[partiallypro]

There is a lot of strawmanning when it comes to free speech. Virtually no one claims the 1st Amendment guarantees people a platform or that it applies to corporations. Yet, I see people clarifying that constantly...when no one is saying otherwise. Free speech as an American ideal, that's all people are really saying.

Anyhow, Joyent has every right to shut down their hosting services to anyone they feel...and no one really says otherwise on that point either. The sticking point is, are we headed down the right path on this issue? Are we setting the right precedent, because while we all likely agree that things like Daily Stormer and Gab are platforms for truly hateful people...are we emboldening them by driving them underground?

Likewise, as cloud providers beginning to show too much discretion over content? Let's take it outside of politics and into copyright. What if AWS hosted a new video streaming service, and some corporation XYZ claimed a (false) copyright violation. Amazon has a large contract with corporation XYZ because of Prime Video and kicks the video services off of AWS with short notice. Would that be acceptable, essentially putting that company out of business? Sure, it would legally not be a problem but would it be a moral problem?

Back to politics. Let's say GCS hosted DailyCaller or something, and employees internally find out and force it off because they find it as morally outrageous as the pentagon contract. It sounds crazy, but it could totally get to that point.

That seems like a bit of a leap from where we are now, but with cloud providers starting to show more and more discretion of what they host, I don't rule out that we could slip our way to things like that happening. It also seems increasingly likely that the more politicized the major players become, the more likely political disagreements could effectively ruin alternative platforms.

Gab might rightfully deserve being kicked off, but we do need to tread carefully on what type of precedent we are setting going forward as things like this become normalized.

[jakelazaroff]

You say it's a straw man, but for example literally two top-level comments down from yours (as of right now at least) is this [1]:

> If you're not a courageous and principled defender of free speech, you should get out of the cloud business.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318895

[partiallypro]

Where does that mention the 1st Amendment or a guarantee of the 1st Amendment when it doesn't relate to government? It doesn't. When people say "free speech" don't assume they are only talking about the 1st Amendment. Free speech is a civic ideal, not just a government one.

[walrus01]

If you want to host something really controversial, but not illegal on the internet, do as the largest adult websites/content providers have done, and become your own ISP. Put your own gear in colo at some major IX points, get an ASN and IP space, hire some network engineers who know bgp, etc. Buy transit from like 5 different top ranked (by CAIDA ASRANK) transit providers, and set up peering.

This is a great deal more resilient than relying on any one hosting provider.

[partiallypro]

In the end it's just going to lead people to using the "dark web" more and more. Making for it to be harder to monitor. It also doesn't help that registrars are pulling the plug as well, because you can't truly be your own registrar.

[beatgammit]

Exactly. It's _because_ the right to free speech doesn't apply outside of government that we need to diligently support it. If we foster a culture of protectionism, we'll erode our culture of free speech to the point where only the majority opinion is allowed, and the majority is quite often wrong.

I choose to not engage with sites like gab and voat, but I also vehemently defend their right to exist. Hosting providers, payment processors shouldn't discriminate except on the basis of the customer's ability to pay or illegal use of the platform. That doesn't mean they should be forced to serve those they don't agree with, but we as a culture should avoid companies that discriminate.

I saw posts in favor of PayPal's choice to refuse service to Gab, and honestly the whole thing made me want to use PayPal _less_. I don't appreciate censorship at all, though I respect people's right to censor.

[charlesism]

    > Gab might rightfully deserve being kicked off, but 
    > Free speech as an American ideal, that's 
    > all people are really saying.

It's not the only American ideal.

https://youtu.be/D4EjRzzRQLI

[someguydave]

Oh yeah - the non-American ideal of punching people who disagree with you about foreign policy?

[charlesism]

    > people who disagree with you about foreign policy

That's what you call them? Well then, who needs police? There's no criminals, just "people who disagree with you over domestic policy" /s

More seriously, the friction here is over which behaviors are beyond the pale. Personally, I would feel uncomfortable describing Nazi sympathizers as holding "different views." It's in the same bucket, for me, as people who torture small animals. That's not just a "different view" to me, it's "beyond the pale."

