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Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

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Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky. The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways. Edit: I was proud of Cloudflare not turning them off after their domain was deregistered. Now, so disappointed. Freedom of speech is rarely the speech we agree with. Or even speech we…

>Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky.

Don't use critical internet infrastructure to wage a campaign of hate and to organize rallies that ultimately culminate in a terrorist ramming attack against unarmed demonstrators?

>The worlds gone sideways.

There was a torchlit rally where people shouted "Jews will not replace us" and "Heil Trump." One of those in attendance was Matthew Heimbach, a white nationalist leader who previously assaulted someone at a Trump rally[1]. Heimbach has urged violence before and cheered stabbings[2] by his fellow Nazis as well.

Part of Trump's base is engaging is white nationalist violence in the open. I agree, the world has gone sideways.

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-...

[2] http://archive.is/ZBOOa

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

Don't try to market yourself as critical Internet infrastructure if you're going to throw your principals away because someone made you feel icky. The Pirate Bay and DDOS gangs are okay, but this was the line? The worlds gone sideways. Edit: I was proud of Cloudflare not turning them off after their domain was deregistered. Now, so disappointed. Freedom of speech is rarely the speech we agree with. Or even speech we…

Yeah, if you don't see the difference between a Nazi website and Pirate Bay you have some serious problems.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#63
For all the people who are warning of a slippery slope or a chilling effect, where do we draw a line? This site along with others like it likely helped spur a person on to murder a few days ago. This site along with other like it celebrated that murder. This site along with other like are organizing protests at that murder victim's funeral. How in good conscience can you be an accomplice in spreading that message?

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#64

This is a slippery slope, Cloudflare. Once you take it upon yourself to begin moderating and regulating content, you are now -- in my opinion -- obligated to do so consistently. Do you really want that responsibility? My opinion may be unpopular, however. I'm one of those folks that believe that everyone, equally, deserves to be able to express their thoughts, beliefs, and beliefs regardless of whether I agree with t…

> My opinion may be unpopular, however. I'm one of those folks that believe that everyone, equally, deserves to be able to express their thoughts, beliefs, and beliefs regardless of whether I agree with them. Yes, you're one tough maverick for repeating something stated only about 20x in just this thread. But you're indeed quite brave to pretend not to have seen the 25 answers pointing out that it's also this CEO (an…

When I first clicked on the discussion link, there were two comments. I also took a break to go to the restroom before I submitted my comment. I'm sorry that I wasn't quick enough for you.

> unilaterally

Happy now?

Did you actually want to discuss/argue with my comment or just criticize the way I worded it?

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#65
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…

So much for believing in "due process".

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#66

I get the whole "companies can choose not to host whatever they want" argument, but in order to do anything on the internet, you have to interact with companies. If I want to run my own website, I need an IP address at the minimum, and ISPs are free to cut off my internet service if they don't like what I'm hosting. In a public setting, if people don't like what I'm saying, they can't force me to be quiet (generally)…

There will always be companies that care more about making a buck than anything else. For years spammers and malware authors have been able to find hosting without issue, and taking them down has been a serious pain in the ass. All these nazis need to do is rent a server in russia (where they've moved their name server) and they will be fine.

The idea that companies like Cloudflare should help support sites like this is nonsensical. The slippery slope argument is an awful fallacy and ignores the fact that we can't even get content most of the world agrees is bad (child porn, active malware exploits, spammers) offline.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#67

This is a slippery slope, Cloudflare. Once you take it upon yourself to begin moderating and regulating content, you are now -- in my opinion -- obligated to do so consistently. Do you really want that responsibility? My opinion may be unpopular, however. I'm one of those folks that believe that everyone, equally, deserves to be able to express their thoughts, beliefs, and beliefs regardless of whether I agree with t…

> My opinion may be unpopular, however. I'm one of those folks that believe that everyone, equally, deserves to be able to express their thoughts, beliefs, and beliefs regardless of whether I agree with them.

You may want to read this comment of mine I put in a thread that probably won't get seen much because it's not intellectually stimulating enough, or something: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032018

I'll add a quote from a White Rose leaflet:

> Do not hide your cowardice under the cloak of cleverness!

http://white-rose-studies.org/Leaflet_3.html

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#68
It seems pretty obvious that all this hand-wringing over a little known site called The Daily Stormer has raised its profile worldwide far beyond their wildest dreams. This is likely causing the opposite effect of what activists want.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#69
post #38
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sit…

I don't think that's true. Cloudflare is just the most visible option at the moment, and probably (one of) the most cost effective.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#70

> 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. So CloudFlare draws the line of freedom of speech when they feel attacked by words, but it's OK if the content they defend is used to attack and slander others?

It could be argued that the mere presence of a Nazi flag as expression is incitement. Not ordinary speech. Naziism is nothing if not clear about violence to people about things that they cannot change about themselves. Skin color. Lineage. It's not like "if you don't do this we have no problem with you" (the Antifa fall into this category. Nazis fall into the former).

Well, the Supreme Court and the law of the land disagrees with you.
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