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Real principled stance there from their CEO - 3 days to totally flip-flop? I mean, if your stance is we will ban content we arbitrarily find bad then just state

Real principled stance there from their CEO - 3 days to totally flip-flop? I mean, if your stance is we will ban content we arbitrarily find bad then just state it as such. Put into your agreement terms precisely what is and isn’t allowed. Be consistent. This “conflicted” act makes them look weak and of questionable leadership. Either take a principled stance on speech or put into your terms how you censor speech.

viraptor 4y ago
My headcanon is that Price wanted to take a stand, but the legal team actually took a better look at the situation because of the pressure and had a long meeting, explaining to him why it's a really bad idea. I hope we learn what really happened in a few years. Reason: twice I sent messages directly to appropriate teams at (large-companies) with something like "are you aware of what your ceo is doing at (link)" which was followed by the team sending a new response and ceo disappearing from that conversation.
- that_guy_iain 4y ago
  Didn't he previously say he took down the nazi site because they were saying that the reason they weren't taken down was that he agreed with them? That provides the sort of decision making process. Also, I find it hard to believe that a legal team would all of a sudden decide 3 days after they publically announce they wouldn't remove security services from a customer that one customer who has basically been the same for god only knows how long needs to have those services removed. I honestly, would be surprised if the original announcement hadn't already had input from legal. So if legal thought this customer was so bad, why wouldn't they have it done before they publically say they won't do it. I think the twitter mobbing of CloudFlare worked.
  - prvit 4y ago
    He said he took down the Daily Stormer because they claimed to have friends at Cloudflare (which was true https://nitter.net/GossiTheDog/status/1565128386753843201 https://nitter.net/GossiTheDog/status/1565128386753843201)
    - googlryas 4y ago
      She left the company shortly thereafter...I assume when her viewpoints became known, probably couldn't keep her mouth shut after the "outrage" of not providing service to daily stormer. It would be silly to say there are definitely no Nazis in a company above a certain size. It's easy to fire them as soon as you know about them, but a lot of shitheads know to fly under the radar, so you can't really proactively hunt them out.
    - benmmurphy 4y ago
      Given she has stated in public that she is a 'troll' on twitter I don't think those twitter posts are evidence that she was a nazi. They seem consistent with her shitposting on twitter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNgLq_naOKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNgLq_naOKw
    - philippejara 4y ago
      If you think screenshots of someone saying slurs in 2014 is evidence of someone being part of the daily stormer i'm afraid a lot more of the internet is a part of the daily stormer than you think. The usage of weev's the trial is also pretty absurd and manipulative, given that his trial wasn't really related to the daily stormer, but about hacking, so much so that the EFF[0] defended him. [0]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/weevs-case-flawed-beginning-end https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/weevs-case-flawed-begi...
      - prvit 4y ago
        Nobody has ever suggested that Asshurt was a part of the daily stormer, she wasn't. >The usage of weev's the trial is also pretty absurd and manipulative, given that his trial wasn't really related to the daily stormer, but about hacking, so much so that the EFF[0] defended him. Pretty sure most smart people have already distanced themselves from the EFF at this point, so that's not very convincing. EFF, despite getting repeatedly called out by several top experts, spent years pushing downright dangerous disinformation via their "secure messaging scorecard". Not exactly a trustworthy organisation. It was also a bizarre choice to defend weev, both from a legal and moral point of view. tptacek explained it well at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5978686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5978686
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > Didn't he previously say he took down the nazi site because they were saying that the reason they weren't taken down was that he agreed with them? And about that decision, he said this: > Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision. It was different than what I’d talked talked with our senior team about yesterday. I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. I called our legal team and told them what we were going to do. I called our Trust & Safety team and had them stop the service. It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company. > Having made that decision we now need to talk about why it is so dangerous. I’ll be posting something on our blog later today. Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power. https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295 https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...
    - prvit 4y ago
      I wonder if he's actually so delusional to think that he's got the power to decide what goes on the internet, or if this is just something Cloudflare marketing is trying to push to make them seem like the only option anyone could possibly work with.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        I think his consternation is performative.
