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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#611

Post by robryk »

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

What change would that be? I don't know of anything they could do to make themselves a utility besides behaving like one and publicly starting that they intend to do so.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#612

Post by Cyberdog »

ladyattis wrote: post #593
Cyberdog wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are pretty much saying "but it's okay when we do it." If doxing and criticizing people for their beliefs and practices is not okay for the right to do, then it's not okay for the left to do either.

So you're fine if I post your SSN on this site? And let's assume the mods also co-sign that decision in this hypothetical, so you're okay with your PII being out there for anyone (and I mean anyone) to see and use? You wouldn't even try to subpoena Y Combinator for my information on file such as my IP logs and email address (necessary for registration) to serve me notice? I seriously doubt that. I'm sure you would la…

I'm not sure how you jumped to that conclusion from my post. If I have reason to believe that you committed a crime by acquiring and posting my SSN and I was victimized by it, I would try to get restitution, sure. I don't see how that's in conflict with what I've previously said, though; if a crime was committed by someone doxing someone else on KF, that person is free to subpoena KF and try to bring the doxer to justice. Go for it.

But before you do, you should make sure that a crime was actually committed, and mere criticism, or sharing information you posted yourself, or sharing information which can be found via the 21st-century equivalent of a phone book, is not criminal in the United States. And that's usually what a "dox" is; very rarely does it involve hacking into government databases or something like that.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#613

Post by phillipcarter »

DoctorOW wrote: post #559
phillipcarter wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fast approaching the whole, "why is anyone morally required to do anything?" sort of existential discussion. The US Government has laws in place like this because those were written as founding principles and interpreted in certain ways by our legal system over time. That's only it. But it's all calvinball in the end. Congress could strike the 1A from the constitution, or all our courts could start ruling aga…

I'm genuinely struggling to see how this answers my question. You continually discuss laws when I made it abundantly clear that because laws are, as you put it, Calvinball they are irrelevant to what should be done. > CloudFlare (a) is in a position to stop digital protection of Kiwi Farms So too is Illinois to stop police protection of Nazi activists. I ask again, why SHOULD one organization protect speech and anoth…

I think you're losing the plot here. Nothing has any moral obligation to do anything in this universe. Morality doesn't exist. And we're all just making it up as we go.

Now that we've established that nothing matters, the reason is because a lot of us feel that Cloudflare should do something about it.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#614

Post by biotinker »

phillipcarter wrote: post #500
xdennis wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not a free speech issue. Please be precise with your terminology. Let me take a stab in the dark: you think "free speech" refers only to the United States' First Amendment, and not a universal principle, which: * according to Wikipedia, is "a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction"…

You're shifting goalposts.

That's not true. The concept of free speech, and what is specifically allowed and disallowed by the First Amendment of the USA, are two different things. Not least which is that the latter applies to a small fraction of the world's population.

Censorship of ideas by a private company is not a first amendment issue. It is a free speech issue.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#615

Post by ladyattis »

aa9a0s9dsljk wrote: post #601
ladyattis wrote: post #381

The problem isn't that certain customers are bigots, but that they actively seek to allow harm to be done by their own end users like Kiwi Farms. The fact they have an exhaustive wikipedia for one person (Chris Chan) should have been the "nope" moment for them. Like if I was a host or a provider of a service and Josh Moon came to me with his site I'd just turn him away because he's like nuclear waste dangerous. It's…

Swatting is illegal, users of the site are doing the swatting, and KF simply pretends they aren't. They aren't arrested because the reason they use swatting is so they can't be tracked and thrown in jail themselves. Meanwhile people's lives are ruined, their friends and family contacted, harassed, and they live in terror of people who congregate, anonymously, on that site, which is hosted out in the open with large c…

Honestly, I agree that there needs to be work done. I think the first step is to get the police to not be as ignorant as they are. The fact that Keffals tried to notify the police of a potential harassment effort and they chose to ignore her should've never happened. Police today are poorly trained and educated but still get an exorbitant budget. I think it's time for people to declaw them or retrain them or possibly both on top of dealing with Kiwi Farms directly.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#616

Post by wil93 »

phillipcarter wrote: post #122

I disagree extremely with cloudflare's position here. One area I'd like to call out is that they think they are a utility. But they are not bound to the same legal restrictions as a utility. It's greedy and slimy to fall back on that argument. If you're actually a utility, then change your company so you're treated like one legally. I'm sure you'll love it, Cloudflare leadership.

IMHO, the legal definition of "utility" is not necessarily useful. The law is slow, while the real world quickly becomes dependent on pieces of tech. I believe that one day the law will finally catch up and these providers will be likened to utilities.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#617

Post by phillipcarter »

colechristensen wrote: post #552
phillipcarter wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't want to live in a world where society is governed and censored by big corporations. You already do. And that's actually a good thing . It means that in free societies like the USA, these companies are free to choose to do (or not do) business with whomever they choose. They are not free from the market reacting to those decisions, though.

Which is effectively mob rule, or fear-of-mob-rule rule. I don't want dominating corporations to be run by people afraid of offending a vocal minority.

Everything is mob rule, or fear-of-mob-rule rule. Most companies have principles on how they do business, and they adjust those principles based on how people (internally and externally) react to them. That's why Google shut down its search engine for the CCP - it's mob rule at Google, and if you decide to do something that enough people find unethical, you won't hear the end of it until you stop. Why do you think this is a bad thing, or that it's somehow not the way the world works?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#618

Post by naasking »

Ticklee wrote: post #453
xdennis wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And let's be real. DDoS attacks are acts of digital terrorism. No, it's not. Not everything that's bad is terrorism. Terrorism is specifically about using violence. Don't water down terms.

Speech can be violence. This can for instance be seen on the very website we are discussing.

> Speech can be violence

No. Don't blur this line or you not only lose credibility, you descend into absurdity.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#619

Post by wahnfrieden »

robryk wrote: post #611
wahnfrieden wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cf themselves are disincentivized to make that change

What change would that be? I don't know of anything they could do to make themselves a utility besides behaving like one and publicly starting that they intend to do so.

yes there is a deeper systemic crux to this symptom and it won’t be solved by a business

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#620

Post by Longlius »

DoctorOW wrote: post #334
throwrqX wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> is Null telling people to harass people to death? I'll treat you as though you're honest, but I might point out this is a dishonest person's favorite argument. Here's the common answer in Twitter thread form: https://twitter.com/IamRageSparkle/status/128089253502461952...

That bartender's name? Albert Einstein.
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