5 ms·

CloudFlare refuses to block service to pro-ISIS websites (2015)

25 points by jccooper 9y ago

ratsmack 9y ago
I would think that this is a good comparison for a case study of whether Cloudflare should reject someone. Just off the top of my head, ISIS has murdered thousands of people, where The Daily Stormer has just offended people with unsavory content.
- ouid 9y ago
  The threat that ISIS represents is not existential. The threat that fascism represents 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.
  - jhanschoo 9y ago
    The reason you can think that is that you are in a society where the threat of right-wing radicalization is real, but not Islamic radicalization. If you lived in a Muslim-majority country, you would see that Islamic radicalization is far more dangerous. Don't forget that even as WWII garnered many atrocities, one of the goals is in reviving the caliphate, a religio-political entity that has had a very real presence as a political institution in the past, that had been able to unite squabbling desert tribes into a powerful entity that had been able to defeat two ancient and prestigious empires—both the Persian Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire.
  - topmonk 9y ago
    Sure it is, ISIS wants to kill all infidels. How can that not be considered an existential threat?
    - ouid 9y ago
      because wanting to do something and having the capacity to do something are different.
      - topmonk 9y ago
        Last time I checked, ISIS has killed a lot of people. You do those slain a disservice by not even acknowledging this. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/25/world/map-isis-attacks-around-the-world.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/25/world/map-isi...
        ouid 9y ago
        What the hell? I haven't acknowledged the number of people that ISIS has killed because it doesn't matter. If the measure of the threat that ISIS poses is measured in deaths per year, then ISIS does a little less damage per year than commercial airplane crashes. Airplane crashes are not existential threat, so clearly, if ISIS is an existential threat, it is not because they are currently on track to kill everyone.
        topmonk 9y ago
        It was an existential threat to them... wasn't it? Your post came off as as long as the deaths didn't happen here, or wherever it is that you live, they don't matter. If not, explain how ISIS isn't an existential threat, and yet the Daily Stormer is? Because the latter's ideology is associated with that special buzzword, "fascism", is it?
  - copx 9y ago
    >The threat that ISIS represents is not existential. Tell that to the Yazidis in Syria.
jhanschoo 9y ago
I would suppose that at the moment CloudFlare's policy would be defensive; to refuse service to groups that are clearly defamatory to CF. To assume censorship on greater moral principles would mean 1. a greater degree of arbitrariness and unfairness, and 2. a drain of resources on an unpopular policy.
itsdrewmiller 9y ago
Did the purveyors of those websites claim Cloudflare secretly supports ISIS, as the Daily Stormer's did of Nazism?
nocoder 9y ago
This is nothing but PR and ensuring they have a moral high ground among their target audience. It does nothing to address the issue and makes people who use their services feel good about themselves. This is similar to how FB supports net neutrality in US but pushes their free basics in other countries. Additionally, this also provides fodder to extremists saying look how all these people are against us because they are only punishing our views, this gives the extremists more ammunition in their brain washing of vulnerable population. A corporation does not stand for anything except it's profits and will shift its moral position based on what is most helpful to the bottom line.
- ratsmack 9y ago
  And what you describe is why I believe there are more actors involved in the decision, possibly customers. The possibility of losing contracts is a good incentive to remove a small player. The "I was in a bad mood" strikes me as a cover to protect someone involved in the decision.
kthejoker2 9y ago
"My rationale for making this decision was simple: the people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes and I’d had enough," Prince wrote. "Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision." Prince wrote that he "woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company." - CloudFlare CEO on why he dropped Daily Stormer as a customer CloudFlare CEO: “The people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes” https://arstechnica.com/?p=1148311 https://arstechnica.com/?p=1148311
buttcake 9y ago
You know things are going south when you're more afraid of being labeled as nazi than actually being harmed by one.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  More realistically in the current USA, you know you are extremely privileged when you're more afraid of being labeled as a Nazi than actually being harmed by one. Or, you have an unusually strong reason to fear being labelled a Nazi, like you are a vocal racist who attends public demonstrations carrying or dressed in Nazi accoutrements or attire. Or, you just have irrational relative levels of fear between those two outcomes.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  This tendency to call everyone a Nazi is a very strange phenomenon in the USA. I think if Americans really experienced the atrocities of the Nazi, mass death camps, shootings of civilians, tortures - they would hesitate before they used this label against someone they don't like or whose views are different than theirs.
  - ratsmack 9y ago
    The same thing can be said about the word "racist". It is so over used that to me it has lost all meaning. It seems that in every political discussion where there is a disagreement, it will be interjected at some point.

