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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#151

Post by pjc50 »

weberer wrote: post #64
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.

In this case, the police are involved, and part of the problem: a KF user got somebody SWATted. The police are amazingly useless at dealing with organized harassment; there have been a couple of cases where people have already been in touch and told them "you will probably receive a hoax call about me", and still got SWATted.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#152

Post by yanderekko »

pseudalopex wrote: post #142
yanderekko wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Is this forum a system?

Is ycombinator's failure to delete the posts of me and others in this thread also indicative of an intent to "use violence as a means of enforcing social order, by encouraging stochastic and opportunistic terrorism against trans people"?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#153

Post by systemvoltage »

yanderekko wrote: post #106
sealeck wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

>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". Then I'm sure these activists will have no trouble moving proving their arguments in a courtroom, which is the proper space for such…

Agreed, we have a justice system based on what we agreed as a society. The rule of law.

If you want to prohibit speech to white supremacists, fine, let’s pass a law and if it doesn’t hold constitutional muster, go ahead convince everyone to amend the constitution. But since our founding fathers made this process difficult on purpose, let’s take a different approach: that’s what social justice is. It is anti-democratic mob lunacy where corporations and governments are playing a proxy authoritarian game.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#154

Post by JYellensFuckboy »

hadrien01 wrote: post #68
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.

This is a great point. Regardless of how one may feel about hate speech laws, it is disturbing that a large percentage of citizens believe that Washington D.C. is completely impotent. People have given up on the idea of their government helping, to the point where it's not even brought up as a possibility.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#155

Post by striking »

yanderekko wrote: post #106
sealeck wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

>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". Then I'm sure these activists will have no trouble moving proving their arguments in a courtroom, which is the proper space for such…

Unfortunately, it's extremely hard to prove allegations of abuse by skilled actors that know how to use their tools (tools that are really easy to use).

KF's lead admin states it plainly: use a VPN, because KF complies with subpoenas. If folks were committing high-end acts of terrorism against elected officials regularly, the baddies might not be safe.

But if you're a trans streamer with a small following, if the folks coordinating attacks on you are diligent enough to make sure they're doing so off-platform, behind a VPN, calling folks while obscuring their identities, and so on? There's no chance for you.

I led a team in infiltrating a small community that acted as KF does. Even with screenshots in hand, even being on Discord, the Discord T&S team couldn't do very much for us because we didn't have nearly enough evidence in hand. We had to do a public exposé with what we had in hand and basically bluff that these folks could get in trouble as a result. Only that, along with the fact that we had bits and pieces enough of their identities, got them to go away. There's absolutely no way that I can tell that anyone would be taking anyone else to court. The best we could do was make our group so hard to attack that it wasn't worth it.

How is anyone supposed to defend themselves from this?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#156

Post by judge2020 »

vorpalhex wrote: post #132
pjc50 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically law enforcement are part of the problem: if you want someone murdered over the internet in the US, by far the easiest way is to make a bogus phone call to the police. Doesn't work all the time but it's pretty risk free for the perpetrator.

Unarmed police shootings are amazingly rare on a yearly basis.

And yet there are compilation videos of streamers being swatted on stream[0]. If someone has an address, all it takes are some anonymous calling techniques / a burner phone to traumatize the occupants by calling in a fake hostage situation or something of that caliber.

0: https://youtu.be/coa7tP54kDY?t=6

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#157

Post by yanderekko »

wbl wrote: post #131
yanderekko wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Null isn't banning these people. He's encouraging them with a wink or a nod. It's like Nazis and bars. See a Nazi, 86 the Nazi or the friends will show up and make your bar a Nazi bar.

No post body was provided.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#158

Post by aniforprez »

hecatoncheires wrote: post #144
sealeck wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Quoted post unavailable.

White supremacists are not fighting for the right of white people to exist or advocating for anything. They would just as easily readily throw a gay or trans white person under the bus. They are terrorist groups that fester through spreading conspiracies about other races and peoples and want nothing less than ethnic cleansing

That said, it's commendable that Cloudflare hosts them while making sure to donate to an equivalent cause to offset the grime. I don't really want them to be a censorship authority

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#159

Post by subsistence234 »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #113
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…

I think one easy thing they could do, is stop hosting for forums dedicated to doxxing and harassing people, preferably before they inevitably bully their victims into suicide.

No post body was provided.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#160

Post by judge2020 »

sealeck wrote: post #146
fjordelectro wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bei…

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

Who should decide that? Cloudflare? you?

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