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> We reported the sites to both CF and Google, and to my knowledge, not a single site were removed before the people behind it took it down. As someone that tr

by avian 5y ago

> We reported the sites to both CF and Google, and to my knowledge, not a single site were removed before the people behind it took it down. As someone that tried reporting spam sites because they were using content scrapped from my website, I'm not surprised. Cloudflare has a policy that they will not stop providing their IP hiding/reverse proxy services to anyone, regardless of complaints. The best they do is forward your complaint to the owner of the website, who is free to ignore it. They say "we're not a hosting provider" as if that's an excuse that they can't refuse to offer their service. I'm sure many spam websites would go away if they couldn't hide behind Cloudflare.

FeepingCreature 5y ago
That seems like the sort of thing that should require a judge's order.
- trangus_1985 5y ago
  Cloudflare is not a public institution. It troubles me that they get to define, draw, and then maintain that line. However, I do agree - privacy unveiling like that should require a judge's order.
  - studentrob 5y ago
    Yes, it is akin to revealing the IP of a user on a social media site.
  - stavros 5y ago
    But they don't, that's explicitly their stance. There is no line. They host everyone equally. To do the opposite would require drawing a line.
    - account42 5y ago
      > They host everyone equally. Everyone except those that are too right wing.
      - stavros 5y ago
        Are you referring to the one incident where they stopped hosting a racist hate site and then vowed to never take sides again?
        nextlevelwizard 5y ago
        "He has never murdered anyone" "Are you referring to the one incident where he shot a racist hater and then vowed to never murder again?" All I'm saying is that we won't know until they come under pressure again
        stavros 5y ago
        > All I'm saying is that we won't know until they come under pressure again That's also true of people who haven't murdered anyone yet, though. Whom do you trust more? The person who did something and vowed to never do it again, or the person who didn't vow anything? I tend to prefer the former.
        wccrawford 5y ago
        When it comes to murdering someone, I'm going to prefer the person who has never murdered anyone yet. When it comes to service providers, I would tend towards your direction. They did a thing that had conflicting ethics on each side, weighed the outcome and their ethics, and then made a hard decision for the future. What they did could be reversed, too, and didn't cause much permanent damage. Murdering someone is very permanent and should take a lot more initial consideration.
        lupire 5y ago
        this metaphor is absurd. the actual murderers here are the contributors to the banned sites, nor cloudflare, and there were a lot more than 1 murders.
        deleted 5y ago
    - yosamino 5y ago
      That is not true. They do have a line specified here https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/ https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/ It's just that the procedure is so useless that it might as well not exist.
      - fauigerzigerk 5y ago
        IANAL, but I don't see a Cloudflare specified line anywhere on this page. I think this is just the bare minimum they are legally required to do.
    - trangus_1985 5y ago
      > There is no line You are missing the point of the complaint, which is that it's a private decision to hold that policy. Maybe it was a bad idea to use the word "line", but the intent still stands unadressed.
eru 5y ago
They might take that stance, to avoid liability and complication. At the moment, they have a very clear rule. If they stop providing services to obvious spammers, they will create lots of grey areas, and they will also implicitly make a judgement that the client they still serve are _good_ in some way, and an enterprising lawyer or muckraker might exploit that.
- avian 5y ago
  How is that different from a hosting provider that has to address legal complaints regarding spam, copyright infringement, etc. on their servers? Just like a hosting provider, they specifically have a relationship with the website owner to provide the reverse proxy service. It's not like they can say "we don't know who or how our service is being used". It seems to me that if they want to be in this business they have to deal with these liabilities and complications, not hide behind some vague "our hands are tied" language.
  - studentrob 5y ago
    Presumably if illegal content is not taken down by the customer then the host cancels the service, right? Otherwise the host risks liability. That's different from revealing the IP of a customer which requires a court order.
  - eru 5y ago
    You have a point, but I assume those businesses' lawyers understand this better than our armchair speculation here.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > How is that different from a hosting provider If their argument is "we only retransmit what we get, with caching" then they are in the same place liability-wise as the phone providers ("We only retransmit what we et, with caching"). In other words, a common carrier. Hosting is different. For exmaple, Youtube is not liable for what their users upload. They comply with takedown notices because they host the content, not the user.
rowanG077 5y ago
In fact I completely agree with that stance. It's not cloudfares job to police the content. They provide a simple service. If something is unlawful law enforcement should go after the owners.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  And how, might I ask, do you propose to do that?
  - rowanG077 5y ago
    Law enforcement can get a warrant to get information to try and find them for example. They can hire security experts. They can do tons of things.
andyjohnson0 5y ago
I'm pretty sure they stopped providing services to a neo-nazi site a few years ago. A decision that I am completely happy with btw.
mattbee 5y ago
This policy even extends to stresser/booster/DoS-for-hire services services - try searching for some and see who fronts them? 20 years ago the transit providers of the internet would have spotted Cloudflare for what it is, and cut it off.
guest159835 5y ago
I've been reporting hundreds of spam sites to Cloudflare, but always get the same lame excuse. Godaddy the same. Meanwhile good content drops in Google rankings and spam moves to the top.
yosamino 5y ago
> The best they do is forward your complaint to the owner of the website, who is free to ignore it. Or worse. Since I have no way to know beforehand who I would be dealing with, this is actively dangerous - what if the mobster running this site is having a bad day and choses to retaliate ? Also what a stupid fucking policy that is. Even if you are not legally compelled to block content, what is the point of actively helping distibute harmful content? What they are doing is worse than just saying "We are not a hosting provider" - because while what is true, they are actively distributing content that is hosted elsewhere while hiding who is hosting it. One can easily write an email to abuse@hoster.example.com and usually these people do not want garbage on their networks. CF is making it impossible to do notify them, and they refuse to implement an alternative procedure. I still do not understand the moral position of profiting off of enabling criminal scum, when it would be so easy not to...
- tlogan 5y ago
  I do not think that it is up to Google or CloudFlare to police the internet. If a site is doing something illegal then report it to appropriate gov agency. If gov agency does not anything then get involved into political process to fix that.
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    Gov agencies and political processes take ages to do anything at all. At this point I'd still like the internet companies doing partial policing of content. At least they'll achieve something.
  - hackbinary 5y ago
    If Google, or CF, or whoever are fronting illegal activity with their services, they are absolutely responsible for damages the party they are proxying. Platforms must be responsible for the content they are hosting, broadcasting, and publishing. One to one communications between two people exchanging ideas and having a private discussion is different from mass broadcasting.
    - 5y ago
nine_k 5y ago
This is very rational of them. They position themselves as a pipe for "bytes", not "content". By ignoring the content they serve, they rid themselves of the necessity to analyze and judge what they serve. Not only would this require a brain the size of a planet and the expense of running it, but also would inevitably conflict with someone else's judgments, and bring various PR woes. They don't analyze the internals of their traffic the way internet backbone providers don't analyze the internals of the traffic they pass around. I frankly find this position superior: imho it does more good by preventing censorship than harm by serving good-intentioned and bad-intentioned customers alike.

