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I feel sorry for Cloudflare's management team in having to deal with all this nonsense. What they really want to focus on is growing their business, developing

I feel sorry for Cloudflare's management team in having to deal with all this nonsense. What they really want to focus on is growing their business, developing new cloud-scale technologies, and serving their customers the best they can. Instead they've ended up stuck in this ridiculous online spat between two internet mobs headed by two unsavoury individuals. If I was CEO of Cloudflare, and I and my employees were being harassed, doxxed, threatened by an online mob, I'd have done the same. Never mind taking a principled stand, it's not worth being involved in the first place.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago
I don't get it. Do trans people and women and all the alleged victims "are a part of that community" that they endured years of torture and talking down leading to suicide as is being alleged or do these KF people do doxing on sorts on other sites and use KF as a central place to coordinate attacks? I am not on 8chan. I can never be harassed by anyone in /b/ or whatever the bad that forums are. If I am aan active part of a community, I should not claim peer pressure and influence or should I not?
- malepoon 4y ago
  > or do these KF people do doxing on sorts on other sites and use KF as a central place to coordinate attacks? Yep. KF is their harassment HQ where they share information about individuals they don't approve of. It's creepy.
  - salawat 4y ago
    ...That's always going to exist. It's gone by different names. It's why you aren't supposed to share personal info on the Web, btw, because anyone can get to it, now without even leaving the comfort of home. The bus has sailed on that one though.
    - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
      you know when the whole foursquare started gamification of locations, i did go into it pretty early on but some "time" later i was like "why am i doing this? for achievements?" same for the whole gamification of your facebook profile which nudges you to give more and more info about yourself... the "connect your accounts" is terrible way of keeping watertight identities. look. do you remember when "chatroom etiquette" meant not correctly answering a/s/l? because that would be creepy if the stranger found out and nasty things could happen? i mean its easy to "connect" and tie everything to one identity but then that same identity means you cannot hide. its a tradeoff and one i personally am willing to give.
malepoon 4y ago
> between two internet mobs headed by two unsavoury individuals This is a bit too much "both sides are bad" for me. Fact is that Kiwi Farms is a horrible website where people harass others, share information about them, and drive them to suicide. That's pretty bad on its own.
- cluedos 4y ago
  Look at it from Cloudflare employees' point of view though. Do they really want to spend their time getting drawn in to any more of this trivial online drama? No, of course not. Pulling the plug is the sensible business decision.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    This is definitely online drama, but I'm not sure I'd call it "trivial." This isn't people arguing about how many days are in a week.
    - cluedos 4y ago
      It's trivial in the same way that celebrity gossip is trivial.
      - UncleMeat 4y ago
        Whether foo and bar will get married is, in my opinion, considerably different from organizations that collect and magnify hatred against members of various disempowered groups.
        honkdaddy 4y ago
        Are transwomen creators really disempowered online these days? The internet's a very different place from how it was in 2007. Contrapoints, Gigi, Maya Henry were the first three that came to mind and from what I've seen all have wildly successful online followings, and a literal army of Twitter and Discord users to come to their defense. KF is the only site I'm aware of that bullies trans people, but I can think of loads of popular accounts and forums that happily go after Republicans, depressed single men, Christians, and any other group which the online majority has decided is deserving of abuse. I think the take "trans people have a hard time being accepted online" is pretty outdated now.
eternalban 4y ago
> If I was CEO of Cloudflare, and I and my employees were being harassed, doxxed, threatened by an online mob, I'd have done the same. Never mind taking a principled stand, it's not worth being involved in the first place. Fair enough. But this CEO was blowing clouds in our face that they took this action because our legal system is not up to the task! It's so sad that Mr. Prince apparently can't afford having a competent legal team to explain to him the concepts of "Rule of Law", "Due Process", "Courts", "Judges", "Juries", "Evidence", and all that other [quaint!] aspects of our (broken!) "traditional legal system".
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  I don't get it. Why does Prince require a legal team to explain to him the rule of law? Everything he has done in this matter has been within the letter of the law.
  - eternalban 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32707821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32707821 "A little bit geek, wonk, and nerd. Repeat entrepreneur, recovering lawyer and former ski instructor. CEO & co-founder of CloudFlare." And oh my God. He is "recovering lawyer". This is what he concluded with: "Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context, rather than free speech, in order to have a more robust conversation with frameworks that have an appeal and applicability across nearly every nation and government." So this exactly the reasoning of those (bad? good?) cops that beat suspects in alley, or conduct search on private property without a warrant. And this cop then turns around and says: "Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context, rather than your civil rights" The term for this type of action is Extrajudicial -- possibly our recovering lawyer remembers that from law school. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicial_punishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicial_punishment To repeat, Cloudflare has every right (afaik) to just say "bad client, we don't want you". This CEO however chose to frame this as some sort of civic virtuous action necessitated by alleged failings of our "traditional legal systems". [edit]
- cluedos 4y ago
tomjen3 4y ago
The problem is that if you give in once, or are perceived to give in, then not only will both sides hate you for it, but you will be under even more pressure to give in next time. To run something like Cloudflare you probably have to have the rule that you will not block services for anyone under any circumstances unless ordered to by a court, or they advocate for a blocking campaign against you, or host content that does. In this case they would have let kf of, but block Twitter.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

