8 ms·

Cloudflare has dropped the Daily Stormer

• sdwisely 9y ago
  context appears to be: Cloudflare removing The Daily Stormer, some kind of far right website? note: not particularly keen to research what it is, just going off what I can gather from the twitter comments.
  • s_kilk 9y ago
    It's a neo-nazi, white supremacist website.
    • reitanqild 9y ago
      Yep, and in this case it is actual neo-nazis, not just annoying or politically incorrect people.
      • s_kilk 9y ago
        Like, legitimate seig-heil, gas-the-jews nazis.
  • zorpner 9y ago
    The site is a hate site for neo-Nazis. In the wake of the recent Nazi march, they were kicked off their previous registrar (GoDaddy), then off Google, and settled on Cloudflare. A lot of folks (myself included) assumed that CF would allow them to remain, as they have with many sites in the past. However, it appears that something has convinced them that it's not worth it to be the facilitator of a mouthpiece for genocide.
    • reitanqild 9y ago
      Agree: shut them down! Edit: or maybe even better: log access and visit every contributor at home. Glorifying nationalsocialism isn't "wrongthink" - it is conspiracy to genocide. I normally try to be civil. And I'm normally defending free speak including - of course in my opinion - Trump supporters and gamergate even if I don’t like Trump and don’t care about GG. However anyone who glorifies nazism obviously either should be imprisoned (if necessary you need to make the missing laws [0], some European countries have them already) or sent to mandatory psychological follow ups the next few years in case they are just very dumb and uninformed and not necessarily evil. I guess everyone who cares about history knows we fought a world war to stop this cancer. [0]: something about conspiracy to genocide or something.
      • Frondo 9y ago
        I really don't get the downvotes. This isn't just a right-leaning political group, these are neo-nazis, complete with the salute, the swastikas, the whole nine yards. Why would anyone want to go to bat for them? We fought a war against this ideology. We've seen where it goes.
        • RandVal30142 9y ago
          Some people here seem to have a real hard-on for white power. They've been spree downvoting critical & informative commentary on the topic.
          • reitanqild 9y ago
            Eh, before i get too popular there are two sides the recent trainwreck threads. Not everything has been very enlightened on either side, sadly.
            • RandVal30142 9y ago
              I'm not commenting on the trainwreck that is the open commentary(ha), but specifically the spree downvotes on inane or just plain informative comments. Haven't really seen activity like that in other threads unless they are bringing in a lot of out-of-site new users. But this low volume thread apparently has a queue of users ready to knock down people responding to an inquiry about what Daily Stormer is..
              • reitanqild 9y ago
                I see, you are talking about this particular thread. Lets hope the mods can take a look at it and remove their downvote privilege. threads unless they are bringing in a lot of out-of-site new users. Not sure if I understood you but new users cannot downvote.
                • RandVal30142 9y ago
  • yincrash 9y ago
    It is a self-identified neo-Nazi website. It takes its name from the Nazi propaganda "Der Stürmer". You can read more about it on the SPLC page for its founder: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/andrew-anglin https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...
    • sdwisely 9y ago
      Thanks for providing more context (and everyone else). I'm honestly speechless after reading that.
  • RandVal30142 9y ago
    This is a Nazi site that regularly urged on violence against 'leftists & Jews' then later after Charlotteville called the Nazi's murder victim a slut.
    • Boothroid 9y ago
      If they broke the law then each instance should be dealt with. We are not on the precipice of war, no matter what the MSM would have you think - until we are I think the tactics of war i.e. censorship are not the answer.
      • RandVal30142 9y ago
        >We are not on the precipice of war, no matter what the MSM would have you think It is not "MSM" stating anything like this but the Nazis. This is Matthew Heimbach, the Nazi who attacked someone during a Trump rally[1], cheering on the stabbings of others calling it a war: http://archive.is/ZBOOa http://archive.is/ZBOOa They believe they are at war -right now-. This is not "MSM" but the Nazis themselves stating this after engaging in stabbings. Matthew Heimbach was also at Charlottesville[2] as documented by Vice. Nazis who overtly state they are at war with others engaged in yet another violent attack, this one large scale enough to capture "MSM" attention. >I think the tactics of war i.e. censorship are not the answer. Again, this is not "MSM" causing this or furthering it, it is the Nazis. Their tactics of include censorship, and things like stabbings/ramming attacks. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-guilty-in-trump-rally-case/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-... [2] https://youtu.be/P54sP0Nlngg?t=10m11s https://youtu.be/P54sP0Nlngg?t=10m11s
      • reitanqild 9y ago
        Ok, this is a valid viewpoint as well as long as you find a way to do it. For me though it is even simpler: advocating nazism means you are planning to kill.
