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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#531

Post by Georgelemental »

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.

It is a free speech issue. It is not a First Amendment (or equivalent in non-US jurisdictions) issue. Legal provisions that protect speech from government interference provide a minimum level of free expression; in a health society private citizens and organizations will generally go above and beyond that minimum.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#532

Post by chc »

throwrqX wrote: post #295
chc wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I wish we had a law enforcement apparatus that cared about protecting transgender people. But we don't have a clear path to that at the moment, and in the meantime we want to avoid more people being killed. Thus you have people trying to argue for more informal procedures that revolve around social pressure, telling companies basically "This is obviously way beyond the pale, you should not associate yourself…

What evidence is there for the law enforcement apparatus not protecting transgender people in this particular case? Have their been similar cases for cisgender people where the law enforcement apparatus has cared more? I am not sure saying we need mob action to stop other mob action is a good long term solution.

I can't think of any instances of people being persecuted for being cisgender. But I suppose you can draw a reasonable comparison to The Pirate Bay, which has received much more attention from law enforcement for cutting into record labels' profits than Kiwi Farms has for terrorizing queer people.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#533

Post by diordiderot »

rcoveson wrote: post #481
tambourine_man wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are ways in which they are "completely different beasts" and ways in which they are similar. In that they are both organizations made up of human beings providing important services to the general public, they are the similar. I think that's the similarity that was being emphasized by the analogy. The analogy still works if you imagine private firefighters (the kind you might contract for a farming operation) i…

Doctors is a better American analogy than firefighters

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#534

Post by Dylan16807 »

sascha_sl wrote: post #260
cowtools wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law describes DDoS attacks as a felony. The technology makes it such that it's infeasable to prevent DDoS attacks without a centralized entity like cloudflare.

But that still doesn't make Cloudflare the fire brigade. It is still their policy decision to value the freedom of speech of Kiwifarms more than the safety of those KF target, no matter how much they try to pretend they have an obligation to protect everyone that asks for it and are thus not at all partially responsible for enabling harassment - to the point of suicide in at least 3 cases. They don't have to protect…

> But that still doesn't make Cloudflare the fire brigade.

Why not? That particular service seems a lot like a volunteer fire brigade.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#535

Post by phillipcarter »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #529
phillipcarter wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then the answer is for Cloudflare to restructure their company. If they want to be seen as a utility so desperately, make it so! Not having the legal obligations of a utility, while acting like one (i.e., getting to pull the "neutrality" card in the face of public pressure to drop nazis) is not okay.

Cf themselves are disincentivized to make that change

Yes, exactly. They want all the benefits of being seen as a utility, but none of the obligations of actually being one. That's called being slimy.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#536

Post by bakugo »

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…

> Cloudflare is not a public service,

Isn't it, though?

I see people are still desperately clinging to this "websites aren't public services" narrative but as the years go by it's becoming increasingly clear that it just isn't entirely true.

The whole logic behind the "it's a private space/service so they can deny service to whoever they want" argument is that, if a user is denied service, they can seek service from an alternative provider elsewhere, usually without much difficulty. If the other providers also don't want to provide the service, fair enough. But this isn't really the case in the modern web because you often don't have alternatives. If you are denied service by cloudflare, you can't just go to another cloudflare down the street. Same with many other major online services that are effectively monopolies in their field.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#537

Post by phillipcarter »

ta1235414335 wrote: post #411
squeaky-clean wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

You can use Google, you know.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#538

Post by krapp »

sschueller wrote: post #489
tambourine_man wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If a cooperation becomes a de-facto monopoly the rules that apply need to change. If there is no competition you can go to and there is no way around it then the government has to step in.

Cloudflare is not a de-facto monopoly. There is plenty of competition.

Simply being popular is not having a de-facto monopoly.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#539

Post by vorpalhex »

phillipcarter wrote: post #508
activitypea wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point here is that Cloudflare's core product, despite being run by a private for-profit company, is as close to an essential service as it gets in the digital world. This is not the same as saying "posting on Twitter is a civil right"

So then the answer is for Cloudflare to restructure their company. If they want to be seen as a utility so desperately, make it so! Not having the legal obligations of a utility, while acting like one (i.e., getting to pull the "neutrality" card in the face of public pressure to drop nazis) is not okay.

As a private company, they can choose how they serve users.

Isn't this what gets said everytime Twitter bans someone?

Cloudflare is allowed to offer services to people you don't like.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#540

Post by tambourine_man »

activitypea wrote: post #491
tambourine_man wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The point here is that Cloudflare's core product, despite being run by a private for-profit company, is as close to an essential service as it gets in the digital world. This is not the same as saying "posting on Twitter is a civil right"

>is as close to an essential service as it gets in the digital world

Thankfully, that's not true at all. About 16% of all sites use Cloudflare (80% of 20%)

“Cloudflare is used by 79.8% of all the websites whose reverse proxy service we know. This is 19.1% of all websites.”

https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cn-cloudflare

>This is not the same as saying "posting on Twitter is a civil right"

It's pretty much the same thing, yes.

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