I would not like to meet someone for whom nothing at all is beyond the pale. Even libertarians will do some hand-waving to support state restrictions on rape, murder, etc. Their hand-waving is not so different from mine regarding free speech.

[someguydave]

1. Isn’t viewing someone as “beyond the pale” such that they deserve summary punishment and/or execution dehumanizing? How is that different than the guy who tortured small animals because he views them as objects and not living things?

2. Even those libertarians would give murderers and rapists benefit of a court of law where they can explain themselves. Consider this video: https://youtu.be/NUqytjlHNIM

[uniqueid]

  > Even those libertarians would give murderers and rapists benefit of a court of law where they can explain themselves.

Somehow I have found myself arguing for violence, which wasn't so much my original intent. I mainly wanted to remind the OP it's an American value to oppose demagogues and authoritarians. The clip I linked is from a film which is one of the best-selling and most critically successful pieces of Americana. My main point isn't that one should go around attacking people, as much as it is that Americans had strong feelings about Nazi sympathizers.

  > Isn’t viewing someone as “beyond the pale” such that they deserve summary punishment and/or execution dehumanizing?

Yes. It's a matter of recursion. The Weimar court that imprisoned Hitler after the Beer Hall Putsch gave him five years. The maximum sentence he was eligible for: life. From what I understand of the history, he charmed the court. If the court had been less tolerant, they would have spared 6 millions Jews, 20 million Russians, and many others.

Everyone on the left quotes Karl Popper these days, but it's worth noting that he only condoned intolerance against the intolerant in cases where it was the last resort. So if there's a movement gaining real popularity that threatens to replace your government with a dictatorship, it's a problem. If it's a few harmless cranks, society can ignore them.

  > How is that different than the guy who tortured small animals because he views them as objects and not living things?

Well, a guy who tortures a bear in the process of preventing it from attacking a campsite... not a big problem. However, I actually was thinking with that example... how much obligation do we have to give a talking stick to a movement that condones torture for fun.

[someguydave]

Thank you very much for your candor and honest engagement. You made me feel better about America's future.

>The clip I linked is from a film which is one of the best-selling and most critically successful pieces of Americana.

This is true, but I would like to take issue with this scene in particular. The guy might not have been a Nazi sympathizer - he might have thought that the Soviet Union was far worse, and it was better not to have intervened.

>If the court had been less tolerant, they would have spared 6 millions Jews, 20 million Russians, and many others.

Yes, and the Soviet Union had already murdered 3-8 million people in the Ukraine famines before the war started. It's not easy to make moral calculations in foreign policy.

>how much obligation do we have to give a talking stick to a movement that condones torture for fun

There's no doubt that's disgusting, but I would put it to you in a different way: wouldn't you rather the "movement" be given the right to speak so that they can expose themselves as lunatics to the public? Violent (or peaceful) suppression magnifies the amount of potential sympathy they could gather in the public eye.

Who can precisely define the line between "beyond the pale" and "normal speech"? If you can't put it in words that can be written down and made law, then it's merely a matter of subjective opinion. Human history has taught us that suppression is used against all kinds of minorities, virtuous and otherwise. It's best to avoid it altogether, for fear of endangering human liberty.

[jbarciauskas]

>Are we setting the right precedent, because while we all likely agree that things like Daily Stormer and Gab are platforms for truly hateful people...are we emboldening them by driving them underground?

Yes. No.

I don't find the slippery slope argument compelling. As a society we can decide what is and isn't within the realm of reasonable debate and discourse. Whatever the lines are, the discussion of racial supremacy and systematic oppression and elimination of others seems like something we should all be able to agree is outside the bounds.

[partiallypro]

Since there have been large crackdowns on these sites, violence and seething has ticked up across the globe, and the "far right" has taken control of more governments (and I'm not talking about Trump, I'm talking about Europe/South America where there are open threats of violence and anti-Semitism.) I am just saying that perhaps driving these people underground where they can't be monitored is not the best approach.

I would argue that it is possible that cracking down on public platforms them gives them a platform in and of itself that once did not exist. It's similar to a Streisand effect. People become even -more- radicalized because they feel "oppressed." It sort of reminds me of how the ATF raid on Waco unwittingly played into their cult's idea of the apocalypse and has since bred people like McVeigh.

THAT is the slippery slope.