Private companies should not be
the de facto moderators
of free speech
Private companies should not be
the de facto moderators
of free speech
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...
Kiwifarms is free to get another company that aligns with their goals.
I'm having trouble understanding how 1) everyone thinks Cloudflare is the singular hole through which the internet flows and 2) how a private company does not have the freedom to do what they want.
If you don't like what Cloudflare is doing, then speak with your wallet and don't use them, there are numerous other providers of ddos protection
See the parent comment I was replying to. We agreed on the statement that "Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech". I just think it is weird to argue this in a thread where we have just turned 180 degrees from our original premise.
My point isn't to weigh in on this specific decision, but I want the rhetoric around this stuff to evolve away from pretending that defining the boundaries of what speech should be protected is super easy and objective. It's really not, and it never will be.
That's because there shouldn't be one global boundary enforced centrally. This kind of problem is a direct consequence of the scale and alignment miss-match between the technical structures (here cloudfare) and the scale at which there is political cohesion (apparently much lower scale here, since there is such an irreconcilable disagreement). Each politically cohesive group should have the ability to make their own policies. That's how federated things work (email, mastodon or bgp). Hence these kind of clashes we get regularly because of the size of most things has become so huge which is completely nonsense imho (eurozone, food/simple goods production, media).
And frankly, the example of Mastodon doesn't inspire confidence. Mastodon instance-level blocks have turned the platform into a huge mess. I genuinely would not be surprised if there was no single instance I can sit on that will allow me to interact with everyone I know on Mastodon, and as far as I've heard, if I choose to host my own instance and not to block certain instances, this will lead to my instance being blocked on some instances. I could be exaggerating a little, but this seems quite annoying.
Admittedly, e-mail works a bit better in this regard, but it's certainly not without issues (SPAM, deliverability, etc.) Still, it's perhaps possible that platforms that deal with public broadcasting are inherently more sensitive to cultural clash than ones that only deal with more or less direct communication.
Consolidation of power into platforms like Cloudflare is still a problem, but even if we fix that, we still have another service that has a lot of people all in one big amorphous zone: the Internet. I do wonder a lot if the Internet will ultimately wind up unifying a bunch of cultures, or if it will wind up creating even more bifurcation than it eliminates. It's starting to feel more and more like it creates more bifurcation, just a bit.
“Free speech” is a philosophy. It makes no sense to describe a particular expression of speech as free or not. Hate speech is speech. Whether one should be free to make it is another question.
If there's defamation, harassment, or incitement to violence, we should deal with that in an open court with juries of our peers, not in some dark board room.
That's a pretty easy litmus test.
As a colloary, it's akin to comparing "I don't like the president" vs "Let's go kill the president" (this is a comparison of allowed vs unallowed speech in the USA, not a call to).
Advocating voting against is 100% legal. Advocation of killing is 100% ILLEGAL.
Kiwifarms was doing the latter, up to and including actions threatening violence, "assisted" suicide, and murder.
Those were never 1fa protected actions.
Then a proceeding in open court will be simple and fast.
A proceeding where the accused has the right to cross examine and present evidence in their defense.
I prefer that to a corporate decision done in secrecy in response to bad PR.
Where I’m sure the disagreement lies is whether or not you find it morally okay to protect the current victims by less than ideal means.
Obviously no country has absolute freedom of speech, but for example the First Amendment has no hate speech exemptions.
Eliminationist rhetoric is a subset of hate speech overall, but it certainly exists and is trivially easy to discover. It's odd to me that none of the self-professed 'free speech absolutists' ever seems to engage with this point.
If you can't prove material damage in a court, it should be allowed.
Forbidden eliminationist rhetoric is quite rare and would be something like the "cockroach" broadcasts in Rwanda.
You have the right to speak, but you also have the right to repercussions, in specific when those actions are a call to harm.
you're just using the words to act like you have a moral high ground you don't actually have.
Then that's a philosophy virtually no one actually holds.
Very few people think death threats, fraud, etc. fall under free speech. If you do your speech at 3am with a loudspeaker in a residential neighborhood, you're probably getting dinged for "disturbing the peace", because other people have rights too, and society winds up having to resolve the conflicts.
In this case, a similarly important right - freedom of association - also applies.
correct. most people don't hold a free speech philosophy. people just like taking a high moral ground they don't actually have.
> Very few people think death threats, fraud, etc. fall under free speech
us govt can't prosecute death threats unless they can prove intent beyond you just saying it, they can't also arbitrarily prosecute for lying
> If you do your speech at 3am with a loudspeaker in a residential neighborhood, you're probably getting dinged for "disturbing the peace", because other people have rights too, and society winds up having to resolve the conflicts.
if you said the same thing at a much lower volume, no one would care. the problem there is noise pollution, not the content of the speech said.
Addresses aren't private information.