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Not sure why you are quoting earlier content instead of Cloudflare's statement on this particular matter. From today: >Our terms of service reserve the right

Not sure why you are quoting earlier content instead of Cloudflare's statement on this particular matter. From today: >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. Seems no one woke up in a bad mood here.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
If eastdakota said it, it's damning, regardless of the later PR scrubbing.
- RandVal30142 9y ago
  He also said this: >“I realized there was no way we were going to have that conversation with people calling us Nazis,” Prince said. “The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe. That was the tipping point for me.”
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky. The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways. Edit: I was proud of Cloudflare not turning them off after their domain was deregistered. Now, so disappointed. Freedom of speech is rarely the speech we agree with. Or even speech we find palatable.
    - vkou 9y ago
      The Pirate Bay and Lizard Squad aren't an existential threat to our society. Neither is ISIS. Fascism and white supremacy is.
      - MaymayMaster 9y ago
        That's just hyperbolic. An ideology that has as few individuals as white supremacy does is hardly an existential crisis. Unless, of course, there is reason to believe more people will be pushed to white supremacy in the future, which is proposterous. For what reason would more and more people be pushed to extreme ends of identity politics? Truly a mystery.
      - doubleshame 9y ago
        Let's say you're right. I'd think that isolating this group is a poor strategy. Look at terrorist camps in Pakistan where children are indoctrinated from a young age with radical ideas. Is the solution here to build a wall or to improve education and spread new ideas? The truth is that you can never build a high enough wall. "We often meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it."
        johnny22 9y ago
        who said it had to be either or. It can be both.
        doubleshame 9y ago
        This is where the analogy breaks down though. If we reach a place where the internet itself is fragmented, then I will no longer be able to access trash like the Daily Stormer, and the child of a radical will no longer be able to access the content that I see. At this point, the wall will be too high to effectively toss education / ideas over, the internet being the primary form of communication.
        rpearl 9y ago
        So you think we should be debating the nazis about whether or not we should consider genocide? The problem is that there aren't two sides here. Even engaging, at all, legitimizes the notion that this type of idea is up for debate. It's not. We can try to stem the flow of people into radicalization and extremism. Guess how that's done? By shifting the window of acceptable rhetoric--ie, ignoring their offered ideas and debate--until it's very clearly not within social bounds to be a nazi. And we're trying to do that. But to engage with the nazis themselves, no. We need to make it such that espousing those ideas--visibly being a neonazi, running hate sites like the daily stormer--means being lonely, isolated, and powerless. And by showing that when nazis try to pry their way in, they will be hurt, there will be violence, and nobody will be sympathetic. Make it so nobody will join them, ever. and we do that by stamping out their propaganda, by not allowing a single resource to be used by them.
    - urbanj 9y ago
      Yeah, if you don't see the difference between a Nazi website and Pirate Bay you have some serious problems.
    - RandVal30142 9y ago
      >Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky. Don't use critical internet infrastructure to wage a campaign of hate and to organize rallies that ultimately culminate in a terrorist ramming attack against unarmed demonstrators? >The worlds gone sideways. There was a torchlit rally where people shouted "Jews will not replace us" and "Heil Trump." One of those in attendance was Matthew Heimbach, a white nationalist leader who previously assaulted someone at a Trump rally[1]. Heimbach has urged violence before and cheered stabbings[2] by his fellow Nazis as well. Part of Trump's base is engaging is white nationalist violence in the open. I agree, the world has gone sideways. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-guilty-in-trump-rally-case/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-... [2] http://archive.is/ZBOOa http://archive.is/ZBOOa
      - zcombo432 9y ago
        Cloudfare used to market itself not too long ago ago as an entity that didn't censor speech. I guess things have changed. “A website is speech. It is not a bomb,” Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a 2013 blog post defending his company’s stance. “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.” https://www.propublica.org/article/service-provider-boots-hate-site-off-the-internet https://www.propublica.org/article/service-provider-boots-ha...
        RandVal30142 9y ago
        Inciting violence has never been a protected form of speech.
        dmitrygr 9y ago
        In USA, the supreme Court has stated that it is only not protected if it causes an IMMEDIATE risk to life. A website doesn't meet that bar, most likely, at least the way SCOTUS phrased it..
