PPEcel
cope and seethe
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- Joined
- Oct 1, 2018
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View: https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelTear/comments/hla4jt/so_about_domains_and_incel_sites/
In 2017, Cloudflare ceased to provide services to the Daily Stormer. In his blog post, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince admitted that his action was "dangerous", and later conceded that he simply "woke up in a bad mood and decided to boot them off the internet". His reasoning was simple: internet infrastructure companies are and should remain content-neutral.
"Law enforcement, legislators, and courts have the political legitimacy and predictability to make decisions on what content should be restricted. Companies should not."
I know what the cucks are going to scream: "Private companies have the right to choose who they want to do business with!" Yes, they do. The question at hand isn't whether they can, but whether they should. As the internet constitutes an increasingly significant component of political and social behaviour, when infrastructure providers (as opposed to social media platforms) start to police content, a small group of companies usurp the judiciary's role in defining the boundaries of free expression.
Should an American technology firm with an eye on the Chinese market cease to provide services for American human rights activists?
Should a Dutch technology firm, providing its services to LGBT rights activists in the Middle East, comply with a request for information by an oppressive Middle Eastern government, knowing that compliance could lead to the deaths of those activists?
Should a technology firm whose biggest client is a large multinational corporation, cease to provide services for small businesses who are competing against the corporation?
As you can see, for private companies to choose who they want on and off the internet would set potentially unwanted precedents; opening a can of worms that Cloudflare has tried to keep closed. Cloudflare is a principled company which not only supports Black Lives Matter but must also balance its support with its other values. Decades of litigation through the Civil Rights Movement have made eminently clear that free expression (see Garner v. Louisiana) and free association (see NAACP v. Patterson) are crucial elements of open societies which must be upheld through due process. Should (not can) the snap decision of a Silicon Valley executive supplant a fair legal procedure? Would such a decision respect the spirit of due process?
So I invite my soy-guzzling peers on Reddit to consider Cloudflare's position with some additional nuance. If I have managed to convince even one person that the regulation of political behaviour is the domain of the public sector and not the private sector, then I won't have wasted the last half hour of my life writing this.
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