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Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

• jdavis703 9y ago
  > Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion. 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. So CloudFlare draws the line of freedom of speech when they feel attacked by words, but it's OK if the content they defend is used to attack and slander others?
  • nickbauman 9y ago
    It could be argued that the mere presence of a Nazi flag as expression is incitement. Not ordinary speech. Naziism is nothing if not clear about violence to people about things that they cannot change about themselves. Skin color. Lineage. It's not like "if you don't do this we have no problem with you" (the Antifa fall into this category. Nazis fall into the former).
    • Torgo 9y ago
      Well, the Supreme Court and the law of the land disagrees with you.
      • nickbauman 9y ago
        To be clear this is not my position. I'm not sure what I think on this subject. But this is the reason why Nazi symbols are illegal in some other countries.
      • throwawayjava 9y ago
        Well, German law disagrees with you. (And cloudflare operates internationally.)
    • 6nf 9y ago
      Ok maybe but cloudflare hosts actual ISIS content so why is that acceptable?
  • laumars 9y ago
    I don't think that's fair because defamation of character could be applied here. What would you prefer they do, sue the Daily Stormer while continuing to distribute their content? Cutting off their services seems a far more rational approach. At the end of the day Cloudflare are just exercising their own freedoms to accept the business they choose to. The Daily Stormer will (if they haven't already) just switch to another provider so it's not like they're being censored (well, not in any effective way) and everyone is now clear where Cloudflare's position is with regards to The Daily Stormer while very little time was wasted with expensive lawyers. On balance I think this seems a pretty fair outcome for all parties involved.
• albertsun 9y ago
  This section is troubling. > In a not-so-distant future, if we're not there already, it may be that if you're going to put content on the Internet you'll need to use a company with a giant network like Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or Alibaba. For context, Cloudflare currently handles around 10% of Internet requests. Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online.
  • kuschku 9y ago
    And yet, everyone trying to work against this gets immediately downvoted on HN, because everyone considers the work of these companies just so convenient. It’s classical short-term vs. long-term thinking, and it’s damaging not just to privacy, but also to the startup economy as a whole.
    • sidlls 9y ago
      In fairness your particular example isn't necessarily a good one. Snapchat is a trivial idea and it's frankly amazing it got as far as it did.
      • TearsInTheRain 9y ago
        Imho his example illustrates his well. Snapchat was fairly disruptive and lost a lot of value when facebook just ripped it off. If we allow giant companies to engage in anti-competitive practices it will hurt us in the long run as people won't even try to innovate. The snapchat story is pretty demotivating. Why bother when one of the largest 5-6 companies in your space will just shut you down or steal your ideas?
        • sidlls 9y ago
          My point is that Snapchat isn't a good example of a company pushed out by anti-competitive practices. Their core product is technically trivial and uninteresting. The fact that there is a market demand for it and being first to do it at large scale doesn't in my mind meet any minimal standard for protection from anti-competitive practices as you imply.
• r721 9y ago
  >“This was my decision. This is not Cloudflare’s general policy now, going forward,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Gizmodo. “I think we have to have a conversation over what part of the infrastructure stack is right to police content.” (from internal email) >Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision. It was different than what I’d talked talked with our senior team about yesterday. I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. I called our legal team and told them what we were going to do. I called our Trust & Safety team and had them stop the service. It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company. http://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295 http://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-...
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • deleted 9y ago
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  • kazagistar 9y ago
    So much for believing in "due process".
    • bnjms 9y ago
      Much like free speech due process concerns citizens and their government rather than people and any public organization.
      • jlgaddis 9y ago
        Even when one explicitly calls it out as something they believe in?
      • zcombo432 9y ago
        He said so himself in May that every website deserves due process before taking it offline. “Whenever you have a private organization which is making what are essentially law enforcement decisions, that is a risk to due process. And I think due process is important,” Prince said in the interview.
• pottersbasilisk 9y ago
  Interesting read. The consequences of this will be important. I always thought the balkanization of the internet would occur because of world governments not because of tech leaders personal feelings or corporate influence. I expect tech leaders to be dragged in front of the senate real soon.
• luke3butler 9y ago
  "Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power." I've been jumping back and forth over the fence on this topic, but this stance is where I've ended up.
  • bwb 9y ago
    It is not they can't be on the internet, it is we are not going to help them spread their message.
  • sulam 9y ago
    I think he's overstating the case. There are plenty of ways for that content to get on the internet that don't involve CloudFlare.
    • luke3butler 9y ago
      Booting them off cloudflare caused downtime at best.
      • r3bl 9y ago
        It did. They're completely offline now. Since their .com got taken down, they had a .onion domain, which now simply says that they've moved to .ru, which is currently down thanks to Cloudflare. They'll probably return to that .onion domain shortly, but, as I'm writing this, they're completely off of the Internet.
      • int_19h 9y ago
        The site of the nature and reputation such as Daily Stormer will remain offline in perpetuity without DDoS protection. It wouldn't even take botnets - you could easily sign up enough volunteers to run the client.
  • joelrunyon 9y ago
    I'm struggling to connect these two phrases: "No one should have that power" "I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn't be allowed on the Internet" Seems like a very tricky precedent to set that you can just not allow someone on the internet. The natural question from this is: how long until this type of power is used against views you support?
• alva 9y ago
  Cloudflare refuse to withdraw services to ISIS
  • jack9 9y ago
    It's funny what a company will say, then turn around and do... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/18/cloudflare_ceo_rubbishes_anonymous_claims_of_terrorist_support/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/18/cloudflare_ceo_rubb... "It's not in CloudFlare's philosophy to just take down sites because management doesn't agree with the content," ...unless the press tells them what their philosophy needs to be? The lesson is that no capitalist company can remain neutral, today. Which has good and bad consequences. It's amazing how the small number of media conglomerates have solidified their political power alongside their commercial power. A true locus of control in Western society.
    • MollyR 9y ago
      It's my fear this locus of control or suppression of voices is part of the reason we have an increase in violent rhetoric. I learned an important lesson in 2016, my worldviews are not shared in America outside of big cities. It forced me to realize that I didn't even know people disagreed so fiercely because of media conglomerate created echo bubbles.
      • ausvisaissues 9y ago
        Don't for a moment think it is just a city/rural thing (with a bunch of conservative country bumkins). Many people having non-leftwing ideas simply hide it. Since most workplaces have become politicised and hostile to conservative/right/slightly right of center views, people just hide it. Some people (including me) even engage in fake virtue signalling.
        • dragonwriter 9y ago
          > Don't for a moment think it is just a city/rural thing (with a bunch of conservative country bumkins). Polling (both opinion polling and actual elections) show that it is very strongly an urban-vs-other thing.
• dhuramas 9y ago
  > Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power. enuf said
  • dabbledash 9y ago
    Apparently he doesn't have that power, since they're still on the internet.
• bwb 9y ago
  Free speech does not mean a company has to take part in spreading it :). Free speech is about your right to speak without the government locking you up, or censoring those who choose to broadcast/spread it. But nothing about free speech says someone else has to listen or spread it for you, companies included. The line is drawn at calling for violence though, which is pretty fucking tricky to navigate.
  • jquery 9y ago
    You're confusing free speech with the first amendment. Free speech is a cultural value says that controversial speech shouldn't be censored, rather it should be debated, condemned, or ignored. The first amendment guarantees the government will uphold this value. You are perfectly correct that private companies can throw the value of free speech in the dumpster if the CEO wakes up in a bad mood.
    • mindcrime 9y ago
      The first amendment guarantees the government will uphold this value. More like "The first amendment purports to guarantee that the government will uphold this value."
      • mindcrime 9y ago
        OK, I'm usually the last to complain about downvoting, but this is ridiculous. That our government routinely fails to uphold the principle of free speech is not even remotely a controversial position... so perhaps some of you folks would like to explain what your argument is? Remember, a "first amendment" in and of itself has absolutely zero power to guarantee anything. Our government violates many of the provisions of the Constitution on a daily basis. "Free speech zones" anybody? Warrantless wiretapping? Civil asset forfeiture? Etc, etc., etc. At the end of the day, the old line "the Constitution is just a piece of paper" really is true. It's actually down to us, "We The People" to hold our government accountable and make sure it upholds the principles we value. We can't just abdicate our responsibility and say "Oh, it's in the 1st amendment, so I'm sure they'll do the right thing."
• jlgaddis 9y ago
  This is a slippery slope, Cloudflare. Once you take it upon yourself to begin moderating and regulating content, you are now -- in my opinion -- obligated to do so consistently. Do you really want that responsibility? My opinion may be unpopular, however. I'm one of those folks that believe that everyone, equally, deserves to be able to express their thoughts, beliefs, and beliefs regardless of whether I agree with them. (Yes, you absolutely need to remove the bullet point now.)
  • thinkfurther 9y ago
    > My opinion may be unpopular, however. I'm one of those folks that believe that everyone, equally, deserves to be able to express their thoughts, beliefs, and beliefs regardless of whether I agree with them. You may want to read this comment of mine I put in a thread that probably won't get seen much because it's not intellectually stimulating enough, or something: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032018 I'll add a quote from a White Rose leaflet: > Do not hide your cowardice under the cloak of cleverness! http://white-rose-studies.org/Leaflet_3.html http://white-rose-studies.org/Leaflet_3.html
  • NetStrikeForce 9y ago
    Would you hang a sign with a writing of my choice out of your window?
    • tedunangst 9y ago
      If I were in the sign hanging business and you paid the advertised fee, yes.
  • Clubber 9y ago
    >I'm one of those folks that believe that everyone, equally, deserves to be able to express their thoughts, beliefs, and beliefs regardless of whether I agree with them. This was big when I was growing up too. KKK was always used as an example. No one liked what they had to say, but as Americans, we felt we were obligated to protect their ability to say it. You know, principles and all.
• cft 9y ago
  Cloudflare's major business is hosting paid DDoS providers "booters" [1] . Scary to delegate such powers to a person who "literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet" 1. https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2016-July/087295.html https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2016-July/087295.h...
  • invisible 9y ago
    I think that calling every decision unilaterally the same no matter the variables involved is pretty rash. Lots of discussions on HN devolve into this way of thinking and I really can't stand it. An entity that puts child porn on the Internet isn't protected by freedom of speech. Soliciting hate, violence and prejudice is obviously not identical but it's a lot different from just having a different opinion than someone else. Shitty people should be treated shitty by companies. I don't really see a democratic way of banning folks like this from Cloudflare besides Cloudflare deciding to do so.
  • ryanlol 9y ago
    >Cloudflare's major business is hosting paid DDoS providers "booters" No it isn't, this is complete nonsense. There's not very many booters and besides a few exceptions they don't have paid CF plans.
    • cft 9y ago
      "paid" as in you have to pay per DDoS to the booter. CF business is not in getting money directly from the booters, but in acquiring many paid CF subscriptions from the sites that the booters can attack. Some of these booters can generate 100+Gbps UDP attacks.
      • ryanlol 9y ago
        >acquiring many paid CF subscriptions from the sites that the booters can attack Still doesn't make sense. CF alone doesn't effectively defend against DDoS attacks without somewhat complicated setup, CF is completely worthless when your backend is getting attacked. I think you're seriously overestimating the amount of people pushed to use CF because of these booters. Besides, do you feel that the situation would be any different if the booters weren't allowed on CF? CF is by no means important to their operations.
