Comment by josephlord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josephlord | Hacker News Reader

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All DigitalOcean asked him to do was to give them editorial control over his blog. That isn't a small thing to me.

At a quick glance it looks like a public forum (which has a bearing on how I view the ethics of the situation although even if it was private I don't think DO should act). When you are asked a question about your employer in public you are speaking for them and if you say something dumb that your company doesn't like that is your action and responsibility not someone who reports it. When I worked for a large company I used to speak (and particularly write online) very carefully except when truly in private. I also don't see any reference to anything being "off the record" so I don't see why you assume it wasn't "on the record".

Would I write that article like that? No. Do I think DO should claim editorial control over it? Hell no.

Maybe DO could request the blog owner provide contact details (I can't see any on the current site) so that legal action could be brought directly against them as the publisher rather than against DO. Not offering such may be reasonable grounds to have DO demand editorial changes or cease service.

> All DigitalOcean asked him to do was to give them editorial control over his blog. That isn't a small thing to me.

A nitpick. They didn't ask for editorial control; they asked for observance of the Terms of Service, with the option on their side to discontinue service. Nothing in the ToS gives DigitalOcean any right to editorial control and nothing in their communications says "give us control".

It's a binary proposition. Stick to the agreement, or the agreement is off.

"You can't publish it if we don't like it"; is editorial control. "Change this or we will take it down"; is editorial control.

They asked for a specific change: the removal of the name. That seems like editorial control to me. They took the view that anything embarrassing (even if not private) about someone who is not a public figure cannot be hosted on their servers. That is an editorial policy and they are asserting editorial control.

It isn't completely clear to me that he was breaching the terms. The closest part of the quoted terms is "harrass and embarrass". If it was an "or" then he would have breached them as an "and" I don't think he has unless there is further unrevealed harassment.

Regardless of whether it qualifies I would have expected the clause mostly to be used for serious harassment and/or posting nude images of people rather than accurately quoting statements that they have made recently.

See my reply further down. I disagree with that characterisation.

I also note that asking for particular changes was a mistake. They should have stuck with "take it down or we will take it down", to avoid people making the argument you just made.

If only because being seen to exercise editorial control might introduce significant new legal risks that the ToS, and its policing, is presumably meant to avoid in the first place.

If they have the final say on whether you can publish they have editorial control. A request to take down a whole article would be no better in my view. They are entitled to have TOS that do this and apply it strictly (although I don't actually see the breach in this case but we can we assume there was one for this discussion).

I don't like the article and if I was editing a paper or a website I would not publish the article in that form but DO is not a publisher but an infrastructure provider and for something that is not clearly illegal it seems highly inappropriate.

However they have guaranteed that I would not use them for any public facing service or content by stepping in this way (I might consider them for testing, internal or pure compute workloads).

I disagree. It seems to me that they wanted editorial control via proxy. "You change this for me or I'll delete your droplet."

The thing in this which really irks me is that the staff were neither co-operative nor reasonable. If you're a paying customer, the least they could do is put the complaint into a state of investigation whilst they looked into the claim. Instant ultimatum seems a bit steep.

I use Digital Ocean and like the service, but I really disagree with how they've handled this. I'm sure I won't be the only one moving providers this weekend.

I understand where you're coming from, but while the shape is similar, "editorial control" and "upholding a ToS" are essentially different things.

For example. Suppose instead that DigitalOcean staff wanted him to write about penguins. If they said "write more about flightless antarctic birds or we will pull the plug", they would be trying to exercise editorial control, because they'd be making positive assertions about the content of the site. And, because they had no previous agreement in place to give them editorial control, they could be rightly told to sit and spin.

But that is not the situation. They have a ToS which forbids certain kinds of content and they are within their rights to terminate service entirely if the terms aren't adhered to by the customer. What they can't do is directly edit, or expect to directly edit, or otherwise direct the content.

When I studied law I learnt that different things, even when they lead to identical outcomes, are different, and should be dealt with independently.

If they made a mistake, it was in trying to be friendly about it, which gave a misleading impression. Sometimes legally-worded requests are best.

If they made a mistake, it was in trying to be friendly about it, which gave a misleading impression

No, their mistake was being lazy. They did not effectively explain their application of the terms of service and how, specifically, his post violated those terms until far too late in the process. [1]

At first all he got was "your post violates section 2.8: harassment, defamatory content, etc.". If just anyone can claim harassment and have a blog shut down for any reason with no review that would be a serious issue for customers that wanted to host content on Digital Ocean. He said "please explain how this violates your terms of service" and it wasn't until several mails later in the exchange that he finally got a barely adequate answer (by my standards).

Now, maybe in legal/asshole world, a service provider is not obligated to explain to a user in a reasonable fashion how the ToS has been violated (or even discouraged because that would make them liable for some bullshit or another). But in the human world, such neglect is a gross violation of customer service. If you are a potential customer of Digital Ocean, "friendliness" is not the takeaway from how they handled this.

The key issue is the risk of a service provider shutting you down because someone complained about your content. No one, no matter what sort of content they host, wants that risk if they can avoid it. From that perspective, the distinction between "Editorial Control" and "Threat of Account Termination for violation of section 2.8" is most definitely nitpicking.

[1] Note, of course, that we are seeing only one side of the story here. There may be unpublished emails that address my accusations that DO was lazy (although I don't personally believe there are)

> When I studied law I learnt that different things, even when they lead to identical outcomes, are different, and should be dealt with independently.