    - jquery 9y ago
      > Freedom of speech is rarely the speech we agree with. Speech that the majority agrees with has no need to be protected. Even North Korea will let you agree as much as you want with the party line.
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      > Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky. When the internet is no longer privatized and is guaranteed as a public service by law, then this argument will have a leg to stand on. We've taken it for granted for a long time that the folks at the top of the data food chain are benevolent despots. This is a belief that is ultimately not rational. Maintaining an internet made of actors who are ultimately private corporations providing a service enables these decisions. The thing is, I suspect if we made the internet a public service in each country, then its speech laws would actually be substantially more restrictive than what CF, Google and others are doing. Case in point: > The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways. Yeah. Although sideways? Let's not forget that an horrific act of fatal violence branded as domestic terrorism that was specifically targeted at suppressing free speech to further a regime of racially motivated violence and hate. Daily Stormer put up 2 distinct articles arguing this was okay. They then defamed a private organization by claiming they too supported that vile sentiment. I mean, don't get me wrong. DDoS gangs are extortionists. But at the end of the day money is just money. Human rights are fundamental.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        I'm cringing at the cognitive dissonance. Every major silicon valley tech company helps China oppress it citizens on an unparalleled scale to allow them to continue to operate in the country, but one "terrorist attack" (unplanned murder with a vehicle, a hate crime) occurs in a state in the US and suddenly the gloves are off. Edit: This country isn't getting fixed without empathy, understanding, and compromise on a national scale. Without that, we're all just yelling how lovely the moral high ground is when we're all wallowing in the mud.
        croon 9y ago
        > but one "terrorist attack" (unplanned murder with a vehicle) occurs in a state in the US and suddenly the gloves are off. > According to the Government Accountability Office of the United States, 73% of violent extremist incidents that resulted in deaths since September 12, 2001 were caused by right wing extremists groups.[41][42]
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      What about being upfront about a lack of principles and also marketing a the company as critical internet infrastructure? I've pretty much reached the point where when someone vehemently declares their adherence to a principle I decide they probably haven't thought about it a lot. Even in the US where there is a strong, fundamental legal protection of speech, it can't be said to be a principle. There's all sorts of places where it is compromised.
    - rxhernandez 9y ago
      > The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways. Yes people whose namesake is derived from a group of people that committed genocide is where I draw my line. Do you even hear yourself right now? What kind of mental gymnastics did you have to perform to equate internet vandalism and theft to hate groups who call for a return to Nazi practices?
      - blfr 9y ago
        people whose namesake is derived from a group of people that committed genocide is where I draw my line Jacobinmag has no trouble with its host.
        stefantalpalaru 9y ago
        > Jacobinmag has no trouble with its host. Neither the various groups calling themselves "Young Turks". It's like historical atrocities have an expiration date, after which they lose any power to scandalise.
        tomjakubowski 9y ago
        That's quite the stretch to say the Jacobins committed "genocide".
        thanatropism 9y ago
        History is written by the winners.
        xienze 9y ago
        Ditto "The Young Turks"
        rxhernandez 9y ago
        And there is controversy insofar as whether they truly committed a genocide with many scholars saying they didn't. There is no controversy with regard to Nazis. If you did 10 minutes of research you could find as much.
    - glebm 9y ago
      Freedom of speech does not cover incitement nor hate speech.
      - jquery 9y ago
        In the US, "hate speech" is not a recognized category of speech and therefore protected, and even incitement has to meet a high bar, including immediacy.
      - alva 9y ago
        > nor hate speech better tell the Supreme Court https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/19/supreme-court-unanimously-reaffirms-there-is-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/?utm_term=.b2f1e8e9aa84z https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - adventured 9y ago
        Hate speech is a fake category, recently invented (in the historical time scope of US speech debate) as a means to instigate tighter speech controls by the government. The definition of hate speech is entirely arbitrary, you'll notice it has approximately as many definitions as there are people discussing it. That's by design, it's meant to have any definition desired at any time, to be of maximum use in destroying freedom of speech in the US. The effort is succeeding and accelerating rapidly. Freedom of speech in the US has less than a decade left, the vise grip will start with things that are very hard to defend, and move down the ladder often varying by who is in power. By the time speech is brought under tighter government regulation, the people pushing for 'hate speech' controls today will be terrified as they watch what a worse version of Trump does with the new power (a serious theocrat for example). That outcome is inevitable, it's what happens every time people don't think through the consequences of handing massive new powers to a very aggressive government.
