Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

Post by phillipcarter » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #597

mojzu wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point and largely agree with the idea that corporations shouldn't become de-facto governments with regard to morality/free-speech/etc. However I think it's important to acknowledge that there's a really difficult problem to solve here with regards to spam, astroturfing and harassment/trolling (if not more areas) where allowing everything that is technically legal would make most online spaces unbear…

It is not Cloudflare's job to moderate a website they provide network services to. This is a different issue than a social network doing moderation and spam prevention on its own platform. It is not Cloudflare's job to protect Twitter or wherever else from a forum of assholes.

Post by abigail95 » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #269

Chris2048 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we should discuss the problems with the term (and implications of) "stochastic terrorism" - namely, the conflation of a terrible, deliberate act with clear and consenting, perpetrators (terrorism); with that accusation that the wrong kind of free speech might lead to terrible consequences, and the implied accusation of malicious intent. Lets approach this as if ST was literally a crime - do the recipient comm…

There's a HackerNews user, goes by the handle Chris2048. And I just don't know what his problem is you know? Back in my day we had a solution for those types of people. If he wasn't hiding behind the internet I bet he wouldn't be so tough. Just imagine if we knew who he was and he couldn't hide like that, wouldn't that be great? I recommend you all go look up his posts. That's Chris2048 on HackerNews, have a really g…

Post by phillipcarter » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #539

phillipcarter wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then the answer is for Cloudflare to restructure their company. If they want to be seen as a utility so desperately, make it so! Not having the legal obligations of a utility, while acting like one (i.e., getting to pull the "neutrality" card in the face of public pressure to drop nazis) is not okay.

As a private company, they can choose how they serve users. Isn't this what gets said everytime Twitter bans someone? Cloudflare is allowed to offer services to people you don't like.

Post by phillipcarter » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

fjordelectro wrote: post #594

phillipcarter wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropping nazis from your service generally doesn't weaken the case for your service. For example, when Cloudflare did this in the past, it didn't harm their business.

> Dropping nazis from your service generally doesn't weaken the case for your service From the article: "In 2017, we terminated the neo-Nazi troll site The Daily Stormer. And in 2019, we terminated the conspiracy theory forum 8chan. In a deeply troubling response, after both terminations we saw a dramatic increase in authoritarian regimes attempting to have us terminate security services for human rights organization…

Post by naasking » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

splitrocket wrote: post #568

vorpalhex wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you as a private individual or company can choose to hold the right to free speech in high regard.

Yup. And if your choice is pro-nazi, the rest of us can decide for ourselves what that means about you. For what it's worth, you can't be just a little bit Nazi. It's like poop in ice cream: if you have ten tons of ice cream and an ounce of poop, if you mix them together, you've just created ten tons of poop.