• doubleshame 9y ago
  It is very important to distinguish something like Facebook blocking an account / Medium taking down a blog from a domain registrar refusing to cooperate. You are free to create a room where only some ideologies are allowed, but it's dangerous to play the same game with the ability to create the rooms. First the domain registrars, then networks say that they don't want to peer, and then we end up with a fragmented internet, cutting off all communication. It is not wise to pretend that an opinion that you do not want just simply does not exist. The extremist in the room who everybody pretends is not there, is eventually going to do more radical things to be noticed. In the echo chamber of extremism, there is now no moderating thought; and the world loses empathy to understand these unpopular perspectives that still exist. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant" "Isolation only promotes extremism"
  • thinkfurther 9y ago
    Sunlight in this case would be doing for Nazis what they themselves won't do because they're unable -- recognize them for who they are and act accordingly. > In the echo chamber of extremism, there is now no moderating thought This is not how any of this works.
    • doubleshame 9y ago
      We are NOT fighting the people here, we're fighting the ideas. I don't think we should ever forget this.
      • thinkfurther 9y ago
        You too should read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032018 and maybe this for good measure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15014737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15014737 I forgot nothing, I'd rather say I know things you haven't yet understood.
        • doubleshame 9y ago
          Thanks for these choice quotes. I completely agree for the need for boundaries, but I think we've done a most excellent job of setting them! The current boundary is speech that immediately incites violence, I believe the supreme court interpretation has been very generous towards the notion of free speech, including hate speech, as it should be! Here's why: We should let the radicals be racist and make radical statements as much as they want. At the point at which they turn violent or call for specific acts of violence we should step in and shut that stuff down. A blanket militant action against the whole ideology will no doubt show better results on shutting down the movement on a short term. But the notion of freedom of speech is not meant to protect these radicals, it is meant to protect ourselves and the integrity of society! We cannot make exceptions to these rules just because it's more convenient to us now, because this weakens the principle. This is the whole slippery slope argument. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." If you wish to change the lines on which we use force, you must make a coherent case based on principle, not on convenience or anecdotes, as the principles themselves already account for, in a deep way, the history to which you allude.
• runesoerensen 9y ago
  Also discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15029852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15029852
• exabrial 9y ago
  Also on sort of related note, this is why I disparage the "cake baking" and "wedding flowers" lawsuits... While I don't care what two adults do in the bedroom, I do care that a private business could be forced to render services. What if Mike Pence becomes president and uses the precedent set by these lawsuits to justify the passage of his version of Christianity into law? I think these issues are better left unturned; in this case, CloudFlare was able to take the right action and terminate their account without having to think about a lot of legal precedent.
  • c3534l 9y ago
    Do you think I should have a sign on my business door that says "no blacks allowed," too? Also the cake incident also involved the owners posting the names and phone numbers of the gay couple on facebook and asked people to harass them.
    • exabrial 9y ago
      No, of course not! I think the line is pretty clear there, a person can't choose to be black or white, but a marriage is an "opt in" event, two people are freely choosing to be married. There have been a lot of these sorts of incidents; I didn't hear about the DOXing incident, that's quite sad, and of course, inexcusable, for any reason. However, there was an incident [http://bit.ly/1MxG5S8 http://bit.ly/1MxG5S8] where a lady was good friends with a man and was a regular customer for years. She did not want her company's name associated with his wedding (sounds oddly similar to the OP), so she politely declined. This all being said, I'm very curious how you reconcile the two situations, I'm interested to hear your viewpoint.
      • thaumaturgy 9y ago
        This discussion would be getting pretty far off-topic, but a lot of thoughtful people would argue that the line isn't clear at all. At the least, marriage confers legal benefits to a couple, including rights during medical emergencies and upon death, and if anyone really "chooses" their sexuality, they do so long before they are at an age to make that choice consciously, and yet long after they can change their mind about it. I don't think you can justify allowing a business to refuse service on the basis of sexuality using the logic that prevents businesses from refusing service to different skin colors.
• slg 9y ago
  For all the people who are warning of a slippery slope or a chilling effect, where do we draw a line? This site along with others like it likely helped spur a person on to murder a few days ago. This site along with other like it celebrated that murder. This site along with other like are organizing protests at that murder victim's funeral. How in good conscience can you be an accomplice in spreading that message?
  • kazagistar 9y ago
    I mean, the networking infrastructure carried that message. The people who manufactured the murder weapon assisted the murder goals. The point is that we have a legal process to deal with murder. If we wanted to suppress the message glorifying it and encouraging it, we should do that directly, and take down the site through legal due process. Going after infrastructure is the wrong solution when you should be confronting problems directly. And if you don't want to confront it directly (ie, maybe the site is protected by free speech laws that we don't want to revoke)... whats the point of those free speech protecting laws if they just end up being subverted through a different avenue, and one that does not have to follow the process and regulation of the law at that?
    • slg 9y ago
      >If we wanted to suppress the message glorifying it and encouraging it, we should do that directly, and take down the site through legal due process. That sounds like a much bigger conflict with the 1st amendment than society simply deciding to shun messages we want to suppress.
      • unityByFreedom 9y ago
        If it were taken down, yes. What he's arguing, though, is to use courts because he knows courts would never do that in the US.
  • samsonasu 9y ago
    I agree. There's probably a line somewhere but let's get a little closer to it than literal Nazis celebrating a murder before the hand-wringing starts.
• colejohnson66 9y ago
  I get the whole "companies can choose not to host whatever they want" argument, but in order to do anything on the internet, you have to interact with companies. If I want to run my own website, I need an IP address at the minimum, and ISPs are free to cut off my internet service if they don't like what I'm hosting. In a public setting, if people don't like what I'm saying, they can't force me to be quiet (generally). But when hosting a website, there is the ability for companies to silence you. For example, if Google doesn't like a website, it can derank it. People who agree with the site might cry censorship, while the others just say that a company can block what it wants. Replace Google with an ISP, and all of a sudden, it seems everyone says the ISP shouldn't be able to do that. If the web is supposed to be the future of communication, but can prevent you from voicing your opinions just because they're a "deplorable" or you don't agree with them, how is that argument valid? Can someone explain that to me? Tangent(?): Also, by not hosting Daily Stormer, you simply push them further down. One of the big reasons Trump won was because people felt like they weren't allowed to voice their opinions easily. There were people, basically closeted Trump supporters, who said they didn't like Trump, but secretly did. Pushing people down because they're "deplorables" simply reinforces their opinions.
  • tedivm 9y ago
    There will always be companies that care more about making a buck than anything else. For years spammers and malware authors have been able to find hosting without issue, and taking them down has been a serious pain in the ass. All these nazis need to do is rent a server in russia (where they've moved their name server) and they will be fine. The idea that companies like Cloudflare should help support sites like this is nonsensical. The slippery slope argument is an awful fallacy and ignores the fact that we can't even get content most of the world agrees is bad (child porn, active malware exploits, spammers) offline.
    • colllectorof 9y ago
      >The idea that companies like Cloudflare should help support sites like this is nonsensical. It is your framing of the idea that's nonsensical. Infrastructure companies should not need to police all their services. Heck, they shouldn't police their services. That is what real police and courts are for. As an analogy, should AT&T monitor calls and terminate service for customers using racist slurs? Now, a lot of people would surely argue that such example is false equivalency, but it follows from the same line of reasoning and would have similar long-term consequences. A modern, stable society needs stable infrastructure that does not bend and shift based on current events or social media campaigns. Even if in some cases it seems "fair". Because anyone with a bit of sense knows it will not be "fair" in all cases. Heck, in the current environment of extreme political polarization that much should be bloody obvious.
• exabrial 9y ago
  I'm glad to see CloudFlare do this, I think it's going to hard to defend themselves against attacks from the MPAA, RIAA, and other troll organizations now :/ I guess no good deed will go unpunished
• emsy 9y ago
  Unless the site was directly breaking the law, I see this move as troubling. It's almost always better not to drive these kind of people to the underground, and I think most HN readers figure why this is. The problem I see is that in the current political climate the general population won't understand that or is unwilling to.
  • urbanj 9y ago
    It's always better to appease Nazis. Society should take a long hard look at itself for not allowing Hitler free speech and to fully express his views.
  • cbron 9y ago
    > It's almost always better not to drive these kind of people to the underground Seems more like this would remove the echo chamber than drive them underground, I would agree with your point if it was about public shaming. But if FB goes offline I wouldn't consider anyone being "driven underground", more like forced above ground.
    • emsy 9y ago
      The Daily Stormer is pretty radical, but afaik still operates within the law. Taking their platform will put them out of sight and into areas where respecting the law isn't necessary. The enemy you don't know is the enemy you have to fear the most. Unfortunately I feel like most people today are more comfortable with hiding and banning bad ideas than to confront them.
• jquery 9y ago
  It seems pretty obvious that all this hand-wringing over a little known site called The Daily Stormer has raised its profile worldwide far beyond their wildest dreams. This is likely causing the opposite effect of what activists want.
  • breadbox 9y ago
    If you honestly think that the rest of the world is only now hearing about the Daily Stormer, then you must have a very plush rock that you've been living under. I assure you that many, many others have not had that particular luxury.
    • MollyR 9y ago
      I don't think that's fair. Some of us work very hard for a living or have kids. I just learned about the Daily Stormer, this weekend. EDIT: on second thought, I wonder if this is what Daily Stormer wanted all along. They have raised their profile enormously now.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • breadbox 9y ago
        My wording was excessively, and for that I apologize. However, my point was more that not everyone has the same freedom to be unaware of Daily Stormer. In much the same way that childless people have the luxury to be unaware of which schools in their neighborhood are good ones, populations regularly targeted by Daily Stormer have been aware of their rising influence for years.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    • camus2 9y ago
      I can assure you many people had no idea what the Daily Stormer was before they were "kicked out" of the US internet. So no, not knowing about it doesn't mean living under a rock.
• totony 9y ago
  If you feel the need to make such a long post about it, perhaps it was a bad decision? Perhaps a statement that you did not support them in their ideals would have suited both the situation and your minds. I've always felt like Cloudflare was one of the better leading internet companies, especially because of their neutrality towards their customers. This is kind of a downer.
• ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  I hope a civil lawsuit advances this conversation much faster than the Cloudflare CEO can. Yes, speech and expression has consequences. The reactionary service provider likely faces consequences too. A court could easily side with the "abhorrent neo-nazis" if DDOSing raises their bills and Cloudflare's adhoc policy was the culprit, no matter what arbitration clause was written in their contract, and put the damages on Cloudflare.
  • matt4077 9y ago
    yeah, no. Because among those great freedoms is the freedom of contract. Just as you can, in the absence of an agreed-upon fixed term, cancel your subscription to "Armchair Paralegal Monthly" any day you want, CF is free to fire any of their customers.
