Does it hit anyone else how direct and clear this is? Imagine if we got this kind of "fuck this, we're not gonna take this shit, but also this won't solve the problem as a whole and here's what...
Does it hit anyone else how direct and clear this is? Imagine if we got this kind of "fuck this, we're not gonna take this shit, but also this won't solve the problem as a whole and here's what this means for everyone else" on the level that users directly interact with, with sites like YouTube speaking like this when dealing with similarly harmful spaces on their platform (where, if anything, they have much less reason to be uncomfortable about exerting control than Cloudflare does). We're so used to these companies tiptoeing around this shit and hoping that their wishy washy statements will lead to real action, but seeing something like this really puts in perspective how much better it can and should be. I like that they go into the implications of not being neutral to who they do business with but don't use it as an excuse when not doing something..it's just honestly exploring the concerns of actions that they do take. What we get is "this is how it's gonna be because it obviously needs to happen, now let's sort out what that all means." That's how it should be.
Is this the norm in this area? Is this an exceptionally well-handled situation, or is this a standard they're typically held to because of a different business model or something? I'm thinking that their biggest customers being large businesses means that they have to be very clear about what's going on so they're still trusted...but that's just a guess pulled out of my ass since I have no idea how business on that level goes. Help an outsider out if you can :P
It depends on the company, but various other hosting/cloud computing/content delivery network/etc. service providers and registrars have publicly expressed similar sentiment when they kicked...
Is this the norm in this area?
It depends on the company, but various other hosting/cloud computing/content delivery network/etc. service providers and registrars have publicly expressed similar sentiment when they kicked various hatespeech sites off their platforms. However, I will say that when it comes to Cloudflare and Matthew Prince specifically, this response is actually a bit of an unexpected curve-ball. See:
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince hated cutting off service to the infamous neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer in August. And he's determined not to do it again.
"I'm almost a free-speech absolutist." Prince said at an event at the New America Foundation last Wednesday. But in a subsequent interview with Ars, Prince argued that in the case of the Daily Stormer, the company didn't have much choice.
Cloudflare runs a popular content delivery network that specializes in protecting clients from distributed denial-of-service attacks. The Daily Stormer published a post mocking a woman who was killed during the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia in August. That had made a lot of people angry at the Daily Stormer, attracting massive attacks on the site.
The Stormer was a Cloudflare customer. Cloudflare had ample technical resources to battle DDOS attacks. The problem was that other Cloudflare customers started calling and threatening to cancel their service if Cloudflare didn't cut the Daily Stormer off.
"The pressure to take it down just kept building and building," Prince told Ars. "We thought that was the wrong policy. We reached out to various civil libertarian organizations and said we need some air cover here. People said 'we'd rather not stick our necks out on this issue.'"
So, Prince said, "we needed to change the conversation."
Why Cloudflare is cultivating free-speech allies
Prince's response was to cut Daily Stormer off while laying the groundwork to make sure he'd never have to make a decision like that again. In a remarkable company-wide email sent shortly after the decision, Prince described his own actions as "arbitrary" and "dangerous."
"I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet," Prince wrote in August. "It was a decision I could make because I'm the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company." He argued that "it's important that what we did today not set a precedent."
Prior to August, Cloudflare had consistently refused to police content published by its customers.
Last week, Prince made a swing through DC to help ensure that the Daily Stormer decision does not, in fact, set a precedent. He met with officials from the Federal Communications Commission and with researchers at the libertarian Cato Institute and the left-of-center New America Foundation—all in an effort to ensure that he'd have the political cover he needed to say no next time he came under pressure to take down controversial content.
So based on this latest announcement, something clearly seems to have changed in Matthew Prince's mind. Perhaps he finally realized that he and his company were part of the problem. In any case, kudos to him!
Matthew Prince isn't exactly a free speech absolutist, I'm fairly certain that quote was pulled out of context. I get Cloudflare's philosophy and I respect it a lot; a lot more than "free speech...
Exemplary
Matthew Prince isn't exactly a free speech absolutist, I'm fairly certain that quote was pulled out of context.
I get Cloudflare's philosophy and I respect it a lot; a lot more than "free speech absolutism". They believe in being a "dumb pipe".
Problem of course is that Cloudflare is getting shredded no matter what. If they cut people off arbitrarily, people yell at them. If they don't, people yell at them. I see a lot of really smart people in my Twitter feed get taken in by the pseudoctivism and claim Cloudflare is evil because they defend 8chan.
This response is brutal honesty, and I like seeing it. I honestly like seeing 8chan get called out, get kicked out, and no longer be their problem; but only because even if this happens once in a while, I believe they legitimately still believe in their philosophy as much as ever.
