Digital Ocean said it would shut down my blog if I didn’t edit a blog post.

http://vpsexperience.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/digital-ocean-threatened-to-shut-down-my-blog-if-i-didnt-remove-or-edit-a-blog-post/

by voidr • 13 years ago

189 155 13 years ago

vpsexperience.wordpress.com

voidr6• 13 years ago

So Digital Ocean could freely decide if a content is harassing without any legal court order or something?

So if I decide to use their service(which I was considering btw) should I worry about wether or not they will deem my content inappropriate?

So if I want to have a site where I would have users who can say/post whatever they want(freedom of speech and all that human right stuff) I can't host it on DO, because somebody might just send a bogus email to them and they would act on it?

rsynnott2• 13 years ago

So Digital Ocean could freely decide if a content is harassing without any legal court order or something?

Their TOS presumably allow this, as do the TOSes of most hosts, but this seems like a pretty bizarre use of discretionary terms, and would definitely put a lot of people off using it for anything much.

voidr6• 13 years ago

It's perfectly fine for a TOS to allow a service provider to comply with the law. The problem is when they have their own highly ambiguous laws and lack a proper system to resolve violations.

comice2• 13 years ago

Digital Ocean are going through all the kinds of problems that newbies to the ISP business go through in their early days, but DO are having to do it after having already got enormously popular. Not a lot of fun for them I'm sure.

venomsnake3• 13 years ago

Enjoy the cloud. Nothing more to be said. With the current "Waiver all rights in the TOS and no legal protections for the customers" it is only going to get worse.

I think that cloud services and telecoms and ISPs should be designated as common carrier with the protections and obligations that come from that.

danpalmer4• 13 years ago

That depends (as one commenter hinted to) on the level of service that the cloud services provider is providing.

If they are providing essentially a bare machine or VPS, then clearly they shouldn't have editorial control over your blog that happens to be hosted on the hardware. But when it gets to more managed services I think the issue is blurred.

- Scenario 1: hire a VPS, set up a mail server on it, send emails that your host doesn't want you sending. - I'd say there's nothing they should be able to do here. - Scenario 2: using a scalable email service (like Amazon SES?) to send emails that the host doesn't like. - I'm much less sure about this.

josephlord9• 13 years ago

How do you host content then? Don't most collocation facilities and ISPs have their own TOS that are not that different?

venomsnake3• 13 years ago

My theory was that they shouldn't be allowed to have such TOS and be given immunity from lawsuits about the way their services are used.

So basicly the only reasons a hosting provider should have grounds to terminate/interfere with service are - court order/stopped payment/the way service is used actively disrupts other customers.

We should have service "first sale doctrine" equivalent - once you have sold the access service etc you have no say in how it is used.

petercooper• 13 years ago

The real issue here is whether Digital Ocean should be enforcing a term in their ToS to prevent users from using their network in various socially negative ways. As a liberal-ish European, I think they should, but I appreciate this stance doesn't necessarily play well in the US.

Nonetheless, taking quotes from an informal chat room and turning them into a biased, borderline libelous blog post isn't cool. It's immaterial whether Collins told the author they didn't care about the post or not. If Collins made an official complaint as per the ToS, the post in question - http://vpsexperience.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/googler-speaks... - strikes me as defamatory and embarrassing enough to legitimately fall under term 2.8.. so the real question has nothing to do with the complaint but more is term 2.8 a good idea or not?

Argorak3• 13 years ago

Thats interesting. As a liberalish European, I think DigitalOcean shouldn't be allowed to police their content, just as ISPs shouldn't be allowed to block websites at their whim. Thats clearly in the realm of courts and lawyers. DigitalOcean can cancel the contract once others found the blog post to be defamatory.

lvh3• 13 years ago

Perhaps the two of you are only disagreeing on what "liberal" means; it tends to mean something quite different in Europe than in the US :)

7952• 13 years ago

"Shouldn't be allowed" is a bit strong. It is not unreasonable to remove questionable content when you are made aware of it; if only to protect the business from threat of legal action. It becomes policing when a website has to actively check up on its customers which places an unfair burden.

jacques_chester9• 13 years ago

DigitalOcean can cancel the contract once others found the blog post to be defamatory.

