Hacker News Reader

Comment by _-david-_ | Hacker News Reader

What happens if another site that you consider completely legitimate can't be hosted just because others think it is not acceptable? Maybe your views are currently acceptable, but will they be in 5, 10, 20 years?

View on HN

When was the last time a site got taken down because "others think it is not acceptable"? Please, name a single one. There's a difference between people simply "not liking" a site, and people using extremely well-established principles of ethical concepts and human rights (which have been refined over centuries) to decide what content is violating the "laws", as we call them, which have been generally agreed upon in modern society. Further to that, hosts have what we call "terms of service" or "acceptable use policy" which clearly define what content is acceptable for that host to continue to serve the customer operating the site and administrating its content. Again, not someone "thinking it is not acceptable".

oh, that's easy: Stormfront, the Daily Stormer...

... hey, Kiwifarm's holding company was named 'Final Solutions, LLC', what a coincidence! ;)

https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1563748563926089730

take a seat, gamers... we've found the REAL most-oppressed minority here (/s)

The most recent one was probably Parler. Usually deplatforming is due to a moral panic involving a massively exaggerated risk. All sites probably violate the AUP or TOS if you look closely enough. But during the panic, you can't see that the risk is tiny in the grand scheme of things.

This argument can't persuade those who never have any views of their own and always adopt the currently acceptable ones.

>Maybe your views are currently acceptable, but will they be in 5, 10, 20 years?

Not just that. It's views that anyone else on the site shares. Your community on a site can be destroyed by the actions of a completely separate community on the same site.

Depends on the specifics, as always. I'm comfortable saying that whatever the line is, KF is firmly on the other side of it.

If you do not have a consistent standard other than something arbitrary and subjective then it is only a matter of time until the line changes again.

Yeah well, such is life.

Let’s cross that bridge if it happens.

At that point it will be too late.

Censorship like this creeps on forward until everyone is scared to speak up against it and then it clamps down hard enough that no one is able to speak up against it.

History has told that lesson a thousand times. Still, there are ever new people that seemingly lack the capacity to recognize the lesson (my guess is, the minority), or, for arguments sake, chose to ignore it (my guess, the majority).

That’s because it’s a garbage argument disproved by exemple.

Most of Europe has strong law regarding hate speech and didn’t devolve into an awful fascist tyranny. A free country doesn’t have to tolerate everything.

Meanwhile their allegedly incredible laws didn’t stop the USA to conduct kidnapping, jailing without trial and for indefinite duration and torture of dozens.

Is it a free country if they don't tolerate "hate" speech?

Yes.

The guy who made the nazi pug video might disagree.

Yea! Today death threats are banned, tomorrow it will be collecting Pokémon!

Why should private entities bear the burden of supporting content they don't endorse?

Do you believe your ISP should be allowed to drop you if you say something they don't like? What about your phone company? We, as a society, already forcing companies to support content they don't endorse.

Those are bad examples; Telcos are almost universally heavily regulated and as such in many (most?) countries out there can't just refuse people service.

Cloudflare is doing neither here. This is closer to Subway banning you than your phone company; it's highly optional to do business with CF.

Do you believe that Kiwi Farms should be able to set up shop in a restaurant and peddle their hateful shit?

What about an airline terminal?

We, as a society, are already denying individuals and organizations the right to disseminate information while using our private property when it doesn't align with our goals and beliefs.

What about the site owner's water supply?

The disagreement here seems to over whether Cloudflare is more like a restaurant, or more like a utility company. Given the ubiquity of DDOS attacks online, (and the fact that KF seemingly can't stay online without DDOS mitigation), I think there's a good argument to be made that DDOS mitigation might be more like a utility.

It's far closer to an insurance company than a utility. And either way, utilities aren't common carriers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com