"[it] takes heat off of us, it does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online". This to me reads like "Congrats activists, you win, we no longer host them. This won't help."
And they're right. Cloudflare isn't the problem. If 8chan uses AWS, AWS isn't the problem. The power grid that feeds electricity to 8chan's servers isn't the problem.
But calling for CF to kick 8chan out feels achievable. Even if it does nothing, it's a goal that (clearly) can be reached, much more easily than, say, fixing America's gun issues, and whatever other deep-seated political and cultural problems that country has.
The quote may not include the full context, because to do that would require several paragraphs, since the interviewer and Prince get into a circuitous and incredibly rambling conversation with...
The quote may not include the full context, because to do that would require several paragraphs, since the interviewer and Prince get into a circuitous and incredibly rambling conversation with many tangents taken by both of them, but IMO it's not been taken "out of context" as in being purposely misrepresented in any way. If you watch the talk it's taken from, it's pretty clear that Prince said pretty much exactly what he meant and truly believes, even going on to mention being a believer in the "marketplace of ideas" and following up with a similar argument to the ol' "sunlight is the best disinfectant" line of reasoning. You can watch the entire interview to see all that for yourself. Here is the timestamp of the interviewer's question that leads to Prince's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4zy_eBo9kA#t=34m50s
And I have seen that power grid comparison plenty of times before too, and IMO it falls apart almost immediately under scrutiny for one major reason; Utility companies do not have any realistic means of determining if the resources they supply through their lines are being used by someone to break the law, disseminate hatespeech and/or incite violence, but Cloudflare cannot make the same claim. Journalists, watchdog groups and anti-hatespeech advocates have been warning Cloudflare for years of the various sites using its services that have been doing exactly that, and Cloudflare has largely ignored them. That's a choice and, unlike the public utilities, they actually do have the power and legal right to take that information and do something productive with it by stopping providing services to those clients.
And unlike you, I don't respect Cloudflare's stance on being a "dumb pipe" any more than I do if it was based on free speech absolutism (which I'm still not convinced it isn't really about, despite Mr. Prince's claims), since the bottom line is that at some level they are enabling those sites to continue to function. And the whole, "if we didn't do it then someone else would" argument that inevitably follows is the same used by illicit drug and arms dealers, which is not exactly the best ethical company to be keeping. Sure, ending your support might not ultimately change much in the end, but at least it's a step in the right direction, which someone has to be the first to take. But even if Cloudflare doesn't want to, thankfully their bigger clients (who actually have something of a conscience, or at least need to appear to) will likely force them to, by threatening to leave if they don't (which is exactly what Mr. Prince actually talked about happening during the Daily Stormer incident later in that talk the quote is from).
They do though. Utility companies provide to addresses, and addresses can be traced back to people and businesses. The law does sometimes ask utility companies to cut off certain addresses exactly...
Utility companies do not have any realistic means of determining if the resources they supply through their lines are being used by someone to break the law, disseminate hatespeech and/or incite violence
They do though. Utility companies provide to addresses, and addresses can be traced back to people and businesses. The law does sometimes ask utility companies to cut off certain addresses exactly because those are breaking the law.
That's my whole point: The law is supposed to be the arbiter here. And nobody bats an eye when GE, Cloudflare or AWS obey it. Asking companies to start making their own judgement calls is risky, that's all.
If they cut people off the mass murders yell at them. If they don't cut people off the people being murdered by the mass murders yell at them. Price prefers the money.
Problem of course is that Cloudflare is getting shredded no matter what. If they cut people off arbitrarily, people yell at them. If they don't, people yell at them
If they cut people off the mass murders yell at them. If they don't cut people off the people being murdered by the mass murders yell at them.
Please don't make assumptions, unless you want to call me personally a mass-murderer. I'm fine with CF cutting off 8chan (and was fine with TDS as well), but these are far from arbitrary decisions.
If they cut people off the mass murders yell at them.
Please don't make assumptions, unless you want to call me personally a mass-murderer. I'm fine with CF cutting off 8chan (and was fine with TDS as well), but these are far from arbitrary decisions.
It's not though, is it? On one side we have people supporting mass murder, and on the other side we have people being murdered. The alt-right fucking loves to talk about the supposed violence of...
It's not though, is it?
On one side we have people supporting mass murder, and on the other side we have people being murdered.
The alt-right fucking loves to talk about the supposed violence of antifa, but ignores the fact that so far antifa haven't bombed any churches, shot up any synagogues, burnt down any mosques, driven cars into crowds, shot into crowds, committed mass murder.
