[zaptheimpaler]

The deplatforming logic is practical but pretty shaky as a long term strategy. Kiwifarms absolutely may have been a despicable place causing real harm to people. In that case, the police should initiate a request to take them down that Cloudflare or ISPs etc. are obligated to follow. The problem is the government is completely ineffective and regularly offloads their responsibility to platforms like Facebook, Cloudflare etc. A private company should not be making decisions on essentially freedom of speech. Its just one more responsibility that law enforcement has completely shirked leaving others to clean up the mess.

[cedilla]

You're focusing so hard on the rights of kiwifarms that you completely forget that cloudflare also has rights. Cloudflare has the liberty of association, and that includes the right to terminate contracts with others who actively harm Cloudflare and its costumers.

And if Kiwifarms sending out bytes to the internet is free speech, then compelling cloudflare to send those same bytes is impernissible forced speech.

[zaptheimpaler]

I just don't think its ever going to be realistic for a company to be held responsible for everything every customer puts up on the web, because there are millions/billions of them.

The problem is any organized body of people can start a similar pressure campaign against Cloudflare or Facebook or Reddit. It is now their job to be a complete legal system - listen to each complaint, adjudicate who is right and who is wrong, what is ethical or not, and respond. Which websites are allowed to exist, which subreddits, which ads and messages are okay and which aren't..

This is an incredibly dangerous & undemocratic precedent because those companies answer to stockholders not citizens. There is a reason the judicial system is set up the way it is, with elected lawmakers and juries of ordinary people.

[viraptor]

> ever going to be realistic for a company to be held responsible for everything every customer puts up on the web

It's good that this is not what people expect from them then. We're still taking about most egregious examples discussed for years with documented lethal real world impact. Just like they already say in their TOS they would act on.

[gruez]

>It's good that this is not what people expect from them then. We're still taking about most egregious examples discussed for years with documented lethal real world impact.

So it's a justice system that only gets pulled out in the event of mass social pressure? Is that supposed to be something to be proud of?

[moomin]

The problem with your argument is that CloudFlare didn’t act to benefit ordinary citizens, it acted to protect its shareholders from a material risk to the company. It’s always been the case that businesses have to choose who they do business with and that clients can take their business elsewhere if they don’t like how a company behaves, very much including demanding that other clients are dropped.

Companies started acting like they shouldn’t need to know what their clients are doing only 20 years ago and it’s given us widespread counterfeiting, scam robocalls and DDoS attacks. Of course they want to continue doing it, because they’re making money hand over fist. Doesn’t mean we should let them.

[brnt]

> Companies started acting like they shouldn’t need to know what their clients are doing only 20 years ago

Only _some_ companies, and for obvious reasons: there is good money to be made in shady business. Playing the naivité card is apparently enough to convince some. But it's just a card, they know precisely why they are doing it, and supporting free speech ain't it.

[alexvoda]

Than lets go one level closer to the user.

Should ISPs proactively block certain websites to all clients under threat of leaving of a group of clients?

I think we want some companies to behave like utilities and be agnostic.

[moomin]

Honestly, there’s quite a few firms that want to have their cake and eat it on this one. Not just internet firms, but credit card companies. And I’m 100% not onboard with that.

[QuadmasterXLII]

"organized body of people can start a similar pressure campaign against Cloudflare or Facebook or Reddit"

Cancel culture is when people assemble and then say things in support of a cause I disagree with- in particular, it's really bad when they petition a company or government to do something I think is wrong. It's more and more common, and it's a real threat to free speech. I think the government should ban it.

[Wowfunhappy]

To steal a line of discussion I heard on a podcast some time ago—at what point along the chain does this stop being acceptable? In other words, which of the following scenarios are you okay with?

• A data center refusing to host Kiwifarms.

• An ISP refusing to provide internet to the data center that hosts Kiwifarms.

• A power company refusing to provide electricity to the data center that hosts Kiwifarms.

• An ISP refusing to provide internet to the homes of Kiwifarms members.

• A power company refusing to provide electricity to the homes of Kiwifarms members.

