The litmus test I think we should use is "We should honor the intent of the user".
If a group of users explicitly want access to white nationalist content, they should be able to get it. So I would oppose blogs, webhosts, and cloudflare deplatforming anyone for any reason besides the outright illegal.
Facebook and Twitter are not just about serving content to those who have the intent to view it...infact the whole point of these social networks is that they expose content to NEW people who didn't initially have any intent to view. This is promotion, not access, and I have no problem with private entities choosing what they want to promote.
I would apply this same test to payments. Users who have explicit intent to financially contribute to objectionable content creators such as Alex Jones should still have a way of doing so. When Patreon, Matercard, etc etc deplatform him it closes the door to those who already have intent. Of course, I'm all for FB and Twitter shutting down the campaign so the word wouldn't spread nearly as far.
As a moderate liberal who finds sexual content over-censored, yet am disgusted by right-wing and anti-vax (anti-vax is often leftist!) conspiracy theorists, I think this test "honor their intent" test is a great way to keep the internet relatively sex positive, and extremist content relatively niche.
This seems like a relatively moderate view, and I like how it breaks down the individual freedom of intentioned users vs. the freedom of users who have no intention of seeing said content.
But at the end of the day, aren't the companies who are providing payment processing or website hosting profiting off of extremism and hate? If you'll recall, the reason why they started deplatforming individuals to begin with was that large swaths of people boycotted their services until they chose to no longer do business with said extremists.
Isn't that voting with our dollars? Isn't that the Free Market of Ideas in action?
Oh, was that a thing? For example was there a lot of outrage and pressure on payment processors to deplatform FetLife, or for Patreon to remove cam girls? I don't recall anything along those lines.
If a group of users explicitly want access to white nationalist content, they should be able to get it. So I would oppose blogs, webhosts, and cloudflare deplatforming anyone for any reason besides the outright illegal.
Facebook and Twitter are not just about serving content to those who have the intent to view it...infact the whole point of these social networks is that they expose content to NEW people who didn't initially have any intent to view. This is promotion, not access, and I have no problem with private entities choosing what they want to promote.
I would apply this same test to payments. Users who have explicit intent to financially contribute to objectionable content creators such as Alex Jones should still have a way of doing so. When Patreon, Matercard, etc etc deplatform him it closes the door to those who already have intent. Of course, I'm all for FB and Twitter shutting down the campaign so the word wouldn't spread nearly as far.
As a moderate liberal who finds sexual content over-censored, yet am disgusted by right-wing and anti-vax (anti-vax is often leftist!) conspiracy theorists, I think this test "honor their intent" test is a great way to keep the internet relatively sex positive, and extremist content relatively niche.