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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

21–30 of 1001 posts

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#21
I am amazed at how cloudflare has turned around and become a reputable, reliable company re: arbitrary breaches of contract based on the CEO's personal opinions. After he breached contract with the Daily Stormer because of "a bad mood" I was sure it'd just devolve into a no-holds barred censorship-fest.

Instead he's managing to hold the line against all of the authoritarians and individuals wanting to rip each other down. I never thought I'd say this, but, well done cloudflare.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#22
> Some argue that we should terminate these services to content we find reprehensible so that others can launch attacks to knock it offline. That is the equivalent argument in the physical world that the fire department shouldn't respond to fires in the homes of people who do not possess sufficient moral character.

> For instance, when a site that opposed LGBTQ+ rights signed up for a paid version of DDoS mitigation service we worked with our Proudflare employee resource group to identify an organization that supported LGBTQ+ rights and donate 100 percent of the fees for our services to them. We don't and won't talk about these efforts publicly because we don't do them for marketing purposes; we do them because they are aligned with what we believe is morally correct.

These are the two strongest points for me. The former is one I already believed, and the latter makes me more hopeful as someone in that specific minority community.

In addition, I think it's touched on but Cloudflare is huge. Even if they changed their mind on terminating amoral customers, how would that go down? Another automated moderation system that checks for certain keywords? Ask the LGBTQ people banned from Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Google/etc. if those systems really work all that well. All too often person A implying that X group deserves violence skirts the system, while the actual text calling out Person A's beliefs from an advocate is considered hate.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#23

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 p…

Like with so many SaaS, CloudFlare has perhaps become too many digital eggs in one digital basket, so inevitably it will result in disappointment and bad decisions ala Twitter, GoDaddy etc.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#24

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.

KF actively pushes people to commit suicide. People have died because of them.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#25
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.

Indeed. Plus these sites invariably come back online, it doesn't make a difference anyway. I just checked - The Daily Stormer and 8Chan are online today.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#26
post #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 o…

Upon a third reading, I'm not interpreting it to be that too. What the fuck?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#27

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.

8chan users radicalize each other and encourage each other to commit mass shootings. KiwiFarms users post the personal information of people and encourage each other to harass them to the point of suicide. I don't see how they aren't comparable.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#28
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.

When I checked last week, their origin IP was trivially available. I found it by typing “kiwifarms” into search.censys.io

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#29

> 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…

It will happen as soon as one of the dead people is a Republican politician or close friend thereof. Not a moment sooner.
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