Well ... that's what's happening. It's not "policing content", it's holding up their side of the contract.

chillingeffect3• 13 years ago

Exactly. If the post is "socially negative," then that interaction is between the two people having the interaction. They have to work it out between themselves and let other people make up their own minds based on what they see. If the playground/commons/social theatre gets terminated every time two people disagree, then we'll never be able to work out anything worthwhile, justice will be harmed.

Harassment is pressure and intimidation. Travis Collins is a prevaricator for fabricating the story that the author was following him online and harassing him. DO doesn't have the resources, wisdom or dissociated self-interest to be able to properly police things and will botch themselves up seriously if they try. They should learn from history instead of retreating into Cover Your Ass mode.

comice2• 13 years ago

Due to few (any?) countries truly considering ISPs as common carriers most ISPs have to be the police at some stage. So it's a matter of how they handle it. It doesn't sound like DO have handled this well.

gphreak• 13 years ago

The original article reminds me of the usual SUN/Bild/Fox News style which makes it really hard to defend the author in any way. In addition to that he calls names, basically gives out the address of the person in question.. ugh.

danpalmer4• 13 years ago

Libel implies it's not true. If it is true then it is legal (as far as I am aware).

The original blog post strikes me as possibly slightly biased, but probably true, therefore not libellous.

tehwalrus• 13 years ago

Indeed; political campaigning 101 (at least here in the UK) is that libel must both:

    * contain false statements AND
    * be designed to damage reputation.

If only the latter, then it's not libel.

However, if it's the former as well, then both the author and the publisher/printer can be sued, so DO in this case are protecting their own legal status by removing libelous material.

Saying you don't like someone online, quoting them and making inferences, are all part of normal political debate and are not libelous.

Quoting somebody out of context, or changing the quote, and implying that they believe the direct opposite of what they actually said, would be untrue and therefore would be libelous. True quotes, backed up by screenshots, would not fall into this category, at least in the UK.

danso3• 13 years ago

In the U.S., there is the concept of "false light", which is similar to defamation, except that the plaintiff can claim damages even if the implication is true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light

A classic case (though for some reason, I haven't been able to find it through Googling), according to my law professor, involved Time LIFE Magazine (or perhaps one of its peers), which had a photograph of a cowboy, and the silhouette, perhaps it was the back of his saddle, appeared to imply that the man was exposing his member.

The photo was unaltered and thus, true, but the cowboy was able to claim damages. Again, I'm citing from memory but haven't been able to find the case via web searches (it's likely to have happened decades ago, though).

Since the U.S. is more permissive on the issue of libel than most countries, I imagine the concept of "false light", or something similar to it, exists in most countries.

jacques_chester9• 13 years ago

It's best not to speculate on defamation matters, because defamation laws vary from place to place. Quite a lot, sometimes.

DiabloD3• 13 years ago

This is a spoof right?

"One member of the community half-seriously (I assumed) threatened to harm me, proposing to “Godwins law this fucker.""

"Another member of the community [...] had taken note of my browser “fingerprint” and was now offering to share it with everyone."

So they were going to compare him to Hitler as punishment, and share with the community information used mainly for ad targeting?

ashley16• 13 years ago

This is the definition of online harassment. This guy Josh at vpsexperience.wordpress.com sounds like a real piece of work.

blueskin_3• 13 years ago

Don't use Digital Ocean. Every time I hear their name, it's a complete index of WTFs.

nobodyshere3• 13 years ago

Find me another service that praises you for violation of their TOS. I'd be really pleased to find at least one.

andrewfong5• 13 years ago

TOSes are what they are, but at least Rackspace's TOS doesn't prohibit acts that "embarrass" someone.

retube• 13 years ago

So? DO is a private company offering a service. They're not obliged to accept your money. Don't like them, go elsewhere.

