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It’s not your role to address the “why”. As a platform you’re only obliged to deal with the “what” and the “how”.
They now have one less platform to choose from, and their ability to do whatever it is they do is reduced. That’s a win, because wins don’t need to be absolute to count.
> we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design What does "lawless by design" mean?
It's a euphemism for sites that are not censored and still allow free speech. Matthew Prince used to support freedom of speech but he's abandoned that concept a while back.
Another way to view this would be, "Cloudflare ends support for mass shooting early warning system."
What's really going on is similar to what we saw with radicalization in extremist Islam forums. A large group of young, usually lonely and frustrated men, disconnected socially, often with no hope of financial status advancement, find solace and community in online forums with like people, and then act to self-reinforce some of the community's worse inclinations, blaming their predicament on other types of people, dehumanizing them. The irony with these forums are, some people on those forums are not racist or pedophiles, but edge-lording on purpose, but other people can't discern the difference and are swept up and manipulated by other people who get off on manipulating people.
When I was a teen in the 80s, I nerdy and disconnected from school, but back then, if you used a computer, you were fairly involved in hacking, and a lot of community revolved around constructive activities, so whatever loneliness or ostracism geeks felt, it was often distracted by optimism and excitement over technology.
It seems these days, you have the online community in these forums, but it is mostly consumptive, not constructive, or rather, what is constructive is memes and racist, xenophobic, extremist screeds.
I really worry about what's happening as more and more people are made idle and out of the labor force, rather than seek face to face community activity, will eventually retreat to their online bunkers?
Another way to view this would be, "Cloudflare ends support for mass shooting early warning system."
As the article states, it's very likely 8chan is just going to use a competitors service so it's unlikely to cause them much disruption, but at least Cloudflare isn't going to feel terrible for providing Internet services to the cesspit that formed the mind of the next radical that's going to commit mass murder and announce it there.
By staying idle the conversation would've moved onto gun control, but now they're going to make this round of shootings all about online community policy which IMHO is a futile scapegoat.
Another way to view this would be, "Cloudflare ends support for mass shooting early warning system."
> Removing 8chan from our network takes heat off of us, it does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online. It’s not your role to address the “why”. As a platform you’re only obliged to deal with the “what” and the “how”. They now have one less platform to choose from, and their ability to do whatever it is they do is reduced. That’s a win, because wins don’t need to be absolute to count.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. Having this content out in the open means we can monitor it. I totally get why Cloudflare would not want to do business with 8Chan, but every step towards pushing 8Chan and it's members underground is less visibility into the kind of people who operate on the site.
Less visibility for those not already on it looking to join in too though. If it gets forced so far underground that law enforcement can't figure out a way in I don't see how some disaffected youth somewhere could either.