Nationalizing Cloudflare seems like a bigger Constitutional crisis than private organizations choosing not to do business with the Proud Boys.
Pay for hosting.
> that thing should not be controlled by a private company
How would this be possible in a capitalist country?
And what's to stop whichever company is hosting me from dropping hosting at the first whiff of a Twitter mob?
> How would this be possible in a capitalist country?
So you are saying free speech on the internet is incompatible with a capitalist economy?
Money that you pay them for the service. This is almost always enough since that's all any of these companies actually care about. There are very rare exceptions where high-profile nazi groups have had their service contracts rescinded, but this isn't a real problem in practice. Nobody is having their service contract rescinded because their website is made up of conservatives, which is usually the implied subtext in these discussions.
> So you are saying free speech on the internet is incompatible with a capitalist economy?
No. I'm asking you how you envision people owning their own websites without any private companies involved, in an economy built around the concepts of corporate ownership.
"almost always" is not a guarantee of free speech.
> There are very rare exceptions where high-profile nazi groups have had their service contracts rescinded, but this isn't a real problem in practice.
...yet. What is "very rare" today can become "more common" tomorrow if there aren't strong legal protections.
> No. I'm asking you how you envision people owning their own websites without any private companies involved, in an economy built around the concepts of corporate ownership.
IANAL, but clearly there needs to be stronger legal protections in this arena. My ISP should not be able to disconnect me from the internet on the basis of speech. They should be like a utility company. My power company can't disconnect my electricity if I use the electricity to charge batteries for a megaphone that I then use to spread hate speech. My ISP/server host should be the same. Charge me for the compute resources I use, do not attempt to disconnect my service on moral or ethical grounds. Leave that to a higher layer in the stack.
There is no such guarantee with respect to someone else's private property.
> What is "very rare" today can become "more common" tomorrow if there aren't strong legal protections.
Yes, that's the slippery slope fallacy. I could make a similarly flawed argument in reverse, e.g. allowing Nazi propaganda to flourish unchecked is what lead to the rise of Hitler, so we should make Nazi ideas illegal before the acceptance of nazi ideas in wider society becomes "more common". Just to be clear, I am not actually arguing this position, only demonstrating why this reasoning is fallacious. Simply pointing to the existence of a rare event is not evidence that it will become more common.
> My ISP should not be able to disconnect me from the internet on the basis of speech
I agree, but only because ISPs control a shared, finite, public resource (the physical ISP lines, paid for in large part by the tax-payer).
> server host should be the same
No they shouldn't because they're not at all the same.
Remember that only a handful of companies today have the infrastructure to handle large attacks.