Joeboy2• 13 years ago

I'm glad I found out what kind of service they offer before I signed up for it, which I might have been tempted to do otherwise.

danso3• 13 years ago

1. Has none of the "alpha geeks" involved ever hear of or Google the "Streisand Effect"?

2. Though the issue raised is one that's worth debating, what Collins said wasn't particularly newsworthy or inflammatory and may not even disqualify him from some day winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet the way the OP referred to his remarks, by the time I clicked through to see the juicy details, I was expecting something on the order of "Let them eat cake", but with racial slurs thrown in. The purportedly shocking statements were, IMO, not terrible, give the concise format. And yet they may have very well been given the sinister connotations DO's alleged actions give them

techwizrd• 13 years ago

I thought the entire article sounded like a bit of an overreaction. It sounds like hashbrownchew (vpsexperience.wordpress.com) wrote this article with the intent of stirring up as much controversy as possible. However, when I read through it I was perplexed. Reading the article[1] that DO asked him to edit did not give me much sympathy for hashbrownchew either. He refers to Collins as "one obnoxious Googler" and then somewhat-creepily investigates (with instructions) where Collins is lives to use for another inflammatory point. This entire article sounds much like a hashbrownchew is a papparazzi trying to provoke a reaction from Collins and then trying to further stir up controversy after misrepresenting Collins gets him into trouble. I really do not see why he didn't just edit the article to be anonymous. Whether he _has_ to edit it or not isn't clear, but it is the polite thing to do.

1. http://vpsexperience.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/googler-speaks...

josephlord9• 13 years ago

I'm not sure how valid this view is but I feel that the lower level (as in closer to infrastructure) the service provided the higher level the threshold for editorial interference should be. Against this feeling DO massively overstepped the mark here and have massively put me off using them.

I'm not saying that they should never have control; at least spamming, illegal content and DOS attacks need to be dealt with but requesting editorial changes to blog posts just feels off the chart.

Edit: Typos and clarifying that lower level referred to infrastructure.

Joeboy2• 13 years ago

the lower level (as in closer to infrastructure) the service provided the higher level the threshold for editorial interference should be

That was my instinct too, but I see no real reason why we should expect that to be the case. We've grown up with the idea that servers are generally managed by reasonably "legit" entities. Now that it's trivial to sign up for a VPS, we probably have to expect providers to pay more attention to what goes on on their machines. This is thought provoking, for me anyway.

DanBlake• 13 years ago

FWIW, all I ever read about on HN is how DO is constantly a disaster. Why you would choose to host there is beyond me. Just move your blog- It takes all of a few hours.

Touche2• 13 years ago

I had an incident where there was a problem with one of my droplets and their response was to shut down all of my droplets, and only leave me a message saying they needed to verify my identity. I had to ask questions to even figure out why my droplets were shut down. After communicating with them for about a half a day they agreed to turn them all back on and in the future to only shut down the offending droplets (without giving them my identity, by the way). I'm still using DO but will definitely scale back in the future, they seem to be run like a hobbyist gaming clan forum.

JackFr• 13 years ago

More information about the 'incident' would allow readers to make an informed judgement about whether this was reasonable behavior or not.

danpalmer4• 13 years ago

FWIW, this is one of only a few 'bad' DO incidents I've seen, among many very positive things.

As a DO user for over a year, I can say I am mostly very happy with the service I have received, although I hope they issue a statement about this, apologising to the author and pledging to review their policies on this.

mark212• 13 years ago

Same here. I've been very pleased with their service but DO is way out of line here. Shutting down content based on a single complaint, without a court order or any kind of injunction -- and then saying that the customer has to get a court order from a NY court to keep it open? Exactly the opposite of what I expect from a VPS.

OafTobark• 13 years ago

Some of the bad I've read in the past couple months alone are bad enough that no amount of positives base on loose reviews of recent users is going to counter the few bads.

viraptor• 13 years ago

It's very cheap and very fast - ideal for testing your deployment scripts. I would never run a live service from there however. (you can't even do realistic HA on their service without involving some third-party for being the front-end)

flavor8• 13 years ago

I'm quite happy with them. I run two production servers and a development server on them. Way more barebones than the AWS ecosystem, but significantly cheaper, which gives me a better margin in my maintenance agreements with clients.

nbevans• 13 years ago

Solution: Stop using a 2-bit cloud provider.

