Cloudflare is not an illegal monopoly. You're not a court -- you don't make these decisions. Here's what the current CEO of Cloudflare
had to say about their decision:
First, we are a private company and not bound by the First Amendment. Second, the vast majority of our customers, and more than 50% of our revenue, comes from outside the United States where the First Amendment and similarly libertarian freedom of speech protections do not apply. The only relevance of the First Amendment in this case and others is that it allows us to choose who we do and do not do business with; it does not obligate us to do business with everyone.
You can fantasize away that the government forced their hand here, but you are without any sort of evidence.
Calling attention to a problem is not equivalent to calling it inevitable or unsolvable.
Just like the problem of the U.S. being on the brink of a civil war, right?
Also just because you are too dense to realize this effects all of us doesn't mean it doesn't effect me.
You are calling me out for using ad hominems and then engaging in the in the same thing yourself.
Cloudflare's decision to discontinue hosting 8chan doesn't effect your freedom. It clearly effects your mental state, but none of your freedoms have been revoked or are at risk.
You can visit 8chan today if you want, so what the hell are you bitching about? Your whole argument is a big pile of nothing.
You just claiming it hasn't happened and won't happen is not an argument.
Its a statement of fact. No one in the U.S. is being denied food or water because of their beliefs.
And I guess things will stay that way so long as
keyboard warriors hero citizens such as yourself are putting up the good fight right?
The shootings in New Zealand as well as in the USA are being used as pretext to condition the general public to the idea of giving up freedom for the promise of security. This is a fools bargain and is a lie. Giving up freedom for the promise of security will result in having neither.
Conspiratard bullshit. Nobody's freedoms are being alienated here, and if people think that they are, I say fuck 'em, they're part of the problem. 9/11 was a much bigger pretext than all of the mass shootings put together. You're welcome to continue believing what you will, just don't expect others to.
Just because they haven't been prosecuted doesn't make it not a monopoly. The fact is Cloudflare meets all the requisite terms for a monopoly. I don't have to be a court to observe facts. Furthermore the CEO is talking about revenue, not market share. These are very different things.
9/11 is the perfect example of using fear to strip rights. 9/11 was the perfect excuse to create massive uncontrolled surveillance programs, strip habeas corpus, posse comitatus, and train people to subject themselves to the regular submission of their rights in the name of security. There was more American freedom taken away under The P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act than any terrorist could ever take. I find it amazing you are aware of this concept yet some how find it valid to argue it has not continued to escalate along this same path of stripping freedom for promises of security.
I don't see any ad hominems directed at you, and even if they were there the difference is mine are surrounded by logical arguments, while yours consist only of personal attacks and are devoid of any other substance. I have arguments, you have only denial and name calling. Politicians are openly talking about abridging free speech and removing second amendment rights, and people such as yourself cheer because people always feel more comfortable thinking it is not for them, but only for "the bad guys". It is for everyone, including you, and just because you have chosen to pluck your own eyes out doesn't change this.
"I AM THE MAJORITY!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIwf3d7hP9g"Joe Biden on whether his admin is 'going to come' for people's guns: 'Bingo'"
http://www.stationgossip.com/2019/08/joe-biden-on-whether-his-admin-is-going.htmlThe rhetoric of stripping the rights of free speech and self defense are right out in the open among many of the mainstream candidates and press. Regardless of how many examples I present, you push your head even further up your ass and cry "NONONONONONO", because you are too weak too look at the painful reality of the situation and instead choose the comfortable lies, the promises these people give that it is only for the bad ones. BULLSHIT. They are coming for YOU and YOURS. This is always how it starts, and bloodshed is always how it ends. How about we just skip the part in the middle and the end and just preserve the rights?
Cloudflare has a right to do what they want with their property, but it's concerning all the same.
The Internet is, unfortunately, not a magic cloud where things can live on their own. It's service providers all the way down:
- Terrorists post on 8/pol/. These people are bad.
- The 8/pol/ board owner may or may not want the terrorists posting there. If not, then he's an innocent third-party, but he's blamed. (In one of the previous shootings, I read that the 8/pol/ moderators removed the shooter's posts and reported it to the police within minutes.)
- 8/pol/ lives on 8chan, a huge collection of boards, many of them completely unrelated to politics. 8chan's boards are similar to Reddit's subreddits, with independent board owners. But 8chan as a whole is blamed for the terrorists.
- 8chan uses several service providers directly: hosting, domain registration, etc. These are blamed for the terrorists.
- Because the Internet is fundamentally flawed, every site needs DDoS protection, and Cloudflare offers by far the best value in that area. (I think that they're probably subsidized by the NSA in order to act as a honeypot, but perhaps they're just really effective.) You could use a different service or roll your own, but this would cost several thousand $/month more to get equivalent service, and in any case you're introducing more service providers who will be blamed for the terrorists.
- The hosting companies have their own ISPs, who have their own ISPs, etc., who could all be blamed for the terrorists. At the top, you have the backbone providers who mutually rely on each other and could blame each other for terrorists on their network.
For freedom to exist, at some point service providers have to have the courage to say, "Those people using my services through n degrees of separation are evil, but trying to stop them would harm freedom more than help it, so I'm not going to do so." By dropping a site with very few real issues, based on uninformed public outcry, Cloudflare failed here. The government should stay out of it, but it creates an argument for Cloudflare being unreliable & anti-freedom. (They also opened up a huge can of worms, since now they'll get complaints about basically every site they host.)
The whole situation also exposes the serious flaws of the Internet, which may someday destroy it: firstly, the fact that DDoS protection is needed at all; and secondly, the existence of this endless chain of services that you need to trust not to take you down.
In general I tend to agree with your libertarian stance. The problem is any ideology in its absolutist form is flawed, because any ideology can be subverted and abused to create the opposite of the intended effect. Drinking lots of water is good, but if they pass a law that you must be force fed gallons of water every day when you wake up, guess what, you are going to die. Any organization or ideology can be subverted, as a result decisions need to be made on the RESULTS of actions, not just on an ideological basis.
That said, monopoly anti-trust laws exist for good reason, and have been a part of this country's legal process for a very long time. In fact when this nation was created corporations were very tightly controlled entities that at any moment could be crushed by revoking their charter the moment they did not serve the public good. Cloudflare DOES NOT have the right to occupy the position of a monopoly and thus deny people access to the infrastructure required to be a part of the modern world. You yourself admitted alternatives are not exactly available. Furthermore by the vary nature of this technology it can only exist at scale and as a result competition is limited and ineffectual in comparison. If this trend continues no one will be able to do simple things like use transportation, use electronic payment systems, communication systems, or any of the other basic necessities that are a requirement of survival in modern life, and I think you know this.
