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Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#31

Post by dragonwriter »

bwb wrote: post #10

Free speech does not mean a company has to take part in spreading it :). Free speech is about your right to speak without the government locking you up, or censoring those who choose to broadcast/spread it. But nothing about free speech says someone else has to listen or spread it for you, companies included. The line is drawn at calling for violence though, which is pretty fucking tricky to navigate.

In fact, free speech means that no private entity is compelled to help spread ideas they don't want to spread, outside of situations (mostly regulated monopolies) where a “private” entity acts as a quasi-public one.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#32

Post by jdavis703 »

bwb wrote: post #12
albertsun wrote: post #3

This section is troubling. > In a not-so-distant future, if we're not there already, it may be that if you're going to put content on the Internet you'll need to use a company with a giant network like Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or Alibaba. For context, Cloudflare currently handles around 10% of Internet requests. Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of com…

That is kinda a BS statement, there are hundreds of thousands of web hosts out there in some form. I am not sure where he is getting such a BS statement.

I think the point is, if you make a site forgo any sort of DDOS protection it effectively does not exist, especially if DDOSers want to take your site offline. Some website running on a VPS on a small hosting company likely won't be able to have the resources to keep their site running... which in my opinion is fine. If people want to shout you down in public because they don't want others to hear what you have to say, well then find somewhere else to express your views.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#33

Post by toomuchtodo »

RandVal30142 wrote: post #28
r721 wrote: post #4

>“This was my decision. This is not Cloudflare’s general policy now, going forward,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Gizmodo. “I think we have to have a conversation over what part of the infrastructure stack is right to police content.” (from internal email) >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 i…

Not sure why you are quoting earlier content instead of Cloudflare's statement on this particular matter. From today: >Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion. The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology. Seems no one woke up in a bad mood here.

If eastdakota said it, it's damning, regardless of the later PR scrubbing.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#34

Post by invisible »

cft wrote: post #17

Cloudflare's major business is hosting paid DDoS providers "booters" [1] . Scary to delegate such powers to a person who "literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet" 1. https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2016-July/087295.h...

I think that calling every decision unilaterally the same no matter the variables involved is pretty rash. Lots of discussions on HN devolve into this way of thinking and I really can't stand it.

An entity that puts child porn on the Internet isn't protected by freedom of speech. Soliciting hate, violence and prejudice is obviously not identical but it's a lot different from just having a different opinion than someone else.

Shitty people should be treated shitty by companies. I don't really see a democratic way of banning folks like this from Cloudflare besides Cloudflare deciding to do so.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#36

Post by TearsInTheRain »

sidlls wrote: post #14
kuschku wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, everyone trying to work against this gets immediately downvoted on HN, because everyone considers the work of these companies just so convenient. It’s classical short-term vs. long-term thinking, and it’s damaging not just to privacy, but also to the startup economy as a whole.

In fairness your particular example isn't necessarily a good one. Snapchat is a trivial idea and it's frankly amazing it got as far as it did.

Imho his example illustrates his well. Snapchat was fairly disruptive and lost a lot of value when facebook just ripped it off. If we allow giant companies to engage in anti-competitive practices it will hurt us in the long run as people won't even try to innovate. The snapchat story is pretty demotivating. Why bother when one of the largest 5-6 companies in your space will just shut you down or steal your ideas?

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#37

Post by RandVal30142 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #33
RandVal30142 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you are quoting earlier content instead of Cloudflare's statement on this particular matter. From today: >Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion. The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology. Seems no one woke up in a bad mood here.

If eastdakota said it, it's damning, regardless of the later PR scrubbing.

He also said this:

>“I realized there was no way we were going to have that conversation with people calling us Nazis,” 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.”

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#38

Post by makomk »

bwb wrote: post #12
albertsun wrote: post #3

This section is troubling. > In a not-so-distant future, if we're not there already, it may be that if you're going to put content on the Internet you'll need to use a company with a giant network like Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or Alibaba. For context, Cloudflare currently handles around 10% of Internet requests. Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of com…

That is kinda a BS statement, there are hundreds of thousands of web hosts out there in some form. I am not sure where he is getting such a BS statement.

From the linked post:

> The size and scale of the attacks that can now easily be launched online make it such that if you don't have a network like Cloudflare in front of your content, and you upset anyone, you will be knocked offline. In fact, in the case of the Daily Stormer, the initial requests we received to terminate their service came from hackers who literally said: "Get out of the way so we can DDoS this site off the Internet."

As far as I know, he's right. It's basically only Cloudflare, Google, and a handful of other megacorps that can keep your content online if someone's willing to pay a vigilante with a botnet to get rid of it.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#39

Post by _2xvp »

bwb wrote: post #10

Free speech does not mean a company has to take part in spreading it :). Free speech is about your right to speak without the government locking you up, or censoring those who choose to broadcast/spread it. But nothing about free speech says someone else has to listen or spread it for you, companies included. The line is drawn at calling for violence though, which is pretty fucking tricky to navigate.

This response always strikes me as a huge cop-out. The phrase "free speech" can refer not just to the legal first amendment right but also to the more general societal principle. Nobody has claimed or will claim that Cloudflare's actions here violate the first amendment.

The "free speech" discussion is not about whether they can do this, but whether they should.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#40

Post by ryanlol »

cft wrote: post #17

Cloudflare's major business is hosting paid DDoS providers "booters" [1] . Scary to delegate such powers to a person who "literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet" 1. https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2016-July/087295.h...

>Cloudflare's major business is hosting paid DDoS providers "booters"

No it isn't, this is complete nonsense. There's not very many booters and besides a few exceptions they don't have paid CF plans.

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