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It's not just the servers. You also need a CDN that won't shut you down, a host that won't shut you down, and so on. That was a problem for them early on since

by Kye 5y ago

It's not just the servers. You also need a CDN that won't shut you down, a host that won't shut you down, and so on. That was a problem for them early on since they started with Cloudflare. Even if you're within their policies, this is a prime target for DDoSes.

stevenicr 5y ago
I've been researching these things a bit here and there. Certainly having hosting and domain names and the infrastructure that does not have a history of shutting people down would be a good start. So yeah godaddy and cloudflare would be out from the start. ddos sucks - been there deal with that a time or two. but yeah, if servers could be replicated in many places, and plans for multiple ways to move to a new domain name, or dns, or ip or whatever and such are already laid, and this info is already given to the users so they can move to new X when Y happens.. I really want to deploy a keybase-like blockchain kind of thing that is auto replicated - and if someone has an individual account blocked in country A then friends of that person would know that another account is already active via service/infrastructure B. I dunno, it seems there are many pieces already out there that could make these things happen - and it's not going to be easy to get it setup at first, and some of the pieces would be blocked in various regions - but give the end users the tools to jump to E F or G... it can be done. The internet is already going in this bifurcated (trifurcated / qua..) direction anyhow and I see no way to stop it, might as well replicate for it.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Do CloudFlare have a history of shutting things down? From what i recall there were two incidents which were extremely egregious (Daily Stormer and a chan) and CloudFlare only acted after months of outside pressure.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > Do CloudFlare have a history of shutting things down? They will readily shut down anything that might expose them to legal liability (i.e. CSAM, credit card fraud). Daily Stormer and the various xChan projects are vile, but mostly legal under US law, in contrast.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      > They will readily shut down anything that might expose them to legal liability Well.. yeah, and so will anyone.
      - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
        Stop normalizing censorship. No, "anyone" will not immediately shut down anything that exposes a legal liability.
        mschuster91 5y ago
        > Stop normalizing censorship. We're talking about pedophiles and fraud here. Stuff that is illegal everywhere in the civilized world. As for the Daily Stormer and the xChan projects: the stuff hosted there also violates laws, holocaust denial or many forms of antisemitism are a crime in most of the European Union. And the only people calling that "censorship"... well, they tend to be Nazis or have no problem supporting Nazis.
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        Remember the time when the ACLU fought for the right of American Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois? The leader of the ACLU at that time was a Jewish guy. He didn't like the American Nazis, but he recognized that the bureaucratic machinery used to prevent them from assembling was almost entirely identical to the bureaucratic machinery used against the civil rights movement in the South.
        Kye 5y ago
        The ACLU has a broader strategy in mind with the cases it picks and a century-long track record of winning key civil rights victories that benefit everyone. I don't think that could be said of most people or platforms that want to publish all speech without discretion, discernment, or commentary.
        sofixa 5y ago
  - _chendo_ 5y ago
    Cloudflare booted Switter off with no notice, and no apparent outside pressure. See: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16876040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16876040 * https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xk78x/switter-down-cloudflare-banned-sex-workers-sesta-fosta https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xk78x/switter-down-cloudfla... * https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17256370/switter-cloudflare-sex-workers-banned https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17256370/switter-cloudfla...
  - stevenicr 5y ago
    It's not just the history - which does indeed show a 180 on dumb pipe / just transferring data to yeah we'll shut down speech if it's bad mkay.. but they also said they are going to get proactive in inspecting data that your site and your visitors send through the pipe and proactively send info about your site and visitors to agencies with letters and guns.. and they are also going to start lobbying gov'ts to make new laws so that they are more easily compelled to give even more data to different govs. (I mean, microsoft kind of did the same thing with the cloud data thing not long ago - so meh on them too) At least that's how I read the blog post from the head guy in charge a while back. I warned that this was going to happen a while ago and that cloudflare would either have to bifurcate and create a cloudf-japan, cloudf-uk, cloudf-blahblah - or they would end up being a prime target for court data from all over the world and would be helping to send guns with fingers on triggers to places for all sorts of things eventually. well here we are years later - where instead of splitting it up - they are consolidating even more of the web instead.
radu_floricica 5y ago
Wonder how feasible is to have an infrastructure server to do the heavy lifting in a place with cheap/reliable computing, and a front-end server that just forwards and maybe does light caching in a country with friendly legislation. But I guess their issue wasn't technical, but that they are an organization subject to Australian law.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Exactly. It turns out the internet has not changed some fundamentals of human existence. Even online, you are either at the mercy of the legal system that can project force onto your body or you push yourself outside the law and are at the mercy of people exploiting you and the fact that you cannot seek recourse in the law. Outside the law, might makes right (inside the law, might also makes right, but one can hope it is at least a right that some large group of people have reached loose consensus on).