      - theptip 4y ago
        Isn’t the simplest read on that statement “there should be legislation that means nobody has this power”? Basically, something like “if it’s legal I’ll do it, but I don’t think it should be legal”. This is kind of dubious as a basic ethical position (if you think it’s bad just don’t do it) but note that it’s not entirely ridiculous as if it’s legal, others can and will pressure you to do it. Whereas if you cede the right to do a thing, you can’t be coerced by an angry mob to do it.
        4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- superkuh 4y ago
  Legal? I think you mean PR team. They realized it would have an impact on income. There was obviously no legal issue.
  - caeril 4y ago
    On income? How would this work? As a CF customer, I am far more concerned with a policy or precedent of capriciously cutting off customers than a policy of defending "bad" customers.
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      That CF would have made a judgment that a larger percentage of their customers would feel uncomfortable using a service that also appears to support sites like KF is hardly surprising though. And as a corporation they're well within their rights to decide on that basis to cut off relationships with clients that they see as bad for business.
    - superkuh 4y ago
      Cloudflare/DDoS-Guard doesn't care about you. You don't do enough business. The DDOS protection company cares about the reactions of the abstract things called corporations and institutions. Corporate persons have different motives than human person do. I don't think it is controversial to say most corporations and institutions have no problem with this decision. That'd be despite what any informed IT dept. employee might believe about the situation. So yes, they worried about their income.
    - Shank 4y ago
      > On income? How would this work? Cloudflare is a public company. I can tell you from being in a position to know this at a small company, but the "vendor review / procurement process" that happens to acquire a new service is non-trivial and usually offers several checkpoints to make sure that you're only onboarding vendors that meet strict criteria. One of those criteria is "not being embroiled in an obviously bad PR scandal easily revealed by a basic Google search." CloudFlare is public and that means that their shareholders have the final say, not the individual customers. If shareholders see that CloudFlare's revenue is declining or that key customers are leaving, and there's an obvious reason why that's happening, well, that's the answer to who has the most say. The whole operational plan that @SleepingGiants had during the Trump administration was to systematically identify corporate links and associations, and to highlight them to PR and legal teams who knew how this worked. "Cancellation" works not because individuals are easily moved by emotional arguments. It works because most companies answer to shareholders, and most shareholders care about value and growth. The company has a fiduciary duty to drive value for shareholders. When those stars align, obvious reasons why value is being artificially capped don't become "hard decisions." They become easy ways to increase value. There are very few companies that can successfully hold an ideology. When they do hold an ideology, that ideology is usually aligned with some market force. Apple advertises privacy as its ideology because it's seemingly aligned with shareholder value. The ideology becomes expensive or even net-negative commensurate with the value being driven.
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  The problem is the site got named in a swatting attack on a GOP House member. That ups the stakes a bit and probably made providing a DDOS service for kiwifarms problematic.
  - _vvaw 4y ago
    It got named because the alleged attacker called the police and said "it was me, Kiwi Farms user so-and-so." The user in question denied making this call and claimed they had been impersonated. This happened in the midst of the pressure campaign on Cloudflare, to a GOP House member known for jumping the gun who had no prior history with Kiwi Farms. If that's not extremely suspect I don't know what is.
    - tibbydudeza 4y ago
      Agreed it was just unrelated but it made news headlines then old history about keffals , them not helping the police with the Auckland shooter so they became "the baddies". It simply made Cloudflare's position untenable - they are not piratebay but need customers.
fullstop 4y ago
Kevin has been hammering on them for many days now, and for good reason. Everyone has a different line in the sand. For me, a platform designed to promote hate speech crosses that line.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  What is hate speech? Was Charlie Hebdo hate speech? Rushdie? A lot of people certainly think so. I see hate speech across nearly every internet platform including this one. There’s no shortage of hate speech against wealthy people or white men, etc. Is that allowed?
  - arcatech 4y ago
    The person you’re responding to said “designed to promote hate speech”. Your examples don’t sound like that.
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      What does that mean? That the forum operator doesn’t have moderation facilities that suits your tastes in what is and is not hate speech? A forum dedicated to the principal and culture of free speech is designed to promote hate speech?
      - arcatech 4y ago
        Hate speech is clearly defined in various laws against the concept. So it’s not really up to taste. Most popular services attempt to remove hate speech, but doesn’t look like KF does. Btw, a forum dedicated to the principle and culture of free speech would absolutely (by definition) be promoting/hosting hate speech.