    - mikeash 9y ago
      "The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways." Are you implying that The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are worse than actual, literal Nazis? Because that's the only way I can see to read it, but that can't possibly be what you meant.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        I'm saying Cloudflare has made a decision which criminal conduct they're willing to allow, which is dramatically different then "we turn off no one".
        mikeash 9y ago
        And why is it a surprise that media pirates or gangs weren't enough to change their minds, but Nazis are? Your phrasing implies that if they're willing to kick out Nazis, they should be willing to kick out media pirates. That's bizarre!
        toomuchtodo 9y ago
        > And why is it a surprise that media pirates or gangs weren't enough to change their minds, but Nazis are? Cloudflare: "Its okay if you break the law, but say offensive words that don't break the law and you are outta here." Hence, my surprise. Criminal acts = ok. Offensive legal speech = not okay.
        mikeash 9y ago
        You don't see why someone might be more opposed to actual literal swastika-carrying roman-saluting Hitler-worshipping Nazis who would be out exterminating inferior races right now if they had more followers, than to a web site that helps you download movies without paying for them? Criminality isn't the only thing people look at for this stuff.
        toomuchtodo 9y ago
    - outworlder 9y ago
      > Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky. "Icky"? They provoked this response by using CloudFlare's name in their cause. What would be the appropriate response?
      - bmelton 9y ago
        Maybe a press release saying "Hey, we're not nazis, but we also have this policy that says we won't shut off service to people with whom we disagree politically" would have done the trick?
        jquery 9y ago
        You think appealing to principles and fairness is enough to quell the mob mentality that's consumed America the past few days? Have you not been watching/reading the news? I've been learning all week that Trump and everyone who voted for Trump is no different than a Nazi.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- thinkfurther 9y ago
  Damning? I find it humble and self-deprecating to call a lucid moment as this a "bad mood".

toomuchtodo 9y ago

If eastdakota said it, it's damning, regardless of the later PR scrubbing.

RandVal30142 9y ago
He also said this: >“I realized there was no way we were going to have that conversation with people calling us Nazis,” Prince said. “The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe. That was the tipping point for me.”
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky. The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways. Edit: I was proud of Cloudflare not turning them off after their domain was deregistered. Now, so disappointed. Freedom of speech is rarely the speech we agree with. Or even speech we find palatable.
  - vkou 9y ago
    The Pirate Bay and Lizard Squad aren't an existential threat to our society. Neither is ISIS. Fascism and white supremacy is.
    - MaymayMaster 9y ago
      That's just hyperbolic. An ideology that has as few individuals as white supremacy does is hardly an existential crisis. Unless, of course, there is reason to believe more people will be pushed to white supremacy in the future, which is proposterous. For what reason would more and more people be pushed to extreme ends of identity politics? Truly a mystery.
    - doubleshame 9y ago
      Let's say you're right. I'd think that isolating this group is a poor strategy. Look at terrorist camps in Pakistan where children are indoctrinated from a young age with radical ideas. Is the solution here to build a wall or to improve education and spread new ideas? The truth is that you can never build a high enough wall. "We often meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it."
      - johnny22 9y ago
        who said it had to be either or. It can be both.
        doubleshame 9y ago
        This is where the analogy breaks down though. If we reach a place where the internet itself is fragmented, then I will no longer be able to access trash like the Daily Stormer, and the child of a radical will no longer be able to access the content that I see. At this point, the wall will be too high to effectively toss education / ideas over, the internet being the primary form of communication.