by Kye 5y ago

stevenicr 5y ago

I've been researching these things a bit here and there. Certainly having hosting and domain names and the infrastructure that does not have a history of shutting people down would be a good start. So yeah godaddy and cloudflare would be out from the start. ddos sucks - been there deal with that a time or two. but yeah, if servers could be replicated in many places, and plans for multiple ways to move to a new domain name, or dns, or ip or whatever and such are already laid, and this info is already given to the users so they can move to new X when Y happens.. I really want to deploy a keybase-like blockchain kind of thing that is auto replicated - and if someone has an individual account blocked in country A then friends of that person would know that another account is already active via service/infrastructure B. I dunno, it seems there are many pieces already out there that could make these things happen - and it's not going to be easy to get it setup at first, and some of the pieces would be blocked in various regions - but give the end users the tools to jump to E F or G... it can be done. The internet is already going in this bifurcated (trifurcated / qua..) direction anyhow and I see no way to stop it, might as well replicate for it.

sofixa 5y ago
Do CloudFlare have a history of shutting things down? From what i recall there were two incidents which were extremely egregious (Daily Stormer and a chan) and CloudFlare only acted after months of outside pressure.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > Do CloudFlare have a history of shutting things down? They will readily shut down anything that might expose them to legal liability (i.e. CSAM, credit card fraud). Daily Stormer and the various xChan projects are vile, but mostly legal under US law, in contrast.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > They will readily shut down anything that might expose them to legal liability Well.. yeah, and so will anyone.
    - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
      Stop normalizing censorship. No, "anyone" will not immediately shut down anything that exposes a legal liability.
      - mschuster91 5y ago
        > Stop normalizing censorship. We're talking about pedophiles and fraud here. Stuff that is illegal everywhere in the civilized world. As for the Daily Stormer and the xChan projects: the stuff hosted there also violates laws, holocaust denial or many forms of antisemitism are a crime in most of the European Union. And the only people calling that "censorship"... well, they tend to be Nazis or have no problem supporting Nazis.
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        Remember the time when the ACLU fought for the right of American Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois? The leader of the ACLU at that time was a Jewish guy. He didn't like the American Nazis, but he recognized that the bureaucratic machinery used to prevent them from assembling was almost entirely identical to the bureaucratic machinery used against the civil rights movement in the South.
        Kye 5y ago
        The ACLU has a broader strategy in mind with the cases it picks and a century-long track record of winning key civil rights victories that benefit everyone. I don't think that could be said of most people or platforms that want to publish all speech without discretion, discernment, or commentary.
        sofixa 5y ago
- _chendo_ 5y ago
  Cloudflare booted Switter off with no notice, and no apparent outside pressure. See: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16876040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16876040 * https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xk78x/switter-down-cloudflare-banned-sex-workers-sesta-fosta https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xk78x/switter-down-cloudfla... * https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17256370/switter-cloudflare-sex-workers-banned https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17256370/switter-cloudfla...
- stevenicr 5y ago
  It's not just the history - which does indeed show a 180 on dumb pipe / just transferring data to yeah we'll shut down speech if it's bad mkay.. but they also said they are going to get proactive in inspecting data that your site and your visitors send through the pipe and proactively send info about your site and visitors to agencies with letters and guns.. and they are also going to start lobbying gov'ts to make new laws so that they are more easily compelled to give even more data to different govs. (I mean, microsoft kind of did the same thing with the cloud data thing not long ago - so meh on them too) At least that's how I read the blog post from the head guy in charge a while back. I warned that this was going to happen a while ago and that cloudflare would either have to bifurcate and create a cloudf-japan, cloudf-uk, cloudf-blahblah - or they would end up being a prime target for court data from all over the world and would be helping to send guns with fingers on triggers to places for all sorts of things eventually. well here we are years later - where instead of splitting it up - they are consolidating even more of the web instead.

radu_floricica 5y ago

Wonder how feasible is to have an infrastructure server to do the heavy lifting in a place with cheap/reliable computing, and a front-end server that just forwards and maybe does light caching in a country with friendly legislation. But I guess their issue wasn't technical, but that they are an organization subject to Australian law.

shadowgovt 5y ago
Exactly. It turns out the internet has not changed some fundamentals of human existence. Even online, you are either at the mercy of the legal system that can project force onto your body or you push yourself outside the law and are at the mercy of people exploiting you and the fact that you cannot seek recourse in the law. Outside the law, might makes right (inside the law, might also makes right, but one can hope it is at least a right that some large group of people have reached loose consensus on).