirmative right to free speech, broader than the First Amendment's negative command to Congress.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R... (IANAL)

Depends upon their involvement with the government that allows them their market position. In the particular case of CloudFlare I don't actually know what the involvement is, and would default to agreeing with you. But I do know some private companies often mentioned in relation to First Amendment that there is some level of involvement, but I think the courts have largely not taken a critical look at what is going on and is still quite inconsistent on the matter (which should surprise no one who compares the pace of law and the pace of technology).

I think you are right that the government has showed a lot of restraint in dipping its toes into this problem, and that might be a good thing. However, Cloudflare in shutting off 8chan, has not violated anybody's free speech.

The constitution only applies to the government's relationship with its people. Only the government can violate a citizen's constitutional rights. Other individuals (or companies) cannot violate another person's constitutional rights. Cloudflare, in ceasing its relationship with 8chan, is not impeding on their first amendment rights.

Even so, the first amendment is not a blanket right to say whatever you want or incite violence. The first amendment is much narrower than you may realize, and in the narrowest (most protected) case, only applies to political speech. Hate speech is definitely not protected.

While 8chan, as an operator, is not directly responsible for what happens on their site, they start taking on liability when they are knowingly aware of and take no action against people who are using the site for criminal activity. The same goes for a landlord who knowingly lets his/her house be used for criminal activity, such as crack house.

I agreed with you up to here.

> And DDOS'ing is very clearly a tactic that violates the first amendment.

I don't follow this, much less find it "very clear." DDOSing is a crime and the prevention of it is a service provided by a third party. It's not a free speech issue.

Furthermore, you're really blaming the victim in your analysis of Charlottesville.

> Furthermore, you're really blaming the victim in your analysis of Charlottesville.

Well they're both the victims and the perpetrators. It's not legal to drive over them, but it's also not legal for them to try to prevent the people from organizing the rally from speaking.

Stuff like this has been happening for hundreds of years, there's actually a reason why the laws are the way they are.

People _are_ allowed to shout over protesters. It's legal to do that.

> People _are_ allowed to shout over protesters. It's legal to do that.

Sometimes. If organizing a rally requires a government permit, then having the government give another permit for the same time and place to people whose aim was to disrupt the rally would probably violate the first amendment rights of the rally organizers. And that's basically what happened in Charlottesville, the rally organizers had permits and the protestors did not.

> having the government give another permit for the same time and place to people whose aim was to disrupt the rally would probably violate the first amendment rights of the rally organizers. And

You keep saying that this violates the first amendment rights of the protesters but yet again you're not backing that up in any way. How does this violate their first amendment right? I'm just not seeing it.

"where people showed up to try to shout over the white nationalists and it just ended up with a bunch of people getting run over by a car."

Sorry, if I may clarify. It ended up with a bunch of people protesting white nationalism being run over by a white nationalist, who has been sentenced for killing a woman with his car.

In the Charlottesville case, the people inciting violence and the people performing violence are both white nationalists.

>> It reminds me a lot of Charlottesville, where people showed up to try to shout over the white nationalists and it just ended up with a bunch of people getting run over by a car. As if something like that happening wasn't entirely predictable.

People showed up to exercise their own first amendment rights, which is how the whole free speech thing works.

Those with opposing points of view also showed up to demonstrate that ordinary people wouldn't be intimidated by white nationalists marching and carrying intimidating symbols from the past.

Are you suggesting that the best response to these regressive viewpoints is for ordinary decent folk to let them alone and do their own thing in peace? Cowardice.

That would only serve to embolden them, and an emboldened hate group is even more likely to engage in violent activity against the targets of their hate.

>Charlottesville, where people showed up to try to shout over the white nationalists and it just ended up with a bunch of people getting run over by a car. As if something like that happening wasn't entirely predictable.

Why disparage the innocent victims a politically-motivated terrorist? Because they "shouted" at the very extremists who celebrated that act of murder?

It's been ruled private companies can discriminate against homosexuals by refusing to provide service to them (ie: a wedding cake). Also been ruled you can discriminate against customers based on religious beliefs (ie: refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control) see “religious refusal” and “conscience protection” laws.

I don't think the main disagreement in this thread is about whether the ban was legal but whether it was moral.

There are the usual side-debates though: the ban being strategically effective and the ban being in-line with how the us constitutions concept of free speech gets interpreted.

Personally I'm not sure to what degree the latter might be relevant for an apparently(?) Filipino company.

Wow. You're both all over the place and wrong.

DDoSing doesn't "violate the first amendment" anymore than a loud bar violates my first amendment rights.

The concept of free speech and the first amendment aren't the same thing. The first amendment, in part, attempts to stop the government from violating its citizens' free speech.

Yelling over you does not violate your rights. Not giving you something does not violate your rights.

Another right the first amendment guarantees is the right to assemble. That means I can associate with whomever I want. That means Cloudflare can associate with whomever they want. They choose not to associate with 8chan. That is their choice and their right. We cannot force Cloudfare to associate with 8chan.

Also, what does Charlottesville have to do with anything here? Are you trying to say the guy running over others is guilty of violating the "shouters" first amendment rights? And that they should have predicted that "shouting at white nationalists" means they would get run over? And how does that remind you of Cloudflare not hosting 8chan? Did they run a car through the server?

Everything is covered by the first amendment.

So. It's a real good look for CloudFlare because they're no longer the company that associates with white nationalists.

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