• dogecoinbase 9y ago
  I'm surprised and impressed by this. Cloudflare has historically been a company which wants to pretend it's a dumb pipe from content to users, but the content is coming from them in every way that matters -- in particular, every method for figuring out how to address problematic content will lead you to speaking with Cloudflare. At least they supposedly don't pass your contact info back to their clients anymore.
• r1ch 9y ago
  Very interesting. Cloudflare have always positioned themselves as a neutral network provider and have not policed the content they serve. Many not so nice parts of the web such as DDoS-for-hire sites are protected by Cloudflare - I wonder if this signals a more general change in attitude?
  • x1798DE 9y ago
    Yeah, this is downright shocking to me. They make a free speech argument when it comes to censoring criminal commercial content, but political content they're OK with shutting down? Seems exactly backwards from what most companies do. Not that I want them messing with any content, but it's quite self-evident that nazi ideology isn't somehow so insanely viral that it needs to be kept away from people rather than rightly ridiculed on its "merits". If you're fine with a hands off approach when it comes to people actively conspiring to DDoS people, you should be fine with nazis saluting each other and sucking Hitler's ghastly member or whatever it is they get up to.
    • reitanqild 9y ago
      They make a free speech argument when it comes to censoring criminal commercial content, but political content they're OK with shutting down? We're talking about nazism here. Nazism is a crime in a number of countries. Europeans hate nazis since we are reminded everywhere about what they did last time. This is coming from someone that thinks other would classify him as clearly right-leaning i.e. values individual freedom, conservative economic policies etc. Actually it gets better because I see nazism (short for national socialism) as just an criminally evil form of normal socialism (strong national state, very little individial freedom).
      • kbenson 9y ago
        > I see nazism (short for national socialism) as just an criminally evil form of normal socialism (strong national state, very little individial freedom). The political spectrum isn't a line, it's a circle. Go far enough either direction and you wrap around somewhat to the other side, but generally by taking ideals past the point of common sense, much less usefulness.
• rdl 9y ago
  Yes -- apparently they dropped every zone from their account, and ended rebill, so this was an administrative action. Technically the Cloudflare TOS is written in the normal weasely way: https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/ https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/ TERMINATION "(j) any use of the Service deemed at Cloudflare’s sole discretion to be prohibited" -- so it's within their TOS rights.
  • iooi 9y ago
    This needs to be higher, if what you're saying is correct, CloudFlare didn't drop them because of who they are. Do you have a source?
    • rdl 9y ago
      You misunderstand. It was that Cloudflare administratively closed the account, rather than that the account-holder or a third party did it.
      • lurker69 9y ago
        Cloudflare also kicks people off when they get ddos'd for too long. Two days ago whe GoDady booted them, and Jester was running campaign against Daily Stormer, CloudFlares statement was that they wont bot them based on brigading flagging.
        • lurker69 9y ago
          I stand corrected: Andrew Auernheimer · @weev A Cloudflare executed says they ditched us because "email on this is massive." So much for an anti-DDoS company. The only traffic you have to send them just has to be in the form of valid SMTP, and they'll kill your site. https://gab.ai/weev/posts/10791974 https://gab.ai/weev/posts/10791974
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• wnevets 9y ago
  And with net neutrality being attacked ironically by trump, ISPs might start doing the same.
• doubleshame 9y ago
  Is this a reliable source?
  • yincrash 9y ago
    Yes
  • ceejayoz 9y ago
    The poster is a Twitter-verified journalist for a major news site. I've issues with Salon's journalism at times, but it's at least a fairly reputable source.
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • deleted 9y ago
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  • stevenh 9y ago
    No. It's a guy with an itchy tweet finger who wants to make headlines first and ask questions later.
    • runesoerensen 9y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922
      • stevenh 9y ago
        Matthew Sheffield‏'s belief in the claim was not based on hard evidence at the time, but rather based entirely on two tweets from white supremacists known for trolling. He parroted the claim in the off-chance that it might be true. He's a gambler, not a reliable source.
