I sort of agree with the parent. They clearly had the right to do what they did, and the world is probably a better place for it but then if they're willing to bend their "neutrality" principle for that then why not for other things?
And let's be clear, I'm not taking the stance that they shouldn't refuse service to hate speech websites, I'm saying that IMO they morally and ethically should strive not to provide service to obvious scams and malware websites either.
I really don't think that the "common carrier" angle holds any water. An ISP requires infrastructure and as a user you don't even have a lot of choice about which one you use. Even if you do have a choice it's not like you can change your ISP easily and quickly. That's why "common carrier" and net neutrality make some sense in that context.
Cloudflare is much closer to a web host than an ISP. You can still very much host websites that will be accessible by everybody without Cloudflare's help. If OVH hosted spammers and botnets and refused to do anything about it under the guise of "free speech" would we consider that a good thing? Is it really all that noble?
And let's be clear, I'm not taking the stance that they shouldn't refuse service to hate speech websites, I'm saying that IMO they morally and ethically should strive not to provide service to obvious scams and malware websites either.
I really don't think that the "common carrier" angle holds any water. An ISP requires infrastructure and as a user you don't even have a lot of choice about which one you use. Even if you do have a choice it's not like you can change your ISP easily and quickly. That's why "common carrier" and net neutrality make some sense in that context.
Cloudflare is much closer to a web host than an ISP. You can still very much host websites that will be accessible by everybody without Cloudflare's help. If OVH hosted spammers and botnets and refused to do anything about it under the guise of "free speech" would we consider that a good thing? Is it really all that noble?