by avian 5y ago

FeepingCreature 5y ago

That seems like the sort of thing that should require a judge's order.

trangus_1985 5y ago
Cloudflare is not a public institution. It troubles me that they get to define, draw, and then maintain that line. However, I do agree - privacy unveiling like that should require a judge's order.
- studentrob 5y ago
  Yes, it is akin to revealing the IP of a user on a social media site.
- stavros 5y ago
  But they don't, that's explicitly their stance. There is no line. They host everyone equally. To do the opposite would require drawing a line.
  - account42 5y ago
    > They host everyone equally. Everyone except those that are too right wing.
    - stavros 5y ago
      Are you referring to the one incident where they stopped hosting a racist hate site and then vowed to never take sides again?
      - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
        "He has never murdered anyone" "Are you referring to the one incident where he shot a racist hater and then vowed to never murder again?" All I'm saying is that we won't know until they come under pressure again
        stavros 5y ago
        > All I'm saying is that we won't know until they come under pressure again That's also true of people who haven't murdered anyone yet, though. Whom do you trust more? The person who did something and vowed to never do it again, or the person who didn't vow anything? I tend to prefer the former.
        wccrawford 5y ago
        When it comes to murdering someone, I'm going to prefer the person who has never murdered anyone yet. When it comes to service providers, I would tend towards your direction. They did a thing that had conflicting ethics on each side, weighed the outcome and their ethics, and then made a hard decision for the future. What they did could be reversed, too, and didn't cause much permanent damage. Murdering someone is very permanent and should take a lot more initial consideration.
        lupire 5y ago
        this metaphor is absurd. the actual murderers here are the contributors to the banned sites, nor cloudflare, and there were a lot more than 1 murders.
        deleted 5y ago
  - yosamino 5y ago
    That is not true. They do have a line specified here https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/ https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/ It's just that the procedure is so useless that it might as well not exist.
    - fauigerzigerk 5y ago
      IANAL, but I don't see a Cloudflare specified line anywhere on this page. I think this is just the bare minimum they are legally required to do.
  - trangus_1985 5y ago
    > There is no line You are missing the point of the complaint, which is that it's a private decision to hold that policy. Maybe it was a bad idea to use the word "line", but the intent still stands unadressed.