But none of this would have happened if the article author realised that companies all over the world are doing this. In the UK there are even "zero hour contracts". Welcome to capitalism and life not being fair :)

Other than the Googler clearly being an unsympathetic simpleton. I'd hazard a guess that almost all other permies at Google, or any company, would be equally as disinterested and unversed in the subject at hand. It simply doesn't come on to the average, particularly the "well employed", person's radar.

macspoofing11• 13 years ago

Am I the only one who sees Digital Ocean as acting ethically here?

This guy is a jerk. He harassed a guy, because the guy works at Google, into giving him his opinion about a semi-controversial topic in a private forum. Then he writes a blog hit-piece in which he explicitly identifies him and disparages him for the opinion he gave! I don't know if he has a legal right to do this, but you don't just do things like that. This Googler is not a spokesperson for the company. He's not in a public forum. He's just some guy who works at Google as a developer, who gave you his opinion "off the record", and you do something like that!? He could lose his job over this if somebody at Google PR overreacts. He may have a family, a mortgage, car payments, school debts, and without any reason, you decided to just screw him over. Don't do things like that!!!! Be nice!

All DigitalOcean asked him to do is to anonymize references to this Googler. This is the ethical move because this jerk didn't get the Googler's permission to have him "on the record". Depending on your jurisdiction, you are in a legal grey area anyway.

voidr6• 13 years ago

It doesn't matter if they were ethical or not, what they did is not right. They are not law enforcement. If everybody would be allowed to enforce the law, then I would be free to shoot you in the head just because you made a negative comment about my cat, because I feel that's ethical.

perlpimp• 13 years ago

I totally concur if a group of people decides to go all out in asshattery, the worst thing is for business is to participate - they become partial which is never good when you start taking sides in this sort of thing.

If you get court order to take a page down do that - probably because it is illegal. IMO the more drama the more your business is visible. For one I heard very good things about Digital Ocean - however I am very libertian minded and I think whatever people go going between themselves - they should figure it out. If things turn criminal let police deal with it.

untothebreach5• 13 years ago

What 'law' are they enforcing here? They are enforcing their own TOS, which is perfectly within their right. I'm not saying this is the right thing for them to do, but he is using their service, so they have a right to enforce their TOS. He is perfectly able to move his blog post, unedited, to another VPS provider if he does not like what they are asking him to do.

macspoofing11• 13 years ago

It doesn't matter if they were ethical or not, what they did is not right.

Ethics matter to me. And they matter to many people. This guy is pure bully and I feel bad for the Googler. I'm glad DO stepped in and politely asked him to anonymize his post.

danso3• 13 years ago

I sympathize with the Googler, in that his comments may not have been written and polished by a PR person, but they weren't at all as offensive or insensitive as the OP hyped them to be, especially given the constraints of the "meatspace".

But look at what you just wrote. That complaint has been raised against Google many times, because Google's index captures not only what you say in public, but what others say about you, even if you feel that it is misleading. For example, if a news story comes out about me being implicated in a crime, and 1 week later, I'm completely exonerated...but whoever wrote the headline used poorer SEO, and fewer people cared 1 week later...Google, via algorithm, may rank the outdated story higher.

There's very little recourse because, on technical grounds alone, it is tricky to do. But in a "moral" sense, once you make that move for someone, how do you argue that you don't do it for someone else in a similar situation?

The Googler spoke in a place that would not legally be considered private and he is not naive about technology. Is the OP a jerk? Sure. But that's not the topic here....the topic is, would Digital Ocean have been a jerk to say "Sorry buddy, but we can't just take a blog down because you regret your comments"?

IMO, No. And it's not because DO is a jerk. Anymore than Google is for not taking down clearly harmful -- but not illegal -- results. As Matt Cutts put it:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/remove-page-from-google/

*Unfortunately there’s not much I can do. The page you pointed out is not spam, and pretty much the only removals (at least in the U.S., which is what I know about) that we do for legal reasons are if a court orders us. We typically say that if person A doesn’t like a webpage B, only removing page B out of Google’s search results doesn’t do any good because webpage B is still there (e.g. it can be found by going to it directly or through other search engines). In that sense, the presence of that page in Google’s index is just reflecting the fact that the page exists on the wider web....There you have it. People usually aren’t happy to hear that reply, but I hope they can understand the reasoning behind it.