• MrZongle2 9y ago
  It's easy to defend the speech of those which you agree or, at the very least, don't vehemently disagree with. With increased calls for Internet access to be a human right and for Internet providers to be treated as common carriers, the arbitrary punishment of lawful-yet-distasteful speech should be considered almost as repellent as the Daily Stormer. Yet here we are. And down the slope we continue to go.
• tyteen4a03 9y ago
  "the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology" What does this have to do with the termination?
  • ceejayoz 9y ago
    Cloudflare's tired of being subject to that defamation?
• christilut 9y ago
  I don't like this... If I have a controversial opinion (hypothetical, unrelated to the current subject matter) and it gets removed from CDN's and if I then put that opinion in my self hosted blog and someone powerful decides to DDoS my little server (and consequent hosting attempts)... Am I then not effectively censored on the internet? It's interesting in how many places (internet and real world) this is happening lately... Interesting but mostly just scary. I'm sure Cloudflare meant well but this action should have been thought through more.
• jshap70 9y ago
  can we get some proper discussion about this or some stronger moderation in here please? this thread is awful on all accounts
• hashberry 9y ago
  > 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. For those interested in more info behind this statement[0]: In a post, [The Daily Stormer] site’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.” A former Cloudflare employee, Ryan Lackey, said in an interview that while he doesn’t condone a lot of what Auernheimer does, he did on occasion give technical advice as a friend and helped some of the Stormer’s issues get resolved. “I am hardcore libertarian/classical liberal about free speech — something like Daily Stormer has every right to publish, and it is better for everyone if all ideas are out on the internet to do battle in that sphere,” he said. Vick at the ADL agrees that Anglin has a right to publish, but said people have the right to hold to task the Internet companies that enable him. [0] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-serve-up-hate-on-the-web https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-serv...
  • jacquesm 9y ago
    For those not following this closely: Aurenheimer == weev.
    • ng12 9y ago
      Wow. Sometimes it feels like the internet is a very small place.
      • backpropaganda 9y ago
        I might be too young to understand the significance. Could you tell us why Aurenheimer being weev is interesting?
• monksy 9y ago
  I like the article as that it still shows that they're committed to being neutral, however, they will respond when you try to drag them down with you. From the article, it sounds like the stormer bit the hand that fed them.
• hexadecimated 9y ago
  A sensible business decision by Cloudflare, and a fine moral stand to take. There is nothing positive to be gained by servicing such neo-Nazi websites, and Cloudflare is under no obligation to keep them as customers. Similarly, the Daily Stormer is free to take their custom to a provider who turns a blind eye to or supports their toxic ideology.
  • MichaelGG 9y ago
    Yet they don't block ISIS.
    • digitalzombie 9y ago
      I don't recall ISIS claiming that Cloudflare support their ideology.
• xorcist 9y ago
  Malware distributors, DDoS purveyors, sellers of stolen credit cards, all those welcome as customers. However nazis isn't. Good to know they had a line somewhere. I was just surprised to see it.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• watersb 9y ago
  I am surprised by the criticism of CloudFlare in these comments. I was a systems admin for a while; User privacy and security were very important to me, despite my lack of technology or skills. FWIW. CloudFlare did not necessarily follow "Due Process" because no such process exists. They seem to think that's a problem worth addressing.
• thaumaturgy 9y ago
  Matthew Prince is asking for a conversation to begin on establishing policy for supporting free speech vs. policing a service. Service providers of all kinds have been more-or-less flying by the seat of their pants on this issue, making up policy according to their individual ideals, and a lot of arguments so far have fallen along ideological lines. As more and more people continue to participate in the internet, there are going to be more issues like this, not fewer. So let's maybe kick off that discussion a little bit? Someone that's articulate might be able to build the foundation for a policy here that would be attractive to lots of service providers. Some things to consider: -> Local law vs. ethical considerations. A lot of expressions and statements that are just fine by US standards are illegal or otherwise censored in other place. Google has struggled with this in China for years now. There's no reason to believe that the US will continue to be a beacon for free speech forever. Efforts to control, surveil, and censor speech are ongoing in the US, as Dreamhost recently pointed out. How should services handle this? Do you adhere to local laws or to what you believe is right? -> Free speech vs. abuse. In this case, I don't mean abuse-by-meanness, but abuse by misuse of resources. From blatant spamming all the way down to just being the loud-mouthed jerk who posts too often in a forum, there's a whole spectrum of abuses here and most service providers happily block this content. What constitutes abuse? Should everything be supported, to the best of the service provider's ability, or is this a point where nearly everyone agrees that free speech should be limited? -> Free speech vs. disruptive or disgusting speech. Communities gather assholes. Some of them are accidental or ill (HN has its own, which it has merrily perma-banned), some of them just want to stir shit up. Some of them give us something to think about, they just want to be really abrasive in the process. What are the limits here? What if we end up on the wrong side of some issue, what would our opinions about limited speech be then? -> Nice vs. Free. These all kind of could be distilled down into a single debate: do we want a nice society, or a free society?
  • matt4077 9y ago
    -> slippery slope vs whataboutism vs sanity: can we, for just a moment, not pretend that we're unable to distinguish between self-professed nazis calling for the extermination of jews and blacks, and legitimate speech in opposition of the government? Yes, if you're drawing a line there will be, by definition, cases close to it, on both sides. But this isn't one of them. And it's not like this is some sort of new problem that we haven't successfully navigated before. Courts have always had to make binary decisions from continuous facts: pornography vs. art, or just naming that single grain of sand that makes this stretch of coast a beach per California regulation 343 etc. "Free vs nice" is an insidious way to delegitimise the concerns of those actually targeted by torch-wielding nazis. People aren't asking for a "nice" country. They're asking for the freedom to peacefully walk around without the fear of being splattered onto the pavement by the next terrorist's car attack.
• thinkfurther 9y ago
  Yeah, and you'll take it all down with your foolishness.
  • toomuchtodo 9y ago
    People have hated for thousands of years, and we've made it this far. Have some optimism. Mandating tolerance is about as likely to work as using a sieve to bail water out of a boat.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • thinkfurther 9y ago
      This isn't mere hate, and I'm not "mandating tolerance" either. I'm mandating you at least read people like Hannah Arendt and Sebastian Haffner instead of you projecting your naivety on me.
    • jacalata 9y ago
      People have silenced dissidents for thousands of years too, why aren't you willing to be optimistic about that?
      • toomuchtodo 9y ago
        I am. Dissenting speech will continue long after Cloudflare is acquired/out of business/etc. I'm only here to draw light to hypocrisy.
        • thinkfurther 9y ago
          Nah, you wish there was hypocrisy where there's really just you not being up to speed.
          • deleted 9y ago
            [deleted]
• toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > We might agree on a few points but trying to clarify that the murder wasn't a terrorist attack, that it was just "unplanned murder with a vehicle", makes me want to re-examine my opinions on the points where we agree. Are we going to call every road rage incident (1200/year in the US) a terrorist attack now? Please. I'd encourage you to evaluate your agreement with each of my points on an individual basis; each idea either stands or falls on its own.
  • thaumaturgy 9y ago
    He wasn't stuck in traffic or being chased by a tailgater or forced off the road. He got into his car. He started it. He pointed it towards a group of pedestrians. He accelerated into them. This is factually identical to attacks in Stockholm and elsewhere which have been called acts of terrorism.
  • jacquesm 9y ago
    This wasn't roadrage, it was murder. Now get off your fake high horse, you don't get to claim the moral highground on account of a bunch of people that would like to do the same to a fairly large number of people. Think of that one murder as a free sample of what is to come if these people get their way.
    • toomuchtodo 9y ago
      > This wasn't roadrage, it was murder. Now get off your fake high horse I'm attempting to prevent the cheapening of the term "terrorism", not adjusting my positioning on my high horse. Its a hate crime, not terrorism. > Think of that one murder as a free sample of what is to come if these people get their way. More of this will come regardless if these people get their way. Protests, tweet storms, and tearing down Confederate monuments will not dissuade hate. The only way to win is to drag the argument into the daylight where it can be fought.
      • jacquesm 9y ago
        > I'm attempting to prevent the cheapening of the term "terrorism", not adjusting my positioning on my high horse. Its a hate crime, not terrorism. I didn't use the word terrorism in my response to you so no need to bring it back into circulation, I've used your terms. The word terrorism (and terrorist) has already been cheapened beyond recognition, they're in a worse state than 'hacker', where were you the last 15 years or so?
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• thinkfurther 9y ago
  > Did not go well. And you're telling me this, why? > We should be careful to a) not call everything Nazi Oh I see, that's why. Well, you should be careful to c) not confuse me with anyone else.
  • thinkfurther 9y ago
    For those who downvote me: so you're actually believing I call "anyone I don't like" a Nazi? How fucking pathetic is that? And no I don't care about the votes, I just want you to stop and realize how incredibly dumb that is. This is a kindergarten level of discourse on a subject that ranks amongst the most important that even exist. edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer That's where names like "Daily Stormer" and "Stormfront" come from. Educate yourself at least a tiny shred.
    • lasfter 9y ago
      To be fair to the GP, I've, for example, seen/heard my friends and acquaintances call people Nazis for condemning vigilante violence (e.g. "punching Nazis"), the Berkeley riots, and Antifa protests. I think the sentiment GP is trying to communicate is that many seem to throw the label out there without any further investigation as to whether its justified. As for the downvotes, it might be because your comment came across very hostile. Also, I agree that it's easy to see that the Daily Stormer is neo-Nazi type stuff.
      • thinkfurther 9y ago
        > I think the sentiment GP is trying to communicate is that many seem to throw the label out there without any further investigation as to whether its justified. That's great, but totally irrelevant here, in response to me, in this context. When I call a dog a dog, I don't care that sometimes, somewhere, other people call a vase a dog. And it's incredibly rich in the context of "free speech" and whatnot: what use is my right to free speech, when people then also have the "right" to just replace what I say with some other anecdote in their mind? What use is being allowed to ask a question when people then just talk to each other about anything but the question? The protection of free speech arose in contexts where people suppressed speech because they otherwise would have to face it. If people don't face it anyway, there's no need to suppress any of it. And congratulations, too.
• xena 9y ago
  What about their .ru domain though?
• fyrstenberg 9y ago
  There is some monkey-business here. Anyone knows why a PR company hired "protesters" to the event in the first place? (and why HN tries to hide this link when posted as submission?) https://charlotte.craigslist.org/tfr/d/actors-and-photographers/6253305119.html https://charlotte.craigslist.org/tfr/d/actors-and-photograph...
  • mikeash 9y ago
    Did something happen in Charlotte I didn't hear about?
    • fyrstenberg 9y ago
      I'm not sure - the ad is supposedly from last week. I just thought I ask if anyone new something about this. The PR company seem legit (in the sense it actually exist). It raises a few questions if related to what happened though.
      • ceejayoz 9y ago
        > It raises a few questions if related to what happened though. Only if you think Charlottesville, Virginia is the same thing as Charlotte, North Carolina...
      • mikeash 9y ago
        Related to what happened? What happened that this would be related to?
