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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

11–20 of 1001 posts

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#11

If this is in response to Kiwi Farms, I would say this is very disappointing. Love CloudFlare, think they are amazingly innovative, huge amount of respect for the people who work there. I see where they're coming from, but I don't see how KF is defensible whilst 8chan et al aren't.

8chan had the whole mass shooter thing. Comparing the two websites is very hyperbolic.

What did the neo-Nazi site have that the others didn't? "Nazis" isn't the answer because I can find Nazis on a lot of websites out in the open.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#12

> While we believe we have an obligation to restrict the content that we host ourselves, we do not believe we have the political legitimacy to determine generally what is and is not online by restricting security or core Internet services. If that content is harmful, the right place to restrict it is legislatively. Agreed, but realistically: for the near future there will be no legislative restriction in the US on ha…

> In the end it's always the same: placing abstract morals over clear and provable actual harm to people's health and sometimes life.

Good.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#13

That’s a lot of words to say they’re not dropping Kiwi Farms. In spite of the fact that I think they plainly meet this condition for removal: > Is otherwise illegal, harmful, or violates the rights of others, including content that discloses sensitive personal information, incites or exploits violence against people or animals, or seeks to defraud the public.

That was under “Hosting Products”, KW probably falls under “Security Services”.

> Hosting products are those products where Cloudflare is the ultimate host of the content. This is different from products where we are merely providing security or temporary caching services and the content is hosted elsewhere

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#14
Cloudflare services are really only useful when a site is under attack - otherwise it's just a CDN to reduce hosting costs.

If "kicking someone off cloudflare" makes them unavailable, it means they're undergoing ongoing attacks of some sort.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#15

If this is in response to Kiwi Farms, I would say this is very disappointing. Love CloudFlare, think they are amazingly innovative, huge amount of respect for the people who work there. I see where they're coming from, but I don't see how KF is defensible whilst 8chan et al aren't.

They're effectively saying they were wrong then: > To be clear, just because we did it in a limited set of cases before doesn’t mean we were right when we did. Or that we will ever do it again.

And like that, we've gone from "very" to "extremely" disappointing. That's a hell of a statement from them.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#16

If this is in response to Kiwi Farms, I would say this is very disappointing. Love CloudFlare, think they are amazingly innovative, huge amount of respect for the people who work there. I see where they're coming from, but I don't see how KF is defensible whilst 8chan et al aren't.

It's a really tricky situation.

On the one hand, websites like KF and the like are utterly reprehensible. On the other hand, Cloudflare taking it upon themselves to police the Internet is a nightmare in its own, given their bot-prevention services are effectively mandatory in order to even keep any sort of larger interactive website running.

What is permitted to say is something for the courts, not for the whims of private businesses, to decide.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#17
post #10

If this is in response to Kiwi Farms, I would say this is very disappointing. Love CloudFlare, think they are amazingly innovative, huge amount of respect for the people who work there. I see where they're coming from, but I don't see how KF is defensible whilst 8chan et al aren't.

Since the article talks about how they will use different policies for different services: Which services was kiwifarms using? Are they now using a reduced set or none at all?

No post body was provided.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#18
post #14

Cloudflare services are really only useful when a site is under attack - otherwise it's just a CDN to reduce hosting costs. If "kicking someone off cloudflare" makes them unavailable, it means they're undergoing ongoing attacks of some sort.

You bet they'd get attacked if they ever stopped using a proxy.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#19
post #12

> While we believe we have an obligation to restrict the content that we host ourselves, we do not believe we have the political legitimacy to determine generally what is and is not online by restricting security or core Internet services. If that content is harmful, the right place to restrict it is legislatively. Agreed, but realistically: for the near future there will be no legislative restriction in the US on ha…

> In the end it's always the same: placing abstract morals over clear and provable actual harm to people's health and sometimes life. Good.

?!

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#20
Two times in the past we decided to terminate content from our security services because we found it reprehensible. In 2017, we terminated the neo-Nazi troll site The Daily Stormer. And in 2019, we terminated the conspiracy theory forum 8chan.

In a deeply troubling response, after both terminations we saw a dramatic increase in authoritarian regimes attempting to have us terminate security services for human rights organizations — often citing the language from our own justification back to us.

Since those decisions, we have had significant discussions with policy makers worldwide. From those discussions we concluded that the power to terminate security services for the sites was not a power Cloudflare should hold. Not because the content of those sites wasn't abhorrent — it was — but because security services most closely resemble Internet utilities.

Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in consultation with politicians, policy makers, and experts that turning off security services because we think what you publish is despicable is the wrong policy. To be clear, just because we did it in a limited set of cases before doesn’t mean we were right when we did. Or that we will ever do it again.

I take this to mean they now think they shouldn't have terminated the Daily Stormer or 8chan, and won't be terminating Kiwi Farms.

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