So if you're talking about ethics, what DO did here, IMO, crossed a line, because now it sets a very low bar for what is privacy and what is defamation. If the OP quoted the Googler correctly...and the Googler offered his opinion knowing that it was being read...he may not like how his comments were interpreted or published, but he doesn't have legal recourse.

For the record, "off the record" has no real legal standing. It's a term reporters use to set the boundaries with their sources...if they break it, then it's unlikely sources will talk to those reporters again. In this case, of course, the Googler can exercise that right to not speak to the OP again. But it really shouldn't be up to DO to intervene on his behalf in such a ham-fisted way.

macspoofing11• 13 years ago

That complaint has been raised against Google many times, because Google's index captures not only what you say in public, but what others say about you, even if you feel that it is misleading.

What does have to do with anything?!

josephlord9• 13 years ago

All DigitalOcean asked him to do was to give them editorial control over his blog. That isn't a small thing to me.

At a quick glance it looks like a public forum (which has a bearing on how I view the ethics of the situation although even if it was private I don't think DO should act). When you are asked a question about your employer in public you are speaking for them and if you say something dumb that your company doesn't like that is your action and responsibility not someone who reports it. When I worked for a large company I used to speak (and particularly write online) very carefully except when truly in private. I also don't see any reference to anything being "off the record" so I don't see why you assume it wasn't "on the record".

Would I write that article like that? No. Do I think DO should claim editorial control over it? Hell no.

Maybe DO could request the blog owner provide contact details (I can't see any on the current site) so that legal action could be brought directly against them as the publisher rather than against DO. Not offering such may be reasonable grounds to have DO demand editorial changes or cease service.

jacques_chester9• 13 years ago

All DigitalOcean asked him to do was to give them editorial control over his blog. That isn't a small thing to me.

A nitpick. They didn't ask for editorial control; they asked for observance of the Terms of Service, with the option on their side to discontinue service. Nothing in the ToS gives DigitalOcean any right to editorial control and nothing in their communications says "give us control".

It's a binary proposition. Stick to the agreement, or the agreement is off.

macspoofing11• 13 years ago

I don't see why you assume it wasn't "on the record".

Because it's a nice thing to do when you're dealing with private citizens.

We're talking ethics here, and the thing about ethics is that they can essentially be boiled down to "don't be an asshole".

This blog post can seriously hurt someone who never asked for it and doesn't deserve it. Why not be a little bit fair? If you're not sure if it's "off the record", ask. If you can't ask because the party 'muted' you (!!), assume it is 'off the record' - why? Because that's the ethical thing to do.

I look at this author, and all I see is a bully.

It's good that you always have the presence of mind to censor yourself accordingly. Clearly the Googler made a big mistake because he didn't expect somebody to write an entire blog post from some off-the-cuff remarks he made in a chat room.

Do I think DO should claim editorial control over it?

They don't. They didn't change his blog post. They asked this guy to anonymize his post because it looks like slander and defamation which is against their TOS. That's how I interpret it as well. AND IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO!

jasonlotito5• 13 years ago

That's a small minded way to look at this. Consider for a moment that now Digital Ocean has just signaled that you can't reliably host anything on DO for more than just technical reasons. Post something someone doesn't like, despite it being true? It can be removed.

Let that sink in, because your comment is calling out the OP for being a jerk. You are making claims, legal claims, such as "he harassed a guy" as if they he was already guilty of the crime of harassment.

heavymark• 13 years ago

I fear the same. Post anything that DO doesn't like or one of their friends do not like they can take you down. If DO wants to censor honest publications whether legal by their TOS or not then their future customers need to be aware of this as I for one would have never thought it was possible unless doing something illegal with a website.

macspoofing11• 13 years ago

Post something someone doesn't like, despite it being true? It can be removed.

Which service would allow you to just post anything you like?

chillingeffect3• 13 years ago

Yup, after hearing good things about DO on here lately, I was hoping to give them a try.

This kind of fracas, though - in which ONE person is able to fabricate a story and exercise tyrannical control via proxy - dissuades me heavily from that. Maybe if I were to use DO, one of my competitors could trump up some charges and persuade them to drop my "droplet"? Do I want to deal with that possibility?

Hell, I feel nervous just posting this here, now! Who knows what they'll do to me in the future based on this text! (/me copies this post, logs out, creates new user id.)