25 points by jccooper 9y ago

I would think that this is a good comparison for a case study of whether Cloudflare should reject someone. Just off the top of my head, ISIS has murdered thousands of people, where The Daily Stormer has just offended people with unsavory content.

ouid 9y ago
The threat that ISIS represents is not existential. The threat that fascism represents 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.
- jhanschoo 9y ago
  The reason you can think that is that you are in a society where the threat of right-wing radicalization is real, but not Islamic radicalization. If you lived in a Muslim-majority country, you would see that Islamic radicalization is far more dangerous. Don't forget that even as WWII garnered many atrocities, one of the goals is in reviving the caliphate, a religio-political entity that has had a very real presence as a political institution in the past, that had been able to unite squabbling desert tribes into a powerful entity that had been able to defeat two ancient and prestigious empires—both the Persian Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire.
- topmonk 9y ago
  Sure it is, ISIS wants to kill all infidels. How can that not be considered an existential threat?
  - ouid 9y ago
    because wanting to do something and having the capacity to do something are different.
    - topmonk 9y ago
      Last time I checked, ISIS has killed a lot of people. You do those slain a disservice by not even acknowledging this. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/25/world/map-isis-attacks-around-the-world.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/25/world/map-isi...
      - ouid 9y ago
        What the hell? I haven't acknowledged the number of people that ISIS has killed because it doesn't matter. If the measure of the threat that ISIS poses is measured in deaths per year, then ISIS does a little less damage per year than commercial airplane crashes. Airplane crashes are not existential threat, so clearly, if ISIS is an existential threat, it is not because they are currently on track to kill everyone.
        topmonk 9y ago
        It was an existential threat to them... wasn't it? Your post came off as as long as the deaths didn't happen here, or wherever it is that you live, they don't matter. If not, explain how ISIS isn't an existential threat, and yet the Daily Stormer is? Because the latter's ideology is associated with that special buzzword, "fascism", is it?
- copx 9y ago
  >The threat that ISIS represents is not existential. Tell that to the Yazidis in Syria.

jhanschoo 9y ago

I would suppose that at the moment CloudFlare's policy would be defensive; to refuse service to groups that are clearly defamatory to CF. To assume censorship on greater moral principles would mean 1. a greater degree of arbitrariness and unfairness, and 2. a drain of resources on an unpopular policy.

itsdrewmiller 9y ago

Did the purveyors of those websites claim Cloudflare secretly supports ISIS, as the Daily Stormer's did of Nazism?

nocoder 9y ago

This is nothing but PR and ensuring they have a moral high ground among their target audience. It does nothing to address the issue and makes people who use their services feel good about themselves. This is similar to how FB supports net neutrality in US but pushes their free basics in other countries. Additionally, this also provides fodder to extremists saying look how all these people are against us because they are only punishing our views, this gives the extremists more ammunition in their brain washing of vulnerable population. A corporation does not stand for anything except it's profits and will shift its moral position based on what is most helpful to the bottom line.

ratsmack 9y ago
And what you describe is why I believe there are more actors involved in the decision, possibly customers. The possibility of losing contracts is a good incentive to remove a small player. The "I was in a bad mood" strikes me as a cover to protect someone involved in the decision.

kthejoker2 9y ago

"My rationale for making this decision was simple: the people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes and I’d had enough," Prince wrote. "Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision." Prince wrote that he "woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company." - CloudFlare CEO on why he dropped Daily Stormer as a customer CloudFlare CEO: “The people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes” https://arstechnica.com/?p=1148311 https://arstechnica.com/?p=1148311

buttcake 9y ago

You know things are going south when you're more afraid of being labeled as nazi than actually being harmed by one.

dragonwriter 9y ago
More realistically in the current USA, you know you are extremely privileged when you're more afraid of being labeled as a Nazi than actually being harmed by one. Or, you have an unusually strong reason to fear being labelled a Nazi, like you are a vocal racist who attends public demonstrations carrying or dressed in Nazi accoutrements or attire. Or, you just have irrational relative levels of fear between those two outcomes.
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
This tendency to call everyone a Nazi is a very strange phenomenon in the USA. I think if Americans really experienced the atrocities of the Nazi, mass death camps, shootings of civilians, tortures - they would hesitate before they used this label against someone they don't like or whose views are different than theirs.
- ratsmack 9y ago
  The same thing can be said about the word "racist". It is so over used that to me it has lost all meaning. It seems that in every political discussion where there is a disagreement, it will be interjected at some point.