      - rpearl 9y ago
        So you think we should be debating the nazis about whether or not we should consider genocide? The problem is that there aren't two sides here. Even engaging, at all, legitimizes the notion that this type of idea is up for debate. It's not. We can try to stem the flow of people into radicalization and extremism. Guess how that's done? By shifting the window of acceptable rhetoric--ie, ignoring their offered ideas and debate--until it's very clearly not within social bounds to be a nazi. And we're trying to do that. But to engage with the nazis themselves, no. We need to make it such that espousing those ideas--visibly being a neonazi, running hate sites like the daily stormer--means being lonely, isolated, and powerless. And by showing that when nazis try to pry their way in, they will be hurt, there will be violence, and nobody will be sympathetic. Make it so nobody will join them, ever. and we do that by stamping out their propaganda, by not allowing a single resource to be used by them.
  - urbanj 9y ago
    Yeah, if you don't see the difference between a Nazi website and Pirate Bay you have some serious problems.
  - RandVal30142 9y ago
    >Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky. Don't use critical internet infrastructure to wage a campaign of hate and to organize rallies that ultimately culminate in a terrorist ramming attack against unarmed demonstrators? >The worlds gone sideways. There was a torchlit rally where people shouted "Jews will not replace us" and "Heil Trump." One of those in attendance was Matthew Heimbach, a white nationalist leader who previously assaulted someone at a Trump rally[1]. Heimbach has urged violence before and cheered stabbings[2] by his fellow Nazis as well. Part of Trump's base is engaging is white nationalist violence in the open. I agree, the world has gone sideways. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-guilty-in-trump-rally-case/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-... [2] http://archive.is/ZBOOa http://archive.is/ZBOOa
    - zcombo432 9y ago
      Cloudfare used to market itself not too long ago ago as an entity that didn't censor speech. I guess things have changed. “A website is speech. It is not a bomb,” Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a 2013 blog post defending his company’s stance. “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.” https://www.propublica.org/article/service-provider-boots-hate-site-off-the-internet https://www.propublica.org/article/service-provider-boots-ha...
      - RandVal30142 9y ago
        Inciting violence has never been a protected form of speech.
        dmitrygr 9y ago
        In USA, the supreme Court has stated that it is only not protected if it causes an IMMEDIATE risk to life. A website doesn't meet that bar, most likely, at least the way SCOTUS phrased it..
  - jquery 9y ago
    > Freedom of speech is rarely the speech we agree with. Speech that the majority agrees with has no need to be protected. Even North Korea will let you agree as much as you want with the party line.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    > Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky. When the internet is no longer privatized and is guaranteed as a public service by law, then this argument will have a leg to stand on. We've taken it for granted for a long time that the folks at the top of the data food chain are benevolent despots. This is a belief that is ultimately not rational. Maintaining an internet made of actors who are ultimately private corporations providing a service enables these decisions. The thing is, I suspect if we made the internet a public service in each country, then its speech laws would actually be substantially more restrictive than what CF, Google and others are doing. Case in point: > The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways. Yeah. Although sideways? Let's not forget that an horrific act of fatal violence branded as domestic terrorism that was specifically targeted at suppressing free speech to further a regime of racially motivated violence and hate. Daily Stormer put up 2 distinct articles arguing this was okay. They then defamed a private organization by claiming they too supported that vile sentiment. I mean, don't get me wrong. DDoS gangs are extortionists. But at the end of the day money is just money. Human rights are fundamental.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      I'm cringing at the cognitive dissonance. Every major silicon valley tech company helps China oppress it citizens on an unparalleled scale to allow them to continue to operate in the country, but one "terrorist attack" (unplanned murder with a vehicle, a hate crime) occurs in a state in the US and suddenly the gloves are off. Edit: This country isn't getting fixed without empathy, understanding, and compromise on a national scale. Without that, we're all just yelling how lovely the moral high ground is when we're all wallowing in the mud.
      - croon 9y ago
        > but one "terrorist attack" (unplanned murder with a vehicle) occurs in a state in the US and suddenly the gloves are off. > According to the Government Accountability Office of the United States, 73% of violent extremist incidents that resulted in deaths since September 12, 2001 were caused by right wing extremists groups.[41][42]
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    What about being upfront about a lack of principles and also marketing a the company as critical internet infrastructure? I've pretty much reached the point where when someone vehemently declares their adherence to a principle I decide they probably haven't thought about it a lot. Even in the US where there is a strong, fundamental legal protection of speech, it can't be said to be a principle. There's all sorts of places where it is compromised.