This leads me to think that in terms of "digital society," we are still behind Hannurabi's Law and even Sharia Law. We are in the Wild West and power in the form of oligarchy is the rule. I hope more of us geeks read up on their philosophy. [1]

[1]http://www.philclassics.libsyn.com/

Welcome to the bottom of the pile, DO. It could have been magic.

leephillips2• 13 years ago

Although this guy is clearly a jerk, I'm crossing DO off my list of providers that I'm willing to use. I sometimes write controversial articles on my own website. These articles can make certain groups of people very angry and have elicited a range of responses up to and including me getting sued for defamation by two public figures (they lost). I have no interest in fighting with my hosting provider in addition to everything else, and don't expect to as long as I don't use their servers for anything illegal.

andrewfong5• 13 years ago

I have no interest in fighting with my hosting provider in addition to everything else

This is really the issue here. The hosting provider should err on the side of its customers as opposed to random third parties. There are a lot of edge cases on what can or should be legally hosted. The hosting provider may have the legal right to take down controversial content, but it's an absolutely cowardly thing to do. The free speech-friendly approach would be to side with its customers UNTIL the third party has obtained a court order that the content be taken down, rather than insist that their own customers get a court order insisting that the content stay up.

scarmig• 13 years ago

All of what you said misses the point entirely. Was the original blog post stupid? Certainly. Is it irresponsible and probably harmful to a guy who did nothing wrong besides saying something maladroitly? Yes.

I don't care though: all of those things are well-within the law. If DigitalOcean's TOS means that they personally police content, then I'm out.

27182818284• 13 years ago

This is how I see it too. If Google or the guy had a problem and contacted the blog, and then Digital Ocean, then it would seem fair for Digital Ocean to maybe step in depending on rules and whatnot, but to pseudo-personally step in and ask that the person's name be made anonymous feels like nepotism at work.

gnu8• 13 years ago

I think you are the Googler who was harassed, based on your distorted justification for Digital Ocean's unethical behavior and the fact that you don't see it as unethical.

Here's a major reason why Digital Ocean was unethical: they took unilateral action based on a complaint from some googler transmitted to a highly placed Digital Ocean executive who the googler knew personally. If that's an acceptable resolution to someone being mean to someone on the internet, then is Digital Ocean going to provide the entire world with personal access to this executive, in case one of their customers is ever mean to anyone else? No. So it's a recovery only available to privileged technocrats.

This is by no means the only reason why Digital Ocean's action is unacceptable, but it deserves more consideration. Google itself is well known for being impossible to deal with unless you know someone on the inside. This googler should carefully consider whether he was really the wronged party here, or whether he is part of a larger problem.

macspoofing11• 13 years ago

I think you are the Googler who was harassed

I have no connection to this Googler, to author, to Google or to DO. Believe it or not.

they took unilateral action based on a complaint from some googler transmitted to a highly placed Digital Ocean executive who the googler knew personally.

They took unilateral action because they own the service, and maybe they took this action because it's quite evident what happened just by reading his post.

And all they did was ask him to remove identifying information, that's it. That's a very prudent and reasonable request. Reddit, for example, had major issues with vigilante groups forming after some inflammatory posting which also named some private individuals. More often than not, it led to innocent people being harassed. I've just re-read the original post, and it's a total personal attack against a private individual for no good reason. This bully went so far as to find out where the Googler lives.

The entire conspiracy theory around the fact that some DO executive may or may not know the Googler personally and that's why all this happened, is just some hand-waving speculation. I don't know anyone at DO and I don't know this Googler, and yet, I think this was the right move.

darkarmani4• 13 years ago

Am I the only one who sees Digital Ocean as acting ethically here?

Yes. Digital Ocean is just providing his VPS. Why should they be involved at all? If i say something about Scientology are they going to kill my VPS because they happen to like Scientology? What if i criticize anti-vaccination supporters?

farginay• 13 years ago

Freedom of press is guaranteed only to those who own one. -- A. J. Liebling

hect0r2• 13 years ago

Freedom of press and freedom of speech are complete red herrings here.

