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Blocking Kiwifarms

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#521

Post by smlx »

eastdakota wrote: post #391

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be…

Imagine I own a bunch of billboards around town. A customer comes to me with cash and wants to display someone's personal details and a message encouraging harassment on my billboards.

Do I have to wait for law enforcement to stop me from displaying their content? Or can I, as a private company, make a judgement call and decline their business?

I think the answer here is pretty obvious and your attempt at passing the buck is pathetically weak.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#523

Post by noSyncCloud »

joecool1029 wrote: post #501
eastdakota wrote: post #391

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be…

>Our decision today Your decision today. You took ownership before for the arbitrary decisions to remove DS and 8Chan, take ownership now and do not try to backpedal. You are Cloudflare's leader. >That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat. You failed to take ownership of this issue…

[flagged]

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#524

Post by verisimilitudes »

eastdakota wrote: post #391

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be…

No post body was provided.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#525

Post by danShumway »

eastdakota wrote: post #391

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be…

> Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems.

Does Cloudflare wait for a court order before taking action when it detects a DDoS attack or when it suspects that a client is malicious?

The law is by design reactionary. In this case, I don't mean that in a bad way; what I mean is that the law is designed to respond to criminals, not to preempt them. If all of your moderation decisions, even in cases that go beyond hate speech or bigoted content into straight-up abuse of infrastructure and direct targeting of individuals -- if you need that to be reliant on a court then you are giving up the ability to prevent abuse and you can only respond to that abuse.

Do you worry about due process when someone's site is getting knocked offline by automated requests, or is your primary worry about protecting your customers?

What's even worse is that by abjugating your responsibility to protect your customers even in cases where there are clear threats, and by encouraging the law to become even faster and more trigger-happy to compensate, you encourage the creation of censorship engines that are even more dangerous than the ones that you are in charge of. We should have better laws around doxing and threatening people online, but even once we get better laws, Cloudflare is still going to have a part to play in detecting targeted attacks. No just law is going to be fast enough or nuanced enough to make these decisions for you.

You can't get rid of your responsibility to such a degree that you won't need to make moderation decisions even about non-ideological and purely abusive content like doxing forums. And by refusing to recognize your role in that process, you allow people to be completely driven offline and censored in the exact same ways that your company is dedicated to preventing. It's no different than allowing a DDoS attack on one of your clients to continue because you haven't specifically heard from a judge yet that you should stop it.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#526

Post by croes »

worldofmatthew wrote: post #154

Cloudflare bans websites for unproven claims but is perfectly happy to provide protection for ddos-for-hire websites that so happen to help their bottom line by generating a reason for people to use DDOS protection for which Cloudflare is one of very few options that does not have a fixed limit. Cloudflare has to be in bed with the US government, otherwise it would have been shutdown for ignoring illegal activity (dd…

Kiwifarms and unproven claims? I don't think so

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#527

Post by danShumway »

xupybd wrote: post #519
notatoad wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>rather than free speech i encourage anybody who is calls themselves a "free speech advocate" to consider what kiwifarms has been doing to "free speech". their intimidation campaigns have been doing a lot more to harm the cause of free speech than this decision by cloudflare is. if you really believe in free speech, you understand that trans people deserve free speech too, and kiwifarms harrasment campaigns have been…

Free speech is about giving people the freedom to say things I find disgusting. It's about giving each individual the choice to listen to what ever influence they wish. It takes the the power of ideas and elevates them above physical force.

> It takes the the power of ideas and elevates them above physical force.

This is exactly why dropping Kiwi Farms was the right decision. There is a difference between saying hateful things and doxing and harassing people with threats of violence.

We don't even need to dip into the endless debate about tolerating hate -- there's no level of ideological indirection here, Kiwi Farms was just very straightforwardly driving people offline with threats of physical harm and real-world harassment.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#528

Post by ed_voc »

smcl wrote: post #331
namelessoracle wrote: post #260

The people who pushed for this have a list of the next sites they are going to get taken down. In particular any place TERFs have discussions. I give it 2 years and they will be successful.

They really don't. Keffals, who has been spearheading this effort, has effectively been the target of hate from this one site which has stalked her across two continents . As far as I can tell she just wants to be able to live a normal life without worrying that taking a picture or posting a tweet could be used by this organized mob to figure out where she is and fuck with her life. It's worth noting that she's based…

I very much doubt someone looking to get on with a normal life would gloat about supplying drugs to children without parental consent, lie about how officers treated them in jail on television, tweet they are hopeful a specific person gets swatted or parade around on social media when their harassment campaign gets users like Destiny banned from platforms.

I’d provide screenshots but documenting the escapades of public figures must be relegated to the memory hole these days.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#529

Post by Tao3300 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #438
eastdakota wrote: post #391

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be…

> we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat If one patron starts beating another to a pulp, the bartender breaking up the fight does not signify a failure of the rule of law or law enforcement. You stepped in to help. It would be nice if you were given official air cover to do so. But I and most Americans prefer a system where the gover…

The bartender example is so wrong that it has wrapped around into rightness.

What really happens is that the bartender signals the cooler to throw out said patrons to settle it some place where it isn't their liability. It goes to the street, who knows where and what they'll do to each other.

And that's pretty much what cloudflare is doing here, saying "you can't do this in here" and now we get to see where the chips fall.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#530

Post by kypro »

It always starts as a one off, "this was a special circumstance" type thing. I feel like I've read this post thousand times before at this point. I remember when it "just Alex Jones" getting deplatformed from social media. And it had to be done - he was just too dangerous! But then it expanded to a few more people, and from there a few more. And within the span of just a few years Twitter had gone from Alex Jones to banning the president of the United States.

I don't care what Kiwifarms did, this kind of thing has to be left to state. If Kiwifarms is doing something illegal law enforcement will deal with it. This move means Cloudflare is now a company that will remove content they find problematic. Or put another way, if they don't remove content we can now assume it's because they don't find it "dangerous" enough. So all those racist and transphobic blogs calling for race wars and celebrating trans suicides, well I guess Cloudflare just doesn't think they're that bad. And that's why these things always progresses, because turning a blind eye is no longer justifiable position. If you cast judgement on one piece of content, you must do so for everything. Now they've made this move the pressure to remove more content will only intensify. And it will be even harder to say no next time because now they've now lost the ability to say they're neutral.

But whatever. I have no hope of a free internet anymore. At this point I think if the West is ever to truly value free speech again we'll need to learn that lesson the hard way.

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