• A water utility company refusing to provide running water to the homes of Kiwifarms members.

• A doctor refusing to treat Kiwifarms members.

I don't think I know the answer myself right now.

[Justsignedup]

I am okay with 100% of these scenarios.

If I am a Jewish Doctor and a card-carrying Nazi came in, I should have the right to say "he can sit over there and I will not treat you". And if that causes him to die, that is his fault not mine.

If I am a Jewish contractor for a power company and I enter the home of a card-carrying Nazi, I should have the right to say "I will leave now, and you can sit in the dark until you find someone willing to do the work."

If I all the ISP administrators threaten to leave the IPS leaving them without workers because they are also serving Nazi websites, they should have the right to cut off that internet and tell them to find an ISP with Nazi workers to keep things running. And the same can be true for their homes.

Point here is: If you are a danger to society, society is not obligated to work with you as-is. You can certainly make your argument, but society isn't obligated to accept it.

People think just because they exist, they are owed. They are not owed. They are part of a collective, and if the collective deems they are a harm to itself, the collective will absolutely have the right to refuse to work with them. Think about the converse, would any of these Nazis help out Jews out of obligation to some sort of freedom doctrine? Hell no. They operate in the mentality "right for me, wrong for thee!"

So point is, there is no slippery slope. If you ask should the police arrest Nazis? Probably not, not unless they are breaking freedom of speech limitations. But since the _state_ is not blocking their speech, doesn't mean private citizens have to listen to it.

[7402]

> If I am a Jewish Doctor and a card-carrying Nazi came in, I should have the right to say "he can sit over there and I will not treat you". And if that causes him to die, that is his fault not mine.

Not exactly. I don't think medical ethics work that way in matters of life and death. For example:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/medics-told-to-treat-attackers...

Israeli medics told to treat terrorists the same as victims

"New rules from Israeli Medical Association require that the wounded be aided in order of severity of injury, even if that means helping assailants before victims"

[gdy]

"If I am a Jewish Doctor and a card-carrying Nazi came in, I should have the right to say "he can sit over there and I will not treat you". And if that causes him to die, that is his fault not mine."

Would you be okay with dying if a doctor refused to treat you based on this post on HN?

Suppose a doctor has strong convictions about free speech, detests cancel culture and is willing to let you die to make a point?

[worldofmatthew]

Cloudflare also allows other to remove any websites free speech by allowing illegal booters to use their protection.

Supporting the economy of illegal DDOS-for-Hire by protecting them from attacks from rivals lowers the cost to launch the attacks. That forces many webmasters to use large DDOS migration providers for which Cloudflare is the only one affordable to them.

Cloudflare is stopping many from avoiding using them by allowing booter websites and if it wants to play gatekeeper, the website should face legal action as it non-neutral platforms (rather than carriers) are subject to S.230 and allowing illegal website under that would mean losing safe harbor and Cloudflare being sized and its top people thrown in prison.

[useragent10]

Oh no, that poor billion dollar corporation that controls over half the internet. What about THEIR rights?

[As_You_Wish]

If it is indeed a quasi-utility, then a utility cannot just shut off someone's water or electricity, just because they don't agree with a person's politics or anything else. A utility has to keep serving, unless the person doesn't pay.

I'm personally more on the side that these are utilities, because really, one cannot get by without an internet connection. I mean, why don't we get the electricity company to turn off electricity if a customer is a pornographer or something that they don't like.

As long as a person is paying their bills, a utility has to serve them.

That's how I see it.

[cft]

The problem here is that DDoS mitigation requires centralization. There aren't cheap alternatives. Same goes for any utility. Would it be okay for Visa to permanently turn off all your current and future credit and ATM cards if you used Visa in objectionable way, say you paid a meth dealer and then resold at scale? Because it's "much faster" to turn off Visa than to do a police investigation and issue an arrest warrant. Would it be okay for Google to delete your Google account to suddenly cut you off from your Android phone? Would it be ok for an electric company to suddenly turn off your electric service because they suspect you cook meth? Would it be ok for a water company to stop providing water to a building, because a criminal lives in one of the apartments?

