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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#641

Post by yakkityyak »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #628

Chloe Sagal seems to have had mental health issues - if not Kiwifarms then it would have been something else that trigged her suicide. It really baffles me when people are targeted by trolls - trolls have been around since the days of Fidonet and BBS - without strict moderation it is a wild west. Also the solution seems kind of obvious to me - just disconnect yourself - delete social media , curate your feeds and sto…

> Also the solution seems kind of obvious to me - just disconnect yourself - delete social media , curate your feeds and stop posting about your real life on twitter , your job or where you live and find another avenue not twitter to engage with.

It seems for a number of people, online social media is the only viable, but paradoxically abusive outlet for social connections.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#642

Post by banannaise »

noptd wrote: post #525
banannaise wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per wikipedia, the actual number is three. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Suicides_of_harassm...

I wonder how that number compares to other forums and social media sites. Seems odd to me that everyone is hyper-fixating on that site, as tasteless as it may be, when much larger ones are given a pass.

I think there are two key reasons:

1. KiwiFarms was explicitly created for essentially that purpose

2. It's far more extreme. Part of the reason it exists is because people on these larger sites (notably, 2000s-era SomethingAwful) were getting progressively more concerned and uncomfortable with the behavior. Sure, it's a concern in other places, but there are checks there. KiwiFarms has none of those checks because the behavior is the intended use of the site.

So, sure, you could go after some of these other places, but KF sounds like a very good starting point.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#643

Post by robryk »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #619
robryk wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm sorry, i don't see how this answers my question. What do you mean by "this symptom"?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#644

Post by colechristensen »

jackson1442 wrote: post #32

They talk a lot about "human rights" in this post. At what point does someone's right to personal safety and privacy trump another person's right to host whatever they want on the internet?

>At what point does someone's right to personal safety and privacy trump another person's right to host whatever they want on the internet?

When it breaks a law and becomes a problem for law enforcement and not corporate PR.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#645

Post by saas_sam »

newman314 wrote: post #576
colechristensen wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't want to live in a world where society is governed and censored by big corporations. Wanting them to do so to further my worldview invites others to further the worldview of people I oppose. Leave the governing to the government, especially when it comes to systems with very broad usages (social networks, internet infrastructure, etc.)

This reeks of "both-siding" which is insanely frustrating for me. Look, I get opening a can of worms and "stay out of my business" but at the same time, we need to be able as a society be able to and be unafraid to say when things are clearly bad. "Nazism is bad" EOM That wasn't so hard, was it?

Why do you think the generation who actually fought and died against Nazis nevertheless held that displaying a Nazi flag is protected speech in America?

Do you think you understand something they didn't? Were they naive? Are you perhaps more intimately connected to the evils of Nazism than they were? Maybe they didn't understand that an entire country could fall to the evils of Nazism if they were not stamped out aggressively?

Or. Maybe they understood these things even better than you. And maybe they believed freedom of speech is even more anti-Nazi than banning Nazis.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#646

Post by taxyz »

phillipcarter wrote: post #520
DoctorOW wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But see this is where I get tripped up. I don't think laws should dictate morality. So barring the fact that it's the way the law is written in the United States. Why is Illinois morally required to protect speech and Cloudflare, who almost certainly has far greater control (theoretically) over speech not?

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…

You seem to be pretty active in comments for this post and you have made several arguments around the ideas that: * CF is not a utility and is not bound by the First Amendment (although you keep saying free speech) * CF is somehow immoral because they are otherwise compelled to remove content/service protections for stuff you disagree with (however correct you may be that the content is morally reprehensible).

The first point may be technically true but the second doesn't leave room for the possibility that CF might have a more absolutist approach to free speech in which case they find it more immoral to remove content/protections from one of their customers that the content itself. Since neither you nor I work at CF, we probably have to take them at their word in this press release. Trying to adjudicate what violates their TOS, what is immoral for them to do, or what is good/bad for their business from the outside is a foolish exercise.

There was a time the ACLU defended neo-nazis and it wasn't because they agreed with them. Just another aside, if you feel this strongly about CF, then don't patronize them if you are in the position to not have to use their services, but I'd avoid taking a moral stand only when its expedient to do so if you otherwise don't live with that level of conviction (presumably you didn't stay at Microsoft for 6 years because you aligned with them morally).

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#647

Post by a_shovel »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #480
FrecklySunbeam wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Somebody who isn't a doctor, giving medications to a child without their parent's knowledge or permission? That's surely in violation of the law.

What law? She's not giving anyone hormones, you know. She shares information about informed consent clinics, the effects of hormones, and places to buy safe supplies.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#648

Post by taxyz »

phillipcarter wrote: post #613
DoctorOW wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should entertain the idea that they claim they have a stronger responsibility to the principals of free speech than the communities you claim are harmed by their customers content.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#649

Post by ZGDUwpqEWpUZ »

tambourine_man wrote: post #540
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"

>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…

Now do what % of people ever need rescuing by the fire service.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#650

Post by [deleted] »

QuinnWilton wrote: post #632
bakugo wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It's difficult to take comments like this in good faith when the Github profile linked on your account prominently features your signature on a letter calling for Richard Stallman to be reinstated to the FSF after his resignation, following his comments defending sex with minors and child pornography.

[deleted]
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