[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.