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Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

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

CloudFlare is a private company.

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.

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)

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.

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).

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.

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