Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blocking Kiwifarms

blog.cloudflare.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 1001 posts

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#191

Post by ketzo »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #151
Cyberdog wrote: post #49

They muffed it. They were proving to the world how reliable they could be and repairing the damage from the Stormfront debacle, and again they just showed how prone to caving to pressure they can be. What a joke. I will never use CF for anything I want kept online in the face of angry people.

For those not in the know what makes the StormFront situation such a debacle and how is it similar?

The Stormfront decision is, IMO, not remotely a debacle and much more easily defensivly.

Stormfront was hosted using Cloudflare, and Cloudflare gave them the boot.

If you are not familiar with Stormfront, they actively promote violent white supremacy and Nazi ideologies.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#192

Post by jyrkesh »

altcognito wrote: post #140
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…

> The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense. I don’t believe you have the same information as cloudflare and assuming good faith I believe them when they say there are legitimate threats to body and person. They have a responsibility to their investors to insure that their brand isn’t used to coordinate violence. Dont just shrug your shoulders while a small group invite…

> I don’t believe you have the same information as cloudflare and assuming good faith I believe them when they say there are legitimate threats to body and person.

I don't believe that Cloudflare gathered the same volume of info that many others have about KF. OP's point is that behavior as bad or worse than what's been going on (yes, including super detailed doxxing, swatting, death threats, and the like) have all been going on for YEARS on KF, and Cloudflare paid no mind until a larger campaign got going.

Full disclosure: I'm actually disappointed that they made the decision to cut them off. Not because I'm pro-KF at ALL, it is absolutely abhorrent. But I do tend to peruse extremist circles on both sides to understand the radicalism a little better, and generally think that keeping these folks relegated to unseen areas is net-negative.

But to the original point, I think it's disingenuous to suggest that this decision wasn't primarily catalyzed by the PR calculus of more people being in the "shut it down" camp than the "leave it up" camp (which makes sense to me, as soon as the spotlight is cast, most people are going to say it's disgusting and should be taken down).

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#194

Post by atdrummond »

spamizbad wrote: post #129
Cyberdog wrote: post #49

They muffed it. They were proving to the world how reliable they could be and repairing the damage from the Stormfront debacle, and again they just showed how prone to caving to pressure they can be. What a joke. I will never use CF for anything I want kept online in the face of angry people.

I'm guessing KF members organizing the swatting a US congresswoman (albeit a controversial one) was probably the straw the broke the camel's back. Hard to lobby congress (Which Cloudflare does) when you protect a forum actively swats its members.

Neither KF nor its members swatted MTG. It was absolutely done to place blame on KF and doesn’t even comport with the image those who dislike the site paint - that KF is a radical, right wing forum designed to harass minorities and political opponents.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#195

Post by crazytalk »

dmix wrote: post #175
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…

100% they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. First you pretend you care about free speech for a week and gesticulate in public. Then you come up with some extraordinary circumstance so it doesn’t seem like it’s the new normal.

Heavily reminiscent of Reddit caving in on /r/jailbait following exposure in the WSJ. Actually not heavily reminiscent, identical

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#196

Post by nazgulsenpai »

devwastaken wrote: post #131

Cloudflare would do better to simply stop making posts every time they do something. Every other company bans users every day and have learned to stop talking about it. Or the inverse. Regardless of what cloudflare does, right or wrong, there will be mobs of people responding negatively and positively to it. People love drama. If their policy was "we'll ban anyone we want for whatever reason." I'd respect that more b…

Their transparency actually makes me sympathetic to the weight of the decisions they're making. Their acknowledgement that it could make things worse is also very honest and refreshing. I hope they continue making these posts especially since they control such a massive percentage of internet infrastructure.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#197

Post by jacooper »

prvit wrote: post #76
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…

> I really liked the pretty clear and reasoned abuse policy[1] Except it's neither. The way they try to brand their caching reverse proxy as only a "security service" instead of a "hosting service" is absurd and not based on any well reasoned logic.

How ? They aren't hosting the server and aren't hosting the backend itself.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#199

Post by tstrimple »

makeee wrote: post #48
Test0129 wrote: post #31

Quoted post unavailable.

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...

Somehow it's Freedom when a company refuses to make a cake for a gay couple, but Tyranny if a company providing hosting and DDOS protection services decide not to work with a company who explicitly violates their terms of service.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#200

Post by notriddle »

colechristensen wrote: post #139
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. When you have an algorithm that suggests things to people, you are a de facto publisher and whatever you do, you're choosing what to promote. In that case you have a responsibility to c…

> When you have an algorithm that suggests things to people, you are a de facto publisher and whatever you do, you're choosing what to promote.

But CloudFlare doesn’t. That’s why they position themselves as a common carrier.

Post reply on HN