eru 5y ago

They might take that stance, to avoid liability and complication. At the moment, they have a very clear rule. If they stop providing services to obvious spammers, they will create lots of grey areas, and they will also implicitly make a judgement that the client they still serve are _good_ in some way, and an enterprising lawyer or muckraker might exploit that.

avian 5y ago
How is that different from a hosting provider that has to address legal complaints regarding spam, copyright infringement, etc. on their servers? Just like a hosting provider, they specifically have a relationship with the website owner to provide the reverse proxy service. It's not like they can say "we don't know who or how our service is being used". It seems to me that if they want to be in this business they have to deal with these liabilities and complications, not hide behind some vague "our hands are tied" language.
- studentrob 5y ago
  Presumably if illegal content is not taken down by the customer then the host cancels the service, right? Otherwise the host risks liability. That's different from revealing the IP of a customer which requires a court order.
- eru 5y ago
  You have a point, but I assume those businesses' lawyers understand this better than our armchair speculation here.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > How is that different from a hosting provider If their argument is "we only retransmit what we get, with caching" then they are in the same place liability-wise as the phone providers ("We only retransmit what we et, with caching"). In other words, a common carrier. Hosting is different. For exmaple, Youtube is not liable for what their users upload. They comply with takedown notices because they host the content, not the user.

rowanG077 5y ago

In fact I completely agree with that stance. It's not cloudfares job to police the content. They provide a simple service. If something is unlawful law enforcement should go after the owners.

withinboredom 5y ago
And how, might I ask, do you propose to do that?
- rowanG077 5y ago
  Law enforcement can get a warrant to get information to try and find them for example. They can hire security experts. They can do tons of things.

andyjohnson0 5y ago

I'm pretty sure they stopped providing services to a neo-nazi site a few years ago. A decision that I am completely happy with btw.

mattbee 5y ago

This policy even extends to stresser/booster/DoS-for-hire services services - try searching for some and see who fronts them? 20 years ago the transit providers of the internet would have spotted Cloudflare for what it is, and cut it off.

guest159835 5y ago

I've been reporting hundreds of spam sites to Cloudflare, but always get the same lame excuse. Godaddy the same. Meanwhile good content drops in Google rankings and spam moves to the top.

yosamino 5y ago

> The best they do is forward your complaint to the owner of the website, who is free to ignore it. Or worse. Since I have no way to know beforehand who I would be dealing with, this is actively dangerous - what if the mobster running this site is having a bad day and choses to retaliate ? Also what a stupid fucking policy that is. Even if you are not legally compelled to block content, what is the point of actively helping distibute harmful content? What they are doing is worse than just saying "We are not a hosting provider" - because while what is true, they are actively distributing content that is hosted elsewhere while hiding who is hosting it. One can easily write an email to abuse@hoster.example.com and usually these people do not want garbage on their networks. CF is making it impossible to do notify them, and they refuse to implement an alternative procedure. I still do not understand the moral position of profiting off of enabling criminal scum, when it would be so easy not to...

tlogan 5y ago
I do not think that it is up to Google or CloudFlare to police the internet. If a site is doing something illegal then report it to appropriate gov agency. If gov agency does not anything then get involved into political process to fix that.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  Gov agencies and political processes take ages to do anything at all. At this point I'd still like the internet companies doing partial policing of content. At least they'll achieve something.
- hackbinary 5y ago
  If Google, or CF, or whoever are fronting illegal activity with their services, they are absolutely responsible for damages the party they are proxying. Platforms must be responsible for the content they are hosting, broadcasting, and publishing. One to one communications between two people exchanging ideas and having a private discussion is different from mass broadcasting.
  - 5y ago

nine_k 5y ago

This is very rational of them. They position themselves as a pipe for "bytes", not "content". By ignoring the content they serve, they rid themselves of the necessity to analyze and judge what they serve. Not only would this require a brain the size of a planet and the expense of running it, but also would inevitably conflict with someone else's judgments, and bring various PR woes. They don't analyze the internals of their traffic the way internet backbone providers don't analyze the internals of the traffic they pass around. I frankly find this position superior: imho it does more good by preventing censorship than harm by serving good-intentioned and bad-intentioned customers alike.