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by Domenic_S
3213 days ago
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This is such an intellectually lazy stance to take (I know, you thought you were being clever, but believe me this is the least clever thing to say about free speech). 1A doesn't have anything to do with it -- either free speech is a concept worth protecting, or it isn't. John Stuart Mill wrote at some length about it, and in particular about what happens when the population at large decides they don't like your speech. Let's take this to its logical end -- let's say Joe wants to host a legal but repugnant site. Cloudflare doesn't want to protect it, ok; EasyDNS won't host it, sure; now let's say Comcast gets involved. They don't think Joe should have internet because he's espousing ideas they don't like, so they cut him off. Same with his mobile provider. Hell, what's to stop the local grocery store from banning him?
Point being, Joe could _legally_ be forcibly removed from society for having opinions some people don't like. |
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It's one of the reasons I'm so wary when flashmobs try to force other businesses to dump specific clients.
It's one thing if your views or actions or so repugnant that all suppliers voluntarily refrain from doing business with you. Maybe one would reconsider their actions faced with that prospect?
But the phenomenon today, where flashmobs form and demand vendors sever their clients because the mob is demanding it and for the reason that the target is politically or ideologically at odds with the mob, that can play out exactly as you fear. Where does that stop?
This is one of those cases where there wasn't an easy answer, unfortunately. Dreamhost unknowingly wound up with a Dailystormer domain on their system last week and they got DDoS-ed into a crater. Also not good.