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It's okay, don't worry. Cloudflare would never use this incredible power for political purposes... ...oh wait, yes, they have and they will again. We've given

It's okay, don't worry. Cloudflare would never use this incredible power for political purposes... ...oh wait, yes, they have and they will again. We've given them the power to censor and with the power increasingly comes the onus to do so, to satisfy the political whims of an elite that doesn't like anything counter to their narrative.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
corobo 7y ago
Do you have any evidence of this? I'd take a dodgy looking blogspot URL over absolute nothing
- kradeelav 7y ago
  OP is most likely referring to the news/articles when they shut down service for neo-nazi sites. There may be others I'm unaware of.
  - Valmar 7y ago
    You mean websites that others smeared as "Neo-Nazi" sites, and then whined about to Cloudflare. Nothing less than a means of censorship ~ brand your opponent as "Neo-Nazis" and get them silenced.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  In the past, Cloudflare were free speech absolutists. They accepted customers in a content neutral way. When people tried to get them to deplatform ISIS websites, they said this: One of the greatest strengths of the United States is a belief that speech, particularly political speech, is sacred. A website, of course, is nothing but speech... 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. When people started asking why Cloudflare hosts racist and neo-nazi content, they eventually relented from their free speech position and stopped hosting one called The Daily Stormer. The CEO wrote a big blog post about how what he was doing is bad for the internet and free speech but he's going to do it anyways (I'm paraphrasing, read original words here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/). Since then, they've stopped working with a number of other sites due to content, like 8chan. I think it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of situation for Cloudflare. They weren't really looking for political battles, but ended up having them anyways. I think this Wired article adds some interesting perspective: https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/ https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    > Since then, they've stopped working with a number of other sites due to content, like 8chan. I believe that number is 1, and that the only two sites they've shut off service to are Daily Stormer and 8chan.
    - at_a_remove 7y ago
      The old joke about there being only three numbers in computer science comes to mind. First they blocked none (zero) on the basis of the content, then a site was blocked (one), and now ... well, two isn't "many," but it won't be the last block we see on that basis.
    - dgreensp 7y ago
      I think if your business helps 20,000,000 groups of people talk to each other (sites), you get to once or twice be like, "Ok, you guys are clearly murderers plotting murders, can you go do it somewhere else?" Haha.
      - csydas 7y ago
        I think this goes out the window when you have a bad actor making claims as follows: >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. I am no fan of Cloudflare; as an expat, their service just makes my life increasingly frustrating as I have to go through hoops and perform circus tricks just to look at the bouquet selection selection of a local florist if I want to send flowers to my Mom on Mothers' Day, never mind having the audacity to look at local news sites. That being said, I get their position if places like Daily Stormer were making invalid claims of support/association with the company. I'd cut them off too without a moments hesitation, since Cloudflare's model is anything but implicit support of the sites it hosts/protects. I don't see a good-faith effort from Daily Stormer in that post, I see an attempt to use a good-faith effort from CloudFlate to legitimize a bad-faith effort from Daily Stormer; and this is not okay. This is not a free-speech issue from my perspective, and instead, it's a bad-actor continuing to act in bad-faith in response to the good-will offered by Cloudflare. Again, I do feel Cloudflare nowadays is trash -- I am a US expat and I just close the tab when I hit the Cloudflare redirect or Google Captcha on absolutely senseless pages. (Neverminding my frustration with US corporations blocking me completely, as if the sweet sweet deals at Home Depot or Target are too good for my current country of residence...) But, that is a separate issue of individuals accessing standard HTTP(s) pages in an expected way versus a rogue group claiming implicit support from Cloudflare to their cause. I totally get Cloudflare's response in the latter.
bluetidepro 7y ago
> ...yes, they have and they will again. I don't doubt this, but do you have more info on what you're referring to on "they have"? I'm a bit out of the loop on that.
- mrtksn 7y ago
  They blocked Nazis after some attack or something like that. The founder wrote an emotional letter back then, acknowledging how bad is this and how he hates becoming the internet police.
  - ppseafield 7y ago
    It wasn't some attack. The guy behind the Daily Stormer stated publicly that Cloudflare not shutting off his service means they agree with and support the Daily Stormer's content. > 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. [0] That's in a blog post which is a follow up to a leaked memo. [1] [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ [1] https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295 https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...
    - asdf21 7y ago
      >The guy behind the Daily Stormer stated publicly that Cloudflare not shutting off his service means they agree with and support the Daily Stormer's content. Yes, because he is a troll... he got exactly the response he wanted, infamy and people still talking about it years later.
    - mrtksn 7y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. Do you remember why the blog in question was a hot topic?
    - lkbm 7y ago
      The Daily Stormer in 2017 was as you state. However, last year they kicked off 8chan, which was in part due to the El Paso and Dayton shootings according to their blog post about it[0]. I suspect that's what mrtksn is referencing. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