        concordDance 4y ago
        Most laws on hate speech don't use the term hate speech. What is your personal understanding of the term?
bouncing 4y ago
There's always going to be something of a judgment call though. You might say "this content is against our TOS", but what if that content is in a book? At a bookseller? You can think of many other examples, but the point is, if you think there's an easy-to-create and easy-to-enforce content policy on the Internet, I think you're mistaken.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  Of course and it’s a bit of a trap. They’d end up having to ban half the internet if they were consistent and non-arbitrary.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Half the internet isn't forums devoted to stalking and harassing people. What exactly is inconsistent about their banning of services? Is there another site which is on their radar, which does what kiwifarm does, and they've come out and stated they will never ban them?
    - bouncing 4y ago
      Half the Internet is indeed forums where bad behavior is taking place though. Reddit, for example, has plenty of bad (often illegal) behavior on it and the moderation is far from aggressive. You eventually go down the rabbit hole of gradations of moderation and "how much" moderation you'll require.
    - google234123 4y ago
      Half the internet probably includes porn and piracy.
- sintaxi 4y ago
  I run a web publishing product with over 10M deployments. The easy-to-enforce content policy is this "Are we breaking the law by hosting this content?". Basically the answer for an ISP is always no until there is a takedown order from the courts which your are under jurisdiction, OR you knowingly are hosting a phishing attack intended to defraud unsuspecting members of the public, OR you are put on notice of content infringement via sworn affidavit under penalty of perjury. It really is that simple because ISPs are immune by default.
Bancakes 4y ago
There are no solid principles, times change and people change. Would it have made a difference if a month ago they forbade websites that dox people?
- cowtools 4y ago
  Since when is "doxxing" a crime? I'm told that the new york times has "doxxed" people on numerous occasions. Should they get taken down?
  - Bancakes 4y ago
    It doesn't have to be a crime, just a waste of bandwidth.
  - redeeman 4y ago
    they doxxed a twitter user causing that user to face credible life threats and had to evacuate and go into hiding.. but they are a-okay naturally
    - cowtools 4y ago
      If "go into hiding" means "not posting personally-identifiable information on the public internet", then that doesn't sound so bad. In fact, that's what I always do all the time on the internet, as should everyone.
      - redeeman 4y ago
        by "go into hiding" i mean leaving their house, living in a new undisclosed location, as people are coming to their house
        cowtools 4y ago
        This is why it's unwise to ever post one's location online. It is truly pitiful, because this is ultimately what social media encourages. They encourage tagging posts by location, they rip the EXIF data from the images (which most users don't even know exists in the first place). This is all information that is fed into the advertising and mass surveillance machine. At the very least, this is what we have castle doctrine and self-defense law for.
dcow 4y ago
Big companies regress to the mean. It’s especially sad to watch it slowly happen to CF over the years.
- sealeck 4y ago
  The mean of not platforming violent forums?
joe_the_user 4y ago
Real principled stance there from their CEO - 3 days to totally flip-flop? I mean, if your stance is we will ban content we arbitrarily find bad then just state it as such. The thing is that just about every company and individual is going to have the caveat "be bad enough and I won't deal with you" in practice. Kiwi Farms is pretty horrible but you could have an even more awful site - say real murder for hire - and it would be dropped even faster. Do really expect someone to offer a "principled position" that no matter the real world consequences, they'll never stand against some horror getting out onto the Internet? Edit: I want to add that Cloudflair's original statement and it's recent statement have involved a consistent point of "we shouldn't be the one to suppress this" which is fundamentally different from "nothing should be done about these problems". They're basically saying "we should be doing this but we should be doing this based on a court order rather than on our own". Which is to say there are never any "free speech fundamentalism" in these statements.
smsm42 4y ago
But why would he? Bloviating about his love for free speech and then suppressing the speech that makes him trouble is much more convenient. And why should he worry how he looks to you? What you'd do, use another provider? Good luck with that, think they'd be any different? The reality is, we're moving from an early pseudo-anarchic ideals of early internet free speech mode to the pseudo-feudal setups where if you want to have an internet presence you must have a liege lord and must live at their sufferance, or you'll quickly fall victim to one of the roving mobs that live to collect the scalps of the likes of you. It's not a fun place to be in, but that's where we're at. And as a vassal you don't have too much position to make demands on your lord. You can change the lord, for sure, but there aren't many and if none of them likes you, you're out of luck. Welcome to the Web 3.0, it's not what you thought it'd be.