        • runesoerensen 9y ago
          Fair point and I agree that the tweet on it's own didn't sufficiently back up the claim. I posted the link in response to your comment for other readers who might stumble on this discussion. In my case I did research the claim on my own and verified with other sources prior to submitting, as I certainly don't want to participate in spreading false information :)
• forapurpose 9y ago
  Cloudflare has been accused of actively supporting hate groups, not just being a dumb, neutral pipe for them: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-serve-up-hate-on-the-web https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-serv... Excerpt (from May): Cloudflare, a prominent San Francisco outfit, provides services to neo-Nazi sites like The Daily Stormer, including giving them personal information on people who complain about their content. EDIT: Also: In a post, the site’s [Daily Stormer's] architect, Andrew Auernheimer, said he had personal relationships with people at Cloudflare, and they had assured him the company would work to protect the site in a variety of ways — including by not turning over data to European courts. Cloudflare has data centers in European countries such as Germany, which have strict hate speech and privacy laws. Company officials offered differing responses when asked about Auernheimer’s post. Kramer, Cloudflare’s general counsel, said he had no knowledge of employee conversations with Auernheimer. Later, in an email, the company said Auernheimer was a well-known hacker, and that as a result at least one senior company official “has chatted with him on occasion and has spoken to him about Cloudflare’s position on not censoring the internet.
  • ceejayoz 9y ago
    "Actively supporting" is an inaccurate characterization of that article. It alleges they were such a dumb, neutral pipe that their processes sent the personal contact information of complainants to the perpetrators. Dumb, sure, but active support? No.
    • forapurpose 9y ago
      Please see my update to my comment, which I think went up after your comment.
      • ceejayoz 9y ago
        I don't doubt weev knows a person or two at CloudFlare, but it sounds like he's relaying their default position - they don't generally moderate content and fight court orders aimed at their users.
• milankragujevic 9y ago
  This just seems weird given their previous stances, but it’s their network so it’sfine they did it, but they have lost all protections of an ISP and became a curator. I stopped using them, and I can’t pretend that I would’ve contributed anything to their bottom line, but I know my future clients won’t either.
  • ceejayoz 9y ago
    > they have lost all protections of an ISP and became a curator YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, etc. ban people without losing their safe harbor provisions. Not sure why you'd think it's any different in CloudFlare's situation.
    • milankragujevic 9y ago
      Maybe not legally but obviously morally at least in my eyes. I think we should protect all content, but I’m not saying it’s illegal for them to drop Stormer.
      • Frondo 9y ago
        Private businesses refusing to do business with Nazis? Great! When did this become a moral gray area?
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
        • Boothroid 9y ago
          The problem is that if the political winds were blowing the other way it could be your favoured group whose beliefs are deemed beyond the pale. We set a dangerous precedent when we outlaw speech we don't like.
          • kbenson 9y ago
            This isn't outlawing. As the GP noted it's a private company. I have no obligation to be part of the platform for a position I don't support. It's not censorship when I don't give my support. It is when I try to exert control over others. It is when the government exerts that control over us all.
• thriftwy 9y ago
  I wonder if Stormer should push to e.g. ZeroNet. Which is a cool project I should check out more often. Unfortunately, there's not much content of any kind.
• nieksand 9y ago
  Does this active intervention based on site content put Cloudflare's DMCA safe harbor protection at risk? Given the 9th Circuit's shenanigans I'm not sure the answer is a definite "no". http://www.focusonthedata.com/2017/05/federal-appeals-court-weakens-dmca-safe-harbor-protection-moderated-online-content/ http://www.focusonthedata.com/2017/05/federal-appeals-court-...
  • nickysielicki 9y ago
    There was a thread yesterday about the registrars dropping them, and this was the big question my mind, too. To any lawyers and/or law-aware people who know the answer as it relates to Cloudflare, I'd also be interested to learn about how/if it applies to registrars.
  • duskwuff 9y ago
    Of course not. Choosing whether to retain or terminate a customer does not qualify as moderating content. The case you're citing was a very different situation. Postings on the LiveJournal community in question, including the ones containing the infringing content, were being actively approved by LiveJournal employees and volunteers. This situation wouldn't have applied to most LiveJournal communities -- ONTD is a special case, as it's sponsored directly by LJ -- and certainly cannot apply to a web host or ISP.
• aw3c2 9y ago
  Where can we report other sites to Cloudflare that we feel they should stop supporting with their services for ethical reasons?
  • ceejayoz 9y ago
    https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form
  • reitanqild 9y ago
    Please reserve this for actual nazis unless you want everyone to report anything from PETA and Greenpeace to who knows.
