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I'm fine with TOS, but TOS isn't the end-all in the US. For example, the electric company can't put in their TOS that I am not allowed to use electricity to vie

I'm fine with TOS, but TOS isn't the end-all in the US. For example, the electric company can't put in their TOS that I am not allowed to use electricity to view "hate speech" or hold a gathering of neo-Nazis. Neither of which I want to do, but you get the point I am making, if they start making moral judgements about how I use a fundamental part of operating in the modern world, it will be an issue.

phillipcarter 4y ago
What you're describing is a law. Electrical services are a utility and classified as fundamentally different. Is Cloudflare infrastructure that should be governed more-or-less the same way as electrical access? That's an interesting discussion! But it's also neither here nor there, since they're not classified that way, and so it's entirely within their purview to drop customers pretty much whenever and however they want. Cloudflare dropping kiwifarms as a customer doesn't make kiwifarms go away. It doesn't target you if you were a user of that site either. All it does is say, "we do not wish to do business with them, so they should go solve the problems we solved for them in another way". I think it behooves us as technologists to influence these businesses to be ethical about who they choose to do business with. There is no forcing hand here. There is no government oversight involved (although perhaps there should be if we consider them infrastructure). If "buttflare but for nazis" forms as a business and they decide to take all the websites that everyone decries under their umbrella, offering site protection and all that jazz, we can make a fit about how unethical it is that such a service exists, but at the end of the day we can't do much about it other than do the same: advocate for them to not do what they do.
- mhuffman 4y ago
  >What you're describing is a law. Electrical services are a utility and classified as fundamentally different. Is Cloudflare infrastructure that should be governed more-or-less the same way as electrical access? Yes! At this point. And just because electrical services are a utility now, doesn't mean they always were, and internet infrastructure should be classified that way as well.

phillipcarter 4y ago

What you're describing is a law. Electrical services are a utility and classified as fundamentally different. Is Cloudflare infrastructure that should be governed more-or-less the same way as electrical access? That's an interesting discussion! But it's also neither here nor there, since they're not classified that way, and so it's entirely within their purview to drop customers pretty much whenever and however they want. Cloudflare dropping kiwifarms as a customer doesn't make kiwifarms go away. It doesn't target you if you were a user of that site either. All it does is say, "we do not wish to do business with them, so they should go solve the problems we solved for them in another way". I think it behooves us as technologists to influence these businesses to be ethical about who they choose to do business with. There is no forcing hand here. There is no government oversight involved (although perhaps there should be if we consider them infrastructure). If "buttflare but for nazis" forms as a business and they decide to take all the websites that everyone decries under their umbrella, offering site protection and all that jazz, we can make a fit about how unethical it is that such a service exists, but at the end of the day we can't do much about it other than do the same: advocate for them to not do what they do.

mhuffman 4y ago
>What you're describing is a law. Electrical services are a utility and classified as fundamentally different. Is Cloudflare infrastructure that should be governed more-or-less the same way as electrical access? Yes! At this point. And just because electrical services are a utility now, doesn't mean they always were, and internet infrastructure should be classified that way as well.