viraptor 4y ago

My headcanon is that Price wanted to take a stand, but the legal team actually took a better look at the situation because of the pressure and had a long meeting, explaining to him why it's a really bad idea. I hope we learn what really happened in a few years. Reason: twice I sent messages directly to appropriate teams at (large-companies) with something like "are you aware of what your ceo is doing at (link)" which was followed by the team sending a new response and ceo disappearing from that conversation.

that_guy_iain 4y ago
Didn't he previously say he took down the nazi site because they were saying that the reason they weren't taken down was that he agreed with them? That provides the sort of decision making process. Also, I find it hard to believe that a legal team would all of a sudden decide 3 days after they publically announce they wouldn't remove security services from a customer that one customer who has basically been the same for god only knows how long needs to have those services removed. I honestly, would be surprised if the original announcement hadn't already had input from legal. So if legal thought this customer was so bad, why wouldn't they have it done before they publically say they won't do it. I think the twitter mobbing of CloudFlare worked.
- prvit 4y ago
  He said he took down the Daily Stormer because they claimed to have friends at Cloudflare (which was true https://nitter.net/GossiTheDog/status/1565128386753843201 https://nitter.net/GossiTheDog/status/1565128386753843201)
  - googlryas 4y ago
    She left the company shortly thereafter...I assume when her viewpoints became known, probably couldn't keep her mouth shut after the "outrage" of not providing service to daily stormer. It would be silly to say there are definitely no Nazis in a company above a certain size. It's easy to fire them as soon as you know about them, but a lot of shitheads know to fly under the radar, so you can't really proactively hunt them out.
  - benmmurphy 4y ago
    Given she has stated in public that she is a 'troll' on twitter I don't think those twitter posts are evidence that she was a nazi. They seem consistent with her shitposting on twitter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNgLq_naOKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNgLq_naOKw
  - philippejara 4y ago
    If you think screenshots of someone saying slurs in 2014 is evidence of someone being part of the daily stormer i'm afraid a lot more of the internet is a part of the daily stormer than you think. The usage of weev's the trial is also pretty absurd and manipulative, given that his trial wasn't really related to the daily stormer, but about hacking, so much so that the EFF[0] defended him. [0]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/weevs-case-flawed-beginning-end https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/weevs-case-flawed-begi...
    - prvit 4y ago
      Nobody has ever suggested that Asshurt was a part of the daily stormer, she wasn't. >The usage of weev's the trial is also pretty absurd and manipulative, given that his trial wasn't really related to the daily stormer, but about hacking, so much so that the EFF[0] defended him. Pretty sure most smart people have already distanced themselves from the EFF at this point, so that's not very convincing. EFF, despite getting repeatedly called out by several top experts, spent years pushing downright dangerous disinformation via their "secure messaging scorecard". Not exactly a trustworthy organisation. It was also a bizarre choice to defend weev, both from a legal and moral point of view. tptacek explained it well at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5978686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5978686
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > Didn't he previously say he took down the nazi site because they were saying that the reason they weren't taken down was that he agreed with them? And about that decision, he said this: > Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision. It was different than what I’d talked talked with our senior team about yesterday. I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. I called our legal team and told them what we were going to do. I called our Trust & Safety team and had them stop the service. It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company. > Having made that decision we now need to talk about why it is so dangerous. I’ll be posting something on our blog later today. Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power. https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295 https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...
  - prvit 4y ago