[judge2020]

Visa et al. already do this for legal business/speech: see Patreon[0], OnlyFans[1], Gab[2]. Payment processing is not regulated as a utility and probably never will be in the States.

0: https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqwwj/patreon-suspension-of...

1: https://www.protocol.com/policy/onlyfans-visa-mastercard

2: https://bitcoinist.com/coinbase-paypal-ban-gab/

[hash872]

While I strongly agree with your broader point- payment processing is absolutely regulated at close to a utility-level. Congress sets the rates that Visa & Mastercard can charge for credit & debit cards via statute. That's getting pretty close to say electric utility levels of regulation

[JoBrad]

Even though they aren’t regulated as a utility, they are very highly regulated. The examples you gave are just highly-politicized examples of a now-common standard and practice that all processors operating in the US have been required to uphold (not that it was involuntary) for decades. That’s part of why Stripe and other Payment Facilitator services have exploded: it’s not easy to open a traditional payment processing account, and very easy to get it shut down for seemingly random reasons.

Despite the online fervor over this, payment processors are clearly within their legal rights to shut down payment processing for abuse - even if it is only suspected.

[treis]

Yes to the private companies and no to the public utilities.

The problem is that you say "used Visa" like it's an inanimate object without its own agency and responsibilities. It's not and as a company it's both capable and has the responsibility of choosing whether or not to be in business with meth dealers.

[mmmpop]

I like this argument and situation if only because it makes people admit that forced speech is tyranny… but I like it besides that too.

[unixbane]

Nope. You just conflated the parent comment with an argument of rights.

[ellen364]

> A private company should not be making decisions on essentially freedom of speech.

This comes up a lot and makes me think I’ve misunderstood US free speech dynamics. I thought the USA traditionally limited the government’s ability to regulate free speech, leaving it to private / social regulation. In other words, it was up to individuals, communities, companies and so on to decide what was acceptable.

But perhaps that’s a misunderstanding. Can anyone recommend books or papers to better understand the history of free speech in the USA? I guess The Federalist Papers are often a good place to start?

[HL33tibCe7]

You’re confusing the First Amendment — a particular law about the government’s requirement to uphold the principle of freedom of speech — with the principle of freedom of speech more generally.

In this context, the First Amendment is irrelevant - it doesn’t apply here; it says nothing about the actions of private companies. Instead, people are discussing the principle of freedom of speech, and in particular the extent to which private companies should be able to limit speech.

[ghaff]

A problem arises when those private companies--especially in the aggregate--elect not to do business with you. At some level I suppose you don't need to do business with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon... But most would find it difficult. Maybe add the one ISP you have available.

[XorNot]

> and in particular the extent to which private companies should be able to limit speech.

This is incoherent with the idea it's not a government matter. If it's not a government matter, then there's nothing to talk about - Cloudflare can do whatever they like because the law does not bind them otherwise.

[HL33tibCe7]

We’re not talking about law, we’re talking about morality.

[ellen364]

You might be right. I interpreted the parent comment as saying the government should do more and started thinking about the government’s role in free speech.

[chris_acree]

I don't think it's confusion; the two are inherently connected. How can a law (and it's consequent enforcement) dictating some types of speech not play into freedom of speech more generally?

Freedom of speech is rightly often characterized as a core American principle; it's emphasized in civic education, and most of the country will, if anything, overstate what is actually allowed by it. Generally though, I think it does follow the common interpretation; people can say what they want is the default, and courts have carved out specific exceptions over the centuries (libel, public endangerment, etc). Looking at the history of these laws, all the examples I know of started off to be assumed legal, and in specific cases those scenarios were deemed sufficiently bad to now be illegal.

In recent years, we've seen increasing amounts of misinformation that are hard to track down thanks to social media, and so there is now increasing debate about how to combat this. I think there are two parts to this question:

- Does (or how much of) this misinformation constitute a necessary legal response? Put another way, in the context of social media, which depending on platform and settings might not even be fully public, what defines whether something is serious enough of libel or a danger to the public to require legal action against its perpetrators? Explicitly calling for a lynch mob against someone probably breaches current laws, but claiming that Trump should have won the 2020 election probably doesn't (even if the person saying it knows its false; lying isn't normally a crime!).

