They are coming for you. It is just a matter of time.
I posted a rant on Twitter yesterday that I will embed here so I don’t have to repeat myself unnecessarily.
Don't think the thought police are coming? Rcvd msg saying: The YouTube community flagged one or more of your playlists as inappropriate. /1
— Head Honcho (@GodGunsGov) August 23, 2017
But I will add that we have a dangerously increasing amount of corporate censorship from Big Internet companies. It starts with Google policing YouTube and Facebook kowtowing to government censorship demands. It was thrust into a spotlight this week with Cloudflare bumping the Daily Stormer off the Internet, in light of the Charleston, VA gathering of Nazi/white supremacists and the loss of 3 people’s lives surrounding that event.
Cloudflare’s CEO admitted that his decision was “arbitrary”, yet he still made it:
Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision. It was different than what I’d talked talked with our senior team about yesterday. I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. I called our legal team and told them what we were going to do. I called our Trust & Safety team and had them stop the service. It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company.
Having made that decision we now need to talk about why it is so dangerous. I’ll be posting something on our blog later today. Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power.
He goes on to say:
My whims and those of Jeff [Bezos] and Larry [Page] and Satya [Nadella] and Mark [Zuckerberg], that shouldn’t be what determines what should be online,” he said. “I think the people who run The Daily Stormer are abhorrent. But again I don’t think my political decisions should determine who should and shouldn’t be on the internet.
And yet you went ahead and made a decision to boot someone, arbitrarily, because you woke up in a bad mood.
You can read more, direct from Cloudflare’s CEO, here.
You’re darn right no one should have that power. Why? Because we get bad decisions based on the feelings of the moment, or the mood of the mob, rather than principled responses that carry us beyond the emotions of a moment of time. You see, that decision allowed a whole bunch of other companies to justify their decisions as well, Godaddy, Google, Facebook, Twitter.
Look, just to be clear, because we all have to be clear or you get branded on the Internet these days, none of this condones Nazism or racism or white supremacy. I’m looking at and addressing a larger picture of overall freedom and liberty. These arbitrary decisions are the start of a larger erosion of freedom and liberty in this country. When our content hosting providers, Internet service providers, domain registrars, backbone infrastructure providers start taking sides in moral, cultural and/or ideological disputes we have some serious problems.
Who is it that gets to determine what is “right” and “wrong”? What should be allowed or disallowed? The Government? Google?
Ah, no.
And I can hear you saying, “But, Nazis!!!”
And my answer to you is, “Who is next, then?”
Because everyone is a Nazi.