  • ceejayoz 9y ago
    You know literally anyone can post a Craigslist ad, right? I mean, https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/6256316306.html https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/6256316306.html https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/chi/6216723045.html https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/chi/6216723045.html https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sea/6088811200.html https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sea/6088811200.html https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/cle/6147468220.html https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/cle/6147468220.html all exist... and you think no right-winger ever went "let's spend a few minutes making a WordPress.com blog and a Craigslist post and cite that as evidence of paid protesters"? (Also, Charlottesville VA isn't Charlotte NC...)
• revelation 9y ago
  That's a long ass philosophical article, but they buried the lede: they terminated them because the CEO woke up feeling like doing it. Today isn't the day the internet dies, today is the day Cloudflare dies.
• jtchang 9y ago
  This is well done statement. He is acknowledging that he himself has no idea what the right way to go about it is and at the same time running his company the way he believes it should be run. As much as I don't like cloudflare because it does create security issues (you are afterall proxying traffic through them) I have to respect the CEO's position on this. And it isn't easy.
• SirLJ 9y ago
  Boycott those hypocrites
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• rangibaby 9y ago
  slippery slope
  • dogecoinbase 9y ago
    Literally a fallacy. You just named a fallacy as an attempt at argument.
    • andrewflnr 9y ago
      Slippery slope is not a fallacy. It's a real phenomenon in certain cases. It does, however, have to be proved relevant to any given question, which is GP's real offense.
      • dogecoinbase 9y ago
        Yes, this is why it's a fallacy. By the time you've justified a slippery slope argument, you have made an independent argument for your point that has nothing to do with the idea of a "slippery slope". Calling something a slippery slope without an additional complete argument is the slippery slope fallacy.
        • andrewflnr 9y ago
          > ...you have made an independent argument for your point that has nothing to do with the idea of a "slippery slope". Um, no, it probably does. Slippery slopes happen when there's unintended consequences embedded in the assumptions behind a proposition someone is putting forward, and there are people with an interest in pushing for them to be realized. Sometimes you talk about this in your argument; bam, slippery slope argument. To try to name a "fallacy" after this rather useful concept, when the "fallacy" is just the boring case of failing to make an argument at all, is useless confusion at best.
  • bpicolo 9y ago
    I don't think Nazis are anywhere near the slope.
  • 9y ago
• jacquesm 9y ago
  I'm not a fan of cloudflare, I think the net would be better without them. That said I think this was the right call to make. Being the CEO of a company carries with it the weight of having the ultimate responsibility for each and every action of the company and to be an unwilling vehicle for the Neo Nazi movement is something that no company should want to aspire to. Where I have a problem is that ostensibly this did not happen because the CEO grew a conscience and a backbone (how about those booter and malware sites then?), but because the Neo Nazi's claimed that Cloudflare was secretly in league with them. If that was the real reason then the whole thing sounds hollow and more as an attempt at damage control than a case of a moral line being crossed. Anyway, from a strictly technical point of view Cloudflare is absolutely optional so no harm done, without the cloak of Cloudflare to protect it the Daily Stormer will have to go through life now as the Daily Naked Stormer.
  • smokeyj 9y ago
    But what's the end game? Do service providers have to morally support those who they provide service to? Because that's how things are looking. I wish we could just pretend these sites don't exist and stop giving them free publicity and advertisement. Trump is president because he's profitable to hate. Seems like we're repeating our mistakes. The only people who win by manufacturing outrage is the media.
    • jacquesm 9y ago
      > Do service providers have to morally support those who they provide service to? Because that's how things are looking. No, but there are obvious limits on what companies would like to be seen to be associating with. Cloudflare is a lot more lenient than most in this respect, but that got interpreted as 'there is no line they will not cross'. That assumption seems to not have borne fruit. I'm reminded of the 'Slashdot will not censor posts' outrage a number of years ago because, yes, Slashdot did have that power and used it once. Of course for the absolutists that once was the sign that the end was neigh, only that's not how it played out. > I wish we could just pretend these sites don't exist and stop giving them free publicity and advertisement. Trump is president because he's profitable to hate. Seems like we're repeating our mistakes. The only people who win by manufacturing outrage is the media. Very astute observation, and definitely a thing to remember when looking at media output.
• whoeffingcares 9y ago
  Prince spoke at Blackhat in Vegas... several years ago. The video is on Youtube. He not only said a terrorist is someones 'freedom fighter' but he pretty much excused child pornography. It wasn't as clear as the terrorist content but when you hear and see it, you'll want to curb stomp the midget. He's a coward and weasel whose word means nothing. This site was distasteful but it wasn't illegal. There's thosuands upon thousands of site which are and he does nothing about it. Now we have wrong think. You don't like the politics? Ok, but if you believe in free speech, it's what needs to be defended. So it's censorship by a guy who defends terorrists and seems to be ok with child abuse.
• itstrueok 9y ago
  Weird branding misstep tbh.
• spydum 9y ago
  I have read many of the threads here, and I think it boils down to this: do businesses (NOT THE GOVERNMENT) have the right to choose what content and customers they serve? Further, does it matter if they are a hosting provider? A network provider? A telephone provider? Can those providers cancel you if the company doesn't like what you say or are? This is tough: I honestly don't know if freedom of speech needs to be enforced by private companies. I think of freedom of speech is the problem here: companies have more influence over our conversations and the old protections are simply not adapting well.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • jacquesm 9y ago
    > do businesses (NOT THE GOVERNMENT) have the right to choose what content and customers they serve? Yes. This is why VISA was instrumental in the 'war on porn' and why every service provider ever has a provision in their contracts stating they can terminate your online presence at their discretion. That's a way for the industry to avoid becoming government regulated, as long as this self regulation takes care of the worst excesses companies will continue to be able to operate in relative freedom. The few times that local national law (such as in France and Germany) has butted up against companies trying to re-write the law in a more lenient way this has - predictably - failed. But as long as companies stay on the far side of that line they are free to draw more restrictive lines as they see fit with impunity so long as those lines do not affect the lives of so called 'protected classes' in a negative way and because of the item that triggers that class to be protected in the first place.
    • spydum 9y ago
      Others have touched on this: the concept of a protected class seems odd when faced with the idea that all people are to be afforded equal protection under the law (14th amendment)
      • jacquesm 9y ago
• kbuchanan 9y ago
  Would not a formal PR response, like, "No, we are not in league with neo-nazis," have been more effective and less contradictory?
• tlogan 9y ago
  This is reasonable decision. If you say something bad about my company then "no soup for you" [1]. It seems like there is no free speech on internet: because free speech is controlled by corporations and the loudest people on social media. So there will be no ISIS websites, no Daily Stormer websites, etc. That is how it is. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svSGKJFSl-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svSGKJFSl-8
• drtillberg 9y ago
  "Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their importance... but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment." --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Northern Secs. case. (1904).
• gbarc888 9y ago
  What about the question of, WHY is Cloudflare responsible for 10% of internet requests? Who are there competitors, and at what point should these service providers be subjected to antitrust laws?
• jstalin 9y ago
  So cloudflare terminates the account of some pathetic racists, but happily continues to host Ripoff Report, a company whose basic business model is to defame people online and then extort them for money. You know, a site that actively ruins people lives, employment, etc. But a silly racist message board is what moves the CEO to take action.
  • davesque 9y ago
    To describe the daily stormer as a silly message board is to ignore the broader context. It seems likely that what the CEO acted out against was the death of Heather Heyer at the hands of the kinds of people who visit the daily stormer (and are radicalized by it), the tacit endorsement of those people by Trump, and the specter of the US slowly transforming into something like Nazi Germany. None of those things are "silly" or "little."
• adventured 9y ago
  So far we've partially lost our freedom of movement (take a look at the borders, the airports, etc). We've heavily lost our freedoms around privacy. Speech is the big prize for the authoritarians. Do not give it to them.
• gthtjtkt 9y ago
  I didn't know Daily Stormer existed until today. Now, I have a little less respect for the companies who terminated their services, and a little more curiosity about Daily Stormer. Congrats, you did nothing but give them free publicity while damaging your own reputation.
• genon 9y ago
  Absolutely correct. He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare. The excuse he uses for terminating TDS is an absolute crock; if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim. It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like. Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.
  • derefr 9y ago
    > if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim. The damage of libel is reputational damage. Getting the libelous claim retracted after the claim has been seen by the public doesn't undo or erase the damage the claim does. Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation.
    • leereeves 9y ago
      If TDS did make such a claim publicly enough to cause reputational damage, there should be evidence we can all see. Anyone know where that evidence is?
      • jachee 9y ago
        Why are you being a Nazi sympathizer?
      • mjevans 9y ago
        Assuming good faith on all parties (including in this discussion)... The public posting was probably on their website, which is now likely blackholed due to being DDoSed after they were no longer protected by a CDN. The Internet is broken when some terrorists can get together and decide to blockaid someone else; even if that someone else is nearly universally agreed upon to vile. I agree with that user on Twitter that wants to make (the racist) individuals /infamous/ so that they can receive the blowback they deserve for their public behavior.
• PeanutCurry 9y ago
  I'm obviously being a bit facetious when I say this, but are there really few things worse than nazis? I'm not expert on the subject of neo-nazis or the nazi movement, so maybe this seems more complex because of my position of ignorance. But none of the statistics seem to imply that nazis are more than simply intellectually repulsive and socially disgusting. That's not to say that nazi affiliated groups never commit crime or kill people. But by the numbers they seem like a very small blip on the crime radar compared to groups like the Sinaloa, MS-13, ISIS, Boko Haram, or the Lord's Resistance Army. I realize the significance of what the nazis accomplished in the past. But there are actual talks about further restricting freedom of speech in America being put forth by some groups because of the attention that's being given to white supremacists and nazis right now with seemingly little attention being given to identifying and quantifying the reach and influence these groups actually have in the modern context.
  • njarboe 9y ago
    Scott Alexander has a good article relating to this issue and Trump[1]. [1]http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wo...
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • zaroth 9y ago
      That was surpringly entertaining, and perhaps even more relevant today than when it was written 9 months ago.
    • hsod 9y ago
      "I stick to my thesis from October 2015. There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up." I'm a big fan of SSC, but this thesis is not holding up very well
• lightedman 9y ago
  In return, CloudFlare's service provider immunity should be terminated. They've demonstrated that they do effectively control what happens with their networks and should not enjoy qualification for immunity.
  • matt4077 9y ago
    What's the mechanism for this claim? Are you suggesting there was, previously, any uncertainty regarding Cloudflare's ability to (a) know which domains are hosted with them or (b) to look at those websites? Because it seems as if they have always had the ability to "control what happens with their networks".
    • lightedman 9y ago
      Same mechanism for any internet service provider - immunity is granted under the auspice that you are not exerting control over the flow of information as a supposedly neutral provider. The second you don't do that, you're not neutral and you're aiding and abetting. This is how IXL Memphis got a big bite in their butt in the late late 90s.
• bqe 9y ago
  Honest question for people who think this stifles freedom: do you also think taking down ISIS recruitment videos is anti-free speech? Should we not do that either? Online radicalization is real. The challenge of how to deal with that and offer considerable freedom on the Internet will be a challenge for our society.
  • kelnos 9y ago
    A very good point. The anti-censorship narrative feels very similar to the right's denial (or at least it's willful ignorance) that white domestic terrorists are a thing in the US. How is speech perpetrated by white supremacists to incite violence any different from that of foreign terrorist organizations?