That may be true in a court of law. This is not a court of law. Insistence on treating it like one is a great example of why people hate lawyers.

This is not a court of law, but the situation is still being governed by the law. Terms of Service don't exist in a vacuum.

I think there are other variables in play here. Treating it like a court of law and not like the theatre of the internet is the reason why DO have embarrassed themselves. They will definitely have lost customers other than just myself, and that has nothing to do with law. That has to do with principle.

They handled this badly, and they'll pay for it, however small the impact.

No, it's governed by our own individual senses of right and wrong. You may allow your sense of right and wrong to be dictated by legal documents, most of us do not.

>I don't see why you assume it wasn't "on the record".

Because it's a nice thing to do when you're dealing with private citizens.

We're talking ethics here, and the thing about ethics is that they can essentially be boiled down to "don't be an asshole".

This blog post can seriously hurt someone who never asked for it and doesn't deserve it. Why not be a little bit fair? If you're not sure if it's "off the record", ask. If you can't ask because the party 'muted' you (!!), assume it is 'off the record' - why? Because that's the ethical thing to do.

I look at this author, and all I see is a bully.

It's good that you always have the presence of mind to censor yourself accordingly. Clearly the Googler made a big mistake because he didn't expect somebody to write an entire blog post from some off-the-cuff remarks he made in a chat room.

>Do I think DO should claim editorial control over it?

They don't. They didn't change his blog post. They asked this guy to anonymize his post because it looks like slander and defamation which is against their TOS. That's how I interpret it as well. AND IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO!

There are at least two assholes involved in this story. If there were only one there would be no story.

I think exposing what people say in the open (not private but also not quite public) isn't exactly something someone who works at google should be complaining about. If "stuff you do online can come back to haunt you" shocks you then you probably shouldn't be working at google (except perhaps as a contractor with no benefits, right?)

Two assholes?

Really? Ok, lets think about it, one of them tells his opinion about certain topic on a chat system which has very small community. Once he notices something fishy going on there, he mutes the other person.

The other one has different thoughts about the same topic and tries to get contradicting opinion. Than writes a blog about it in a manner that shows how bad and unfair that opinion is, even though that is really arguable topic.

And yet we end up with having to assholes. Quite a careless use of words I would say.

>There are at least two assholes involved in this story.

Whose the other asshole?

I don't like any of the three participants in the story from this telling of it. Googler expressed fairly unpleasant views, blogger was petty personal and nasty in how he wrote up the story and DO overstepped the mark for an infrastructure service in taking it down. I don't see any winners or heroes here but I don't feel the need to call any of them arseholes either.

"all I see is a bully."

I think that's a good word for him. Unfortunately, this is the way many journalists act much of the time - exactly how they create "stories" out of nothing. I guess while playing journalist this guy forgot that the didn't have the resources of a news organization to back him up, and now he has to fend for himself.

Hmm. It's not really about having the resources of a news organization. The "resources" are the inertia and hard-won philosophical reasoning behind having a free press. An individual's free speech has just the same amount of weight behind it as a large organization's.

So he's hardly fending for himself - he has the backing of all those who support free speech behind him. There are rather many of us.

Also, if your opinion of journalists is that many of them act this way, may I respectively suggest that it would benefit you to upgrade your news sources?

Except this isn't a free speech issue. Just like Reddit disallowing the identifications of individuals in certain kinds of stories is not a free speech issue. There are no free speech issues when a company does not wish to be associated with certain kinds of discourse on their servers. DO may have policies against hosting sites with hate speech, or pornographic content - that's ok, even though neither is illegal. This guy clearly crossed a line with the content and tone of his blog post. I think DO is being reasonable.

There are no free speech issues when a company does not wish to be associated with certain kinds of discourse on their servers.

As usual, it's difficult to discuss this when there's no distinction between first-amendment style free speech and the general concept of it and various interim consequences.

A site like Digital Ocean is a general-purpose hosting provider. As a general-purpose provider, their perspective on censorship and free speech is important to anyone who would be a customer of their service. "How are they going apply their ToS?" is a legitimate and important question to any user of their service. Will they be rigorous and fair? Or Will they be biased towards people who complain? Will they be biased towards certain political factions? Will they be biased towards the whims of their executives? When they apply their ToS, what recourse will you have? What is their appeal process like?

In other words, it's a "free speech" issue in the sense of "is Digital Ocean's behavior and policy adequately permissive for the content I want to host?"

This guy clearly crossed a line with the content and tone of his blog post.

How do you 'cross a line' with tone? If I am looking for a hosting provider, I am not looking for one who takes a complaint at face value, then scans my content carelessly trying to get a feel for the 'tone'. I want a specific, incontrovertible infraction that is fair and explained to as precisely as they are able.

Honestly this guy seems like a jerk to me and just from the two posts I've seen I don't like him. But it doesn't matter how I feel, it matters whether he violated the terms of service (both the letter and the spirit).

Now imagine if every hosting provider and internet provider had the same policy, such that it was essentially impossible to discuss many viewpoints and ideas via the internet (which is the best - arguably even the only - avenue most people have to disseminate their views to a wider audience). That pretty substantially restricts the kinds of speech that can actually be communicated effectively. Indeed, part of the reason why hosting providers are under such pressure to have anti-hate-speech provisions is because it will make disseminating those views difficult.

I agree with that.

What does an individual do at a time like this? It seems his solution is to try to rally up people in anger and emotion against DO.

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