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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

It is naive to think this battle wasn't going to eventually come to Cloudfare or the Internet as a whole. The US has some of the most extreme laws on allowing free speech and there is still plenty of stuff that we don't allow. Humanity has decided there are just some things that shouldn't be said or shared. Child porn is the most obvious example. Once you go from 100% free speech in which anyone can say anything to disallowing a single thing, you have to start defending where that line is. I don't think that is bad. I also think it may be a dangerous thing for the technolibertarians in our community to continue pushing for 100% free speech as if it is an ideal state because it doesn't account for how negative speech can silence the speech and infringe on the rights of others.

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A rather ignorant view of history.

Lookup US obscenity law and case history. Child pornography is an easy example, 80 years ago it was any pornography, or even obscene literature, joyces Ulysses was once banned.

On general speech has only gotten freer, to think we now are at the precipe and speech won't be even freer is naive, provincial, and arrogant.

Interacial kissing was once provocative, sodomy illegal as recently as 2003, and now depictions of transexuals is edgy.

That anyone thinks its okay to limit speech, the midwife of thought -- its a debate going back to the State sanctioned murder of Socrates for 'corrupting the youth', 'making the weaker argument the stronger', and 'profaning the gods' -- its sad hilarious but those we are educated know such views are on the wrong side of history even if good people like Socrates are murdered along the way.

Let's see if I even share my speech here, I'm regularly shadow banned for no reason.

This is exactly the type of belief I was talking about in my last sentence. All speech is not equal. That may be a hard truth for some to accept, but it is the truth.

Once your speech starts to infringe on the rights of others it is no longer deserving of protection. Your rights are not more important than the rights of your fellow citizens. I don't understand why libertarians don't agree with that. I thought the whole point of the government was to protect the rights of the individual.

>Once your speech starts to infringe on the rights of others it is no longer deserving of protection

That is quite a chilling statement. What right do others have to silence speech? A right is not something that can be taken away due to public opinion. Otherwise it is a privilege. The entire foundation of a free society is built on free speech.

>That is quite a chilling statement. What right do others have to silence speech?

You have the right to silence speech that infringes on your rights. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they knowing print lies in order to ruin the career of another individual. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they leave a burning cross on the curb outside their black neighbor's house. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they are reprinting the published work of another person without permission or fair use. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they are threatening violence on another individual.

>A right is not something that can be taken away due to public opinion. Otherwise it is a privilege.

You don't even have to go back a decade to find that this isn't true. Prop 8 is a perfect example of how a right can be taken away by public opinion.

Some people get misled by the Declarations of Independence's whole "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" thing that human rights are some natural phenomena. That has never been true. We bestow these rights on each other because we as a civilization have decided they are the bare minimum that every person should be guaranteed. As human history will show it is a constant struggle to help ensure that is true.

>The entire foundation of a free society is built on free speech.

By that logic no free society has ever existed before.

>You have the right to silence speech that infringes on your rights.

Most of your examples are covered by other laws. Property rights, defamation or such. However, none of this is forbidden as speech.

>We bestow these rights on each other

This is demonstrated as false because we had these rights before there ever was something we could call government or even a society. When you are born into the world alone as a living being there is nothing to silence you. Freedom did exist before civilization.

>By that logic no free society has ever existed before.

Status of a free society is not a boolean. The degree to which the society is free is strongly correlated to the degree of free speech within the society.

>Most of your examples are covered by other laws. Property rights, defamation or such. However, none of this is forbidden as speech.

That is exactly my point. What do you think defamation is if isn't a limitation on free speech? What do you think copyright is if it isn't a limitation on free speech? What do you think laws against threats or intimidation are if they aren't a limitation of free speech? Those laws are created because we think some speech shouldn't be protected.

>This is demonstrated as false because we had these rights before there ever was something we could call government or even a society. When you are born into the world alone as a living being there is nothing to silence you. Freedom did exist before civilization.

