5 ms·

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 website

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.
    - lopmotr 7y ago
      Cloudflare only got its revenge on Daily Stormer because it had the power to do so, and abused that power instead of using the legal system like everyone else has to. I used to be a schoolteacher, and no matter what bad or false thing a student said about me, I wouldn't fail them as retribution or to prove them wrong or anything. That would be abuse of power. Might is right?
parliament32 7y ago
Honestly the Daily Stormer was the beginning of the end for Cloudflare. I used to respect them, once upon a time. Now with their non-neutrality, user-hostility like OP, rumors of being a government operation (and financials that really don't make sense), aggressive expansion, and constant deployment of even more privacy-averse products (dns, vpn, etc) they've basically become one of the final bosses of the internet.
jasonlotito 7y ago
> 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. That's not entirely accurate (though I could understand how it seems that way). From the article: "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 the issue wasn't what CF was hosting for DS. Rather, it was DS speaking on behalf of CF. In some ways, that's like taking away ones first amendment rights: I have the right to speak for myself, you don't have the right to speak for me. While it's nuanced, I feel it's fair. And while I'm not some big defender of CF, I feel in this case, they handled it without compromising their 1st Amendment ideals.

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.
  - lopmotr 7y ago
    Cloudflare only got its revenge on Daily Stormer because it had the power to do so, and abused that power instead of using the legal system like everyone else has to. I used to be a schoolteacher, and no matter what bad or false thing a student said about me, I wouldn't fail them as retribution or to prove them wrong or anything. That would be abuse of power. Might is right?

parliament32 7y ago

Honestly the Daily Stormer was the beginning of the end for Cloudflare. I used to respect them, once upon a time. Now with their non-neutrality, user-hostility like OP, rumors of being a government operation (and financials that really don't make sense), aggressive expansion, and constant deployment of even more privacy-averse products (dns, vpn, etc) they've basically become one of the final bosses of the internet.

jasonlotito 7y ago

> 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. That's not entirely accurate (though I could understand how it seems that way). From the article: "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 the issue wasn't what CF was hosting for DS. Rather, it was DS speaking on behalf of CF. In some ways, that's like taking away ones first amendment rights: I have the right to speak for myself, you don't have the right to speak for me. While it's nuanced, I feel it's fair. And while I'm not some big defender of CF, I feel in this case, they handled it without compromising their 1st Amendment ideals.