[phillipcarter]

It's precisely that their leadership (rank-and-file employees I know have different feelings) are taking an absolutist approach. That's pretty evident when their stance is that banning nazi sites was a mistake.

My position is this. That is not a good stance to take. And people should now use their wallet to influence Cloudflare's leadership to reconsider their extreme position. The small part I can play in that today is already underway, so it's not just words on hacker news, no.

[taxyz]

You're being intentionally dishonest. Their stance is not as simple as "banning the nazis was wrong. We need to bring back the nazis to our platform." They are pretty explicit in saying no company should be exercising the power that they did - if someone is willing to pay for DDoS protection on their site, they should take a neutral stance on the content of their site. Anything that is blatantly illegal is for the government to act on.

Do you think people should vote with their wallet in regards to the ACLU? What about the idea of public defenders generally? Should society not be footing the bill to be provide legal defense to hate crime offenders/rapists/etc?

Your characterization that their position is extreme is also dishonest. It's been the MO for American citizens/corporations/institutions and ingrained in 20th/21st century American jurisprudence to take a neutral stance when it comes to providing a service or defending rights. It's, frankly, one of the last few admirable things about our society.

You can promote an activist mindset if you'd like, but you should also consider that your opinion is only shared by a vocal minority and the fracturing of commerce into parallel economies won't benefit you or the communities you care about the way you think it will. I'm not sure what I need from CF, but after reading your comments/opinions on the issue, I'm inclined to just order shit from them now.

[phillipcarter]

I think you're waxing philosophical about a bunch of stuff that's unrelated to what's going on here.

[taxyz]

I don't think discussing the limiting principal behind your stance is waxing philosophical. We live in a liberal society that generally upholds free speech, that society is made up of institutions, corporations, and individuals; arguable, CF is more important because of how information is currently distributed than even the ACLU or public defenders but I'll bite and put the philosophy aside.

Here is a more direct question: why is it a good idea for a company to exercise censorial power if the content is not otherwise illegal? Reminder that we are talking about companies that run infrastructure not something like Twitter that hide behind BS "community guidelines"