2Gkashmiri 4y ago

I don't get it. Do trans people and women and all the alleged victims "are a part of that community" that they endured years of torture and talking down leading to suicide as is being alleged or do these KF people do doxing on sorts on other sites and use KF as a central place to coordinate attacks? I am not on 8chan. I can never be harassed by anyone in /b/ or whatever the bad that forums are. If I am aan active part of a community, I should not claim peer pressure and influence or should I not?

malepoon 4y ago
> or do these KF people do doxing on sorts on other sites and use KF as a central place to coordinate attacks? Yep. KF is their harassment HQ where they share information about individuals they don't approve of. It's creepy.
- salawat 4y ago
  ...That's always going to exist. It's gone by different names. It's why you aren't supposed to share personal info on the Web, btw, because anyone can get to it, now without even leaving the comfort of home. The bus has sailed on that one though.
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    you know when the whole foursquare started gamification of locations, i did go into it pretty early on but some "time" later i was like "why am i doing this? for achievements?" same for the whole gamification of your facebook profile which nudges you to give more and more info about yourself... the "connect your accounts" is terrible way of keeping watertight identities. look. do you remember when "chatroom etiquette" meant not correctly answering a/s/l? because that would be creepy if the stranger found out and nasty things could happen? i mean its easy to "connect" and tie everything to one identity but then that same identity means you cannot hide. its a tradeoff and one i personally am willing to give.

malepoon 4y ago

> between two internet mobs headed by two unsavoury individuals This is a bit too much "both sides are bad" for me. Fact is that Kiwi Farms is a horrible website where people harass others, share information about them, and drive them to suicide. That's pretty bad on its own.

cluedos 4y ago
Look at it from Cloudflare employees' point of view though. Do they really want to spend their time getting drawn in to any more of this trivial online drama? No, of course not. Pulling the plug is the sensible business decision.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  This is definitely online drama, but I'm not sure I'd call it "trivial." This isn't people arguing about how many days are in a week.
  - cluedos 4y ago
    It's trivial in the same way that celebrity gossip is trivial.
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      Whether foo and bar will get married is, in my opinion, considerably different from organizations that collect and magnify hatred against members of various disempowered groups.
      - honkdaddy 4y ago
        Are transwomen creators really disempowered online these days? The internet's a very different place from how it was in 2007. Contrapoints, Gigi, Maya Henry were the first three that came to mind and from what I've seen all have wildly successful online followings, and a literal army of Twitter and Discord users to come to their defense. KF is the only site I'm aware of that bullies trans people, but I can think of loads of popular accounts and forums that happily go after Republicans, depressed single men, Christians, and any other group which the online majority has decided is deserving of abuse. I think the take "trans people have a hard time being accepted online" is pretty outdated now.

eternalban 4y ago

> If I was CEO of Cloudflare, and I and my employees were being harassed, doxxed, threatened by an online mob, I'd have done the same. Never mind taking a principled stand, it's not worth being involved in the first place. Fair enough. But this CEO was blowing clouds in our face that they took this action because our legal system is not up to the task! It's so sad that Mr. Prince apparently can't afford having a competent legal team to explain to him the concepts of "Rule of Law", "Due Process", "Courts", "Judges", "Juries", "Evidence", and all that other [quaint!] aspects of our (broken!) "traditional legal system".

timmytokyo 4y ago
I don't get it. Why does Prince require a legal team to explain to him the rule of law? Everything he has done in this matter has been within the letter of the law.
- eternalban 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32707821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32707821 "A little bit geek, wonk, and nerd. Repeat entrepreneur, recovering lawyer and former ski instructor. CEO & co-founder of CloudFlare." And oh my God. He is "recovering lawyer". This is what he concluded with: "Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context, rather than free speech, in order to have a more robust conversation with frameworks that have an appeal and applicability across nearly every nation and government." So this exactly the reasoning of those (bad? good?) cops that beat suspects in alley, or conduct search on private property without a warrant. And this cop then turns around and says: "Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context, rather than your civil rights" The term for this type of action is Extrajudicial -- possibly our recovering lawyer remembers that from law school. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicial_punishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicial_punishment To repeat, Cloudflare has every right (afaik) to just say "bad client, we don't want you". This CEO however chose to frame this as some sort of civic virtuous action necessitated by alleged failings of our "traditional legal systems". [edit]
cluedos 4y ago

tomjen3 4y ago

The problem is that if you give in once, or are perceived to give in, then not only will both sides hate you for it, but you will be under even more pressure to give in next time. To run something like Cloudflare you probably have to have the rule that you will not block services for anyone under any circumstances unless ordered to by a court, or they advocate for a blocking campaign against you, or host content that does. In this case they would have let kf of, but block Twitter.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]