[Responsibility2nd]

Phone companies are still regulated as an utility I believe

————————————

Facebook and Twitter are utilities as well. And we all know how they suppress freedom of speech. I have long maintained that if Facebook and Twitter are allowed to censor our lives, it won’t be long before your phone company will do the same. Before your electric company will cut you off. Before your insurance will cancel your policy. Before the state allows all private companies and Utilities to trample over our rights and our freedom‘s.

[Lockbox]

At this time neither Facebook nor Twitter are utilities.

[daniel1212]

Phone companies are still regulated as an utility I believe ———————————— Facebook and Twitter are utilities as well.

I did not think they were , but regardless, such have Terms of Use type agreements we signify consent to even if we have not read it (but we must say we have, though I mean part of it), concerning which Openurmind wrote

Morning Dan, as always you share a very good comprehensive reply. :) I found similar with AOL. AOL and Yahoo are now owned by Verizon and part of the "Oath" concept including Huffington Post. AOL terms link to the Oath terms. I'm leaning towards AOL blocking FR. https://policies.oath.com/us/en/oath/terms/otos/index.html Check this out... https://www.oath.com/ You agree not to use the Services to:

make available any content that is harmful to children, threatening, abusive...defamatory, hateful, or racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable;

And indeed, commercial communication companies like Google, Verizon and Comcast actually state in their ToS that certain forms of speech are prohibited. For example, Verizon's Acceptable Use Policy states in part,

1. General Policy: Verizon reserves the sole discretion to deny or restrict your Service, or immediately to suspend or terminate your Service, if the use of your Service by you or anyone using it, in our sole discretion, ...is objectionable...or violates the terms of this Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”). Is so broad and subjectively defined that it can cover all sorts of otherwise protected speech. It used to say, "Verizon reserves the right to deny Service to you, or immediately to terminate your Service for material breach, if your use... promotes or incites bigotry, hatred or racism; (c) might be legally actionable for any reason, (d) is objectionable for any reason...

And Comporium Communications, like the rest, has a SERVICE AGREEMENT in which it states, Objectionable content. Using our services to post, transmit or disseminate any content that is, in our opinion, abusive, libelous, slanderous, defamatory, incites hatred or is otherwise offensive or objectionable.

Likewise, Comcast Cloud Solutions Terms of Service (for businesses) states, in part,

BY USING THE CLOUD SOLUTIONS MARKETPLACE YOU AGREE NOT TO post, upload, or distribute any User Submission (as defined in Section 8 below) or other content that is defamatory....inaccurate... or that a reasonable person could deem to be objectionable, offensive,...threatening, embarrassing, distressing, vulgar, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or otherwise inappropriate.

And as usual with these terms of service consents, this contains some ambiguous language( that would allow broad censorship (cf. content that is offensive or objectionable) which can be interpreted to place FR in violation, and you/us as users, now or in the future.

And note Cloudflare's policy which is, as stated vby CEO Matthew Prince, "One of the greatest strengths of the United States is a belief that speech, particularly political speech, is sacred. A website, of course, is nothing but speech ... A website is speech. It is not a bomb. There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain."

For all customers Cloudflare offers an "I'm Under Attack Mode" setting. Cloudflare claims this can mitigate advanced Layer 7 attacks by presenting a JavaScript computational challenge which must be completed by a user's browser before the user can access a website - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare

But who dropped the American neo-Nazi website "The Daily Stormer" as a customer. Which I would do also, but as said, if a host can deny such based on its content being objectionable, it can deny conservative content on the same basis (unless perhaps the one denied wanted to promote the homosexual agenda or reverse racism.). This issue led to this opinion piece in the NYT no less, The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors :

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of corporate players on the internet: companies that build infrastructure through which content flows, and companies that seek to curate content and create a community.

Internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast, domain name servers, web hosts and security services providers like Cloudflare are all the former — or the “pipe.” They typically don’t look at the content their clients and customers are putting up, they just give them the means to do it and let it flow.

Social media platforms like Facebook are the latter. They encourage their users to create, share and engage with content — so they look at content all the time and decide whether they want to allow hateful material like that of neo-Nazis to stay up.

One of the additional difficulties with Cloudflare is that it is not so much a piece of pipe as it is a service. Specifically, it is a paid-for-protection service. Having to hire Cloudflare to protect your website is like having to hire security to protect you from attackers when you speak in the public square.

Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s chief executive, acknowledged how much power his company has, and what’s at stake. “The internet is a really important resource for everyone,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch, “but there’s a very limited set of companies that control it and there’s such little accountability to us that it really is quite a dangerous thing.” - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opinion/cloudflare-daily-stormer-charlottesville.html

Morning Dan, as always you share a very good comprehensive reply. :) I found similar with AOL. AOL and Yahoo are now owned by Verizon and part of the "Oath" concept including Huffington Post. AOL terms link to the Oath terms. I'm leaning towards AOL blocking FR. https://policies.oath.com/us/en/oath/terms/otos/index.html Check this out... https://www.oath.com/ You agree not to use the Services to:

make available any content that is harmful to children, threatening, abusive...defamatory, hateful, or racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable;

And indeed, commercial communication companies like Google, Verizon and Comcast actually state in their ToS that certain forms of speech are prohibited. For example, Verizon's Acceptable Use Policy states in part,

1. General Policy: Verizon reserves the sole discretion to deny or restrict your Service, or immediately to suspend or terminate your Service, if the use of your Service by you or anyone using it, in our sole discretion, ...is objectionable...or violates the terms of this Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”). Is so broad and subjectively defined that it can cover all sorts of otherwise protected speech. It used to say, "Verizon reserves the right to deny Service to you, or immediately to terminate your Service for material breach, if your use... promotes or incites bigotry, hatred or racism; (c) might be legally actionable for any reason, (d) is objectionable for any reason...

And Comporium Communications, like the rest, has a SERVICE AGREEMENT in which it states, Objectionable content. Using our services to post, transmit or disseminate any content that is, in our opinion, abusive, libelous, slanderous, defamatory, incites hatred or is otherwise offensive or objectionable.

Likewise, Comcast Cloud Solutions Terms of Service (for businesses) states, in part,

BY USING THE CLOUD SOLUTIONS MARKETPLACE YOU AGREE NOT TO post, upload, or distribute any User Submission (as defined in Section 8 below) or other content that is defamatory....inaccurate... or that a reasonable person could deem to be objectionable, offensive,...threatening, embarrassing, distressing, vulgar, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or otherwise inappropriate.

And as usual with these terms of service consents, this contains some ambiguous language( that would allow broad censorship (cf. content that is offensive or objectionable) which can be interpreted to place FR in violation, and you/us as users, now or in the future.

And note Cloudflare's policy which is, as stated vby CEO Matthew Prince, "One of the greatest strengths of the United States is a belief that speech, particularly political speech, is sacred. A website, of course, is nothing but speech ... A website is speech. It is not a bomb. There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain."

For all customers Cloudflare offers an "I'm Under Attack Mode" setting. Cloudflare claims this can mitigate advanced Layer 7 attacks by presenting a JavaScript computational challenge which must be completed by a user's browser before the user can access a website - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare

But who dropped the American neo-Nazi website "The Daily Stormer" as a customer. Which I would do also, but as said, if a host can deny such based on its content being objectionable, it can deny conservative content on the same basis (unless perhaps the one denied wanted to promote the homosexual agenda or reverse racism.). This issue led to this opinion piece in the NYT no less, The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors :

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of corporate players on the internet: companies that build infrastructure through which content flows, and companies that seek to curate content and create a community.

Internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast, domain name servers, web hosts and security services providers like Cloudflare are all the former — or the “pipe.” They typically don’t look at the content their clients and customers are putting up, they just give them the means to do it and let it flow.

Social media platforms like Facebook are the latter. They encourage their users to create, share and engage with content — so they look at content all the time and decide whether they want to allow hateful material like that of neo-Nazis to stay up.

One of the additional difficulties with Cloudflare is that it is not so much a piece of pipe as it is a service. Specifically, it is a paid-for-protection service. Having to hire Cloudflare to protect your website is like having to hire security to protect you from attackers when you speak in the public square.

Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s chief executive, acknowledged how much power his company has, and what’s at stake. “The internet is a really important resource for everyone,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch, “but there’s a very limited set of companies that control it and there’s such little accountability to us that it really is quite a dangerous thing.” - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opinion/cloudflare-daily-stormer-charlottesville.html