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Blocking Kiwifarms

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#761

Post by matheusmoreira »

orf wrote: post #24

Pretty crazy turnaround. I really liked the pretty clear and reasoned abuse policy[1] they put out recently, and I don't envy the position they are in. On one hand, yes, this specific site is terrible. But they are trying very hard to not become the arbiters of what is terrible and what isn't terrible, and I respect them for that. It's not an easy line to take, and other companies like Google and Facebook have not ma…

> But they are trying very hard to not become the arbiters of what is terrible and what isn't terrible

I don't think so. "Trying very hard" would entail doing the actually hard thing which is to continue to provide service to the controversial website. That's the only action that would allow them to stay true to the principles they claim to believe in.

Censoring kiwifarms is the easy way out. It reveals exactly what Cloudflare has become: arbiters of which sites are allowed to stay up on the internet.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#762

Post by strangattractor »

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…

Kiwifarmers can call each other on the phone, stand on a soapbox in a park, print pamphlets and distribute them. They are still free to say whatever they want to whomever they want without fear of a Government throwing them in jail unless they break the law. Anonymous posts simply allow Kiwifarmers to say things they would likely never say to your face. Cloudflare simply chose to not allow their paid for service to support this behavior. Big deal.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#763

Post by skyyler »

Uptrenda wrote: post #619

Typical weasel word announcement from a big company bending over backwards to satisfy the prevailing voices of a political narrative. This has nothing to do with 'free speech' or 'due process'. It is about ensuring a brand stays appealing. I say this because they weren't specific about the credibility of any 'threats' made. They invented an enemy and then used it to justify suppressing Kiwifarms --as a whole--. Very…

> You need to differentiate between the actions of a user/s and the site.

You do realise that KF was started to bully an autistic sonic fan, right? Have you actually been there?

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#765

Post by banannaise »

mchusma wrote: post #570
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…

I'd like to honestly better understand why, if there is a threat of violence, law enforcement cannot act.

They don’t care about threats of violence unless they’re targeted at law enforcement itself or at people they consider important.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#766

Post by rntksi »

miki123211 wrote: post #435

The problem with cases like this one is that they really show the inadequacy of the geographic government model in the age of the internet. If a Czech citizen, currently living in Slovakia, doxxx a British person resident in Canada on a site hosted in the Maldives and managed by a Japanese citizen, protected by a German server owned by an American security company, which government has the right to order the content…

All of the above countries, including countries not mentioned in your example, have the right to order the content to be taken down, following their own country's regulations.

"Taking down content" can range from blocking the site from being accessible from inside the country, to organising measures together with other countries where the site is actually hosted to take down the site at its roots, should the country allow it.

North Korea, China, Russia are prime examples of blocking being heavily used to control the Internet.

A government's model will never be "inadequate" as long as people live there and abide by the country's law because of various incentives (economical, sociological, familial, ...).

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#767

Post by xdmr »

CF could have said to KF "For various reasons we no longer wish to do business with you. In 24 hours we will stop redirecting to your servers. Please make appropriate arrangements." Had they done this, they would not have actually been censoring KF. They would also have been behaving like a responsible service provider by not cutting off service without notice.

Instead, they seem to have made the decision to do this in a way where they actually block access to KF, rather than in a way where they simply chose to stop doing business with KF. I could be wrong about this; maybe substantial notice was given, and CF reasonably believed that KF could have avoided service disruption. But given that they wrote a bunch of copy to go with this decision, including the copy for the redirect page, I'm inclined to think that this went off exactly as CF intended. They didn't give notice and attempt to prevent their customer from having service disruption because they wanted them to have service disruption, and they wanted everyone to know they wanted this.

CF should not do this. I don't care who KF is or what they've done. CF should either do right by their customers, or stop doing business with them in a responsible way. Not in a way designed to injure their customers. Especially after taking their money, but that's hardly the point.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#768

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

password4321 wrote: post #557

Anyone willing to stick their neck out with a HN-undeletable prediction of who'll be the target of the next pressure campaign? (which of course wasn't the reason for blocking...) The rumblings I'm detecting now seem to be related to misinformation.

Ovarit or possibly the LGB Alliance's website, probably the former.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#770

Post by rvz »

bitwize wrote: post #33
alexb_ wrote: post #17

>Kiwifarms itself will most likely find other infrastructure that allows them to come back online, as the Daily Stormer and 8chan did themselves after we terminated them. And, even if they don't, the individuals that used the site to increasingly terrorize will feel even more isolated and attacked and may lash out further. There is real risk that by taking this action today we may have further heightened the emergenc…

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