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Comment by Clubber | Hacker News Reader

Every time someone says that, I just hear "I'm defending censorship." Is that what you are doing, or am I just overly sensitive?

I mean everyone on here knows this, yet every time someone feels they need to say it. We aren't debating what the first amendment protects, we are debating on wether it's good for our country to have all internet speech controlled by a handful of conglomerates.

This is going to sound unfair, but it's not unlike saying, "Sure slavery is immoral, but it's legal! The Supreme Court said so!"

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If you label "not amplifying someone" as censorship, then there is obviously no such thing as uncensored free speech for everyone. The question then becomes who you step up to defend, and who you quietly ignore, when someone gets amplified over them.

It's not about amplifying someone. There is a difference between ignoring someone and silencing them. Cloudflare's move seems more like silencing than ignoring to me. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I think everyone should be able to put their (sometimes terrible) opinions on the internet, and we'll trust society to decide which ideas are terrible and should be ignored.

Cloudflare is refusing to help someone spread their message. Again, if you call that censorship, then I'm not sure where you draw the line, as almost every speech act involves taking space away from other speech acts. Particularly when you're talking about sites like Daily Stormer, which are explicitly used to organize acts of censorship against voices they don't like.

I don't think one can coherently take a neutral stance at that level. If not helping Daily Stormer disseminate their message is branded as censorship, but Daily Stormers acts of bullying and threads of violence are not, then I would say that that definition of censorship needs to be re-evaluated.

CF terminating their service absolutely does not silence them. They have many other ways to get their message out, even ways that look identical to what CF was providing.

If they end up actually getting turned away everywhere, and have no avenue to get their message out, then perhaps that's saying something about what everyone else things of the quality of their message.

And yes, this sort of thing needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis. If every internet company decided to disallow accounts held by people of a particular ethnic group, then that would be a problem. But I don't see an issue with every internet company deciding they don't want to participate in spreading hate speech and giving a hate group a platform to spread their propaganda. We wouldn't be arguing about this if we were talking about shutting down a website distributing ISIS recruitment videos, would we?

For what it's worth, yes, I would still argue that ISIS recruitment videos should be allowed on the internet. (But I could see my future self renouncing this as immature and un-nuanced.) Because in general, I am more afraid of overreaction to terrorism than terrorism itself.

That's true that there are alternatives to CF. As long as there is at least one anti-DDoS provider with an "everyone is welcome" attitude, I suppose CF can do whatever they want. So I'll concede that point.

Censorship is merely deciding what ideas you will or will not participate in promoting; protecting the right to do that is the heart of the ideal of free speech.

Government censorship—having public authority (whether officially styled as the state or one having exercising a monopoly on essential tools of communication) decide for you what ideas you must or must not promote, regardless of your own desire—is what “free speech” stands against.

If you think government censorship is bad then you think this is bad, or you don't understand why it's bad at all. I don't understand where you come from arguing against such a cornerstone of our society.

Personally, I think that anyone who supports censorship should be fired from their jobs, have their internet accounts banned, and be refused service at every business where it is legal to refuse service to you.

Your freedom to support censorship doesn't mean that you are free from consequences! ;)

I'm really playing devil's advocate here but if the CEO of Cloudflare wakes up and thinks to himself "man I hate that site, I'm going to remove it from my service", and the Internet says "no you can't", is that another form of censorship? In this situation we're either limiting what Daily Stormer can do, or limiting what Cloudflare can do.

It's not censorship either way. The private corporation should be able to regulate its network as it pleases on the content it allows. People are free to use, or not use, that service in consequence.

If Cloudflare can't regulate the content on its service, then neither can any other service properly. Extrapolated, it means a typical blog must allow any comments posted to it. These issues were logically thought through and settled a very long time ago, and it has worked very well for a very long time: disallowing your speech on my private property, is not censorship.

Seems inevitable that this sliding process will end with the US Government having direct policing power of speech in regards to the Internet, as they have over traditional broadcast & radio.

Just wait until everyone sees what the next, worse version of a Trump does with the power to directly use his FCC to limit speech arbitrarily based on shifting definitions on things like hate speech.

Yes, without a third option, the question is, which is more important, freedom of speech and expression, or the freedom for business to choose who they serve?

If it were a protected group like LGBTQ, Cloudflare could not discriminate against them (the gay wedding cake is an example of this). So we've already decided, as a society (or rather our politicians have), that businesses must service protected groups. How far of a slippery slope is it to extend that protection to everyone?

The difference between this and the wedding cake example, is the couple could have easily gone to another bakery. With the internet controlled by a small group of companies in a particular region, and SV's bias towards liberalism (in a capitalist sort of way), it makes it harder to just find another bakery.

I can see the frustration. Imagine if the roles were reversed and the US internet was controlled by a conservative group in Texas (as it almost was) and those companies decided they didn't want to host packets or register LGBTQ type websites; we'd be livid. I mean we have to treat all speech equally, don't we?

It's an interesting dilemma.

> If it were a protected group like LGBTQ

That's not a protected class. In some (a minority) states, sexual orientation is. Gender identity is in some also, but not the same set.

> The difference between this and the wedding cake example, is the couple could have easily gone to another bakery.

Outside of a major urban area, that's far from clear. OTOH, there are many domain registrars and web hosts, and they tend not to have very limited geographic service areas. I definitely have more viable choices for either of those than I would for a wedding cake baker.

> With the internet controlled by a small group of companies in a particular region

This is absolutely not the case, especially for domain registration or web hosting.

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