  - rxhernandez 9y ago
    > The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways. Yes people whose namesake is derived from a group of people that committed genocide is where I draw my line. Do you even hear yourself right now? What kind of mental gymnastics did you have to perform to equate internet vandalism and theft to hate groups who call for a return to Nazi practices?
    - blfr 9y ago
      people whose namesake is derived from a group of people that committed genocide is where I draw my line Jacobinmag has no trouble with its host.
      - stefantalpalaru 9y ago
        > Jacobinmag has no trouble with its host. Neither the various groups calling themselves "Young Turks". It's like historical atrocities have an expiration date, after which they lose any power to scandalise.
      - tomjakubowski 9y ago
        That's quite the stretch to say the Jacobins committed "genocide".
      - thanatropism 9y ago
        History is written by the winners.
      - xienze 9y ago
        Ditto "The Young Turks"
      - rxhernandez 9y ago
        And there is controversy insofar as whether they truly committed a genocide with many scholars saying they didn't. There is no controversy with regard to Nazis. If you did 10 minutes of research you could find as much.
  - glebm 9y ago
    Freedom of speech does not cover incitement nor hate speech.
    - jquery 9y ago
      In the US, "hate speech" is not a recognized category of speech and therefore protected, and even incitement has to meet a high bar, including immediacy.
    - alva 9y ago
      > nor hate speech better tell the Supreme Court https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/19/supreme-court-unanimously-reaffirms-there-is-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/?utm_term=.b2f1e8e9aa84z https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - adventured 9y ago
      Hate speech is a fake category, recently invented (in the historical time scope of US speech debate) as a means to instigate tighter speech controls by the government. The definition of hate speech is entirely arbitrary, you'll notice it has approximately as many definitions as there are people discussing it. That's by design, it's meant to have any definition desired at any time, to be of maximum use in destroying freedom of speech in the US. The effort is succeeding and accelerating rapidly. Freedom of speech in the US has less than a decade left, the vise grip will start with things that are very hard to defend, and move down the ladder often varying by who is in power. By the time speech is brought under tighter government regulation, the people pushing for 'hate speech' controls today will be terrified as they watch what a worse version of Trump does with the new power (a serious theocrat for example). That outcome is inevitable, it's what happens every time people don't think through the consequences of handing massive new powers to a very aggressive government.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    "The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways." Are you implying that The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are worse than actual, literal Nazis? Because that's the only way I can see to read it, but that can't possibly be what you meant.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      I'm saying Cloudflare has made a decision which criminal conduct they're willing to allow, which is dramatically different then "we turn off no one".
      - mikeash 9y ago
        And why is it a surprise that media pirates or gangs weren't enough to change their minds, but Nazis are? Your phrasing implies that if they're willing to kick out Nazis, they should be willing to kick out media pirates. That's bizarre!
        toomuchtodo 9y ago
        > And why is it a surprise that media pirates or gangs weren't enough to change their minds, but Nazis are? Cloudflare: "Its okay if you break the law, but say offensive words that don't break the law and you are outta here." Hence, my surprise. Criminal acts = ok. Offensive legal speech = not okay.
        mikeash 9y ago
        You don't see why someone might be more opposed to actual literal swastika-carrying roman-saluting Hitler-worshipping Nazis who would be out exterminating inferior races right now if they had more followers, than to a web site that helps you download movies without paying for them? Criminality isn't the only thing people look at for this stuff.
        toomuchtodo 9y ago
  - outworlder 9y ago
    > Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky. "Icky"? They provoked this response by using CloudFlare's name in their cause. What would be the appropriate response?
    - bmelton 9y ago
      Maybe a press release saying "Hey, we're not nazis, but we also have this policy that says we won't shut off service to people with whom we disagree politically" would have done the trick?
      - jquery 9y ago
        You think appealing to principles and fairness is enough to quell the mob mentality that's consumed America the past few days? Have you not been watching/reading the news? I've been learning all week that Trump and everyone who voted for Trump is no different than a Nazi.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
thinkfurther 9y ago
Damning? I find it humble and self-deprecating to call a lucid moment as this a "bad mood".