There is no one stopping anyone from taking your rights away if you are born into the world alone as a living being. That is one of the primary purposes of government. The protection of its citizens' rights. If we don't have some force to protect those rights, there is nothing preventing the powerful from taking away the rights of the weak as evidenced by the entirety of human history.

>Status of a free society is not a boolean. The degree to which the society is free is strongly correlated to the degree of free speech within the society.

That is obviously true, but the r value in that correlation also isn't equal to 1. The US is at the extreme in terms of free speech but it is rarely in the top of the various freedom indices that exists to measure the freedom of a society.

> What do you think defamation is if isn't a limitation on free speech?

Think of it this way. If I harm someone by punching them, I will not be prosecuted for improper use of my fist. I will be prosecuted for the damages. Same with these examples of speech. You are being prosecuted for damages, not violating a speech code.

So a law that forbid certain speech and allowed for prosecution without proving damages or somehow prevented me from saying something in advance would then be a limitation on actual speech.

And deep down everyone has that feeling, that his gut feelings should be the judge of that.

The problem starts, when people project there wish to control the lives of others upon some vague enough person as power.

For most of its followers, Libertarianism is a means to an end, a label that can be shed and worn repeatedly, a justification rather a-way-of-life.

Other People need the help of government? They should stop being lazy and put their faith in the free market.

My folks need government help? Well we deserve it, give it to us, right now, don’t delay, don’t you have a heart?

Compared to the members of communist, conservative and other demanding and identity-integral idealogies, libertarians are far smaller in number and altogether weaker as an independant political force.

> Humanity has decided there are just some things that shouldn't be said or shared.

The thought of this terrifies me. It invites the absolute worst kind of collectivism.

Welcome to being a human. Collectivism is built in. No man is an island and all that.

The question worth exploring is how to balance individual and collective needs.

Using "collectivism" as a pejorative gets us nowhere.

Yes, particularly with controlling what can be said, especially political speech.

It's kind of crazy that we finally agreed that the government doesn't have the right to unfairly treat two gay dudes who want to get married, but now if someone doesn't want to serve them the cake the government can force you to. No matter how righteous either act, we just traded one form of tyranny for another and made no progress in understanding the importance of the lesson. When can we just agree that telling you what to think should have never been a legitimate role of government in the first place? It is a concept fundamentally and completely opposed to democracy and individual liberty.

Is it a similarly-terrifying tyranny when the government forces restaurants to serve black people?

You know I can appreciate some good snarkiness like this; but to be fair, governments almost always sell tyranny to the people in the name of moral righteousness.

I guess what it comes down to is what you fear more: tyranny or some racist people with restaurants.

Like what happened in lord of the flies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

Almost everyone would agree at least some things should be illegal to express or share, like child pornography or calls to physical violence.

Human rights end at where someone else’s rights begin. It’s obvious following from this that perpetrating physical violence on the innocent is wrong and must be stopped. But what of people who glorify, encourage or publicly plan to do such a thing? Do you always have to wait until people translate toxic words into toxic actions?

>Do you always have to wait until people translate toxic words into toxic actions?

Yes. Otherwise we are attempting policing through pre-crime. Also, `toxic` is always subjective. It becomes a useful vehicle by which the definition will always be expanded to include what someone dislikes.

I consider the discussion of fruit, that can be shaped like human genitalia a insult to my religion. Thus i demand, the bannishment of cooking recipes from the internet, to protect the worlds morals.

Who are you to judge my religion and culture wrong and vane?

How naive are you? I would say that an ideology that advocates for racial or ethnic cleansing should not be shared. I would say that sexually explicit images of children who are emotionally traumatized should not be shared. As someone mentioned above, when the speech advocates for the harming of other people, it should not be shared.

Yet this is exactly why speech must be protected. Speech is always lost in the interest of what would appear the public good. You start with what most would agree to be speech that should not be shared.

Some entity must then be given power to determine what qualifies as that speech. This is then the point speech is lost. Once someone has the power to determine what people can say, then that becomes the vehicle through which it will be undermined. The definition of what is acceptable will continue to change as the state will want to keep expanding its power of `public good`. This becomes a selling point to the public to support such efforts while the state will continue to silence opposition to its interests with support of the public as all will be framed in the interest of protecting the public.

