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Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

That's a bit of a stretch, even for equivocation.

Did you read the article in question? http://vpsexperience.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/googler-speaks...

It took four comments, out of context, and made it into a slam. Bias of the rant aside, DO says that it was because of a TOS violation on privacy and defamation. It comes pretty close to outing where the person lives, what websites they run, and certainly makes plenty of assumptions about the four comments.

It reads like someone bitter lost an internet argument when they couldn't bait the employee into saying something incriminating, and they wanted revenge.

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> It reads like someone bitter lost an internet argument when they couldn't bait the employee into saying something incriminating, and they wanted revenge.

Exactly this. This guy baited someone to say something about his employer, posted quotes out of context and with obvious bias. The guy seems like an asshole.

So what? The beauty of the internet is that it lets everyone make themselves look like an asshole if they want. If every service provider took down content from assholes we'd lose 3/4 of the internet.

But just think about how pleasant an internet that would be... daydreaming

I don't care what it said. There is no reason for a provider to take down a blog post short of it being illegal and someone standing on their doorstep with a warrant.

Except a TOS agreement violation with a person who is obviously trolling.

Normally I would be right there with you - but in this case it was a troll who was asked to anonymize his clearly defamatory attacks, and predictably he blew up over it.

DO is a private provider, not government affiliated, so 1st amendment doesn't apply and they are protected under §230, but still they have a TOS that prevents it from becoming a safe haven for cyber bullies like this troll. TBH I'm okay with this, especially since the troll agreed to the TOS to begin with.

To take this to the extreme: you could shut down an innocent business that hosts on DigitalOcean by posting a threatening or defamatory comment on their blog, then making an abuse report. This puts them in the position of hosting such speech, and permits DO to cancel the service without recourse as a TOS violation. That's what you're OK with if you're OK with that being a term of the agreement. You point out that there's no first amendment issue here, but there's a lesson to be taken from the bill of rights anyway -- that sometimes protecting the rights of everyone means also protecting the rights of specific individuals you disagree with.

There may be small risk of this scenario happening, but if you are comparing to another host that doesn't make service contingent upon policing of content you host, then any risk is infinitely larger than necessary. In general, minimizing the ways my business could be wiped out by some service provider helps me sleep better at night. If a user uses a service I provide to host something defamatory, I want there to be a court order before the web host goes flipping power switches on my racks, as it's likely I'll have been contacted by someone before it gets to that point.

True, that is an extreme. It seems like DO is willing to evaluate each case and give the blog host a chance to remedy the situation. Evidence thus far shows that they at least stick to their guns on the troll posts.

A VPS host should have no business censoring "trolls".

Is-ought problem.

Sure, they have the right to make an oppressive TOS, and I have the right to take my business elsewhere in protest.

Of course you do. Violating the TOS that you agree to does give the provider a reason to block your service though.

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