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Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#321

Post by ringaroundthetx »

jacquesm wrote: post #175
ringaroundthetx wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't he face personal liability in a civil lawsuit for monetary damages? Like if Daily Stormtrooper's hosting costs go up in a DDOS

Obviously, absolutely not.

Can you give me several reasons why a judge wouldn't merely grant summary judgement in favor of Daily Stormer? Or why their arguments would fail?

"Cloudflare unexpectedly revoked our traffic mitigating service in the middle of our highest costly traffic, our costs went up this much. Cloudflare caused this, these are the damages, and here are the punitive damages to deter this behavior in the future, the CEO even said this is not company policy."

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#322

Post by dragonwriter »

Clubber wrote: post #279
Nition wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really playing devil's advocate here but if the CEO of Cloudflare wakes up and thinks to himself "man I hate that site, I'm going to remove it from my service", and the Internet says "no you can't", is that another form of censorship? In this situation we're either limiting what Daily Stormer can do, or limiting what Cloudflare can do.

Yes, without a third option, the question is, which is more important, freedom of speech and expression, or the freedom for business to choose who they serve? If it were a protected group like LGBTQ, Cloudflare could not discriminate against them (the gay wedding cake is an example of this). So we've already decided, as a society (or rather our politicians have), that businesses must service protected groups. How far…

> If it were a protected group like LGBTQ

That's not a protected class. In some (a minority) states, sexual orientation is. Gender identity is in some also, but not the same set.

> The difference between this and the wedding cake example, is the couple could have easily gone to another bakery.

Outside of a major urban area, that's far from clear. OTOH, there are many domain registrars and web hosts, and they tend not to have very limited geographic service areas. I definitely have more viable choices for either of those than I would for a wedding cake baker.

> With the internet controlled by a small group of companies in a particular region

This is absolutely not the case, especially for domain registration or web hosting.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#323

Post by gthtjtkt »

I didn't know Daily Stormer existed until today.

Now, I have a little less respect for the companies who terminated their services, and a little more curiosity about Daily Stormer.

Congrats, you did nothing but give them free publicity while damaging your own reputation.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#324

Post by genon »

Absolutely correct.

He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare.

The excuse he uses for terminating TDS is an absolute crock; if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim.

It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like.

Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#325

Post by tedivm »

colllectorof wrote: post #153
tedivm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>The idea that companies like Cloudflare should help support sites like this is nonsensical. It is your framing of the idea that's nonsensical. Infrastructure companies should not need to police all their services. Heck, they shouldn't police their services. That is what real police and courts are for. As an analogy, should AT&T monitor calls and terminate service for customers using racist slurs? Now, a lot of peopl…

That's an awful analogy. No one is telling cloudflare to monitor things- what's happening is that people are reporting the issue to cloudflare directly. A better analogy would be AT&T shutting down an account that was using to threaten or harass people.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#326

Post by breadbox »

default-kramer wrote: post #183
breadbox wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you label "not amplifying someone" as censorship, then there is obviously no such thing as uncensored free speech for everyone. The question then becomes who you step up to defend, and who you quietly ignore, when someone gets amplified over them.

It's not about amplifying someone. There is a difference between ignoring someone and silencing them. Cloudflare's move seems more like silencing than ignoring to me. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I think everyone should be able to put their (sometimes terrible) opinions on the internet, and we'll trust society to decide which ideas are terrible and should be ignored.

Cloudflare is refusing to help someone spread their message. Again, if you call that censorship, then I'm not sure where you draw the line, as almost every speech act involves taking space away from other speech acts. Particularly when you're talking about sites like Daily Stormer, which are explicitly used to organize acts of censorship against voices they don't like.

I don't think one can coherently take a neutral stance at that level. If not helping Daily Stormer disseminate their message is branded as censorship, but Daily Stormers acts of bullying and threads of violence are not, then I would say that that definition of censorship needs to be re-evaluated.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#327

Post by [deleted] »

tuna-piano wrote: post #77
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…

It's so bizarre. He tries to have it both ways. He says "no one should have that power", but then says he did it literally earlier that day. He says CloudFlare isn't changing their "content-neutral" policy... but clearly they did change that policy. I have many reasons to oppose nazis, including incredibly personal ones. That said, I think crossing this content line for an infrastructure company is a big deal, and I…

[deleted]

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#328

Post by ruleabidinguser »

dragonwriter wrote: post #74
Clubber wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time someone says that, I just hear "I'm defending censorship." Is that what you are doing, or am I just overly sensitive? I mean everyone on here knows this, yet every time someone feels they need to say it. We aren't debating what the first amendment protects, we are debating on wether it's good for our country to have all internet speech controlled by a handful of conglomerates. This is going to sound unfair…

Censorship is merely deciding what ideas you will or will not participate in promoting; protecting the right to do that is the heart of the ideal of free speech. Government censorship—having public authority (whether officially styled as the state or one having exercising a monopoly on essential tools of communication) decide for you what ideas you must or must not promote, regardless of your own desire—is what “free…

If you think government censorship is bad then you think this is bad, or you don't understand why it's bad at all. I don't understand where you come from arguing against such a cornerstone of our society.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#329

Post by derefr »

genon wrote: post #324

Absolutely correct. He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare. The excuse he uses for terminating TDS is an absolute crock; if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim. It's an outrage that…

> if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim.

The damage of libel is reputational damage. Getting the libelous claim retracted after the claim has been seen by the public doesn't undo or erase the damage the claim does. Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation.

Re: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

#330

Post by [deleted] »

colllectorof wrote: post #153
tedivm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>The idea that companies like Cloudflare should help support sites like this is nonsensical. It is your framing of the idea that's nonsensical. Infrastructure companies should not need to police all their services. Heck, they shouldn't police their services. That is what real police and courts are for. As an analogy, should AT&T monitor calls and terminate service for customers using racist slurs? Now, a lot of peopl…

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