  • chrissnell 9y ago
    Yes, both are anti-free speech. It's not that we want people to join these groups, it's that we're rapidly spiraling down the rabbit hole of censorship. IS was using Cloudflare to weaponize beheadings of foreign hostages into propaganda. TDS was, as @octal pointed out on Twitter today [1], a "stupid racist/troll crappostsite". We've lowered the bar significantly here. Of all pathetic things to give into, Cloudflare gave into the outrage over these TDS losers? [1] https://twitter.com/octal/status/897887095821402112 https://twitter.com/octal/status/897887095821402112
  • csr12928834 9y ago
    I think Cloudfare made the wrong decision here, but for me the reasons it's damaging to free speech are deeper than "is free speech at the level of government or private organizations?" There's a couple of ways of looking at this. One is to say Cloudfare is a private company, they were free to make a decision, they exercised that right, and now white nationalists have the right to choose to go to a different provider. Others have the right to do business or withhold business from Cloudfare in response. Another, though, is to say that Cloudfare is now in a unique position--by the CEO's own admission--and has power over another person's speech as a result. It would be akin to a husband controlling a wife's contacts with others. Sure, the wife could leave, but that's not really a good argument for the husband's behavior being ok; someone is, similarly in the hands of the company somewhat unfairly. Yet another way to look at it is this: when Cloudfare decides it can and will make content-based decisions, have they now implicitly argued that when they don't remove content, they implicitly support that content, in that it's not aversive enough to remove? Where do you draw the line with that? And if a company nominally accepts that responsibility, does that mean we, in exchange, should allow them to regulate other traffic? One argument for net neutrality is that while it binds a corporation's hands, it also frees them of responsibility for things they might otherwise be liable for. This was the bargain with phone companies, after all, with common carrier status. No one blames the phone company for supporting white supremacists because they carried their phone calls, but nor do they worry about the phone company dropping their calls because the phone company disagrees with their political position. My impression is that the CEO of Cloudfare is freaking out at the moment because he realizes he has now made Cloudfare implicitly responsible for the content on its systems, and has opened up an argument against net neutrality. He's essentially saying to the government "please come up with rules that absolve us for responsibility in this situation." If Cloudfare had simply said "we don't drop clients because of the nature of the content" they would have had a very strong position. Now they've opened a can of worms and have called into question their complicity in the content they carry. They can't have it both ways: by saying that white supremacist groups are too aversive for them, they have now implicitly said that everything else is not too aversive. This is a very undesirable route to be going in in terms of freedom of speech. For what it's worth, I also oppose network companies removing ISIS recruitment videos, all other things being equal. Now, if a court decided that the content poster/creator was in violation of some ethical and legal code to such an extent that their right to distribute content should be restricted, that's one thing, but that would require actual due process in a court of law.
• lightedman 9y ago
  CloudFlare could've just sued DS out of existence if the claim they are making is true, for libel/slander/defamation of character. Instead, they lose out on free money, lose out on delivering a bigger black eye to ethnicists, and possibly lose their service provider immunity. Should've resisted the urge to punch a Nazi and acted like a real American instead. We don't fight, we sue.
• grey-area 9y ago
  While this was the right choice and long overdue IMO, it was the wrong way to do it. They should update their TOS to remove the arbitrary clause about terminating for any reason, and replace it with a concrete list of behaviour which is against their terms, like perhaps hate speech, violent threats and harassment. Cloudflare can decide where this line is, but there is a line and it should be clear to everyone. Clients deserve to know what the criteria are prior to signup, and Cloudflare deserves the right to choose which clients to service. Thankfully Cloudflare are not and should never be in the position where they decide what stays on the internet, as they are just one provider, and do not have a monopoly. This is why monopolies are undesirable, even though most companies aspire to one.
  • jacquesm 9y ago
    > They should update their TOS to remove the arbitrary clause about terminating for any reason, and replace it with a concrete list of behaviour which is against their terms, like perhaps hate speech, violent threats and harassment. Companies make those clauses arbitrary for a purpose: that's so they don't get a bunch of amateur legal eagles who will attempt to argue forever about what they can and can not get away with. By purposefully leaving a gray area the company can draw the line by adjusting to fluid conditions when it suits them. You can disagree with that but I totally understand why a company like Cloudflare would want to reserve some room for maneuvering: it is impossible to know what the future will throw at you.
• bandrami 9y ago
  shrug The fact that US hosting companies have the pretty much unquestioned choice to decide whether or not to host websites of organizations supporting a faction of armed rebellion against the US, to me says we're probably doing this right.
  • gbarc888 9y ago
    The whole Civil Rights Movement came about as a result of a faction of armed rebellion against the US in the 1960s! I suppose you think it was a mistake to let them have the right to be heard back then?
• temp-dude-87844 9y ago
  The linked post is PR, or more accurately, damage control; and I say this with no malice towards Cloudflare. Simply, it's in their Terms of Service [1] that they can terminate accounts for any reason, which is exactly what they did. Unfortunately for them, this puts them squarely in the same category as, say, Google [2][3][4], whose near-ubiquitous presence in people's digital lives intersects with their black-box suspension behavior and near-memetic lack of customer support, to unpleasant effects. And no ill will towards Google either; they are just one of several examples who exist at the sweet spot of significant market share, widespread presence at various layers of information-networking, and a largely disconnected customer support experience. Cloudflare is trying to set themselves apart from a company (and competitors) that evoke that association by blogging about the gravity of their decision, but at this stage their writings aren't backed by demonstrable due process, like they aspire to work towards. Instead, they truthfully admit that it's troubling that any number of private corporations up and down the stack can boot people and information off the net, and then segue off to a self-reflective, but inconclusive closing. No new ground is blazed by this post. After all, those hosting content that they know has fallen afoul of contemporary sensibilities are still concerned, the people troubled by private corporations' control of the net stack have another example to add to their list, and the people who are most disturbed by the nature of the content banned in this instance are pleased this situation played out the way it did. Some will invoke the slippery slope argument, and perhaps rightfully so. I'd argue from a pragmatic standpoint that mainstream views shift over time, so it's natural that some topics will become taboo, some views will become to be seen obsolete and even abhorrent, as history has shown. And absent government regulation (in all relevant jurisdictions), corporations will try to act in their own self-interest, trying to balance reassuring their own customer-base with satisfying wider public value-sets, while seeking to shed customers who may cause them a disproportionate amount of cost: monetary, reputational, or otherwise. Government regulation protects certain classes of people through various mechanisms, like those with disabilities, or certain, but not all intrinsic characteristics that have been commonly used in the past to discriminate. We, as societies, then overlay subjective judicial systems to try to reason whether corporations' behavior towards certain individuals was legal or illegal. It's wasted effort to try to gauge, as outsiders, whether Cloudflare will enact a transparent process if any process they enact operates solely on the honor system. If it's checked by the legal system, then that's a different story. We're too early for that story. [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/ https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/, section 5 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972554 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3839568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3839568
• moe 9y ago
  This is what I call good marketing! There's dozens of CDNs to choose from (https://www.cdnplanet.com/ https://www.cdnplanet.com/), with the best one obviously being https://fastly.com https://fastly.com However, for most companies it's a wash which CDN to pick. Unless you're serving media to a large audience the cost is usually in the low triple digits. And unless you need to serve problematic regions (parts of Asia, Africa), there is barely a difference in performance between most of the contenders. So what tips the scale for any one of the CDNs? Well, after this move me and certainly others will definitely consider Cloudflare more often than previously - out of sheer sympathy.
• chrissnell 9y ago
  This makes me really sad. I will admit that I did not always feel this way. Several years ago, I spoke out against Cloudflare right here on HN for not terminating ISIS's al-Hayat Media Center and Amaq news agencies' websites that were serving up videos of the beheadings of foreign hostages. Cloudflare claimed content neutrality as their justification and I was appalled by this and actively recommend against them in my professional career as an infrastructure leader. To me, it was simple: ISIS was killing innocent people and Cloudflare was complicit in the weaponizing these killings into propaganda. I can't believe I'm saying this but here in 2017, I've had a change of heart. It's not that I support ISIS, or Daily Stormer, or Nazis. Fuck all of those guys. The problem here is that I feel that the post-Charlottesville Internet is rapidly sliding into a very scary trend of _weaponizing speech_. Prior to last weekend, the weaponization of speech was mostly confined to SJW-speak, where people call others' speech "violence". No longer confined to Twitter outbursts and op-eds, we are now seeing the weaponization of speech by service providers. It's easy to write off Daily Stormer as a bunch of inbred Nazi assholes because, hey, that's obvious, but who's next? Who's the next group that gets knocked off the Internet? Trump supporters? Civil War historians? Encryption experts? You? Me? Who gets to decide? Social activists? The government? Some other government? Matthew Prince? Even if you're ready to drive a truck into Richard Spencer's house, you should be outraged by Cloudflare's action today. This is quite possibly, as one of his employees said, the end of the Internet--certainly the free Internet.
  • ceejayoz 9y ago
    > This is quite possibly, as one of his employees said, the end of the Internet--certainly the free Internet. If one person at a private corporation can single-handedly end the free Internet, it was already over.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• dman 9y ago
  In a strange way this reminds me of the Reddit controversy where the CEO was caught modifying comments. I have never trusted Reddit after that, in a way I am thankful to the Reddit CEO for shaking me out of my complacency. I have similar thoughts about this. I do not want technology companies deciding what content is reachable.
• njarboe 9y ago
  Interesting that Matthew Prince did not think to list the owner of the device that is connected to the internet as a possible option of who could or should censor what one sees on the internet. This to me is the best option and not even put on the table. The old internet was amazing. Where is the new internet forming today?
• mythrwy 9y ago
  People that frequent TDS will probably believe this to be result of a secret globalist cabal further cementing their resolve that something must be done to save the white race. Sometimes its better if things have an outlet that's relatively benign and already mentally unstable people don't have cause for even more agitation. Plus it's easier to keep an eye on things and perhaps guide them a little. Confirming (in their eyes at least) what is already suspected doesn't help the situation. Let them have their site and their speech. Because you can't really stop it anyway and trying makes it worse.
• kfhoeihfy38h 9y ago
  If a baker can be forced to bake for a gay couple, the web performance company should be forced to provide web performance for a nazi.
• myrandomcomment 9y ago
  They are a business and they have the right to do this. 100% However they can no longer say they are "content-neutral". Also because they have taken an active step to censor they face the fact that in the future they could be sued for NOT censoring other content as there is now precedent created by this action. If you never censor then you have a clam of safe harbor. Emotionally the CEO is correct. From business point of view this decision opens them up to risk. Long term this was likely unwise.
  • matt4077 9y ago
    That doesn't even begin to make sense... Or at least you're 20 years too late with that argument: "The act was passed in part in reaction to the 1995 decision in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.,[3] which suggested that service providers who assumed an editorial role with regard to customer content, thus became publishers, and legally responsible for libel and other torts committed by customers. This act was passed to specifically enhance service providers' ability to delete or otherwise monitor content without themselves becoming publishers" See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
    • myrandomcomment 9y ago
      You should read more of the Wikipedia under limits. That law does not change the fact that one could argue "well they did censor this so...". It is a risk. If you have a record that says "we censor nothing" then you are much safer. I would agree that under the law you site it should be clear cut, but that is not the way it has worked lately. It's a risk based on a moral belief and I applaud the CEO for doing it. That does not invalidated the risk.
