Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

This, incidentally, is why the term "racism" (and similar supremacist terms) must be understood to refer to embedded social structures that may include honest, and often honorable, people unwittingly perpetuating them and not just being mean to the target. So, the question you are in effect raising is how Cloudflare can be ANTI-transphobic and not simply trans-supporting, and whether it has a moral or other obligation to do so. To me, it's a very easy answer with an extremely difficult execution.

This is a false equivalence, because fire departments are public utilities provided and regulated by the state. Cloudflare is a private business. If Cloudflare was democratically elected by its constituents, and it was accountable and answerable to them, then I would agree with them that they have a responsibility to make their services available to all of their constituents, subject to the due process of law.

But they aren't a public utility, and they don't get democratically elected. Cloudflare is a private business, and it exists to capture the surplus value of keeping more websites online and marketing their security products to more corporations. They can do business with whoever they choose to. And they choose to do business with Kiwifarms. Honestly: in effect, Kiwifarms functions as a free success story for Cloudflare's sales folks—"Look at how many people hate this website, and yet they're still online, thanks to Cloudflare!". I think that's probably the reason that Cloudflare's support of Kiwifarms rankles so much with people who are victims of the website—the fact that Kiwifarms is still online is Cloudflare working exactly as intended, but amorally.

> For instance, when a site that opposed LGBTQ+ rights signed up for a paid version of DDoS mitigation service 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

Okay, you donated the fees, but why continue to accept the money from the site that opposes LGBTQ+ rights in the first place? Cloudflare still got to keep the benefit of increased revenue, and a larger customer base, and the world still got worse. Did the donation they make actually offset the harm done to the world by keeping that site (whatever it is) online? It seems unlikely.

> In addition, I think it's touched on but Cloudflare is huge. Even if they changed their mind on terminating amoral customers, how would that go down? Another automated moderation system that checks for certain keywords?

No, it would go down, ideally, the same way it does today and the same way it did for the Daily Stormer and 8chan. Terminating services for customers like Kiwifarms is a big decision, and it's one that shouldn't be made lightly, and frankly: there just aren't that many harassment websites that are as big and as long-lived as Kiwifarms. I can maybe think of one or two others off the top of my head. I'm okay if Cloudflare decides to terminate one or two of the biggest, most important harassment sites using their platform per year—doing something is better than doing nothing.

First - if KF is guilty of crimes that would stop CloudFlare from providing them services - then it's both reasonable and normal for people to encourage CloudFlare to act before a verdict. It's extremely common for commercial actors to have policies based on their impressions of likely criminality (i.e. credit card transactions are marked fraudulent before a court of law weighs in). Also, even though it's impossible to perfectly provide services to all 'good' customers and deny services to all 'bad' customers - it seems desirable to minimize the services you provide to 'bad' customers. I.e. It's good to cut off likely fraudulent transactions before a court verdict and we should encourage companies to act ahead of verdicts.

So if you think a customer is probably doing something you'd cut off service for if it was determined in court, you should generally change your posture towards that customer somewhat. This is often a difficult determination and a difficult line to draw - but it's clearly a good thing to try and do.

Second, the ability to prove a case in court depends on a great number of elements aligning. There are a number of scenarios where an actor is doing things that, could they be proved in court, would get them denied service - but for reasons unrelated to the actions themselves a determination cannot be made. The moral weight of providing services to those actors is the same and it's still desirable for companies to seek to avoid providing services to bad actors. Your legal responsibility is different, but you would still like to avoid serving clients whose actions you abhor.

Otherwise, you get into the position where moral action is impossible outside of the opinion of an authority. Let's say you see a stranger's bag grabbed by someone else on the street - would you say the only moral course of action is to cooperate with an official investigation (if one happens)?