    I wonder if he's actually so delusional to think that he's got the power to decide what goes on the internet, or if this is just something Cloudflare marketing is trying to push to make them seem like the only option anyone could possibly work with.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      I think his consternation is performative.
    - theptip 4y ago
      Isn’t the simplest read on that statement “there should be legislation that means nobody has this power”? Basically, something like “if it’s legal I’ll do it, but I don’t think it should be legal”. This is kind of dubious as a basic ethical position (if you think it’s bad just don’t do it) but note that it’s not entirely ridiculous as if it’s legal, others can and will pressure you to do it. Whereas if you cede the right to do a thing, you can’t be coerced by an angry mob to do it.
      - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
superkuh 4y ago
Legal? I think you mean PR team. They realized it would have an impact on income. There was obviously no legal issue.
- caeril 4y ago
  On income? How would this work? As a CF customer, I am far more concerned with a policy or precedent of capriciously cutting off customers than a policy of defending "bad" customers.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    That CF would have made a judgment that a larger percentage of their customers would feel uncomfortable using a service that also appears to support sites like KF is hardly surprising though. And as a corporation they're well within their rights to decide on that basis to cut off relationships with clients that they see as bad for business.
  - superkuh 4y ago
    Cloudflare/DDoS-Guard doesn't care about you. You don't do enough business. The DDOS protection company cares about the reactions of the abstract things called corporations and institutions. Corporate persons have different motives than human person do. I don't think it is controversial to say most corporations and institutions have no problem with this decision. That'd be despite what any informed IT dept. employee might believe about the situation. So yes, they worried about their income.
  - Shank 4y ago
    > On income? How would this work? Cloudflare is a public company. I can tell you from being in a position to know this at a small company, but the "vendor review / procurement process" that happens to acquire a new service is non-trivial and usually offers several checkpoints to make sure that you're only onboarding vendors that meet strict criteria. One of those criteria is "not being embroiled in an obviously bad PR scandal easily revealed by a basic Google search." CloudFlare is public and that means that their shareholders have the final say, not the individual customers. If shareholders see that CloudFlare's revenue is declining or that key customers are leaving, and there's an obvious reason why that's happening, well, that's the answer to who has the most say. The whole operational plan that @SleepingGiants had during the Trump administration was to systematically identify corporate links and associations, and to highlight them to PR and legal teams who knew how this worked. "Cancellation" works not because individuals are easily moved by emotional arguments. It works because most companies answer to shareholders, and most shareholders care about value and growth. The company has a fiduciary duty to drive value for shareholders. When those stars align, obvious reasons why value is being artificially capped don't become "hard decisions." They become easy ways to increase value. There are very few companies that can successfully hold an ideology. When they do hold an ideology, that ideology is usually aligned with some market force. Apple advertises privacy as its ideology because it's seemingly aligned with shareholder value. The ideology becomes expensive or even net-negative commensurate with the value being driven.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
The problem is the site got named in a swatting attack on a GOP House member. That ups the stakes a bit and probably made providing a DDOS service for kiwifarms problematic.
- _vvaw 4y ago
  It got named because the alleged attacker called the police and said "it was me, Kiwi Farms user so-and-so." The user in question denied making this call and claimed they had been impersonated. This happened in the midst of the pressure campaign on Cloudflare, to a GOP House member known for jumping the gun who had no prior history with Kiwi Farms. If that's not extremely suspect I don't know what is.
  - tibbydudeza 4y ago
    Agreed it was just unrelated but it made news headlines then old history about keffals , them not helping the police with the Auckland shooter so they became "the baddies". It simply made Cloudflare's position untenable - they are not piratebay but need customers.

