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Cloudflare gave up neutrality when they terminated Daily Stormer. Before that, there was even discussion if they have technical ability to terminate single site

Cloudflare gave up neutrality when they terminated Daily Stormer. Before that, there was even discussion if they have technical ability to terminate single site like that (deleting content from distributed store is hard). More political activism they do, more damage for them!

victorbjorklund 2y ago
why would it be hard to delete content for them? you can literally in seconds delete files/sites from cache in cloudflare
- trte9343r4 2y ago
  It was 2017, technical difficulties were they argument against DMCA strikes or censorship. That argument was rendered void after that. Gmail initially did not had delete button for "technical difficulties".
sophacles 2y ago
It's political activism to terminate service over TOS violations? It was pretty simple really - all they had to do was not lie about Cloudflare endorsing them (per the contract that had extremely standard boilerplate language about such things). People seem to get really upset when Nazis are held to the same basic contract law standard anyone else would be held to. Just because the politics of promoting hate makes it hard to find vendors, it doesn't mean that vendors need to make a special TOS just to coddle those that do.
- kbolino 2y ago
  I think you assume this detail is widely known about the affair, but I didn't know about it. Here's an article from the time describing what happened: https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295 https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to... Importantly: “I realized there was no way we were going to have that conversation with people calling us Nazis,” [CloudFlare CEO Matthew] Prince said. “The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe. That was the tipping point for me.”
  - trte9343r4 2y ago
    I do not know background of that. But Stormer at some point also endorsed Hilary Clinton (as a satire). I could imagine they were trolling BBC or CNN, that compared Cloudflare to nacist, for not censoring them.
eli 2y ago
Sorry but continuing to host Daily Stormer is not neutral either. There is no neutral and apolitical option on this issue.
- function_seven 2y ago
  Yes there is. Don’t look at the content unless the law requires it. That’s neutral. You host sites, regardless of their content.
  - eli 2y ago
    You're describing a philosophy called Free Speech Absolutism. It's a perfectly reasonable stance and I get where you're coming from, but it is not objectively more correct than any other approach. And it's definitely a choice with political implications.
- 0x457 2y ago
  Hosting something that doesn't break your local laws or your ToS is as neutral as it gets. Not hosting something because you don't agree with them - is not. In this case, they broke ToS and got removed from CF.
  - eli 2y ago
    Isn’t the operative question here, what should the ToS include in the first place? Also: I don’t really agree. Enforcement of ToS is inherently political too.
    - 0x457 2y ago
      I'm sorry, if a place has a "do not shit of a floor" in its ToS, you go there and get kicked out because you shat on the floor. What is political about it? If you really want to argue on this, then go with "ToS are complicated for mortals to understand". > Isn’t the operative question here, what should the ToS include in the first place? No? It's a private company. You can choose to agree or not to agree with ToS and therefore make a choice of using or not using service because of its ToS. Another thing that you can complain about: CF clearly wanted to boot them off the service (see CEO's interview) and found a clause in their ToS to do so.

victorbjorklund 2y ago

why would it be hard to delete content for them? you can literally in seconds delete files/sites from cache in cloudflare

trte9343r4 2y ago
It was 2017, technical difficulties were they argument against DMCA strikes or censorship. That argument was rendered void after that. Gmail initially did not had delete button for "technical difficulties".

sophacles 2y ago

It's political activism to terminate service over TOS violations? It was pretty simple really - all they had to do was not lie about Cloudflare endorsing them (per the contract that had extremely standard boilerplate language about such things). People seem to get really upset when Nazis are held to the same basic contract law standard anyone else would be held to. Just because the politics of promoting hate makes it hard to find vendors, it doesn't mean that vendors need to make a special TOS just to coddle those that do.

kbolino 2y ago
I think you assume this detail is widely known about the affair, but I didn't know about it. Here's an article from the time describing what happened: https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295 https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to... Importantly: “I realized there was no way we were going to have that conversation with people calling us Nazis,” [CloudFlare CEO Matthew] Prince said. “The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe. That was the tipping point for me.”
- trte9343r4 2y ago
  I do not know background of that. But Stormer at some point also endorsed Hilary Clinton (as a satire). I could imagine they were trolling BBC or CNN, that compared Cloudflare to nacist, for not censoring them.

eli 2y ago

Sorry but continuing to host Daily Stormer is not neutral either. There is no neutral and apolitical option on this issue.

function_seven 2y ago
Yes there is. Don’t look at the content unless the law requires it. That’s neutral. You host sites, regardless of their content.
- eli 2y ago
  You're describing a philosophy called Free Speech Absolutism. It's a perfectly reasonable stance and I get where you're coming from, but it is not objectively more correct than any other approach. And it's definitely a choice with political implications.
0x457 2y ago
Hosting something that doesn't break your local laws or your ToS is as neutral as it gets. Not hosting something because you don't agree with them - is not. In this case, they broke ToS and got removed from CF.
- eli 2y ago
  Isn’t the operative question here, what should the ToS include in the first place? Also: I don’t really agree. Enforcement of ToS is inherently political too.
  - 0x457 2y ago
    I'm sorry, if a place has a "do not shit of a floor" in its ToS, you go there and get kicked out because you shat on the floor. What is political about it? If you really want to argue on this, then go with "ToS are complicated for mortals to understand". > Isn’t the operative question here, what should the ToS include in the first place? No? It's a private company. You can choose to agree or not to agree with ToS and therefore make a choice of using or not using service because of its ToS. Another thing that you can complain about: CF clearly wanted to boot them off the service (see CEO's interview) and found a clause in their ToS to do so.