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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

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Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#931

Post by naasking »

malfist wrote: post #924
naasking wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Clearly you're having trouble understanding basic logic so I'll spell it out for you: 1. Terrorism is not a judgment of the target but of the action. 2. The OP classified DDoS as terrorism. 3. DDoSing Nazis is thus terrorism. By parity of reasoning, I pointed out that murdering a Nazi is still murder, regardless of the fact that the target was a Nazi. The nature of the target is immaterial to the classification o…

> 2. The OP classified DDoS as terrorism. This is begging the question. DDoS is not terrorism. Terrorism is "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims." Inconveniencing a people, by taking down a website is not violence or intimidation. Without that tenant, everything you've argued on this thread is a moot point. Keep in mind who you're defending her…

> Inconveniencing a people, by taking down a website is not violence or intimidation.

The intent of the DDoS in question is very clearly a form of intimidation. DDoS in general does cause real economic harm and not merely inconvenience.

> Keep in mind who you're defending here.

That's irrelevant. Murdering Nazis is still wrong and illegal.

> The site in question doxxes trans people so they can be harassed and sent death threats. That IS terrorism.

If it were they would have been charged. You're imputing intent and actions without sufficient evidence, because if that evidence existed we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Extra-judicial actions of this sort, no matter how plausibly justified, are not how society works. We have laws and a justice system because mob "justice" is wrong.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#932

Post by philippejara »

malfist wrote: post #924
naasking wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Clearly you're having trouble understanding basic logic so I'll spell it out for you: 1. Terrorism is not a judgment of the target but of the action. 2. The OP classified DDoS as terrorism. 3. DDoSing Nazis is thus terrorism. By parity of reasoning, I pointed out that murdering a Nazi is still murder, regardless of the fact that the target was a Nazi. The nature of the target is immaterial to the classification o…

> 2. The OP classified DDoS as terrorism. This is begging the question. DDoS is not terrorism. Terrorism is "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims." Inconveniencing a people, by taking down a website is not violence or intimidation. Without that tenant, everything you've argued on this thread is a moot point. Keep in mind who you're defending her…

Who is being defended as a consequence of being against DDOS is completely irrelevant, as it should be. Attempting to boil it down to Oxford's definition is quite reductionist, especially when literally anything can be a political aim(even a rejection of politics can be seen as a political opinion) as well as violence not being that set in stone either. Encyclopedia Britannica said it best: "Definitions of terrorism are usually complex and controversial, and, because of the inherent ferocity and violence of terrorism, the term in its popular usage has developed an intense stigma."[0]

But even under your definition I fundamentally disagree that this instance of it doesn't fit. It is an unlawful attack on infrastructure with clearly political aims against a service used by civilians, it is clearly being used to intimidate hosts to drop them so that the DDOS doesn't create more collateral damage for their other customers as well.

It's fine to agree with terrorism, one man's terrorist is another freedom fighter and all that, but I doubt most people would agree that it isn't terrorism.

[0]: https://www.britannica.com/topic/terrorism

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#933

Post by phillipcarter »

taxyz wrote: post #864
phillipcarter wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's precisely that their leadership (rank-and-file employees I know have different feelings) are taking an absolutist approach. That's pretty evident when their stance is that banning nazi sites was a mistake. My position is this. That is not a good stance to take. And people should now use their wallet to influence Cloudflare's leadership to reconsider their extreme position. The small part I can play in that today…

You're being intentionally dishonest. Their stance is not as simple as "banning the nazis was wrong. We need to bring back the nazis to our platform." They are pretty explicit in saying no company should be exercising the power that they did - if someone is willing to pay for DDoS protection on their site, they should take a neutral stance on the content of their site. Anything that is blatantly illegal is for the go…

I think you're waxing philosophical about a bunch of stuff that's unrelated to what's going on here.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#934

Post by kmeisthax »

philistine wrote: post #876
kmeisthax wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that all those bad decisions inevitably spark from these platform companies not wanting to enforce their own AUP . We point out a particular bad actor in violation of their own policies, and they do nothing. We complain loudly about it in the news, and they vaguely commit to "fighting" the problems that were already against their AUP ... but not any specific named bad actors. Automated systems are chuc…

The fact that Clouflare has decided it is in the better interest of the Internet that one website gets to break their AUP because they've become a cause célébre is so amateurish. Business to business relationships don't work that way. You break the contract, you're out. That's what's in the interest of the Internet. Upholding business contracts.

Reminds me of Twitter's world leaders policy they trotted out around 2017 to keep Trump on the platform. If I remember correctly Trump was even immune to DMCA 512 takedown notices, which is an absurd level of risk to take just to say you have @POTUS.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#935

Post by phillipcarter »

taxyz wrote: post #648
phillipcarter wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should entertain the idea that they're just ideologues who don't really know what they're doing.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#936

Post by phillipcarter »

Banana699 wrote: post #730
phillipcarter wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we're allowed to pressure them to act more ethical.

Ok, but your pressuring is not working. We're just trying to save you from wasting your time.

You should look at their stock price.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#937

Post by phillipcarter »

dehugger wrote: post #900
Banana699 wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They (KiwiFarms, Daily Stormer) would be better not on the internet. That's not for you to decide, you're not the manager of the internet.

Who decides then? Who is the manager of the Internet? Cloudflare?

In this case, Cloudflare. They have the right to decide who gets to use their service or not. It's an amazing freedom because they're not a utility.

But they're not free from criticism of their decisions.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#938

Post by NoraCodes »

strangeattractr wrote: post #882
NoraCodes wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I had the timeline wrong, thanks for the correction. Still shitty in context, given how many laws KF violates, but more consistent for sure.

Which ones does it violate specifically?

I suggest you consult some of the readily available news coverage on the topic.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#939

Post by derefr »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #757
afiori wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the thing: cutting off diplomatic routes is almost never the right approach, even during a hot war. The analogous approach would be to speed-limit outbound connections.

This do next to nothing though. Most of the DDoS-traffic, while initiated in these places, originates from botnets all over the western world. Smart fridges, enterprise routers, that sort of things. Many of them seem to come from small businesses.

And to be even more pessimistic, cutting off Russia's Internet would do nothing to stop these, because these botnets can be set up by viruses, which can in turn be initially spread by just dropping random infected USB sticks on the street in other countries. No need for a Russian-IP-hosted CNC coordinating the attack.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#940

Post by killyourcar »

phpisthebest wrote: post #930
killyourcar wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not that tricky. Few sites are peers of 8chan, kiwi farms, and the daily Stormer. When you become their peer, you have a serious discussion about whether you want them as customers with several people in the company, and you can choose "no". They can absolutely drop kiwi farms and still be in the clear, ethically. It's not like kiwi farms is even remotely close to some sort of slippery slope. It's the god…

it is a slippery slope. 8Chan was banned for illegal content, Daily Stormer was banned for Direct Calls for racial violence Kiwi Farms is being called for banning on the nebulous "harassment" charge, based on non-US Legal definition of the term Harassment. if you can not see how this is a continuation of the slippery slope then I am not sure what you would need to be convienced

Kiwi Farms has killed and swatted people and had resulted in many direct threats of violence to individuals. It's not really a slippery slope at all. All three sites are way, way beyond the pale.

Calling it harassment is like calling the moon a "space rock" - technically true I guess, but missing the magnitude.

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