    • lurker69 9y ago
      There are AntiFa, BLM and even ISIS sites on Cloudflare.
      • reitanqild 9y ago
        As much as I think antifa are criminals they aren't conspiring to kill all of us.
        • lurker69 9y ago
          They sure have less humor on their web pages than Daily Stormes has. And dont forget antifa painted graffiti in Berkeley saying "Liberaly get the bullet too" Oh and New Jersey DHS recently declared them domestic terrorist group.
          • hsod 9y ago
            what does humor have to do with it?
• RandVal30142 9y ago
  A site to watch is Rootbocks. They have been the fundraising site of choice for white nationalists & Nazis involved in violence. The latest fundraiser is from the Nazis involved in the murder of Heather Heyer[1]. One of those attending has cheered stabbings before[2], calling it a war they were engaged in. His name is Matthew Heimbach, he is a Nazi, and he has already been in legal trouble for assaulting someone at a Trump rally[3]. Rootbocks recently lost their original host[4] after people realized kicking Nazi's asses was as easy as contacting unknowing companies to detail who their customers were[5]. After searching around for new hosts they appeared to of moved to a different domain, now using Rootbocks.co instead of .com until they are able to migrate the .com domain. These types are to be treated like sites pushing malware, their hosts are to be contacted and pressured before their IP space can be tainted by clusters of Nazis & others promoting terrorism and violent attacks. If clickfraud is serious enough to pressure hosts into removing users then Nazis urging the purging of 'Jews and genetic filth' via violent means surely counts. [1] https://rootbocks.com/projects/unite-right-legal-defense-fund/ https://rootbocks.com/projects/unite-right-legal-defense-fun... [2] http://archive.is/ZBOOa http://archive.is/ZBOOa [3] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-guilty-in-trump-rally-case/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-... [4] https://twitter.com/RootbocksDotCom/status/897214109913141249 https://twitter.com/RootbocksDotCom/status/89721410991314124... [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024767
• joecot 9y ago
  When I saw Daily Stormer had relocated to a .ru address, I noticed that the first thing displayed upon opening the site was a full screen notice that Cloudflare was checking my browser. I understand Cloudflare generaly trying to be a neutral provider, but if the first thing people will see when gawking at a Neo-Nazi hate site is your logo in the center of the screen, it's not a big surprise that Cloudflare decided keeping them would be bad for their PR.
  • jhanschoo 9y ago
    On the other hand, it seems to me that minimum censorship is vital to CloudFlare's partnerships and business. It probably has many datacenters located in questionable regimes, and any hint that it performed moral discrimination would probably attract attention from govts. wanting to pressure censorship on CloudFlare, which would be an avoidable drain of resources.
• stevenh 9y ago
  Why is Matthew Sheffield asserting this so strongly? Did Cloudflare make a public statement indicating they deliberately stepped in to drop the site? I can't find one. The content of the tweet merely makes it seem like the guy's plan simply expired and he failed to renew it. If Cloudflare were actually interested in avoiding alt-right dumpster fires, then I think they would also stop protecting sites like 4chan and 8ch.
  • kbenson 9y ago
    I've often wondered how much of 4chan is actually alt-right and how much is using it as an affect for the lulz?
    • DanBC 9y ago
      Also known as the Alf Garnett effect. When you're telling jokes about killing The Jews you're probably just a nazi, not some edgy ironic satirist.
      • Boothroid 9y ago
        So the thought policing extends to humour now does it? Apparently so!
        • kbenson 9y ago
          Your comment makes no sense based on the current conversation, or if it does, you didn't provide enough context to explain and contribute. At least one downvote was explicitly because of that, and nothing to do with your position.
      • kbenson 9y ago
        I get your point, but I'm not sure if it still applies if the joke isn't relying on support for your position, but vehement opposition. And I mean that in the literal sense of I'm really not sure. This type of humor, if not new, seems to have at least been extremely fringe in the past.
      • 9y ago
• yflu 9y ago
  Free speech necessarily does have limits, obviously, otherwise I could claim my ddosing your web server or my uploading of CP was simply me expressing my free speech. Does my free speech only end when my actions infringe other laws? Or should my free speech overrule the consequences other laws? People want to claim free speech is a moral perogative, not just some words written into a Constitution, but you can't mix unlimited free speech with the real world, at some point, idealism has to give. And I won't say GoDaddy, Google or Cloudflare necessarily should be the ones to draw that line, but someone has to. Something had to give after Charlottesville, and we're see that here.
