4 ms·

There are tons of shady websites hiding behind cloudflare's services. Some used .tk domains too but just in general, many shady websites are hiding behind Cloud

There are tons of shady websites hiding behind cloudflare's services. Some used .tk domains too but just in general, many shady websites are hiding behind Cloudflare and at least I know from personal experience if you contact cloud flare about it, they pretend not to be home. "We do not host the website" was always there response, while that is perhaps technically true, arguing if they shut down the reverse proxying for that website it would be at least offline, never worked.

lxgr 3y ago
Cloudflare is a US company. If they provide hosting (or reverse proxying; I don't think there's a material legal difference) services for anything illegal under US law, shouldn't it be possible to compel them to stop doing that through the legal system? And if this is about not-illegal-but-objectionable content, I'm actually glad that as an infrastructure company, they're choosing to not get into the business of content moderation.
- internetter 3y ago
  > if this is about not-illegal-but-objectionable content, I'm actually glad that as an infrastructure company, they're choosing to not get into the business of content moderation. Agreed. There's one other subset you didn't mention: "Clearly illegal but not yet handled in the court of law". Cloudflare again has a pretty hardline stance that "the courts need to come to us and force us to take it down"
  - diggan 3y ago
    > Clearly illegal but not yet handled in the court of law Isn't that somewhat of an oxymoron? What are some examples of something that is against the law but not handled by the courts of law?
    - dingnuts 3y ago
      Maybe that commentator lives in a country without common law, so precedent doesn't matter, but in a country like the US a law without precedent is considered "untried" and a lot of the details are worked out when the law is first enforced. If the legislature doesn't like the court's interpretation, they can then amend the law and the process restarts. So basically, at least in the US, nothing is clearly illegal until it is handled by a court -- so yes I think you're right
    - internetter 3y ago
      I mean not handled yet. Like say I'm hosting pirated content. Yes it's illegal, but it's not Cloudflare's place to say that.
      - diggan 3y ago
        Right, but if brought up to the courts, they would handle it, since it's illegal. But someone needs to prosecute for that to happen. So it sounds like the system works as intended, as far as I understand.
        internetter 3y ago
        I agree. It's not Cloudflare's place to remove something because it might be illegal
  - lxgr 3y ago
    If it's clearly illegal, what prevents it from being handled in any court of law? If it's not actually as clear, preemptive/overzealous compliance can lead to all kinds of undesirable (in a liberal democracy) effects. I also doubt that Cloudflare lets every single analogous issue bubble up to a full court case every single time, but for new/unclear/borderline scenarios, I'm glad that courts don't get to outsource their duty, i.e. determining the legality of actions, to a for-profit organization without public oversight.
  - caskstrength 3y ago
    > Cloudflare again has a pretty hardline stance that "the courts need to come to us and force us to take it down" "Hardline"? To me it seems like quite reasonable approach as opposed to "we will just take down anything someone on Twitter didn't like".
    - newaccount74 3y ago
      It's not reasonable. 99% of scams, frauds and harassment will never be subject of legal action, because there just aren't enough prosecutors out there to charge every fraud attempt. If you require a court ruling before blocking a fraud, it means you will keep hosting 99% of frauds.
- costco 3y ago
  They can. You can also subpoena them for information on an account, there are literally lawyers with blogs talking about how to do this. The people complaining essentially think that they should have the right to take anything they want down with an abuse report.
- stef25 3y ago
  A while back there was an interview with someone at Cloudflare and they were asked what about these Al Qaeda sites you guys are in front of, dude just answered "no comment". Seems that at the time they didn't ask many questions at all, like you said cause they don't want to go in to content moderation.

lxgr 3y ago

Cloudflare is a US company. If they provide hosting (or reverse proxying; I don't think there's a material legal difference) services for anything illegal under US law, shouldn't it be possible to compel them to stop doing that through the legal system? And if this is about not-illegal-but-objectionable content, I'm actually glad that as an infrastructure company, they're choosing to not get into the business of content moderation.

internetter 3y ago
> if this is about not-illegal-but-objectionable content, I'm actually glad that as an infrastructure company, they're choosing to not get into the business of content moderation. Agreed. There's one other subset you didn't mention: "Clearly illegal but not yet handled in the court of law". Cloudflare again has a pretty hardline stance that "the courts need to come to us and force us to take it down"
- diggan 3y ago
  > Clearly illegal but not yet handled in the court of law Isn't that somewhat of an oxymoron? What are some examples of something that is against the law but not handled by the courts of law?
  - dingnuts 3y ago
    Maybe that commentator lives in a country without common law, so precedent doesn't matter, but in a country like the US a law without precedent is considered "untried" and a lot of the details are worked out when the law is first enforced. If the legislature doesn't like the court's interpretation, they can then amend the law and the process restarts. So basically, at least in the US, nothing is clearly illegal until it is handled by a court -- so yes I think you're right
  - internetter 3y ago
    I mean not handled yet. Like say I'm hosting pirated content. Yes it's illegal, but it's not Cloudflare's place to say that.
    - diggan 3y ago
      Right, but if brought up to the courts, they would handle it, since it's illegal. But someone needs to prosecute for that to happen. So it sounds like the system works as intended, as far as I understand.
      - internetter 3y ago
        I agree. It's not Cloudflare's place to remove something because it might be illegal
- lxgr 3y ago
  If it's clearly illegal, what prevents it from being handled in any court of law? If it's not actually as clear, preemptive/overzealous compliance can lead to all kinds of undesirable (in a liberal democracy) effects. I also doubt that Cloudflare lets every single analogous issue bubble up to a full court case every single time, but for new/unclear/borderline scenarios, I'm glad that courts don't get to outsource their duty, i.e. determining the legality of actions, to a for-profit organization without public oversight.
- caskstrength 3y ago
  > Cloudflare again has a pretty hardline stance that "the courts need to come to us and force us to take it down" "Hardline"? To me it seems like quite reasonable approach as opposed to "we will just take down anything someone on Twitter didn't like".
  - newaccount74 3y ago
    It's not reasonable. 99% of scams, frauds and harassment will never be subject of legal action, because there just aren't enough prosecutors out there to charge every fraud attempt. If you require a court ruling before blocking a fraud, it means you will keep hosting 99% of frauds.
costco 3y ago
They can. You can also subpoena them for information on an account, there are literally lawyers with blogs talking about how to do this. The people complaining essentially think that they should have the right to take anything they want down with an abuse report.
stef25 3y ago
A while back there was an interview with someone at Cloudflare and they were asked what about these Al Qaeda sites you guys are in front of, dude just answered "no comment". Seems that at the time they didn't ask many questions at all, like you said cause they don't want to go in to content moderation.