DO is a private company and they are free to agree to whatever they want in their contracts. They don't owe anyone any obligation other than to adhere to the agreements they form with their customers.

gaius• 13 years ago

This is no different from asking someone a question, slyly videoing their answer on your Google Glass, and uploading it to Youtube.

darkarmani4• 13 years ago

And then having your ISP drop you as a customer.

MaysonL• 13 years ago

Did Digital Ocean just lose any DMCA safe harbor status it had, by policing client content in this way?

awk23• 13 years ago

This is basically a ploy by someone who is seeking publicity for his attack on this other individual by taking his words out of context and altering their meaning.

Here is a previous submission of HN of the disputed post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6984487

http://www.firstlooksy.com/frustrated-googler-speaks-out-on-...

His is a repost under another date of the same bat-shit crazy "nothing" that makes Gawker seem reasonable.

The author is an attention monger who probably has some sort of a personal vendetta against the person he is attacking, I suggest not to take his account of things on face value.

gizzlon2• 13 years ago

Does their TOS really say you can't embarrass anyone? That seems totally retarded, some people get embarrassed about the stupidest things.

I guess as a DO customer I should have read their TOS more carefully =/

callesgg• 13 years ago

He is a dickhead and Digital ocean might be a bit contradicting when allowing harassment on the forum. That was however harassment towards his alias/username not to a specific individual.

I still think digital ocean did the right thing and contacted him, And asked him to fix the ToS breakage he committed.

donniezazen• 13 years ago

When companies decide to get into personal matter of two unknown individuals which could have been easily went unnoticed, DO did a disfavor of putting them both on face of social media bringing bad words for both themselves and Travis Collins.

zobzu2• 13 years ago

freedom of speech much

camus2• 13 years ago

freedom of speech protects your speech from the government , not from a private business where you host your blog. Did they shut down his blog ? no.

colinbartlett• 13 years ago

It saddens me to see this petty bullshit on the front page of Hacker News.

fuziontech• 13 years ago

Get this off of HN. This blog doesn't deserve the publicity.

boskonyc• 13 years ago

This clown covertly recorded (spied on) an established engineer who was casually conversing in a well-known if niche and informal chat room. He then decided he was justified to publish the excerpts of the covertly recorded conversation as if they were journalistic quotes provided to a media outlet. This is the most pathetic kind of muckraking by a would-be engineer drawing attention to himself by attacking an established figure. Unwise, perhaps, for Digital Ocean to TOS him like this, but certainly within their rights as a service provider. As for the original poster, he may in turn feel violated by DO's TOS, but the violation of privacy he committed is without question much more severe.

dmdeller• 13 years ago

For the sake of comparison, it seems worth mentioning a hosting provider that takes an explicit stance in their policies against things like this happening, to the extent that they actually named their company around the idea: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/help/abuse

Unfortunately, NFSN's technology stack is so far behind the times that it's hard to use them for much of anything these days. I'm not affiliated with them, just a long time customer.

ddebernardy• 13 years ago

It's surprising that wordpress.com leaves this petty post up. OP is likely violating their ToS too...

rsynnott2• 13 years ago

How's that surprising? Most blogging providers (Wordpress, Blogger etc.) and indeed large ISPs in general are pretty tolerant of things that are merely potentially offensive to an individual, as opposed to libellous.

zedpm• 13 years ago

Given his sensationalist writing style, I'm not at all surprised to see that it was a Gawker piece he questioned Travis Collins about. Gawker is Yellow Journalism[1] and as such deserves no response.

The larger issue makes for interesting discussion, however. I believe he's right that the complain ought to have been directed at the author initially, rather than at the hosting provider. I doubt it would have accomplished anything to complain to this individual, but it is nonetheless the correct procedure.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

hect0r2• 13 years ago

All DO are asking the blog author to do is to just honour the Terms of Service that he himself agreed to. I don't see any controversy here; it is all very simple.

Maybe, the blog author is attention-seeking and trying to manufacture outrage by trying to cast himself as a "victim". The real victim, if there is one, is the Googler who has had his conversations in a closed forum relayed to the world and editorialised by someone who obviously didn't explain his true intents. Anyway, if the blog author disagrees and doesn't feel that he wants to honour his contract then he can just move his blog or, as DO suggest, launch legal action and get an injunction. I suspect though he will just skulk off and look for some other controversy to rant about.

jasonlotito5• 13 years ago

Replace DO with AWS and the Googler with Jeff Bezos, and the blog format with the NYTimes.