• tpush 9y ago
  Personally, I think what these sites are doing now(dropping support for websites that distribute nazi propaganda) is the moral thing to do. However, I am bit worried that this seems to happen in response to social media shit storms and not because the people in charge of these companies actually just acquired a moral backbone. Most of the people I subscribe to on Twitter are (American-) left leaning, and in the past when I saw similar shit storms happening (e.g. GamerGate, Milo Y. etc.) I always thought "Good! What these people are doing is awful, so they had it coming." But the recent James Damore thing got me a bit worried. I wasn't fully on board on what was the dominant narrative on Twitter and the like, and was a bit horrified with what conviction I saw people who were espousing a different viewpoint were treated. I guess I worry that corporations and people now bow so easily over social media pressure that in the future they could be easily pressured to do something that morally repugnant or some such. Or maybe that's just how society has always been, and social media just exacerbates it.
  • deleted 9y ago
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• imanewsman 9y ago
  I wrote a bit yesterday about Cloudflare's previous stance on this issue, which has always been that the company does not think it's its place to pick and choose whom it does business with: https://qz.com/1053689/cloudflare-is-the-one-tech-company-still-sticking-by-neo-nazi-websites-like-daily-stormer/ https://qz.com/1053689/cloudflare-is-the-one-tech-company-st... So far, Cloudflare has not made a statement or confirmed in any way that it has dropped Daily Stormer or any other website based on its content. If it does, I expect the confirmation will first come from Cloudflare's official blog: https://blog.cloudflare.com/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/ The action would represent a major philosophical shift in the company's approach to these kinds of issues, and all we have to go on so far is a screenshot of a non-descriptive email, posted on a Gab.ai account that _appears_ to be run by the editor of a neo-Nazi website. https://gab.ai/AndrewAnglin https://gab.ai/AndrewAnglin I'm not suggesting that Cloudflare has or hasn't done anything, just that we don't have a ton of information on this yet.
• TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  Using social pressure to silence certain viewpoints is a terrible precedent to make. Social consensus is a terrible benchmark on whether or not something is bad. It was once consensus that black people were inferior to whites. It was once consensus that socialists were the enemy, and tons of people were pushed out of the labor market for it[1]. Internet corporations bowing to social pressure to silence certain viewpoints is abhorrent. It's starting with Nazis, but chances are good that it won't end there[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism [2] https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392 https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392
  • gremlinsinc 9y ago
    how bout we just silence rhettoric directed at broad groups...regardless of who says it..oh that's pretty much everything that comes out of a Nazi's mouth...so yeah..warranted. Also -- Nazi's aren't far from a terrorist organization should these companies also allow ISIS and Taliban sites to recruit new members on their servers? Because - - censorship!
    • TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      > how bout we just silence rhettoric directed at broad groups By that definition, we should silence any discussion of Democrats, or Republicans, or blacks, or latinos, or whatever "broad group" you'd like to suppress discussion of at the moment. An actual good argument is that we should suppress views that may lead to terrorism. I'm pretty sure it would be easy to argue that Nazi viewpoints can be pretty terroristic. But then where do we draw the line? How do we as a society decide what is allowed and what isn't without opening up the system to exploitation by an authoritarian regime?
  • analogmemory 9y ago
    Wanting specific types of humans dead/removed is a not a valid viewpoint.
  • s_kilk 9y ago
    Less than a century ago we used artillery, machine-guns and nukes to silence the same viewpoints. A little bit of social pressure ain't so bad.
• lurker69 9y ago
  cloudflare also kicks people off when they get ddos'd for too long
• jstalin 9y ago
  I have no problem with this since they're a private company and they can do that with their own services. Dropping an easy target like some racist idiots is one thing... yet Cloudflare apparently has no problem hosting Ripoff Report, a company whose business model is entirely about defaming people online and then extorting them to remove the content. This shittiest of shitty companies that has real-world devastating consequences for people does a lot more damage than some clowns on a racist forum.
• mnm1 9y ago
  For Cloudflare, this is more about PR than morality. The company wants to attract business and kicking these nazis off will make Cloudflare seem like a good company in the eyes of many, while only nazis will see it in a negative light. Retaining DS will do the opposite. There are many more non-nazis than nazis, so from a business perspective it makes sense. Occasionally, business goals and morals do align.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]