      • matt4077 9y ago
        The law doesn't change what anyone can argue. It only changes what a court will consider valid. The section on limitations says nothing about about the topic we're discussing, whereas the law was explicitly written to overturn this (since then invalid) belief that "any content moderation creates a burden to moderate all content". Quote: "The important difference between CompuServe and Prodigy for the Stratton court was that Prodigy engaged in content screening and therefore exercised editorial control. The holding in Stratton was overruled in federal legislation when Congress passed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in 1996. As a result, Internet service providers in the United States today are generally protected from liability for user-generated content." Anything else would obviously be unworkable. Facebook, for example, exerts wide-ranging control over content (i.e. they delete quite a lot). If that were to create liability for all user-generated content on Facebook, they would have seized to exist long ago.
• sakabasataka 9y ago
  Hate speech != free speech
• ransom1538 9y ago
  This is how life is for people in Porn. Let's say you host porn. Let's also assume you wish to charge for porn. Many banks, credit card merchants, etc DO NOT wish to deal with your company at all. They wont take your transfers nor business. There are merchants that are comfortable taking payments from you (CCBill) but they cost much more since they have the expertise to deal with these types of chargebacks etc. I am not sure how I see this is different. If you create a hate website - you might get dropped from SendGrid. Tough. That is how it works.
  • syrrim 9y ago
    Cloudflare is in the business of protecting websites from DDOS attacks (and various other things). They should of course try to estimate the cost of protecting a given client, and forward that cost onto them. However, if that client is willing to pay, their business centers around protecting them. I highly doubt daily stormer is their worst client in terms of DDOS protection or any other service.
• ahhhhhhhhhh 9y ago
  alright sure, but can we get twitter to ban donald trump?
• ahhhhhhhhhh 9y ago
  alright sure, but can we get twitter to ban donald trump?
• sjreese 9y ago
  Freedom of Speech - The right to express any opinions without censorship or restraint
• redm 9y ago
  A previous blog addressed a similar issue, about ISIS, with a very clear policy. It's worth the read. From Mr. Prince: "> What safeguards do you have in place to ensure that CloudFlare does not support illegal terrorist activity? This question assumes the answer. 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." [1] "Again, CloudFlare is not a hosting provider. If we were to terminate this, or any other customer, the material wouldn't go away, it would just be a bit slower and be more subject to attack. We do not believe that "investigating" the speech that flows through our network is appropriate. In fact, we think doing so would be creepy." [1] [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free-speech/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free-speech/
  • jquery 9y ago
    Also from the article: > Your CEO has in the past publicly defended providing services to websites hosting dangerous material. Would his position change if one of his own family was hurt or killed in an incident that could be reliably linked to the [controversial website]? In a word: no. As a way of proving that point, rather than speculate on a gruesome hypothetical, let's discuss a concrete example. About a year ago, a young hacker broke into my email accounts, rummaged around, and caused a significant amount of damage and embarrassment to me. At the time, the hacker was a CloudFlare user. He even used his CloudFlare-powered site to publish details of the attack. I was furious. It was a direct attack by one of our users specifically targeting me. Despite that, we did not kick him off our network nor should we have.
• pmarreck 9y ago
  If beating up a kid on a playground is free speech, then that is where my tolerance of free speech ends and I will go and stop the production of pain from a simply ethical harm-minimization standpoint
• simonh 9y ago
  I think that private companies like Cloudflare that claim to uphold free speech whatever the circumstances are fooling themselves. In this case it wasn't the Nazi propaganda of TDS that tipped the balance, it was them claiming that Cloudflare supported them. That made it very personal to Cloudflare and it's management in a way Prince clearly had not anticipated could happen. The reality is that private companies and individuals, unless compelled by law or regulation, have no obligation to facilitate the free speech of others. None. They certainly don't have an obligation to facilitate speech that falsely smears or defames them themselves. Trying to believe or claim that they could do so in all circumstances was naive. The principle of absolute moral neutrality is simply untenable. Choosing not to choose is itself a choice. Given the existence of repulsive opinion and content, choosing not to exclude it is simply a choice to publish it. It doesn't in any way dodge moral responsibility. It's time companies like this did the truly hard thing and set actual policies they believe in and can follow as a matter of conscience.
• j_s 9y ago
  Surprised no one has linked this back-and-forth discussion at Blackhat 2013 between cybercrime investigative reporter Brian Krebs and CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince regarding CloudFlare's hosting of "booters"/DDOS marketing sites. I will put a bit of the conversation here, but please do listen to it in context. https://youtu.be/wW5vJyI_HcU?t=45m17s https://youtu.be/wW5vJyI_HcU?t=45m17s (quoting CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince below, aka eastdakota on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=eastdakota https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=eastdakota ) 45:52 "Where would you draw the line?" 47:25 "It's really tricky when private organizations act as law enforcement" 47:33 "We try to follow what is due process" 47:56 smart-ass/sick burn re: Krebs's journalism 48:46 "We comply with any court order that we receive" (both takedowns and to not take things down) "unless we feel that it's truly abusive in these cases we [interrupted/unintelligible, maybe: would] ..." 49:00 "There have been some hacking-related sites that we have been asked to take down" source: HN user kefka https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14654680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14654680
• shawn-butler 9y ago
  I find it amusing that many of the same people who bemoan the loss of "net neutrality" are in this very thread applauding arbitrary censorship of content by a large company.
• dcow 9y ago
  What about the case where Microsoft Frontpage's EULA forbid creation of websites that shed a negative light on Microsoft? Wasn't the verdict that such a clause is not enforceable?
  • gbarc888 9y ago
    link?
    • dcow 9y ago
      My memory failed me. There was no case, simply speculation. I remember discussing it WRT some other EULA case. https://books.google.com/books?id=9jgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=frontpage+eula&source=bl&ots=5b0Q0psBfm&sig=MCIEZxjCDJi8gklRE30hLba-aW8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX8fCTw97VAhXF5YMKHfN7CAcQ6AEIODAF#v=onepage&q=frontpage%20eula&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=9jgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=P...
• wolco 9y ago
  Cloudflaire did a lot damage today by releasing that statement. It's one thing to have a policy or guideline that would ban a site like this. To have the CEO tell us he woke up in a bad mood and decided to kick this site off of the internet sends the message cloudflaire's service isn't a stable place governed by rules and policies. Cloudflaire CEO moods will dictate policy. I always felt Cloudflaire was a hotpot service with nsa hooks.
  • bookmarkacc 9y ago
    He stays in the article The Daily Stormers claim tbat cloudflair was a supporter of them because of their hosting.
• wushupork 9y ago
  If you had a restaurant, and you don't feel comfortable having Nazis/neoNazis at your place of business, would you serve them or would you feel like it's your right to choose not to do business with them.
• typon 9y ago
  It always perplexes me when libertarians (the Silicon Valley kind) argue for radical freedom but don't like it when a company chooses to exercise it. Don't like it? Create a competitor to Cloudflare.
• johnrichardson 9y ago
  Adolf Hitler: ~9 million deaths Joseph Stalin: Estimates range from 3 million - 60 million deaths. Mao Zedong: Estimates range from 49 million - 78 million deaths. All evil men. Why aren't the latter two nearly as reviled as Hitler or 'Nazis'?
  • SCdF 9y ago
    You mean, why aren't they idolised as much? Or used as a racist symbol to rally around as much? The reviling comes as a reaction to the idolisation, and the use of that figure as a racist symbol to rally around. Otherwise, you revile them while you do history in high school, and then move on with your life.
• CurtMonash 9y ago
  I say again -- he claims that the Daily Stormer claimed that Cloudflare NOT cutting them off was some kind of endorsement. If true, that makes them a very special case. I generally oppose almost all cases of a company using their legal right of censorship, at least when it's squarely aimed at censoring OPINIONS rather than just censoring specific modes of expression (e.g. threats, curse words, whatever). But he managed to find a legitimate-sounding loophole. He has no obligation to support the Daily Stormer's false claim of endorsement via his (in)actions.
• hueving 9y ago
  So supporting ISIS is fine, but this is where he draws the line?
• Akujin 9y ago
  We take down Al Qaeda terrorist websites all the time because they can be used to radicalize people. Nazis are no different. They are calling for the systematic violent overthrow of the US government and for the extermination of many millions of so called undesirables. This is a terrorist threat. I take this threat very seriously as do many people in the Jewish, Hispanic, and African American community. There are literally thousands of hosts out there in and outside the United States. The idea that Cloudflare is a public space requiring the protection of the first amendment from a company's policies is laughable. The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups.
  • supremesaboteur 9y ago
    Everyone who disagrees with you may not be a Nazi sympathizer
    • invisible 9y ago
      Not everyone who makes rational statements about this discussion is saying that other's disagreement is a sign of them being a Nazi sympathizer. Look through the comments and it's pretty clear what is being said by akujin.
  • chvid 9y ago
    "The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups." Exactly. Thank you for this beautiful statement. Dear writer of faul thoughts; have you considered that maybe one day this HN forum that you love so much will be closed due your writings here? Let's keep our forum clean from your Nazi sympathizing so that HN can continue as a part of the beautiful open web.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • abalone 9y ago
• elcapitan 9y ago
  It's funny that people still believe that exclusion will prevent other people from radicalization, rather than doing the opposite. People get shouted down on college campuses if they disagree with politically correct views. So they go somewhere else to speak out their views, not being interfered with anymore. So they radicalize. People in companies have to fear penalties if they speak out against developments they disagree with, so they don't speak out openly and form small circles and consult forums of their own. So they radicalize. People see themselves misrepresented as extremists by what they perceive as the "mainstream media", so they turn to what they think is the opposite of that, so they enter their own world of facts with Fox, Breitbart, etc. So they radicalize. Those people will vote for whoever they think represents the enemy of their enemies, and even support foreign governments that they think represent the opposite of their own establishment. They won't give a f about virtue-signaling platform providers in their own country, they will turn to providers elsewhere, whoever that may be (Russia etc). The belief that further exclusion everywhere will make anything better is just absolutely ridiculous.
• timwilson1 9y ago
  I'm a long time lurker of HN. This is my first post. Decided to sign up to write this. After all I have read in the news regarding Daily Stormer, I thought it best to go straight to the source, and find out whether what I had been reading was accurate, or if their views had been entirely, or in part, misrepresented. As a result of Cloudflare revoking their services to DS, the site is down. I can't evaluate DS directly. To me, this is bad. If everything that was said about DS is true, their own words would reveal their colours. People could judge them accordingly. The media regularly misrepresents individuals and groups. We shouldn't have to take the media at their word. Whenever possible, we should be able to evaluate the source. Now we can't, and we're worse off for it.
• pawelkomarnicki 9y ago
  All dangerous propaganda should be stopped, but mark this day as the start of a new era, the "Echo-chamber-Internet", censored by whoever shouts the loudest.