fullstop 4y ago

Kevin has been hammering on them for many days now, and for good reason. Everyone has a different line in the sand. For me, a platform designed to promote hate speech crosses that line.

nemo44x 4y ago
What is hate speech? Was Charlie Hebdo hate speech? Rushdie? A lot of people certainly think so. I see hate speech across nearly every internet platform including this one. There’s no shortage of hate speech against wealthy people or white men, etc. Is that allowed?
- arcatech 4y ago
  The person you’re responding to said “designed to promote hate speech”. Your examples don’t sound like that.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    What does that mean? That the forum operator doesn’t have moderation facilities that suits your tastes in what is and is not hate speech? A forum dedicated to the principal and culture of free speech is designed to promote hate speech?
    - arcatech 4y ago
      Hate speech is clearly defined in various laws against the concept. So it’s not really up to taste. Most popular services attempt to remove hate speech, but doesn’t look like KF does. Btw, a forum dedicated to the principle and culture of free speech would absolutely (by definition) be promoting/hosting hate speech.
      - concordDance 4y ago
        Most laws on hate speech don't use the term hate speech. What is your personal understanding of the term?

bouncing 4y ago

There's always going to be something of a judgment call though. You might say "this content is against our TOS", but what if that content is in a book? At a bookseller? You can think of many other examples, but the point is, if you think there's an easy-to-create and easy-to-enforce content policy on the Internet, I think you're mistaken.

nemo44x 4y ago
Of course and it’s a bit of a trap. They’d end up having to ban half the internet if they were consistent and non-arbitrary.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Half the internet isn't forums devoted to stalking and harassing people. What exactly is inconsistent about their banning of services? Is there another site which is on their radar, which does what kiwifarm does, and they've come out and stated they will never ban them?
  - bouncing 4y ago
    Half the Internet is indeed forums where bad behavior is taking place though. Reddit, for example, has plenty of bad (often illegal) behavior on it and the moderation is far from aggressive. You eventually go down the rabbit hole of gradations of moderation and "how much" moderation you'll require.
  - google234123 4y ago
    Half the internet probably includes porn and piracy.
sintaxi 4y ago
I run a web publishing product with over 10M deployments. The easy-to-enforce content policy is this "Are we breaking the law by hosting this content?". Basically the answer for an ISP is always no until there is a takedown order from the courts which your are under jurisdiction, OR you knowingly are hosting a phishing attack intended to defraud unsuspecting members of the public, OR you are put on notice of content infringement via sworn affidavit under penalty of perjury. It really is that simple because ISPs are immune by default.

Bancakes 4y ago

There are no solid principles, times change and people change. Would it have made a difference if a month ago they forbade websites that dox people?

cowtools 4y ago
Since when is "doxxing" a crime? I'm told that the new york times has "doxxed" people on numerous occasions. Should they get taken down?
- Bancakes 4y ago
  It doesn't have to be a crime, just a waste of bandwidth.
- redeeman 4y ago
  they doxxed a twitter user causing that user to face credible life threats and had to evacuate and go into hiding.. but they are a-okay naturally
  - cowtools 4y ago
    If "go into hiding" means "not posting personally-identifiable information on the public internet", then that doesn't sound so bad. In fact, that's what I always do all the time on the internet, as should everyone.
    - redeeman 4y ago
      by "go into hiding" i mean leaving their house, living in a new undisclosed location, as people are coming to their house
      - cowtools 4y ago
        This is why it's unwise to ever post one's location online. It is truly pitiful, because this is ultimately what social media encourages. They encourage tagging posts by location, they rip the EXIF data from the images (which most users don't even know exists in the first place). This is all information that is fed into the advertising and mass surveillance machine. At the very least, this is what we have castle doctrine and self-defense law for.

dcow 4y ago

Big companies regress to the mean. It’s especially sad to watch it slowly happen to CF over the years.

sealeck 4y ago
The mean of not platforming violent forums?

joe_the_user 4y ago

Real principled stance there from their CEO - 3 days to totally flip-flop? I mean, if your stance is we will ban content we arbitrarily find bad then just state it as such. The thing is that just about every company and individual is going to have the caveat "be bad enough and I won't deal with you" in practice. Kiwi Farms is pretty horrible but you could have an even more awful site - say real murder for hire - and it would be dropped even faster. Do really expect someone to offer a "principled position" that no matter the real world consequences, they'll never stand against some horror getting out onto the Internet? Edit: I want to add that Cloudflair's original statement and it's recent statement have involved a consistent point of "we shouldn't be the one to suppress this" which is fundamentally different from "nothing should be done about these problems". They're basically saying "we should be doing this but we should be doing this based on a court order rather than on our own". Which is to say there are never any "free speech fundamentalism" in these statements.

smsm42 4y ago

But why would he? Bloviating about his love for free speech and then suppressing the speech that makes him trouble is much more convenient. And why should he worry how he looks to you? What you'd do, use another provider? Good luck with that, think they'd be any different? The reality is, we're moving from an early pseudo-anarchic ideals of early internet free speech mode to the pseudo-feudal setups where if you want to have an internet presence you must have a liege lord and must live at their sufferance, or you'll quickly fall victim to one of the roving mobs that live to collect the scalps of the likes of you. It's not a fun place to be in, but that's where we're at. And as a vassal you don't have too much position to make demands on your lord. You can change the lord, for sure, but there aren't many and if none of them likes you, you're out of luck. Welcome to the Web 3.0, it's not what you thought it'd be.