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Comment by 91bananas | Hacker News Reader

I read up on this a little yesterday. What do you think about this site getting dropped from GoDaddy, then Google for T.O.S. violations?

I could just be ill informed, but it seemed like Cloudflare could have simply just done the exact same thing quietly. But instead they at first did nothing, after some criticism in the press did the CEO wake up in a bad mood to remove their protection. His blog and email read almost noble, then I caught up on the days prior and it made me think much less of them as a company, him as a leader.

Feels like you as a company should be able to do business with whoever you want, and will face judgment for it in the public eye, I have no issue with that. I have no idea where I'm going with this so I will stop now.

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> What do you think about this site getting dropped from GoDaddy, then Google for T.O.S. violations?

I think it's a little disturbing. On the one hand, I vehemently disagree with TDS and what they are saying. On the other, what if the political tide turns against my religion and my church's website is knocked off the web for being "anti-LGBT"?

I personally would prefer if domain registrars remained politically neutral. I'm hoping this is just an extreme case and that they won't do it on a wide-scale in the future.

> what if the political tide turns against my religion and my church's website is knocked off the web for being "anti-LGBT"?

Yes, what then? Shall we solve that problem when we have it?

Because you can fantasize and theorize until the cows come home about how your religion and your church will be knocked off the web but in the meantime that never happened and it very likely never will and if and when it does you will find a lot of voices sympathetic to your cause, including mine.

Or are we somehow beyond being able to evaluate things on merit?

> I'm hoping this is just an extreme case and that they won't do it on a wide-scale in the future.

Yes, it is an extreme case. And no, it most likely - you can't deal in absolutes - won't be done on a wide scale in the future.

So the message is that we are all okay silencing TDS in this case because they're pretty bad. I'm not okay with that. It is too intellectually dishonest for my taste (among other things).

Slippery slopes are alive and well, particularly in this domain. Go back to 2006 or so and tell them that in a decade, bakeries would be getting sued for not catering gay weddings.

It is entirely right and proper to consider the likely future implications of an act before you decide it's a good idea. Even if it feels really good to stick it to $OUTGROUP just this one time.

> Go back to 2006 or so and tell them that in a decade, bakeries would be getting sued for not catering gay weddings.

Why would I do that? I'm fine with bakeries getting sued for not catering gay weddings, that's one of the advantages of living in a normal society: the ability to petition the courts to seek redress.

> Go back to 2006 or so and tell them that in a decade, bakeries would be getting sued for not catering gay weddings.

Public accommodation laws for sexual orientation were passed in some states before then, and it's a fairly trivial and obvious application of those laws.

Why should they. They are private entities ruled primarily by the question what fosters shareholder value.

So I expect nothing less then pure self-interest. I would never expect freedom of speech as it isn't guaranteed like against a state actor.

AFAIK the TOS violations were because of TDS actively stalking and harassing people, not because they're terrible people. I may be wrong though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

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