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Comment by maxk42 | Hacker News Reader

Hello. I was in practically the same situation: I hosted a political site via cloudflare that some people took exception to. In my case they took the example of clearly satirical cartoons (that were uploaded by users - not my own content)and claimed they promoted violence. Cloudflare immediately terminated my account without warning and refused to refund me for the remainder of the month. The harasser then went on to contact my host and after a campaign of reporting every cartoon over the course of several months the host decided it wasn't worth the headache anymore and dropped me also. This experience really soured me on the lack of defense of free speech in the US. I'm afraid I have nothing to offer but my sympathies. If you're reading this and hosting political content on Cloudflare please act accordingly.

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> lack of defense of free speech in the US

Free speech (as in the first amendment) allows you to say most things, it does not however compel others to broadcast or host your speech. So there is no free speech argument for a service provider to be required to host your website or protect it with a reverse proxy.

You can speak, but nobody is required to give you a megaphone and nobody is required to listen.

No, but you wouldn't expect them to just hand over a users data just because some individual doesn't like the opinion someone has of them. There are consequences for free speech I totally understand that. Unfortunately the consequences for me are not going to be good.

That's a violation of privacy problem, quite different from free speech. With all the vacuuming of user data, our data is leaking around all the time for all sorts of reasons, including just being sold. No subpoena required.

Cloudflare is very happy to lend their megaphone and DDoS protection to people hosting nonconsensual pornography boards on the other hand. Along with a multitude of other sites that exist solely to traffic in human misery and exploitation. Even when you follow their processes to the letter to report them nothing comes of it.

Free speech is an interface, the first amendment is an implementation. We can’t use them interchangeably. So when you say

> there is no free speech argument

You really mean there is no first amendment argument. There is still an abstract free speech argument.

Another example: SLAPP laws that effectively intimidate people into silence are a free speech issue but not a first amendment issue.

I was with you until the last paragraph. How do SLAPP laws intimidate people into silence? Their purpose is to combat the use of legal means to silence speech, so it seems the opposite is true.

Further, if SLAPP laws did burden speech, then that would be a first amendment issue since they are enacted by states which are bound by it.

Sorry, I meant SLAPPs themselves, not the laws against them. Oops.

Why do people make the default assumption that "free speech" only refers to a specific American legal principle? Free speech existed long before the Constitution and yet whenever someone says, "My right to free speech is being violated," unless the culprit is directly the US government, someone always responds, "Actually, that's not literally illegal, so it's fine."

This kind of confusion was so common online (where people often complain about uneven and capricious applications of TOS) that I never failed to find it. It makes two mistakes: confusing 1A with free speech and an appeal to the law.

Just because companies are legally allowed to remove content (e.g. the owner of Twitter removing content critical of Tesla) does not mean there are no free speech issues. That would be like saying there are no free speech issues in China as long as you follow the law.

Further, just because the law says a thing doesn’t mean I have to agree with it. Laws have legal authority not moral authority, so even if a company is legally allowed to do something doesn’t end the conversation.

Why not host in China or Mongolia or Russia and never have to deal with any of these issues?

I'd rather not give my money to any of them! I realise you're probably being ironic given the whole USA free speech thing.

No, it sounds like the kind of pragmatism required to uphold higher-order principles.

Yeah I really regret using Cloudflare. It was in the back of my mind that they could 'throw me under the bus' to use a British colloquialism.

I'm amazed that this can happen so easily in the US. I realise the US courts probably don't care about UK citizens, but free speech is free speech. I realise that's not without consequence, there's been nothing untrue said about this individual to warrant this action.

How are US courts relevant in a case concerning a UK citizen being challenged by another UK citizen in the UK?

From what I understand anyone in the UK can make claims, file cases, etc…, against anyone else.

Edit: They may take action in another jurisdiction where they posesss some advantage, but it would have to be taken up in UK courts to actually mete out formal punishment.

Cloudflare is the middleman to my site. The individual got a court to issue a subpoena to Cloudflare, a US based company to find out the identity of the operators of the site.

I edited the prior comment a minute after I posted it.

How is that relevant when they would still need to go to a UK court to go after you in some way?

Which is what you are afraid of, I’m assumming?

At least in the UK a lawyer would tell him whether he had a case or not. At least I'd be dealing with the UK court system where I have some chance of understanding it. I also have legal insurance. I do not genuinely believe it would get to court. Cloudflare just handing over details is just chilling. They could have just asked me to take the content down.

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