Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 1001 posts

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#301

Post by ajvs »

pjc50 wrote: post #264
dxuh wrote: post #208

Large corporations policing free speech is a horrible trend that often enough goes absolutely wrong and the only way to prevent censoring content inappropriately is to not censor anything at all. There are laws and courts that judge over what content should stay online and it should stay their responsibility. If we give that up, we replace democracy with a technocracy, that already showed us plenty of times is not so…

This means that the KF mob can take people offline.

What do you mean by that exactly?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#302

Post by bioemerl »

nightpool wrote: post #223
mjr00 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess what? They do. FTA: > Our decision to disable access to content in hosting products fundamentally results in that content being taken offline, at least until it is republished elsewhere. Hosting products are subject to our Acceptable Hosting Policy. Under that policy, for these products, we may remove or disable access to content that we believe: [...] Is otherwise illegal, harmful, or violates the rights of ot…

The article says that providing CDN and DDOS protection services for KiwiFarms doesn't constitute hosting. The GP commenter clearly disagrees. I'll be honest: it really does seem like a distinction without a difference to me. If Cloudflare stopped doing business with Kiwifarms, it wouldn't be online. Kiwifarms is doing a great deal of harm to the world by being online. At the end of the day, Cloudflare has a moral re…

I think you might be prone to overestimate the net harm of kiwi farms and you understate the harm of centralized groups like cloudflare making decisions like this.

The harm of kiwi farms is centralized and immediate and obvious, the harm of centralized control is insidious, long-term, and surprises you without warning once you establish the precident years later.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#303

Post by subsistence234 »

rosmax_1337 wrote: post #210

I find the article hopeful for the future of free speech on the internet. Even though the ability to host content on the net is one thing and lacking access to most platforms (where the users actually are) like youtube, facebook, instagram, tiktok is another. The most important thing nowadays is access to the siloed user bases for people who try to express dissident opinions, not the access to the net as whole, even…

There are many successful protection rackets going around that work by generating bad PR and threatening more bad or worse PR, unless you donate to them and/or hire them as consultants.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#304

Post by joshmanders »

wyre wrote: post #275
pjc50 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people really believed that doxxing was harmless, they'd be posting under their real names and addresses.

Except using an alias online is a large part of internet culture. There are also a lot of people that do use their real names online. I’m not telling strangers, in-person or online, my address.

And that would make sense when it comes to people like you or others with aliases, but an alias like "wyre" or "pc" aren't exactly hiding themselves, just using a nickname, similarly to how in high school my peers called me Seneca (because my first day I wore my old school's t-shirt). I wasn't hiding who I am by going by that, just not using my real name.

But "throwawayacc2" doesn't get that same meaning.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#305

Post by systemvoltage »

chc wrote: post #242
systemvoltage wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-democrati…

This appears to be describing a parallel universe. The justice system we have in America today is arcane, strongly favors monied interests, is subject to perverse incentives ("tough on crime" DAs, lack of interest in pursuing crimes against groups without institutional power), frequently produces results that go against the common understanding of what is just, and is generally inaccessible to the most vulnerable peo…

I think US has one of the best judicial systems, if not the very best in the world.

I loathe about American exceptionalism, but the constitution and American legal system truly is: https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#306

Post by chc »

tlonny wrote: post #285
chc wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was not my definition. Kiwi Farms will post their target's private info, the private info of everyone their target knows, send death threats to their target and their family, report false crimes to try and get SWAT teams to kill their target, etc. Ben Shapiro doesn't seem like a good person and I suspect he is probably sympathetic to many terrorists, but he is not himself a terrorist as far as I know.

What's your source on the SWAT-ing + death threats originating from Kiwi Farms? My understanding of that website is that it is moderated based on the philosophy of "look, don't touch". Your statement runs contrary to this...

They are the top suspects in the swatting of the Twitch streamer Keffals and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene just in the past month. There have been many news articles about it — I would suggest Googling and picking the source that seems most credible to you, since I've found linking specific sources tends to lead to people debating the source itself. (I'll be honest, I'm skeptical on the MTG one, but they are still the top suspects there.)

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#307

Post by devwastaken »

a_shovel wrote: post #189
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…

> ...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. I'm sure their LGBTQ+ employees will appreciate that when they get doxxed, swatted, and harassed every hour of the day and night because they're providing critical resources to the groups doing so. Their position probably really does come from…

And when that happens, Cloudflare is in the perfect position to provide evidence. Your unwittingly advocating for these websites to use more sophisticated methods, where their actions will be much harder to prove and prosecute.

If not Cloudflare, then someone else, that's the reality of it. We do not live in a world of no harm and never will we. All we can do is manage it.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#308

Post by anotherrandom »

Considering cloud compute providers and similar services a la Cloudflare are at this point basically necessary utilities, I am beginning to wonder if the ability to select who can and can't use the services based on a lawful use case is truly the prerogative of the service provider.

See: AT&T being prevented from shutting down dial-a-hate lines by regulators and courts in the name of the first amendment

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#309

Post by FrecklySunbeam »

throwrqX wrote: post #282
sealeck wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're attacking infrastructure due to political motives. They're attacking KiwiFarms for their agenda of trying to drive people to commit suicide.

Some users of KiwiFarms may have the agenda of wanting to drive people to commit suicide, you seem to be accusing the website as a whole of a) having an agenda and b) that agenda being to drive people to kill themselves What evidence is there for this? I haven't kept up with the website recently, is Null telling people to harass people to death?

Official statement from KF on Aug 26th:

> What I fear more than losing my site, being sued, or dealing with police is living in a world where fat eunuchs can groom little boys into castrating themselves and nobody is allowed to say anything about it.

Wow very neutral site with no agenda here

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#310

Post by Karunamon »

tlonny wrote: post #285
chc wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was not my definition. Kiwi Farms will post their target's private info, the private info of everyone their target knows, send death threats to their target and their family, report false crimes to try and get SWAT teams to kill their target, etc. Ben Shapiro doesn't seem like a good person and I suspect he is probably sympathetic to many terrorists, but he is not himself a terrorist as far as I know.

What's your source on the SWAT-ing + death threats originating from Kiwi Farms? My understanding of that website is that it is moderated based on the philosophy of "look, don't touch". Your statement runs contrary to this...

The fact that they post dox (names, addresses, other personally identifying information) makes that a pretty weak defense in my mind. If you write up this long post about how someone is a terrible human being and include their PII right next to it, what happens next isn't exactly hard to guess. And these people are not stupid, they know what will happen next even if they don't actually ever harass the person.

I wouldn't have a problem with them discussing other people among themselves, but including addresses and phone numbers and such is such a bad faith "I'm not touching you I'm not touching you ha ha ha" that I wouldn't mind seeing them burned down on principle.

Post reply on HN