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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#141

Post by cowtools »

weberer wrote: post #108
DoctorOW wrote: post #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…

And let's be real. DDoS attacks are acts of digital terrorism. They're attacking infrastructure due to political motives. These people who want to revoke DDoS protection for groups they don't like are essentially promoting terrorism. Why else would they fight so hard to remove DDoS protection, if not because they simply want those attacks to succeed?

DDoS is a product of an inherent weakness of the internet infrastructure, namely BGP. Cloudflare "solves" this by acting as a middleman, and charging for their service.

I don't know if I would describe a DDoS attack as "digital terrorism", but it is annoying and hard to stop on an individual level because of the design of the internet.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#142

Post by pseudalopex »

yanderekko wrote: post #121
greyface- wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of a system is what it does.

No one actually believes this outside of brain-rotted partisan contexts. eg. The fact that I'm not donating all my money to combat malaria in developing nations does not make me pro-malaria.

> No one actually believes this outside of brain-rotted partisan contexts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

> The fact that I'm not donating all my money to combat malaria in developing nations does not make me pro-malaria.

Are you a system?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#143

Post by sealeck »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #16
hammyhavoc wrote: post #3

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…

Except that they don't respect court verdicts - e.g. in one case they lost against an Italian court "US-based Cloudflare disagreed. It countered that the Italian court didn’t have jurisdiction and that the e-Commerce directive didn’t apply to foreign companies, but those objections were rejected." How can you argue that a legal ruling is legally invalid (besides appealing it) and use this as a supposed justification for not complying with a court judgment?

Even in that article they say "While we will generally follow legal orders to restrict security and conduit services," - how can you say this? No other business says "while we will generally accept court judgments..."

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#144

Post by hecatoncheires »

sealeck wrote: post #75
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…

It's not actually commendable to host content for white supremacists and transphobes. Free speech may be deserving of protection, but white supremacists using the internet to coordinate real-world activities (such as terrorist attacks) doesn't actually qualify as "free speech" deserving protection against "authoritarians and individuals wanting to rip each other down".

No post body was provided.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#146

Post by sealeck »

fjordelectro wrote: post #140
phillipcarter wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is permitted to say is something for the courts, not for the whims of private businesses, to decide. To the contrary, in this case it's exactly for Cloudflare to decide. They're not a utility.

They've decided they want to be seen as a utility. You undermine your DDOS protection business if you drop controversial customers. They are exact type of customer who need DDOS protection the most.

> They are exact type of customer who need DDOS protection the most.

They (KiwiFarms, Daily Stormer) would be better not on the internet.

> They've decided they want to be seen as a utility.

This isn't how law works - just as you can't say "we don't have a banking license but we'd like to be seen as a bank and provide banking services" you can't say "we're not a utility but we'd like to be seen as one". Note that being a utility also comes with a host of other legal restrictions.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#147

Post by Chris2048 »

pjc50 wrote: post #85
throwayyy479087 wrote: post #35

Never thought I'd see the Left trying to weaponize corporations to suppress speech they dislike. Reminds me a LOT of Evangelicals in the 2000s - I know that comparison has been made frequently but that's the last group that made a serious censorship push. I wonder how all of this will end? I support CloudFlare here - they should act as a utility, not as an arbiter of content. This ends poorly and one day will bite th…

Quoted post unavailable.

Perhaps we should discuss the problems with the term (and implications of) "stochastic terrorism" -

namely, the conflation of a terrible, deliberate act with clear and consenting, perpetrators (terrorism); with that accusation that the wrong kind of free speech might lead to terrible consequences, and the implied accusation of malicious intent.

Lets approach this as if ST was literally a crime - do the recipient communities of said terrorism bear no responsibility e.g. those that choose to be provocative? Will they also be accused of ST and be told to shut up? Or just those with no stake in the matter?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#148

Post by phillipcarter »

fjordelectro wrote: post #140
phillipcarter wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is permitted to say is something for the courts, not for the whims of private businesses, to decide. To the contrary, in this case it's exactly for Cloudflare to decide. They're not a utility.

They've decided they want to be seen as a utility. You undermine your DDOS protection business if you drop controversial customers. They are exact type of customer who need DDOS protection the most.

> They've decided they want to be seen as a utility.

Cool! They should restructure their corporation then. But they're not, because their greedy CEO is trying to have his cake and eat it too.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#149

Post by greyface- »

cowtools wrote: post #141
weberer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let's be real. DDoS attacks are acts of digital terrorism. They're attacking infrastructure due to political motives. These people who want to revoke DDoS protection for groups they don't like are essentially promoting terrorism. Why else would they fight so hard to remove DDoS protection, if not because they simply want those attacks to succeed?

DDoS is a product of an inherent weakness of the internet infrastructure, namely BGP. Cloudflare "solves" this by acting as a middleman, and charging for their service. I don't know if I would describe a DDoS attack as "digital terrorism", but it is annoying and hard to stop on an individual level because of the design of the internet.

> namely BGP

DDoS attacks would still occur if we used a routing protocol other than BGP. It's not created by BGP, it's created by the fact that the Internet is end-to-end oversubscribed.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#150

Post by sealeck »

_-david-_ wrote: post #119
driverdan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So does Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and every large platform. There is so much harassment, doxing, and other disturbing behavior on all the platforms.

This is a remarkably facile comment; on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram you can find people who aren't out to drive trans people to commit suicide, and content which isn't about how to best call SWAT teams to people's homes. On KiwiFarms, that is all there is.
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