That is a ridiculous claim, I honestly can't imagine how anyone could make that in good faith. The website is named after a Nazi tabloid that was so virulent its publisher was executed at Nuremberg. The website's style guide for guest writers talks about the importance of "gassing kikes". If a website that glorifies Adolf Hitler, fascism, and genocide isn't enough to be considered neo-Nazi, then what is?
Neo-Nazi sites, for better or worse (obviously: worse) should still be on the Internet. If only for the rest of us to point at as an example of what not to do.
Censorship is a bit like antibiotics: short-term positive impact but long-term negative impact. Neo-Nazis are not a threat to anyone, anywhere, in any way. We can survive their stupid web page, and have no need to censor it. The cure is MUCH worse than the disease.
UPDATE: I love how I get downvotes and literally NO ONE has engaged with my core argument, that censorship is a bit like antibiotics: short-term positive impact but long-term negative impact. Making the future worse over a tiny group of "neo-Nazis"—who are probably 90% Feds anyway—is a bad idea. People used to know this stuff, but I guess we'll have to re-learn it all over again the hard way. sigh
> UPDATE: I love how I get downvotes and literally NO ONE has engaged with my core argument, that censorship is a bit like antibiotics: short-term positive impact but long-term negative impact.
Because it's absolutely insane to suggest that zero people/websites should use antibiotics.
The problem with antibiotics is when they're given out in huge amounts with barely any reason. And the only reason that's bad is because it makes antibiotics ineffective. There's no possible way to turn that into an argument that we should never use antibiotics.
Your own analogy argues strongly against your point. Cloudflare's shutdown count is very small.
> Your own analogy argues strongly against your point. Cloudflare's shutdown count is very small.
The Daily Stormer went on to be banned by Google Domains, and a number of other registrars (all of whom had previously not banned customers for political speech). So yes, the "anti-biotic" had to be repeatedly prescribed—just not by CloudFlare. In the end, it was all for not: The Daily Stormer is still up and running today.[0]
It gets worse. After CloudFlare's actions on The Daily Stormer, they were pressured to follow it up with another political speech ban, this time on 8chan. It ABSOLUTELY had a follow on effect, and not just for CloudFlare. 8chan (of course) is still running.[1]
CloudFlare's censorship actions were then followed up by censorship of political speech across huge platforms including Facebook, Google/YouTube, Apple, and Twitter (supposedly "the free speech wing of the free speech party"[2]). For instance, Alex Jones was banned by all of them almost one year after the failed attempt to erase The Daily Stormer off of the Internet. At the time, he had an audience estimated at 20 million and had been on the air since the 90s.
Internet censorship is at all time highs and CloudFlare was at the forefront of making that happen.
Are you saying the Daily Stormer ban is worse because it didn't knock them offline, but the Alex Jones ban is bad because it did knock his audience way down?
I can't figure out what your argument is.
And nobody expects antibiotics to eradicate a disease either.
Also Alex Jones was using that platform to strongly harm the lives of a big group of people by aiming constant harassment at them. Does that factor in anywhere? Are you demanding hosting platforms to be complicit in that?
My dude, if you want to censor people, or get corporations to do it for you—knock yourself out. Some random HN commenter isn't going to change your mind, or stop you.
I think it's bad strategy, and antithetical to the stated goals of those doing the censoring. Let's leave it at that.
I'm mostly just trying to understand you because you keep using self-contradicting arguments. If you would rather keep making new arguments instead of explaining anything, then sure it's better to leave it at that.
My comment isn't meant to make a judgement call or restart the argument as to whether or not neo-nazi sites should be on the internet.
I'm just saying that it is ridiculous to question whether the people behind the site are Neo-Nazis and fascists. They admit what they are— there's not much room for debate.
I'm not aware of anyone, anywhere, debating that. The debate is: what do we do about it? Do we compromise our values to hurt a minute group of bad actors? Or do we have integrity and tough it out?
The answer, at least in the United States, both culturally but also at the government is: nothing is done to them, they get speech like everyone else.
I oppose CloudFlare's decision because, culturally, it's un-American—and they are an American company. I expect all Americans, and especially the most prosperous and successful Americans—like the CEO of CloudFlare—to uphold those values.
You replied to a comment that said "I do not trust the SPLC to determine what is a "Neo-Nazi" website"—something I agree with as well. The SPLC is a garbage organization, even if they happen to be correct about The Daily Stormer in this specific case (not hard, given that The Daily Stormer is completely open about what they believe—no one has to "guess").
Anyway, the OP was perhaps unclear—you could construe distrust of the SPLC with disagreement on the status of The Daily Stormer. I think they were more saying "SPLC is not a legitimate source", not "SPLC is wrong in this specific instance".
I oppose CloudFlare's decision because, culturally, it's un-American—and they are an American company. I expect all Americans, and especially the most prosperous and successful Americans—like the CEO of CloudFlare—to uphold those values.
I would 100% support legislation requiring anyone providing a platform or infrastructure, such as CloudFlare, to have a 100% neutral policy as to who they provide service to. It's a civil rights issue to me.
Corporations have rights, but with those rights come responsibilities.
That is pretty tricky for a case like this, though.... DDOS protection is pretty expensive, and various CDNs have dropped customers who become more costly than they are worth.
If they had phrased this as "we have decided to drop them because the DDOSes they were experiencing were more expensive than the money we were making from them", would you have been ok with them dropping them? Or would they be required to publish a hard rule about 'we will drop a customer that experiences more than x amount of DDOS traffic'? And if they have to do that, that is basically telling adversaries, "DDOS us this much and you can get us dropped"
It seems really tricky to make this a rule that businesses have to do business with everyone. It is a very established rule in the United States that a business is free to enter into business agreements with whoever they want, as long as they don't discriminate based on specific protected classes.
If you want to censor someone, just censor them! Trying to come up with PR gobbledygook to make the action seem less bad is lame as fuck.
That said, your actual argument about "cost" I reject. Infrastructure providers should be required to service everyone, even though some cost more than others. Indeed, that's the whole point—imagine if AT&T didn't have to handle phone service for the whole United States, and instead only did more profitable, cheaper urban centers?
I'm more than willing to pay a small amount more so that everyone is treated equally. That's just part of living in a society.
