Comment by gadgetoid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gadgetoid | Hacker News Reader

I may be missing a trick here, but what - exactly - gives Cloudflare - a company that provides web services - the moral authority to flatly claim:

"that is a dangerous precedent, and one that is over the long term most likely to disproportionately harm vulnerable and marginalized communities."

... and use that as a defense for inaction?

It's like saying "Oh, well I can't give the poor money, they might spend it on drugs."

Since they claim that their own moral compass aligns with those asking them to fire a customer, what precedent - exactly - would be set? Are they relying upon the notion that the moral tides might sway, and that the vulnerable and marginalized communities might become those under fire next? Why- given their moral standing- would they be complicit?

This doesn't add up. It feels like they're only paying lip service to a corporate moral stance that lacks any real substance (if it exists at all), and requires that they do nothing in public that might upset their customers/shareholders. It's rote, corporate apolitical cowardice. Morals sacrificed upon the alter of profit.

In conclusion it seems to me that claiming to know better than the marginalized and vulnerable people clamoring for action is a really deeply condescending take. Coupled with the narcissism dripping from the fire service analogy this all serves to do them rather less justice than just... saying nothing, or sticking with "free speech absolutism".

And... that's quite a feat, for something that only really intended to say "Sowwy, taking too visible a political stance is bad for business but we pinky pwomise we're tooootally on your side."

What gives you or anyone else the moral authority to censor legal speech? I know doing so is a common fad in California/SV but it's doing tremendous harm to society already.

I fear the definition of legal speech on our respective countries differs too vastly for me to venture any reasonable answer to this.

I suspect our personal interpretations for what constitutes censorship might also. To lay out my position- I don't believe that a DDoS attack is a foregone conclusion if protections are removed, and I don't believe that a DDoS attack resembles censorship any more than a traffic jam resembles imprisonment. Which - I suppose - means I concede that it does, somewhat.

Inaction of what? They're saying they're not the opinion police.

Look at the list in the beginning of the article that has clear criminal violations, human rights violations, the like. They comply with take-downs in that domain, as they should and are legally required.

Yet they go on to mention that the vast majority of the complaints they get has nothing to do with those, rather they are take-down requests for things the reporter considered "offensive".

There's no right to not be offended. Further, the bar for "harm" is so low that it's on the ground. You can't let Twitter rage mobs on either side of politics decide on who gets to use internet infrastructure.

This stance to preserve the freedom of expression, opinion and even the right to insult is not apolitical. It's classic progressive liberalism, one of the pillars of our society.

I don't know. If I claimed to uphold the sacred tenets of free speech and expression I probably wouldn't want to be associated with a website that has a profound chilling effect on free speech and expression.

Is hate and ridicule expressed publically and unchallenged not just a DDoS against a group of people's right to expression?

When it's evident that some speech can quell other speech, which speech do we choose?

Cloudflare say "both" by taking money from the oppressor and giving it to the oppressed. I'd suggest this is- while something of a poetic justice- wholly insufficient and that Cloudflare should exercise the morals they claim to possess.

"Is hate and ridicule expressed publically and unchallenged not just a DDoS against a group of people's right to expression?"

The way I see it, the internet has enabled entirely new categories of negative behavior, using that term as a wide umbrella.

Half the things people say on Twitter, if you'd say them to someone's face in a bar, would make you wake up in the hospital. On the internet though, you can get away with it. Worse, you can organize a large amount of people to target an individual, organization, group of people, etc. This capability is near-impossible in the physical world.

These new ways are seized by hysterical activists on both extreme ends of the political spectrum and over time further normalized into the mainstream. These people feed on polarization and absolutely cannot be trusted to have the power to shut down infrastructure.

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