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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

by 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.
    - reitanqild 9y ago
      I thought something similar before but it doesn't feel correct.
  - x1798DE 9y ago
    Well, Cloudflare is a US company where no political ideologies are criminal, and I'm personally of the opinion that if your political order is so fragile that it can't survive the free expression of some reprehensible ideas, you've got bigger problems than "those people are saying something awful." Either way, like I said - I was actually fine with them being a dumb pipe. I don't think they should be acting as an arm of the law in the first place, I was just making the point that most companies usually don't make a principled stand on free speech with respect to actual crimes with identifiable victims (e.g. DDoS or even copyright infringement), but then censor someone based on their political ideology / incorrect beliefs.
    - aaomidi 9y ago
      Read about the paradox of tolerance. At some point you need to draw the line. This line is going to be fuzzy as hell, but if you don't you're going to end up with a ton of intolerance.
      - ASalazarMX 9y ago
        "In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
    - reitanqild 9y ago
      I'll give you an upvote for that and continue to disagree in this particular case. (But as I already mentioned I'm well aware that any possibility to censor speech seems likely to be abused.)
  - deleted 9y ago
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lurker69 9y ago
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
duskwuff 9y ago
Disappointingly, this appears to be an unusual special case, and may not reflect any larger change in policy: > The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology. -- https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

by r1ch 9y ago

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.
  - reitanqild 9y ago
    I thought something similar before but it doesn't feel correct.
- x1798DE 9y ago
  Well, Cloudflare is a US company where no political ideologies are criminal, and I'm personally of the opinion that if your political order is so fragile that it can't survive the free expression of some reprehensible ideas, you've got bigger problems than "those people are saying something awful." Either way, like I said - I was actually fine with them being a dumb pipe. I don't think they should be acting as an arm of the law in the first place, I was just making the point that most companies usually don't make a principled stand on free speech with respect to actual crimes with identifiable victims (e.g. DDoS or even copyright infringement), but then censor someone based on their political ideology / incorrect beliefs.
  - aaomidi 9y ago
    Read about the paradox of tolerance. At some point you need to draw the line. This line is going to be fuzzy as hell, but if you don't you're going to end up with a ton of intolerance.
    - ASalazarMX 9y ago
      "In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  - reitanqild 9y ago
    I'll give you an upvote for that and continue to disagree in this particular case. (But as I already mentioned I'm well aware that any possibility to censor speech seems likely to be abused.)
- deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago

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lurker69 9y ago

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

duskwuff 9y ago

Disappointingly, this appears to be an unusual special case, and may not reflect any larger change in policy: > The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology. -- https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/