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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#691

Post by pvillano »

vorpalhex wrote: post #539
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.

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.

Private companies are allowed to do a lot of immoral things because lobbying prevents the law from accurately reflecting the values of the voting public.

Nazis shouldn't get a website, even if the law permits it, and everyone has a moral obligation to fight fascism.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#692

Post by anigbrowl »

Bigpet wrote: post #319
sascha_sl wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, what willful ignorance. KF is the kind of "technically legal" operation that the charge of racketeering was invented for. Everyone knows what's happening and why things are laid out as they are, but nobody immediately responsible for the illegal act can be found.

Then charge them with racketeering. If that doesn't work make the part you don't like illegal. Enshrine something like the "right to be forgotten" stuff into law and make them take down threads if the people they refer to don't want them up. I know it's hard to word something like a "right to be forgotten" without making it to broad and a tool for abuse of chilling speech but it seems worth the effort if the conseque…

One problem is that one can't bring a prosecution oneself; not only does the state maintain a general monopoly on the use of violence, but it typically maintains a monopoly on prosecution. If police or prosecutors dislike you (perhaps because you are a member of some socially disfavored out group) what recourse do you have?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#693

Post by pseudalopex »

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…

> Chloe Sagal seems to have had mental health issues - if not Kiwifarms then it would have been something else that trigged her suicide.

Harassment is associated with suicidality.[1][2]

> 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.

This was prompted by the harassment of a professional Twitch streamer if I understood right. Just delete your career.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34968122/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4808508/

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#694

Post by tomcam »

mschuster91 wrote: post #39
marginalia_nu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really tricky situation. On the one hand, websites like KF and the like are utterly reprehensible. On the other hand, Cloudflare taking it upon themselves to police the Internet is a nightmare in its own, given their bot-prevention services are effectively mandatory in order to even keep any sort of larger interactive website running. What is permitted to say is something for the courts, not for the whims of p…

> On the other hand, Cloudflare taking it upon themselves to police the Internet is a nightmare in its own, given their bot-prevention services are effectively mandatory in order to even keep any sort of larger interactive website running. Maybe we should additionally also focus on that problem as well. It should not be the case that you need to pay a protection racket just to be able to survive on the Internet. We d…

This is a little confusing. You talked about protection rackets, then you said this company should collude in taking entire countries off the Internet.

I think that would make them… A protection racket.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#695

Post by CJefferson »

naasking wrote: post #603
CJefferson wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you accept posts which say people should kill themselves which have not been removed (and their posters not banned)? I could easily find hundreds of such posts, but I don't want to waste my time if you wouldn't consider them.

Are you suggesting that not removing those posts is tacit agreement with their content rather than a principled stance on free speech for it's members? It could be both of course, but I always err on the side of charity even if you don't think they deserve it.

It is support -- kiwifarms isn't a free-for-all, they have their list of "lolcows" (people who have a thread dedicated to them), and only moderators can add new threads.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#696

Post by colechristensen »

amrocha wrote: post #661
throw_a_grenade wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Nazism is bad" Yes, it pretty much is. Over here it's against the law to futher it. What's wrong with enshrining this principle in the actual law, that 1) affects the whole society, not just users of one particular corporation, 2) it's enforcement is dispensed by an actual court, not a PR department pushed by a twitter mob?

Whose law? US law? KF operates outside the US. Are you ok with the US government deciding what's allowed on the internet and what isn't? What if the US government believes it's totally ok to murder trans people? Do we have to keep waiting for a law in that case too?

Is it reachable within the US? Are people interacting with US persons? Are you doing business with US companies (i.e. Cloudflare)? Then you're crossing the border and operating in the US.

>What if the US government believes it's totally ok to murder trans people?

It doesn't. You don't need an adjective between murder and people.

Also, harassing someone to the point of suicide isn't murder, it can be manslaughter.

No new laws are needed. Go bother your local DA or US attorney or legislative representatives to get charges filed for the actual harassment and the conspiracy to harass that lead to what should probably be manslaughter charges.

Make actual differences and actually hold the people who do these things accountable.

Don't go cheerleading for Cloudflare to do something meaningless that wouldn't and won't stop any of this in the future.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#697

Post by pjc50 »

yanderekko wrote: post #681
schleck8 wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should keep up Kiwifarms because something similar has happened on Twitter? Is that the logic? Instead of removing one of the evils let's keep them both up because fairness or something like that?

The logic is that we shouldn't use some sort of "one drop" thinking to characterize a platform as broadly evil based on its worst users.

The problem here is that KF does not have "substantial noninfringing uses", it's all harassment even if most of it is non-fatal.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#698

Post by at_a_remove »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #3

If this is in response to Kiwi Farms, I would say this is very disappointing. Love CloudFlare, think they are amazingly innovative, huge amount of respect for the people who work there. I see where they're coming from, but I don't see how KF is defensible whilst 8chan et al aren't.

Remember, while they took down 8chan, they left up ISIS sites hosting ISIS-made videos of ISIS members burning people alive, popping off their heads with detcord, and the like.

8chan bad, ISIS ... well, not as bad?

I will never stop reminding people that the CEO said he woke up in a bad mood one day and took down protections for one group ... but left murdersites alone. Can't be undone.

Remember that whenever they pretend to be unbiased.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#699

Post by pjc50 »

wyre wrote: post #275
pjc50 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people really believed that doxxing was harmless, they'd be posting under their real names and addresses.

Except using an alias online is a large part of internet culture. There are also a lot of people that do use their real names online. I’m not telling strangers, in-person or online, my address.

> I’m not telling strangers, in-person or online, my address.

But what if there was a website that told strangers your address associated with your handle?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#700

Post by rhinoceraptor »

convery wrote: post #571
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harassing, doxxing, and swatting random people on social media is not investigative journalism.

Guess we should take down traditional media as well then when they dox LibsOfTiktok and other creators so that the Twitter mob can harass and SWAT them, since they can't hide behind 'journalism'. Or does it only apply to the bad guys?

It's a pretty big false equivalence to say revealing the name of a prominent psuedonymous account linked to doxxing, harassment and bomb threats is remotely the same as what KF or Libs of TikTok do.
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