Sidis2• 13 years ago

...and it wouldn't make any difference.

If the NY Times signed an agreement with AWS that stated that they couldn't do X against anyone and, at a later date, they did X against Jeff Bezos then AWS would be well within their rights to demand that either NYT adhere to their agreement or leave.

I note that you use the example of two related entities (AWS and Jeff Bezos). Are you implying that there is a relationship between DO and the Googler equivalent to that between Jeff and AWS?

smazero• 13 years ago

All a bit petty and grubby isn't it? I don't think the claims of libel or defamation really hold much water given the evidence presented (I am not a lawyer), but it seems to me DOs clause of avoiding embarrassment could cover pretty much anything.

That said the tone and approach of the original poster's blog posts leave an unpleasant taste in my mouth in that way that something can be technically correct, whilst simultaneously feeling morally repugnant; more self aggrandising than injustice fighting, and it's interesting how keen the original poster is to explicitly name and shame the random dude from Google, while remaining conveniently anonymous himself.

Bah, I feel grubby just from having commented on this.

jdhendrickson• 13 years ago

How many times is this story going to be killed and reposted?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7015191

I get that he is trying to get this to go viral and thereby bring attention to his pathetic muck raking but maybe a ban for gaming the system is in order I believe it's been submitted three times and killed or flagged each time, how many times can you submit the same lame, self aggrandizing content?

ommunist• 13 years ago

Leave DO. Go to goip.com, publish whatever you want. Its Netherlands.

To those who say the guy is jerk and his blog does not deserve the publicity. This is typical orwellian situation with some animals more equal than others. DO hosts a lot of things and does not police them, but this one was voluntary attempt of editorial control (censorship) and it is not acceptable from infrastructure provider. As it seems, DO is not behaving ethically (nor does the guy).

Sidis2• 13 years ago

So, let's be clear:

1. The blogger signed up with DO and agreed to some TOS that prohibit certain types of activities.

2. He then, by his own admission, lurks in a chatroom.

3. He asks a Googler a question but does not disclose what he intends to do with it. By his own admission, he had no plans to write a piece.

4. He takes the Googler's comments, contorts them, and constructs a poorly written screed in which he, amongst various other calumnies against good taste, investigates the home address of the Googler and uses that to add dramatic effect to his hit piece.

5. The hoster -- whose TOS he explicitly agreed with at the start -- asks him politely to edit his piece to comply with the agreement. They seem to only require him to remove the personal identifying information.

6. Despite the fact that removing the name of the person would not really diminish the albeit half-baked and poorly thought out idea that the author is trying to get promote, he acts as though he is the one that should feel aggrieved and outraged for removing the Googler's name.

7. By doing so, he reveals his true intent. He isn't interested in making a point about Google; he is interested primarily in presenting the said Googler in a negative light and personally maligning him or inciting others to malign him.

Or, the shorter version, the blog author is an odious and obnoxious attention-whore and troll who is trying to build a reputation by demolishing the reputation of an innocent engineer; and then who is so blinded by his desire to get attention that he doesn't realise that he looks like an ignorant jackass by whinging and whining that DO are asking him to simply adhere to the TOS that he himself agreed to.

macspoofing11• 13 years ago

Exactly. What's this bully's motivation? Does he want this Googler to be fired? To be disciplined at work? To apologize publicly? Or simply to embarrass him publicly and move on to something else?

I don't know anything about DO, but it aggravates me that they are being disparaged here when all they did was make a reasonable request.

Most services frown upon posting identifying information in certain kinds of stories. Reddit, for example, had issues with vigilantism against innocent people after certain inflammatory posts.

DanBC• 13 years ago

DO are not unusual in having AUP/TOS that is more restrictive than the law allows.

A number of people here are saying that they feel uncomfortable with DO's stance, but plenty of other providers would come close to that level of policing.

Luckily there are options if you want someone to just host stuff with tolerant AUP/TOS.

Tldr: contracts mean stuff.

Digital Ocean said it would shut down my blog if I didn’t edit a blog post.

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