381–390 of 1001 posts
We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign. Oh, guess it's those one of those Cloudflare Coincidences (tm).
The word "directly" is doing a lot of work here.
Not to mention DNS which is subject to the laws of the country of registrar; plenty of pirate sites have had their domains have been seized by the US gov't.
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…
Earlier they posted this image. https://blog.cloudflare.com/content/images/2022/08/pasted-im... That made sense to me. Basic services, transit, blocking ddos… little, if any moderation. Hosting content, more moderation. I might strongly disagree with someone and I sure as hell won’t host their BS, but I still think some basic level of rights/ services should be provided.
It feels like they’re trying to construct a distinction here that allows them to continue providing web services to illegal/immoral content. And this isn’t the first time, they’ve told patreon to pound save over pirates using their cdn too.
“It’s not actually hosted just a CDN” is the weakest of these though. Like wow that’s splitting a fine fine hair, for what I can’t really see as any particularly great underlying reason or principle.
And if the principle is free speech… why not host it too? I just don’t see the logic here.
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I don't think you quite understand how awful Kiwi Farms is
Because they don't like that otherwise it is a balance, and are afraid of what happens to that balance and who does it.
Meanwhile, all things that make societies successful are a balance (as are most things that succeed in nature).
It's not some tragic Greek hero holding the line for freedom of speech.
It's just a business, and business can decide to not provide service to assholes, just like your local restaurant.
It already decided it won't provide hosting service to the despicables, but somehow the security service is vital to freedom of speech? I don't buy it.
It's all about their legal exposure, and it looks like the heat's too much this time.
1. Some awful website uses Cloudflare.
2. Something ignites outrage that Cloudflare is protecting that awful website.
3. Cloudflare initially refuses to take it down, arguing that they are neutral infrastructure providers.
4. Twitter-amplified outrage keeps growing
5. Cloudflare caves in and kicks that site off, posting about that this is only due to very recent emergency (which is nonsense, they serviced these sites for years and nothing materially changed).
6. ???
7. No profit, go back to step 1.
My prediction: because they cannot stick to their stance, every cycle makes it more probable that next attempt will succeed, until nobody will believe in infrastructure provider interpretation and they will be forced to estabilish some moderation.
I am a free speech absolutist, but I read the Wikipedia page on this site and it seems bad. "Crimes were committed," "People lost their lives" bad. Unjustifiably bad. That said, is anyone willing to steelman this website? Could this possibly be construed as just a big misunderstanding?
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How is this censorship? They are a company and can do business with whoever they please. They are drawing the line at imminent threats to human life. The site has already led to the deaths of multiple people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Suicides_of_harassm...
There is censorship even if there are no Romans anymore. It is a concept, not a very complex one at that. A bit of abstraction is the daily bread of many users probably...