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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#61

Post by pjc50 »

seneca wrote: post #43

It's interesting watching the responses roll in here. What CF is laying out here was essentially the standard viewpoint of western society until something like 10 years ago. "I disagree with what you say, but I'll protect your right to say it" is a basic tenant of liberalism. If you find that shocking, you should examine why that is.

> western society

No, just America, and even then the famous free speech has always had significant exceptions. Usually by the process of defining stuff as "not speech" or "obscene". Free speech surrounding sex is censored, most recently by FOSTA/SESTA.

The stable consensus also relied on mass media not being a complete free for all. The airwaves are censored by the FCC. There's a limited number of big producers who are vulnerable to political pressure, giving you things like MPAA censorship and the conflict with the RIAA over rap lyrics.

The phenomenon that you can say to a mass audience "this person is a degenerate, wouldn't it be great if someone harmed them" and sit back and wait for it to happen is genuinely different.

(Only the other day I found out about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Film_Corp._v._Industria... , in which for a period of about 20 years the Supreme Court held that films weren't free speech. Going back further you have to explain Comstock laws, and so on.)

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#62

Post by Borgz »

I don't understand why Cloudflare believes it is their responsibility to protect content that they admit to finding morally reprehensible when they are under no moral or legal obligation to do so.

It seems that Cloudflare believes that they are the only ones who can protect the websites hosting this content from being DDoS'd out of existence, and thus they are protecting their right to freedom of speech. But the owners of these websites can just use a different provider that is more aligned with their sense of morality, and Cloudflare doesn't need to protect websites that they morally disagree with.

DDoS-Guard still exists and I have no doubt they would be perfectly happy to protect websites like The Daily Stormer, 8chan, and KiwiFarms. They have shown themselves to be capable at mitigating large-scale DDoS attacks against the Russian government, so it's not like Cloudflare is the only place these websites can survive.

Cloudflare should only continue to provide services to websites like these if whatever they gain by having them as customers outweighs their moral disagreement with them. And I can't see how a few thousand dollars per year does that.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#63

Post by KptMarchewa »

seneca wrote: post #43

It's interesting watching the responses roll in here. What CF is laying out here was essentially the standard viewpoint of western society until something like 10 years ago. "I disagree with what you say, but I'll protect your right to say it" is a basic tenant of liberalism. If you find that shocking, you should examine why that is.

"protect your right to say it" and "help you distribute copies of Mein Kampf" are two different actions.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#64

Post by weberer »

jackson1442 wrote: post #32

They talk a lot about "human rights" in this post. At what point does someone's right to personal safety and privacy trump another person's right to host whatever they want on the internet?

I would say when it breaks a specific law. And if its that serious, get the police and feds involved, not some board members of some hosting company.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#65

Post by pjc50 »

chmorgan wrote: post #33
mschuster91 wrote: post #4

> 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…

This is a crazy take on responsibility. It isn't Europe's responsibility when people decide to take unsafe passage on the sea and drown. Could they do more? Yes, I'm sure they could, but are they directly responsible for drownings? No, this is too far. I'd argue the same for Kiwi Farms. If people are cyber-bullying (ie, reaching out to people and harassing them) then those people should be addressed. Arguing that any…

> Yes, I'm sure they could, but are they directly responsible for drownings? No, this is too far.

Several European states have chosen to prosecute volunteers rescuing the drowning, so they've definitely taken on responsibility for making sure that they drown.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#66

Post by thegeekbin »

I’m glad Cloudflare is taking a neutral stance to this. I’ve long said if a service provider, in any capacity, starts moderating content without a court order then it’s a slippery slope. I’m not saying the sites are good, but, why does Cloudflare need to be the internet police here? They can’t and shouldn’t be.

Neutrality is key, how would you feel if your content was suddenly pulled because someone on the internet disagreed?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#67

Post by pjc50 »

superkuh wrote: post #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…

Proudly supporting teenagers urging each other to suicide. A great moral stance.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#68

Post by hadrien01 »

shadowfacts wrote: post #8

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.

I see more that as a consequence of a failure of the US to legislate hate speech. Cloudflare, as a private company, doesn't want to police hate speech (which I fully understand and support, personally).

In my country, France, this website is simply illegal. It would be prosecuted, and only then the hosting company (such as Cloudflare) would have to shut down the website.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#69

Post by freedomben »

jefftk wrote: 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…

> 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.

That's certainly a possible interpretation, but I think it's more a call out of a fallacy, stating explicitly that "precedent doesn't make right." i.e. just because something was done before, doesn't mean it was correct.

In other words, people will argue "you should take down KF because you took down and KF is worse" and they are saying, "yes we did take down , but just because we did doesn't mean it was the right decision. It might have been right, it might not. We just don't want to make a decision now regarding KF simply because we did something in the past."

An extreme response to help illustrate the fallacy might be, "just because committed genocide against doesn't mean genocide against was correct and should be used in support of genocide against "

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#70

Post by [deleted] »

Borgz wrote: post #62

I don't understand why Cloudflare believes it is their responsibility to protect content that they admit to finding morally reprehensible when they are under no moral or legal obligation to do so. It seems that Cloudflare believes that they are the only ones who can protect the websites hosting this content from being DDoS'd out of existence, and thus they are protecting their right to freedom of speech. But the owne…

[deleted]
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