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Blocking Kiwifarms

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#271

Post by graygoose »

bjustin wrote: post #167
Icathian wrote: post #40

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current lands…

I think Cloudlfare’s choice to block them is fine and CF was probably fine allowing their use of the service before, given the damage to their reputation they apparently considered acceptable. Historically, you needed money or influence or both to make a “bad” (or in this case, actually bad) message widely available. What we’re seeing with Cloudflare and other companies choosing not to do business with some people is…

No post body was provided.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#272

Post by angelbreakfree »

This is a bit unsettling, I thought that the emergency threat was moderated off the site (as mentionned by the main [1]).

I know that place is horrendous, but it feels like CF blocked it because of the media attention instead of the threat itself. There is plenty of content online that actively partakes in stochastic terrorism as well as direct threats that are serviced by Cloudflare.

The question of what makes content worth dropping, without the involvement of law enforcement, from such low level infrastructure services is a scary prospect, especially when you consider the issues that current internet has[2].

The moment they caved in, Cloudflare stopped being a simple infrastructure provider, and we can be sure that there will be actors, big and small, that will pull levers to make this happen again.

The silver lining is that a hateful forum will probably cease to operate for good.

[1] - https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566158393391423489

[2] - https://secushare.org/broken-internet

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#273

Post by hn2017 »

donohoe wrote: post #71
Icathian wrote: post #40

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current lands…

Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech Hate speech and organizing to harass and other IRL hate acts is not ‘free speech’. That was the major point.

Most libertarians here don't understand free speech in the US legal system.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#274

Post by convery »

rejectfinite wrote: post #237

Cloudflare is a private busniess and can refute service ofc, but should the owner not get some notice of the termination to move to another service in time?

The operator posted this on Telegram: "Cloudflare's decision to block the site was done without any discussion. The message I've received is a vague suspension notice. The message from Matthew Prince is unclear. If there is any threat to life on the site, I have received no communication from any law enforcement."

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#275

Post by gobdob »

Give it 5 years. The internet will be divided along political lines and private companies will decide who's political message is true, and what is legal and not.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#276

Post by Cupertino95014 »

Icathian wrote: post #40

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current lands…

Let's not obscure things by calling it an issue of "hate speech." That is an impermissible broadening. As they said, "hard cases make bad law." The only way to mitigate the badness is to make the decision as narrow as possible.

It's about illegal threats of violence. Those were against the law long before anyone ever used the term "hate speech."

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#277

Post by rtpg »

IncRnd wrote: post #210
Icathian wrote: post #40

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current lands…

> Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current landscape. That's not what happened here. They made an appropriate decision. It's not a difficult to say, "while we have no policies that restrict lawful content, we reserve the right to not serv…

To be even clearer, in this case it’s not even really quite clear that this was legal content at all! Coordinated stalking of people!

Of course you could say “the legal system should handle it”. But what serious company says “let’s wait for a court to maximize our legal exposure”. The guy cited hard cases. This seems pretty easy!

And of course, why does Cloudflare proactively take down other sites that have anything to do with sex work but require a billion justifications for sites like this?

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#278

Post by desindol »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #169
Icathian wrote: post #40

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current lands…

The problem is who defines what is hate - don't trust a govt to make that - they are the last people I would trust. We have no solution in this age - it was easy in the older days when consensus was reached within a village on what was bad for the community and you got either got tarred and feathered or thrown out.

I am honestly dumbfounded about the government hate on HN. It's elected by you and your peers. You can influence it and you can even be part of it yourself. If you want change do it and stop spreading FUD.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#280

Post by _vvaw »

slothsarecool wrote: post #188
ffwszgf wrote: post #53

Cloudflare can do whatever it wants but I wish they were honest about it. The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense. If anything the owner has been monitoring the thread more proactively and making sure people follow the law. This is included not allowing the creation of new accounts and reminding everyone that their data will be turned over to the authorities should it…

Just adding some light to the escalations; there were bomb and shoot threats over the last few days. The userbase on the site upped the tone of their "jokes"/threats after the last blog post and thats what caused the final suspension.

There absolutely were not, and this is a gross exaggeration. One user made a clearly satirical comment about posting IRA soldiers with bombs at every cafe in the Ulster area. This was screenshotted by Keffals and posted to Twitter as a serious threat. Everyone else posting in the thread understand it was an extremely dumb joke. The post was removed by the KF owner within minutes. If that is why the site went down, I’ll be amazed and disappointed.
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