• ckw 9y ago
  Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech. Noam Chomsky
  • wanda 9y ago
    Non-sequitur. It's from Noam Chomsky so it's not surprising, he has a predilection for fallacies. Just because two "bad" people liked something in a certain way does not mean that "good" people must therefore like it the converse way. Both Goebbels and Stalin may also have liked butter and jam on their toast, but that doesn't mean I should eat toast with just butter. If that seems a little facetious, consider it this way: many leading figures deemed "good" by history were also in favour of regulated free speech. That doesn't make regulated free speech good, of course — though one might suppose that it means that these "good" people were probably not as liberal as many people seem to think. In fact, during times of war, and of apprehension/anticipation of war, I'd say that there were many things that went on, which would make many liberal people take umbrage today. I would say all free speech was heavily regulated by most nations up until the perhaps the '90s or even the '00s. I do not think it is unwise to regulate free speech. It is not wise for a civilisation, with laws, to allow people to flaunt their breaking of, or desire to break, said laws, without some legal consequence. Are we to have rapist support rallies next? Join the Rapist Party for the legalisation of rape? No. The rape of anybody is a crime, just like murder. It is not legally permitted to be perpetrated by anyone in most countries. The same should apply to racism — and you might say that it should not be illegal to make racist remarks, but actually, it should not be tolerated in terms of free speech either, because it is objectively wrong to believe a race is superior to another race. It's not a question about the meaning of life or the existence of supernatural deities, so the answer is not something that lies beyond the bounds of our language to discuss. It's a question of whether one race of people is superior to another race of people, and this question is answerable scientifically: there is no superior race. Given that there is no superior race, just like there is no superior gender i.e. women are not inferior to men, it should not be permissible for people to advocate views contrary to this — not because it is a "dominant discourse" or whatever Foucault might have said, but because it is a scientific fact. Science is not a discursive means to enforce order, it's just the application of logic to evidence. There are no meaningful genetic differences between different races, and there are no bounds set to what a person can achieve other than those set by political regimes and by the person's financial situation/access to education. Nothing should be able to call into question a scientifically-proven fact other than other scientifically-proven facts i.e. new evidence. It should not be legal to spread sophistry or incite dissent and disorder based on sophistry. So, racism should not be permissible simply because it carries no truth. If racism had a basis in science, or indeed any truth to it whatsoever, it would not require fanatical cults and violence to spread its message. It would just be taught, as it is already taught that homo sapiens outmatched the neanderthal (though this is actually speculative and remains to be conclusively proven, but that's another debate). There is no universal rule for handling free speech and it's not something that should be considered in terms of setting precedents. Every case of permissible free speech is distinct and the question must be asked each time: is the message that being advocated logically plausible/scientifically justified? Remember, "rape is bad" is not something you can scientifically prove because it's not a comparison between two people from different places, it's a moral statement, albeit one that most agree with. Thus, if you permit racist discourse against science, you will set a far more dangerous precedent for the rapists, human traffickers, murderers and paedophiles around the world who also feel that for too long their voices have gone unheard. I wonder if Chomsky would readily be the one to grant them the freedom to speak openly about their preferences for murdering and raping people, from his armchair.
• MrsPeaches 9y ago
  Can someone explain to me how the protection of free speech sits within the view of "the market will sort it out"? This seems like a very interesting case to take as an example. In general this forum is pretty pro market but when a certain idea comes under attack from the market, people start talking about public goods. It seems like there are some contradictions here that feel under explored.
• mk89 9y ago
  I would never shut down such websites. Not due to Freedom of speech, but because now they will hide better. Most of these people login with their Facebook accounts to post hateful comments etc. I mean, seriously, all it takes for any law enforcement is to keep these people under control and that's it and sue them if it's the case. On the other hand, now we risk to create more and more parallel societies and secret groups. I understand that a private company can decide to terminate any user's account just "because they can". Completely fine with that. They could have played this card better I think.
  • twobyfour 9y ago
    Hide better? These aren't child pornographers trying to stay under the radar of the law. These are Nazis advocating for the murder of people who don't look like them, and trying to make their views mainstream. Making them harder to for the vast majority of people to find is a major part of exactly how you shut a violent fascist movement down. And if you don't think a movement like this should be shut down, you're part of the problem.
    • mk89 9y ago
      > Making them harder to for the vast majority of people to find is a major part of exactly how you shut a violent fascist movement down. Did you ever read about how Mussolini or Hitler gained their power? Do you really think that the governments back then didn't do anything to prevent what they were trying to start? That they didn't try to shut them down, etc.? We are talking about a severe social problem that unfortunately ends up mostly with bulls* - white supremacy and all this cr. Why? Because nobody wants to listen to these people - what are the issues they have? I would say that most of the time, these people don't have a high income. Maybe they are unemployed, etc., maybe they don't feel secure/safe - do you actually know why they do these things? Some may be mentally ill, but hell, I don't want to believe that all of them are! How many times does this have to happen again and again...? When will we ever learn? Rising walls and shutting people up are not good ways to build something - but only to destroy.
      • 9y ago
• beegeezuz 9y ago
  I think we are reaching dangerous levels of censorship. We already live in a world where we have guidelines of how we are allowed to think and what we are allowed to say.
• thinkMOAR 9y ago
  Dear CloudFlare, Hi mr prince i know you read this. Could you please apply the same policy to malicious sites that are you are proxying which you never bother to take down because of 'insert poor reasons here'? I think thats worse then to see or read an opinion i don't agree with, regardless of how explicit that opinion is or how badly i disagree. People should be able to say what they want where they want and not only when the largest part of the population/media agrees. The limit lies at VIOLENCE. There never is a reason to enforce or show your opinion through means of violence. Ever.
• alexandercrohde 9y ago
  For those making the "public company it's their right" argument, it's worth considering what that logic might imply. Does it mean food stores could deny selling you food, based on your associations/affiliations? Airlines deny you travel? Cell phone companies, deny you a phone? I think the reason we're seeing backlash here is that the internet is largely perceived as a utility now (I believe utility companies cannot deny service at will). Secondly, more than once is US history have those attempting to be virtuous gone too far (e.g. McCarthyism). Surely it will happen again. When that day comes, will it be better if we err to the side of too dismissive or too open-minded?
  • billysielu 9y ago
    Generally agree. Potential distinction between content consumer and content producer though. E.g. it might be a right to consume electricity, but is it a right to produce it, say.. with solar panels?
• moomin 9y ago
  One thing a lot of speechers don't seem to get around here: taking down The Daily Stormer is speech. Also, keeping them up is speech. If you want to regulate CloudFlare so that it has to carry The Daily Stormer, take it up with your congressman. But don't pretend you're neutral in the fight between those who value the constitution and those who would trample over it.
• GrumpyNl 9y ago
  If people were educated better, there would be no need to close sites like that down.
• EJTH 9y ago
  Cloudflare happily mirrors ISIS forums. The double standards, all because one person was killed by what looked like an inexperienced driver scared shitless by antifa goons.
• Shinchy 9y ago
  Makes total sense, not sure why they would even need to write all of this up.
• salimmadjd 9y ago
  Principles are tested in hard times. In half of Europe Nazis were replaced by Stalinists...hope we're not on the same path. Legally 1st amendment is protection against the government, but principally it should be applied to any entity with national or global power. Racist, Nazis or anyone can say what they want (minus explicit call for violence), and the opposing side has the equal right to prove them wrong. That's the beauty and intent of the 1st Amendment. How people are cheering this decision, seems rather shortsighted to me.
  • unityByFreedom 9y ago
    > principally it should be applied to any entity with national or global power It's ridiculous to call Cloudflare this. There are tons of alternative CDNs. They have as much "power" as your local bookstore.
• HNNoLikey 9y ago
  Is anyone just taking the time to simply ask, WTF is going on? At the emotional frequency everyone is operating on, do you really think you'll win? No one will win because everyone will lose. Let me explain why. I think it's time everyone admitted their biases and that their biases if not TAMED will only serve to antagonize their political opponents. Before I go on, here are my biases... I'm a black libertarian(with a strong affinity for classical liberalism) and a supporter of Trump's presidency so words like 'uncle tom' have been thrown at me. I wasn't always a libertarian. Initially a liberal, I didn't pay much attention to politics but when I begun to think about the role that politics has in my life (at zero option), I realized that I was naturally inclined towards conservatism i.e. fiscal responsibility & frugality, tighter immigration control, less government intervention, anti-eminent-domain, pro-personal freedom and liberty, anti-common-core, and then some. I'm huge fan of Peter Thiel and Hans-Hermann Hoppe - I read them a lot. I no longer feel the need to watch CNN because their ability to hide their skew towards liberalism is all but gone You should note that there's no where that I mentioned violence as a chosen means to get my voice heard. I don't support it but I fear that's where the world is headed in order to resolve this political conflict that's in the ether right now. What we have today is a left that is too far gone - who mostly don't realize it - and a right that's intentionally too far gone also. Just as much as there is a far-right, you best believe that Trump is right and there is a far-left (it is telling that today on the web, you'll find two clones of Wikipedia all skewed towards either leftism or rightism because neither trust Wikipedia - see Conservapedia & RationalWiki). As much as Trump has been touted by some as a symptom (I agree), I think that Obama's presidency was also a symptom. Putting his(Obama) race aside, we had an American president who once said that [sic] between capitalists and communists or socialists, and especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate...You should just decide what works. This shows that the world had once again reached a point where systems like communism which were disproven - when America won the cold war, the soviet collapsed, the Berlin wall came down and Fukuyama wrote the words 'End of History' - could now be viewed in a relativistic manner. As though it didn't matter what the world had gone through historically. This was one of those fatal flaws because, if you forget history, you're undoubtedly bound to repeat it. I also subscribe to some Burkean views which espouse that, change in a society should be introduced gradually. Gradual change while all the while testing to see if there's truth in your claims. This is not what we're used to in the tech scene; we prefer disruption but disruption comes at a cost. You cannot have a Bernie without a Trump. You cannot have an Alt-Right without an Antifa. We must all tone down our views. We must all tame our desires for instant political gratification. Revolutionary change comes at a painful cost. Let's all embrace gradual change. If we don't, right or left, the Daily Stormer will win whether you like it or not because there will be a race war as per their slogan. When this happens, it will all turn into rubble and only a few will be left to pick up the pieces. The questions we should be asking is what can I cede (politically) in exchange for you ceding something of equal magnitude until some balance is restored. We aren't headed in the right direction otherwise.
• Zahreddine 9y ago
  Just because someone does horrible shit in the name of the Nazi party does not mean the Nazi party itself is at fault.
  • jwdunne 9y ago
    Are you being serious? The Nazi party is based on doing horrible shit to minorities. That's the ideology, that's what the leadership believed and that's the reason why people joined them.
    • Zahreddine 9y ago
      Are you being serious? Islam is based on doing horrible shit to infidels. That's the ideology, that's what the leadership believed and that's the reason why people were forced to join them. You're a hypocrite.
      • jwdunne 9y ago
        In the 5th or 6th century. Christians were doing the same in the middle ages. Is that true of the Islam and Christianity people follow today? No. Completely different when it's a modern ideology with people signing up today who want to see the extermination of minorities. Yeah sure, it's hypocritical for men to support feminism because Ugg dragged his woman by the hair. It appears you're trying to defend the indefensible.
