So now CDNs and Cloud providers are operating politically, determing who can and cannot use their services depending on their beliefs; whats next, the ISPs?
Within like 5 years, we went from facebook being a problem because it has power to direct politics through its incredible reach and filtering algorithms.. to suddenly every tech company, through the whole stack, wants a say on the matter?
At least facebook had the “algorithms” defense, that they didn’t intentionally apply their political views into their ecosystems; this is far more direct — CEOs realizing they have a power over an infrastructure to weaponize their beliefs (generally agreeable, or not)
How did we jump from net nuetrality politics to.. this? Just the difference between monetary reasons versus political?
Yeah, this has always been the case. There's literally nothing new here.
Fascinating to hear these expert opinions from people who have obviously never dealt with the hosting industry.
If you think nazis and other undesirables have a right to hosting, then go ahead and start your own nazi hosting company. If cybercriminals can manage this, I'm sure you guys can do it too.
(a) People who publicly support white supremacy should be imprisoned by the government.
(b) Businesses should not make money by hosting or providing services to people who publicly support white supremacy.
It's very easy to think that (b) is true, but (a) is false; this is a popular position among free speech advocates who know the law.
What exactly is supposed to have changed here? Hosting controversial content poses significant operational costs, nobody will do it for free.
The only relationship was free was users -> 8chan website, and 8chan did do it for free..
You may wish to read your ISP's ToS, because many of them have had AUPs for years that would forbid use of some bits of 8chan.
They don't appear to use these clauses very often, but we don't know because no-one is counting.
But that doesn't mean we expect them to.
Cloud infra companies and CDNs trying to filter their service offering based on its content, without government intervention, based on no "algorithm" or strategy, but instead, without any hiding of it, whatever whim realized by the CEO and his twitter feed; this is new behavior to me (that it could be done is obvious, that it would be done is not).
I mean, its not new new, this is cloudflare's second time at it; the new part is that its not just cloudflare doing it, and we went another layer deeper.
If you don't want that to be the case, create a company that supports them. The only ones stopping you are your customers.
Buy your own hardware rather than demand other people look after you
There is a difference.
Somebody could automate the generation of manifestos, and leak hundreds claiming responsibility after every shooting, arguing for a variety of different positions. Then the public would have less certainly about what shooter's political intent actually was - which could lead to less politically-motivated mass shootings?
I wonder if someone has ever successfully tricked the public into believing a manufactured manifesto was written by a perpetrator, when it was actually written by someone unrelated to the incident.
Sounds like an effective mechanism to potentially remove mass murderer’s ability to effectively communicate their reasons or beliefs. Since effective gun control in the US is impossible, it’s going to be out of the box ideas like this that might end up actually helping (besides god forbid some real focus on mental health in this country).
