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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#801

Post by Cr4shMyCar »

jefftk wrote: post #406
a2128 wrote: post #347

In my experience Cloudflare goes too far with offering their security services to everyone. There is a website that's constantly ripping and stealing artistic content from a community I used to be part of. They have an automated process for ripping and reuploading content not meant to be downloadable from small independent artists in this community without informing the artist, obtaining permission or anything. Outra…

It sounds like getting together and using the legal system is your best bet here

I think I know what site this person is talking about, and I can say that the legal system is typically out of reach for a lot of people creating the art that's stolen. It takes a lot of money to bring a lawsuit against someone, and it might not even go anywhere.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#802

Post by hnbad »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #50

CloudFlare opened Pandora's box. It will never be able to shut it. When private companies become enforcers of public morality, you will quickly find morality is shaped by what is profitable. This is a horrible idea.

Every individual in a society is "enforcer of public morality". Corporations are just different to regular people in that they wield a disproportionate amount of power and capital.

If you want to abolish the system allowing corporations levels of power effectively equivalent to public utilities and branches of government, we can have that conversation. But if you want to continue them to have that and are still outraged about their decisions it's not because of a principled stance about them being "enforcers of public morality", you just disagree with their morality.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#803

Post by groby_b »

elefantastisch wrote: post #586
Borgz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is this: if there are certain types of content that they deem unacceptable to host, why do they deem it acceptable to protect? I disagree that the paragraph you quoted is relevant to that. But if it is, then it doesn't seem good that their goal of eradicating cyberattacks is more important to them than actual human lives.

So, if someone is standing trial for murder and it turns out the evidence against them was collected illegally, they will end up getting away with it even if everyone knows they did it. It's not that we value police procedure more than we value the life of the victim. We value rule of law and due process as a society more than any individual gap in applying justice in a given case. Yes, if we ignore procedure and loc…

> So, if someone is standing trial for murder

If Cloudflare would like to be nationalized, I'm happy to have a discussion of applying government rules to them. Until then, they're a private company, "due process" does really not apply.

If we think that protecting sites from DDoS is a public good (and I think that's a good question), that is a task that should fall to government entities.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#804

Post by [deleted] »

yanderekko wrote: post #78
throwayyy479087 wrote: post #35

Never thought I'd see the Left trying to weaponize corporations to suppress speech they dislike. Reminds me a LOT of Evangelicals in the 2000s - I know that comparison has been made frequently but that's the last group that made a serious censorship push. I wonder how all of this will end? I support CloudFlare here - they should act as a utility, not as an arbiter of content. This ends poorly and one day will bite th…

Yeah, I remember when "net neutrality" was something that the left was demanding. Once they realized that they had a systematic advantage in petitioning hosting companies to deplatform disfavored content without due process, however, all of the underlying arguments for net neutrality were quietly discarded.

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#805

Post by colechristensen »

patmcc wrote: post #335

>>Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things I've been thinking about this for a few days, in regards to all the Kiwi Farms stuff. Where do we want censorship to happen? It seems like most people agree that "bullying people to suicide" is something we shouldn't tolerate, but where do we stop it? No DNS hosting for them? No CDN, no DDOS protection? Go after their…

Law enforcement, charging by government attorneys, criminal courts and civil courts.

If you’re being harassed, the communication venues on which the harassment happens should be compelled legally to unmask the harasser so they may be charged and served with restraining orders.

Who cares if kiwifarms exists if you have competent and empowered law enforcement and judicial systems that can bring justice to the people actually taking illegal actions?

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#806

Post by colechristensen »

jefftk wrote: post #20

Two times in the past we decided to terminate content from our security services because we found it reprehensible. 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 o…

Exactly their position and they are right. Cloudflare also protects good things which are illegal in less good places. Every action they take to take content down weakens their position that they are neutral which allows them to keep up the argument that they aren’t there to enforce laws in places where the laws are quite a bit more disagreeable.

Do you want them to be forced to deplatform planned parenthood in states where abortion is now illegal? There are certainly a lot of people in this country who think PP is far worse than 8chan.

When you involve yourself in the politics of censorship you can’t claw yourself out.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#807

Post by fragmede »

elefantastisch wrote: post #586
Borgz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is this: if there are certain types of content that they deem unacceptable to host, why do they deem it acceptable to protect? I disagree that the paragraph you quoted is relevant to that. But if it is, then it doesn't seem good that their goal of eradicating cyberattacks is more important to them than actual human lives.

So, if someone is standing trial for murder and it turns out the evidence against them was collected illegally, they will end up getting away with it even if everyone knows they did it. It's not that we value police procedure more than we value the life of the victim. We value rule of law and due process as a society more than any individual gap in applying justice in a given case. Yes, if we ignore procedure and loc…

You're making it easy more complicated than it needs to be. Cloudflare sells face punching shields and thinks every last single person should have one. Even face punchers. (They make money off this service.)

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#808

Post by geodel »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #785
elefantastisch wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if someone is standing trial for murder and it turns out the evidence against them was collected illegally, they will end up getting away with it even if everyone knows they did it. It's not that we value police procedure more than we value the life of the victim. We value rule of law and due process as a society more than any individual gap in applying justice in a given case. Yes, if we ignore procedure and loc…

> So, if someone is standing trial for murder and it turns out the evidence against them was collected illegally, they will end up getting away with it even if everyone knows they did it. That very much depends on jurisdiction; don't assume that American laws and norms are universal, nor that they are the best way of doing things.

Well, best way would be to do things my way.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#809

Post by fleddr »

jasonshaev wrote: post #280
computerfriend wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is talking about 1A. Freedom of speech is a principle. That there are laws codifying it is incidental.

If I reword my reply to: "There has never been a reasonable expectation that private businesses are or should be required to allow all speech. Doing so prevents the business from exercising their own freedom of speech protections." it still holds. Freedom of speech does not mean that a company should be compelled or required to host speech it disagrees with.

Correct, yet for a particular category of companies providing foundation utility-like services, there's a well established tradition of taking a liberal/neutral stance.

Which above all is a pragmatic call.

Re: Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach

#810

Post by colechristensen »

peppermint_tea wrote: post #474

wow, so many comments that leads nowhere (law/technical/etc)... what about a counterprotest? Like bigots voicing their opinions on a street corner would attract. I assume everyone here have a VPN... would be fun to post some trans positive messages on their rotten kiwi farm.

> would be fun to post some trans positive messages on their rotten kiwi farm

Do not suggest or hint at this kind of brigading behavior on HN.

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