        • lmm 9y ago
          > In the 5th or 6th century. Christians were doing the same in the middle ages. Is that true of the Islam and Christianity people follow today? No. All that is still there in the scriptures. Not many people are "doing horrible shit" to people in the name of those religions/ideologies today, sure (though do look at how the Islamic world treats apostates or women) - but nor are today's Nazis doing any extermination in practice. The idea that people in one movement whose core beliefs include support for genocide must really believe in it but people in another group whose core beliefs include support for genocide must be into it for other reasons seems rather dubious.
• gasull 9y ago
  The self-proclaimed mission of the alt-right: "Creating a Subculture Which Becomes the Dominant Culture" https://web.archive.org/web/20170721194819/www.dailystormer.com/alt-right-mission-creating-a-subculture-which-becomes-the-dominant-culture/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170721194819/www.dailystormer.... I wonder if censoring the Alt-Right only reinforces them as subculture via Streisand effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
• saimiam 9y ago
  If you have not read the post and came straight to the comments, you should read the post. I found it well written, thoughtful, and cognizant of its potential role in dictating what the future of the internet could look like.
• billysielu 9y ago
  This topic seems to bring out the worst in people. HN is usually better than this.
• dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  I can't wait for the day that society figures out that individuals, small groups of people and big groups of people need different rules when it comes to what is and isn't free speech. A small bakery not putting a confederate flag or a rainbow or a swastiaka on a cake or conversely being compelled by law to do so if requested is different than Google or Cloudflare kicking out a customer for their speech or being legally compelled not to. I think Cloudlfare was in the right. The Daily Stormer was pretty stupid to say that Cloudflare supported or agreed with them and got kicked out.
• norea-armozel 9y ago
  I'm not sure this is a good idea since Cloudflare came out initially in favor of maintaining their account. Mind you, I don't like Nazis and frankly I don't care that they lost their account but it's bad for a business to change its mind so quickly. Honestly, I say let the fascists have their crappy site, just don't help them monetize it. Let's see if they can keep up with their "recruitment" when it's clear the only class of people they can garner support from are the kind that spout nonsense like Alex Jones or worse.
• deleted 9y ago
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• pyroinferno 9y ago
  I find it weird that everyone jumps at Nazis when they do something bad, but when it's police being killed at BLM protests or people getting hit in the head with bike locks and shot at at Antifa protests, no one bats an eye. Why is it okay to leave out Black Nationalists and Communists/Anarchists and solely focus on Nazis? All these groups have blood on their hands.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• markleberry 9y ago
  DailyStormer had this coming for a long time
• dibstern 9y ago
  I'm Jewish, and a huge portion of my family was killed in the holocaust. Two great aunts were operated on by Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz. I hate and fear neo-nazis and people who ascribe to similar hateful, violent ideologies. I was shocked and scared by what I saw happened in Charlottesville. A small part of me even briefly fantasised about a modern day Inglorious Bastards. But I know freedom of speech needs protection, because today, it is easier than ever to be given a label and associated with the worst of humanity, and for people to think that you're a racist/sexist/etc., even when you are very far from it. We all just saw this happen to James Damore, a pro-diversity guy, who suggested ways to make his workplace more attractive to a larger proportion of women, and cited only science that has been backed up by a significant number of studies. The tyrannical Left felt some of his comments go against their narrative, the narrative that oppression is the cause of everything unless proven otherwise. A intellectually lazy and innacurate narrative, obviously. The world is never so simple, and the evidence doesn't support such a view. If we give up freedom of speech and punish people like James Damore, we will have lost the freedom that supports our society, and allows us to have political discourse. Do you know what separates us from Russia, China, and the rest? The freedom of speech. Democracy is only truly held by a country when political discourse is allowed. Obviously. The Left is guilty of demonisation of their opponents and alienation of their allies, and is, from what I've seen, the only group wanting to stop freedom of speech, and impose tyranny on all others. People need to wake up to its threat. It is much less obvious than the hideous Neo-Nazis, far more insidious. The fact that I fear being called 'right-wing' for what I have just said is absurd. Friends of mine are members of both Left and Right-wing political parties in my country, and I refuse to be associated with either, because parties and wings create division and move us further apart, and distract us from the same values that we do share. And of course because I disagree with both wings. They are both driven by fear instead of reason. Nothing clouds one's judgement more than strong negative emotion. The crocodile brain. The worst part of ourselves. My limit? The explicit threat or encouragement of violence. This is never acceptible. This is where we can and should be coming down on the neo-nazis, white supremacists, socialists, antifa, and the rest of them. They are violent people, so this isn't hard. Encouraging neo-nazism, given the holocaust, might be considered encouraging violence. This makes some sense to me. So perhaps, where there is incontrovertible evidence of encouraging Nazi belief, or belief systems that are explicitly and historically supportive of violence, we can consider the implicit threat of violence an explicit one. Can anyone poke holes in this? Or any of what I've said? Unlikely anyone will read this absurdly long comment, but I still want to post it.
• omegbule 9y ago
  Ignorance is bliss I guess, maybe the white nationalist shouldn't have a web presence for these SJWs to notice them else they would go on rampant like these gangs in LA/chicago.
• Kazamai 9y ago
  I reported a website for human trafficking a year ago, which is still online and protected by cloud flare. I referenced parts of the forum to their staff where users mentioned enjoying raping women. Their response, "I don't see anything wrong with this content".
  • Tloewald 9y ago
    So what this says is Cloudflare believes in providing service to anyone until it causes bad publicity. It's certainly not a morally courageous stand, but fits in perfectly with most tech giants.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• arca_vorago 9y ago
  All I have to say is the arguments being put forth by so many on this thread are poorly formed, appeal to logical fallacies, in particular false equivalence, and generally show a lack of understanding of American enlightenment ideals and the Constitution. I'm not going to get down in this mud by trying to refute all the bad points, but it makes me sad to see HN in such a state. I think perhaps it's time for country of origin tagging so we know where commenters are from... because these sentiments are somewhat understandable in less free european countries, but are much less so if the posters are American. I hope this isn't a precursor to HN being sockpuppeted to death like Reddit...
• NDlurker 9y ago
  This is insane
• tgarma1234 9y ago
  We can make burglary illegal without any additional explanation of why burglary is "wrong". This is because it is part of understanding the concept of burglary to know that it is wrong. It's the same sort of logic that applies to Nazi propaganda: it is wrong simply because it is Nazi propaganda. We understand what it is and what they are saying, so we do not need to go to additional lengths to explain why it is wrong. It should be silenced for no other reason than that it is Nazi propaganda. To promote Nazi propaganda is to undermine the social contract itself about what constitutes free speech. It is a mistake of Enlightenment political philosophy to say that every decision we make about what constitutes right and wrong must derive ultimately from basic principles by logical reasoning. In many cases merely understanding a concept suffices to directly condemn an activity and Nazi propaganda is almost the best example of how we can, without further conversation, simply say "NO"... we are not going to help you promote this and we are not going to politely explain to you why we do not agree with your views. All this talk about free speech and Nazis is nonsense. I support Cloudflare's decision.
  • basch 9y ago
    Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. - Louis Brandeis
• throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  CloudFlare is a private business. Its their prerogative. The only thing the CEO did wrong here was explain himself. I'm sure those Nazis can figure out by themselves why they got tossed out.
• Dove 9y ago
  Free speech is not important because it is a pleasant experience to be able to speak your mind. It is important because it is the only hope we have of society making moral and intellectual progress. Every time a new idea comes along, it starts out unpopular and faces resistance from the establishment. If we decide what is right by arguing, unpopular but correct ideas can win. If we resort to blows, they are much less likely to. The government must permit free speech because we cannot improve a system we cannot criticize. But this is not a sufficient condition to give new and radical ideas a chance. Citizens must believe in the principle, too. Just like all the anti-discrimination restrictions on government offer little protection to the marginalized when any business can do it, a guarantee that the government will not throw you in jail for your speech means little when no one will host your website, no one will print your book, no one will hire you, and campaigns of bullying and harassment are fair game. It is easy to feel that might makes right when you are on the side of the majority, but looking back in history, it is not always obvious what is right. For example, we often imagine that the historical opposition to interracial marriage proceeded from base hatred, but this wasn't so. The science of the time showed clearly and repeatedly that the races had vastly differing intelligences and that intelligence was heritable. We know now that this research was flawed, but at the time, it was well established scientific opinion. The concern was that by mixing the races, we would drop the intelligence of humanity down to the mean, and deprive ourselves of great thinkers, and bring about the doom of humanity in an idiocracy. It was argued that those who supported interracial marriage were blinded by compassion and would cause the downfall of civilization. This was a very popular, very intellectually credible view, held by good and responsible upstanding citizens who were willing to work hard and fight hard to protect civilization. Sure, they were able to pass laws based on their views. That's right and proper. But should they have been allowed to suppress dissent? Should the scientific community have rejected research that would lead to the doom of human civilization? Should people be fired for supporting it? Demonstraters identified, shamed, and harrassed? Print shops refuse to print their literature? The world is a weird place. Speech which we consider dangerous abnd abhorrent usually is. But sometimes? Sometimes it's right, either in part or in whole. Sometimes what you think is right, based on what you think you know, turns out to be wrong. The reason it is critical to let Nazis speak, the reason it is critical to oppose arguments with arguments alone and never with any measure of force, is that this is the only system under which views which are true and right have a chance of winning. Whatever you want the rule to be, however you want to treat the Nazis, remember that not that long ago, their ideas were the ones that were obviously popular and right, that all the well-informed and powerful and good people subscribed to. The price of free speech is that there are always crazies. People starting cults of ignorance and hate, drawing the desperate and the damaged into them and threatening the very foundations of society. These ideas need to be fought, but it is crucial that they be fought WITH. WORDS. If we resort to collaborative blows, we will miss it when the crazies are right about something important.
• nielsabel 9y ago
  These might give an interesting perspective: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-befriends-kkk-documentary-accidental-courtesy_us_585c250de4b0de3a08f495fc http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-be...
• logfromblammo 9y ago
  This is definitely sparking the Streisand Effect now. I had never heard of this site before, and having their domain dumped by three major tech companies in a row has plastered it all over my news bubble.
• khana 9y ago
  React driven should be confined to js frameworks not human interactions. This is a slippery slope but the ppl have already spoken. Sadly, we go forward in this half-cocked manner. It's hard to confront the underlying sources of this angst and that's our dilemma.
• dclowd9901 9y ago
  > We're going to have a long debate internally about whether we need to remove the bullet about not terminating a customer due to political pressure. I think you can safely say this has nothing to do with political pressure if it's something you've asserted yourself. You can't say, "We've never taken down a website due to internal moral pressure," but that's something I actually consider when picking a business to do business with, so it stands to reason a business should make decisions based on this. Not everyone feels this way, and that's fine, but I prefer to do business with people I consider principled in the way that I am. Is this a dangerous notion? It doesn't seem so in practice, in that the only people being banned are Nazis and child porn distributors; tough luck making that slope slippery with those two players.