That is what the judicial branch of the State is for: if someone has a problem with some kind of content, he can go and denounce it.

The other possibility is just chaos and vigilante justice. Which is what the CEO of Cloudflare did.

The idea that the owner of a business can not set any rules above the bare minimum legally is a little silly. Do you think an expensive restaurant should be able to deny service to a guy who comes in shirtless even though it is completely legal for him to walk around like that? Is that vigilante justice?

Both the legal system and businesses need to draw lines. We can't pretend those lines don't exist or that 100% free speech is some ideal natural state. Once those line are drawn it is only natural for there to be debate about them. I think frequently debating and reassessing those lines is healthy.

> Do you think an expensive restaurant should be able to deny service to a guy who comes in shirtless even though it is completely legal for him to walk around like that?

If the restaurant benefits from special safe harbor exemptions to food safety laws because they have so many customers from all walks of life that they supposedly can't spare the resources to play hygiene police while serving everyone on time, then no.

I assume you're referring to copyright laws and safe-harbor provisions.

But aren't copyright laws another way of suppressing free expression? It seems contradictory to say that it's not ok for Cloudflare to suppress the free expression of Nazis while implicitly supporting the suppression of the expression of file sharers, remixers, and other violators of copyright who want to use Cloudflare. Furthermore, you seem to be arguing that the explicitly political expression of Cloudflare's CEO should be suppressed using the power of the state (by suggesting that it should open them up to legal liability).

I wasn't referring to copyright laws. If someone in the "move bits from point A to point B" business wants to make it their responsibility to suppress activities that are legal, purely on ideological grounds, then they should also shoulder some responsibility for the activities they're facilitating that actually are illegal and actively harmful. I mean, priorities! Otherwise they should stick to moving bits from point A to point B, cooperating with lawful orders when required.

You mean beyond taking it down after it's reported? Surely they already do that.

Are you suggesting that in order for them to be allowed to turn down Stormfront's business they must take on the legal obligation of actively screening all their content for illegal material?

I don't see the connection or justification.

As long as you let the people know in advance, before the contract is written, that you are willing to do so.

As the Cloudflare CEO explained, that is not the case in this instance.

There is nothing in the Cloudfare ToS that state that if they find the content objectionable that they can terminate the service.

https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/

The only way they can terminate the terms is:

"Cause for such termination shall include, but not be limited to: (a) breaches or violations of the Terms of Service or other incorporated agreements or guidelines; (b) requests by law enforcement or other government agencies; (c) a request by you (self-initiated account deletions); (d) discontinuance or material modification to the Service (or any part thereof); (e) unexpected technical or security issues or problems; (f) extended periods of inactivity; (g) you have engaged or are reasonably suspected to be engaged in fraudulent or illegal activities; (h) having provided false information as part of your account; (i) having failed to keep your account complete, true, and accurate; (j) any use of the Service deemed at Cloudflare’s sole discretion to be prohibited; (k) use of fraudulent payment methods; and/or (l) nonpayment of any fees owed by you in connection with Cloudflare.com and associated Services."

> ... but not be limited to: ...

Meaning "and anything else we forgot to include or think of later," so "woke up pissed off at you" is a valid reason for termination under that clause.

To to mention that "j" is broad enough to include pretty much any content-based decision.

Yet child porn is clearly a criminal act. Producing the media material would make you complicit. Kinda like if you went along with bank robbers to rob a bank, video tapped it and never reported it. You would be complicit of covering up the crime. I believe this distinction separates child porn from free speech.

Also, like yelling `fire` in a building is not a speech issue, it is a property rights issue in that you cause damage to the owners of the property.

Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre is likely to cause people to stampede in panic which can lead to persons being trampled to death.

Property rights covers damage to people as under property rights you own your self.

The point is that it can be prosecuted, but not on the grounds of speech.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

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