corobo 7y ago

Do you have any evidence of this? I'd take a dodgy looking blogspot URL over absolute nothing

kradeelav 7y ago
OP is most likely referring to the news/articles when they shut down service for neo-nazi sites. There may be others I'm unaware of.
- Valmar 7y ago
  You mean websites that others smeared as "Neo-Nazi" sites, and then whined about to Cloudflare. Nothing less than a means of censorship ~ brand your opponent as "Neo-Nazis" and get them silenced.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
In the past, Cloudflare were free speech absolutists. They accepted customers in a content neutral way. When people tried to get them to deplatform ISIS websites, they said this: One of the greatest strengths of the United States is a belief that speech, particularly political speech, is sacred. A website, of course, is nothing but speech... 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. When people started asking why Cloudflare hosts racist and neo-nazi content, they eventually relented from their free speech position and stopped hosting one called The Daily Stormer. The CEO wrote a big blog post about how what he was doing is bad for the internet and free speech but he's going to do it anyways (I'm paraphrasing, read original words here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/). Since then, they've stopped working with a number of other sites due to content, like 8chan. I think it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of situation for Cloudflare. They weren't really looking for political battles, but ended up having them anyways. I think this Wired article adds some interesting perspective: https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/ https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/
- pwinnski 7y ago
  > Since then, they've stopped working with a number of other sites due to content, like 8chan. I believe that number is 1, and that the only two sites they've shut off service to are Daily Stormer and 8chan.
  - at_a_remove 7y ago
    The old joke about there being only three numbers in computer science comes to mind. First they blocked none (zero) on the basis of the content, then a site was blocked (one), and now ... well, two isn't "many," but it won't be the last block we see on that basis.
  - dgreensp 7y ago
    I think if your business helps 20,000,000 groups of people talk to each other (sites), you get to once or twice be like, "Ok, you guys are clearly murderers plotting murders, can you go do it somewhere else?" Haha.
    - csydas 7y ago
      I think this goes out the window when you have a bad actor making claims as follows: >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. I am no fan of Cloudflare; as an expat, their service just makes my life increasingly frustrating as I have to go through hoops and perform circus tricks just to look at the bouquet selection selection of a local florist if I want to send flowers to my Mom on Mothers' Day, never mind having the audacity to look at local news sites. That being said, I get their position if places like Daily Stormer were making invalid claims of support/association with the company. I'd cut them off too without a moments hesitation, since Cloudflare's model is anything but implicit support of the sites it hosts/protects. I don't see a good-faith effort from Daily Stormer in that post, I see an attempt to use a good-faith effort from CloudFlate to legitimize a bad-faith effort from Daily Stormer; and this is not okay. This is not a free-speech issue from my perspective, and instead, it's a bad-actor continuing to act in bad-faith in response to the good-will offered by Cloudflare. Again, I do feel Cloudflare nowadays is trash -- I am a US expat and I just close the tab when I hit the Cloudflare redirect or Google Captcha on absolutely senseless pages. (Neverminding my frustration with US corporations blocking me completely, as if the sweet sweet deals at Home Depot or Target are too good for my current country of residence...) But, that is a separate issue of individuals accessing standard HTTP(s) pages in an expected way versus a rogue group claiming implicit support from Cloudflare to their cause. I totally get Cloudflare's response in the latter.

bluetidepro 7y ago

> ...yes, they have and they will again. I don't doubt this, but do you have more info on what you're referring to on "they have"? I'm a bit out of the loop on that.

mrtksn 7y ago
They blocked Nazis after some attack or something like that. The founder wrote an emotional letter back then, acknowledging how bad is this and how he hates becoming the internet police.
- ppseafield 7y ago
  It wasn't some attack. The guy behind the Daily Stormer stated publicly that Cloudflare not shutting off his service means they agree with and support the Daily Stormer's content. > 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. [0] That's in a blog post which is a follow up to a leaked memo. [1] [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ [1] https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295 https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...
  - asdf21 7y ago
    >The guy behind the Daily Stormer stated publicly that Cloudflare not shutting off his service means they agree with and support the Daily Stormer's content. Yes, because he is a troll... he got exactly the response he wanted, infamy and people still talking about it years later.
  - mrtksn 7y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. Do you remember why the blog in question was a hot topic?
  - lkbm 7y ago
    The Daily Stormer in 2017 was as you state. However, last year they kicked off 8chan, which was in part due to the El Paso and Dayton shootings according to their blog post about it[0]. I suspect that's what mrtksn is referencing. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/