- In an online world, how do we enforce these laws? Social media is often anonymous. Should public profiles be required to have verified contact information? How can we track and police international actors? Does liking a criminal post count as a crime? What about a retweet to millions of followers? Given these challenges, there is a push to have platforms take a role in this enforcement, whether through account verification, removal of potentially criminal speech, or other methods.

Both these questions are unsettled. The common person probably isn't thinking too much about the first question, and the courts will mostly hash it out over time. The second one is what gets more public debate.

Personally, I'd say the American enthusiasm for free speech, and wariness of business regulation more generally, make it unlikely to take significant action there, particularly since the big platforms themselves are clearly putting a lot of time into trying to address these things. If Europe creates a legal framework around platform responsibility, the US might follow, but otherwise will probably let the platforms keep working at it. That's just my guess though!

[rnk]

Another parallel to these tensions between free speech, commercial responsibilities and rights is a kind of tension between the ability to be anonymous on the internet (on social networks especially) and the inability to track down dangerous things on social networks and/or prevent them. But - it's not just about anonymity in lies or persuasiveness on the internet.

I love being able to be anonymous or pseudo-anonymous on the internet. At the same time, the ability of people to persuade others of dangerous, destructive lies on social networks is terrible for society. It's not just the us of course, there have been multiple other countries where people were persuaded to attack the 'other' minority group or religion or whatever because they were secretly attacking them.

I'm in the us and social media has destroyed the ability to have some basic agreement on what has happened in the world (such as the issues of the election in 2020). But it's not just social media. It's certain conservative news outlets that push these lies, persuasively!

And I don't know what to do about these problems. I honestly don't see how we as humans will develop a better ability to study what happens and get to a basic understanding of reality - even in the face of conflicting information. My own dad was an EE and a cfo of a billion dollar a year company and now he's fallen into the sway of a certain american network's lies and racial animus. Maybe he was always sympathetic to these views.

[JeremyNT]

This is a modern reappropriation of the phrase, really. There are two issues: what should the government be allowed to do to limit speech (historically, this was called "free speech") versus how companies should be compelled to police or host objectionable content (this is the "new" connotation).

It's unfortunate that these two concepts are often lumped together in online discussions, because they are obviously very different, and many people who would agree with the First Amendment and the classical notion of "free speech" as a restriction on the government could have diverse opinions on the regulation of platforms and how they display content.

[rmbyrro]

I'm also not very familiar, but I understood it differently:

The government did not let it for private sector to regulate when it explicitly guaranteed the right in the constitution...

[maxbond]

The text better supports GP's understanding:

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is explicitly about what sorts of laws Congress may not pass, and not about the conduct of private citizens or institutions.

[krapp]

Further, the Tenth Amendment:

    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Because the Constitution doesn't delegate the power to regulate speech to the US, but rather prohibits it, by definition the power to regulate speech is reserved by the States and the people.

[ellen364]

That’s interesting. Would the Tenth Amendment prevent the federal government regulating free speech in the opposite direction, e.g. a law saying “companies can’t do anything to limit free speech”?

[tzs]

> Kiwifarms absolutely may have been a despicable place causing real harm to people. In that case, the police should initiate a request to take them down that Cloudflare or ISPs etc. are obligated to follow.

That approach is fairly easy to work around. Just make sure your site is in a country whose police cannot issue requests that Cloudflare is obligated to follow. For added protection pick a country that your victims are not in, ideally one that does not have good relations with the US or the countries of your victims so there is little law enforcement cooperation between them.

> A private company should not be making decisions on essentially freedom of speech

I'd much rather see private companies doing it than see just government doing it.

Consider a site that is not bad enough to be illegal under current law but bad enough that a solid majority of people think it should be stopped.

If it is only government that deals with these things eventually the law will be expanded to cover that site. We'll end up with an ever expanding boundary on what is illegal. A boundary that will probably be very hard to ever shrink. The law is unlikely to handle subtleties well and will catch sites that aren't actually bad but might appear to be so.

