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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#461

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#462

Post by psyc »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #328
ajvs wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by that exactly?

Twitter mobs can drive people to get fired, websites or companies to shut down... But KF literally drives people to suicide or calls in fake situations to get a SWAT team to ambush a home and in the hopes they shoot the people they are harassing. People are worried more about ending a website than they are worried about ending actual lives.

No post body was provided.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#463

Post by DoctorOW »

psyc wrote: post #426
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

This is not at all what I'm saying. I'm trans, a lesbian and an advocate for feminism.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#464

Post by tambourine_man »

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…

Cloudflare is not a public service, the comparison with firefighters is not apt.

I’ve been seeing this confusion more and more recently, probably because of the size and omnipresence of corporations.

I don’t know if this confusion is deliberate to justify certain acts or simply ignorance, but the distinction has to be emphasized. Corporations and public services are completely different beasts, with different legislations, incentives, etc.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#465

Post by Cyberdog »

ladyattis wrote: post #403
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…

It's nothing like the evangelicals by any stretch of the imagination. The fact of the matter is that Kiwi Farms is a cesspit full of people who revel in obsessing over people and then harassing them not only at their jobs but even through their private communications (phone numbers, personal email addresses, etc). How you react if dozens of people just started calling you at all hours because you're trans and are vis…

It's nothing like the SJWs by any stretch of the imagination. The fact of the matter is that Reddit/ResetERA/Twitter/DailyKos is a cesspit full of people who revel in obsessing over people and then harassing them not only at their jobs but even through their private communications (phone numbers, personal email addresses, etc). How you react if dozens of people just started calling you at all hours because you're Christian and are visible in a social network? How would you react to having to explain to your employer that it's just "some kids" constantly badgering you and them when you're busy doing work? How would handle the act of them calling the police with false reports that result in a SWAT raid? This isn't hypothetical, it's happened many times due to Reddit and other forums.

Yes, I remember the "Moral Majority" era. I remember the religious right, the fundies, the evangelicals, and the grasp they had on speech. I remember how they tried to ban porn in the late '90s and the courts had to smack it down. And I saw how the left has taken over institutional power since then, still crying about victimhood status while holding government majorities, running education and the media, and so on.

It looks like the pendulum has started swinging back in recent years. I don't really want to go back to the late '90s in terms of culture and government (especially culture) but I won't be at all surprised if it happens and the right shows the same lack of magnanimity as they were shown this past quarter century. And a good way to make sure that happens is to continue to stifle their speech and give them every opportunity to cry victim and wish revenge. The left made hay from these opportunities and the right has been watching. A lot of their activists have read Rules for Radicals too.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#466

Post by baggy_trough »

phillipcarter wrote: post #385
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…

> Large corporations policing free speech Let me stop you right there. This is not a free speech issue. Please be precise with your terminology.

Takes some presumption to demand precision in terminology while being completely and totally incorrect.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#467

Post by schainks »

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…

You make a good point that policing who is who is difficult enough that letting bad guys pay $20 month or whatever is "cheaper" than actively validating who they are and then kicking them off your service for moral reasons. I get the feeling that 9/10 times these bad actors are on the cheapest cheapo plan available so it's actually very expensive to deal many tiny customers versus one huge one.

Oh, but wait, CloudFlare HAS the resources to validate and act, since they know whose fees to send to rights organizations.

And as for being the fire department? Excuse me? They are a company that exists to make money, not a public service beholden to a specific, lawfully mandated social contract. Their first point is a false equivalency and they can go fuck themselves for even bringing that up.

This statement from them is PR fluff.

Paradox of tolerance. You must be _intolerant_ to these intolerant people or they will fuck up everything for everyone. Cloudflare is letting cancer of society erode public trust, just like every other hyper scale tech company, because businesses exist to make money.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#468

Post by splitrocket »

tambourine_man wrote: post #464
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…

Cloudflare is not a public service, the comparison with firefighters is not apt. I’ve been seeing this confusion more and more recently, probably because of the size and omnipresence of corporations. I don’t know if this confusion is deliberate to justify certain acts or simply ignorance, but the distinction has to be emphasized. Corporations and public services are completely different beasts, with different legisla…

100% concur.

Illinois has to allow the Nazis to march: they are the government.

You don't have to allow nazis into your private party, nor do you have to publish their books.

You, as an individual, and corporations as entities are emphatically not the government.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#469

Post by splitrocket »

shrubble wrote: post #195
a_shovel wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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…

So, you have at least one example of this scenario (gay Cloudflare employee gets doxxed and harassed) ready to tell us about, right?

We will soon enough, now that cloudflare has published this.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#470

Post by Cyberdog »

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…

Other people who might want to host content that certain groups of people and/or governments don't want kept online are surely noticing and may start or continue using CF as a result of this message. Even someone in this situation who is completely opposed to KF's content should be able feel some comfort in that.
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