If private companies are also looking at what sites they facilitate are doing and dropping those that they think have gone too far it adds fuzziness that allows the system as a whole (private companies plus government) to deal with the bad sites in a way that isn't as blunt and permanent as making the sites illegal.

Government works best as the last level in a multilayered approach to problems.

[heavenlyblue]

I currently for for a Fintech and our investors don’t want to do anything with asbestos companies. That includes asbestos removal companies. Which is pretty idiotic considering these companies are actually doing a good thing. This is the kind of solution that the industry will tend to if it is expected to self-police.

[shadowfox]

> A private company should not be making decisions on essentially freedom of speech

On the other hand, a private company has limited obligation to uphold what is essentially a government concern ... Unless we start redefining a lot of things related to private obligation.

[blfr]

This particular private company wants to get out of being forced into a role of content moderator for a fifth of the Internet. This is an infinite time sink with no good outcomes for them.

More importantly, this seems to have no good outcomes for us, the viewers. I also don't want Twitter mobs and DDoS-ers to have a say in what I can and can't read.

[daptaq]

> I also don't want Twitter mobs and DDoS-ers to have a say in what I can and can't read.

This is honestly what I find the most disturbing about the entire story.

This "keffals" person -- an individual! -- managed to organise enough attention to make all of this happen. From what I understand the argument is based on a threat towards this person, but considering the (public) information they were gathering on them (From what I recall it was stuff like flirting with underaged people, selling HRT drugs via Discord, old sexist tweets, etc.) I don't see why it was not in their interest to pseudo-anonymously have these threats posted themselves. Of course it could just be that some user was stupid enough to post these threats themselves, but I believe the fact remains that "keffals" had more to gain from threats against themselves, since most of what was being posted was perhaps vulgar and certainly impolite, but practically harmless -- more embarrassing for those being "investigated". Just some people with too much time on their hands.

The site is probably going to be resurrected some way, soon enough. I believe hearing that they were considering an onion site. When this happens, I'd be interested to see the post histories of those issuing threats. But of course, since this is a private entity, they have no obligation to look at any evidence that would run contrary to the accusations. Of course this is their right, when considered in isolation, but CloudFlare has become a disproportionately significant player that thinking of them as just another company is rather difficult. In the end this all speaks for the fact that the internet was never intended to work on the scale it does. It is almost a miracle that it appears to do so most of the time ^^.

[geraldwhen]

It’s already back at the .ru TLD with ddos-guard

[crummy]

> most of what was being posted was perhaps vulgar and certainly impolite, but practically harmless

It was this mild but cloudflare took it down?

[daptaq]

As I said, "most" of it. Apparently there were bomb threats and people posting pictures from outside "keffalas" residence, which naturally is concerning, but at the same time was against KiwiFarms rules.

[capitol_]

Here is an overview of some of the terror that was organized from kiwifarms:

https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15657972205318144...

[vippy]

Yes, the U.S. Constitution protects free expression, so the U.S. government's hands are completely tied on this issue. Even if government officials personally think a site probably facilitates behavior that violates the law, actually taking a website offline, rather than targeting individuals for criminal charges only after they've violated the law, unless that website is owned and operated, perhaps, by an individual who has been found guilty of violating the law, is most likely unconstitutional. This is one of those, "private companies are forced to step up because the state's powers are limited," situations.

[sacrosancty]

If it's not illegal then it probably isn't causing any serious harm, so Cloudflare doesn't need to block it. If it is, say a direct death threat or telling others to harm someone, then it's already illegal and your explanation isn't needed.

[dcow]

Yep. The government is limited in its powers here exactly so that people are treated fairly and loud factions don’t unduly oppress others.

[rasz]

> police should initiate a request to take them down that Cloudflare

Police is executive, not legislative, they cant willy-nilly decide such things.

[dools]

The trouble of course is that you have a technology enhanced libertarian movement convincing everyone that government shouldn’t be regulating anything except property rights

EDIT: shout out to all the techno libertarian hacker news bros downvoting my critique of techno libertarianism