But I do wonder then how do we solve that problem, about the deep-seated political and cultural problems the US has. It seems like the general consensus these days is about attacking the branches...
But I do wonder then how do we solve that problem, about the deep-seated political and cultural problems the US has. It seems like the general consensus these days is about attacking the branches of the problem, and not the root cause? So how can we try to remedy this issue?
Him changing his mind was very recent. He called it a "moral obligation" to keep providing service to 8chan less than 24 hours earlier when talking to The Guardian (the article has changed...
My impression from reading a fair amount of different statements he's made about this kind of thing over the years is that Matthew Prince doesn't want to keep aiding these sites, but he's really uncomfortable with making subjective decisions about who's "bad enough", and doesn't feel like they should need to make any decisions like this because Cloudflare is closer to infrastructure.
Despite that, he still seems to eventually hit a breaking point where he just basically thinks, "fuck it, why am I going through all this shit just to protect this worthless garbage site?" and decides to just do it and figure out how to justify it later. They've still only ever taken out the absolute worst of the worst (for example, they're still protecting Voat) so it's not really that commendable, but I'm glad that it's happened anyway.
Do you think it'll make any difference that they kicked them out, though? If CF kicking 8chan out did have the potential of having any sort of concrete positive result, I'd be singing a different...
They've still only ever taken out the absolute worst of the worst so it's not really that commendable
Do you think it'll make any difference that they kicked them out, though?
If CF kicking 8chan out did have the potential of having any sort of concrete positive result, I'd be singing a different tune. But as it stands, why do they have to take a stance, any more than AWS/GCP would? (Where "taking a stance" reflects "making a judgement call where the law itself did not")
It's not always about how much of an effect there is in the end, I think it's also important to send a message that they're not welcome, that people don't want to have any part in helping their...
It's not always about how much of an effect there is in the end, I think it's also important to send a message that they're not welcome, that people don't want to have any part in helping their site exist, and even just to do what's right. We've also repeatedly seen tech companies all refuse to do something until one or two finally "break the ice" on it, and then all the rest follow. For example, nobody would ban Alex Jones, and then when a couple of services finally did, suddenly he was banned from everything within about a week. Sometimes it all adds up, even if each individual action seems insignificant.
You're not wrong, but I think without invoking a slippery slope fallacy, it's fair to ask where it stops. Cf my other comment regarding the power grid. In my view, it stops at the services we...
You're not wrong, but I think without invoking a slippery slope fallacy, it's fair to ask where it stops. Cf my other comment regarding the power grid.
In my view, it stops at the services we should want to be dumb pipes. Because if it doesn't then we're sending the message we want those services to be arbiters of good and evil. Which is sometimes fine, most of the time not.
Yeah, I agree, it's a really difficult topic. But I also think the root cause of so many issues on the internet is that almost everyone with a significant amount of influence uses the argument of...
Yeah, I agree, it's a really difficult topic. But I also think the root cause of so many issues on the internet is that almost everyone with a significant amount of influence uses the argument of "logically, we shouldn't be the one responsible for making a decision about this".
The internet is pretty much just a bunch of platforms connected together. Arguably Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. are all "dumb pipes" in their own way. But if all of the major players keep clinging to the "not our fault, we're just a platform!" excuse, there isn't anyone else with any power that can actually do anything to address the problems.
So I've had some time to think about your answer and I think the difference is that with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc those websites offer a platform with an audience that can't be replicated...
So I've had some time to think about your answer and I think the difference is that with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc those websites offer a platform with an audience that can't be replicated easily. Whereas with cloudflare, the service itselt can simply be replaced by another.
I think that is where I draw the line at what a dumb pipe is: offering an audience.
Doesn't Cloudfare offer and audience in some way? If you built a stage in the town square and had control over who got up on to it, you might rightfully get yelled at if a bunch of white...
Doesn't Cloudfare offer and audience in some way? If you built a stage in the town square and had control over who got up on to it, you might rightfully get yelled at if a bunch of white supremacists were getting and your stage and spewing bullshit. You didn't bring the crowds there, but the Internet is a shared space in much the same way.
They don't offer an audience, they offer technology that counters random people bringing giant speakers playing deafeningly-loud screeching noises to the square. Nobody wants those screechers...
They don't offer an audience, they offer technology that counters random people bringing giant speakers playing deafeningly-loud screeching noises to the square.
Nobody wants those screechers anywhere. Maybe it's "okay" if they screech at the psychos like 8chan but that should be someone else drawing the line. And they should be drawing the line by preventing them from entering the square at all, not by removing AntiScreech.
Maybe the real problem then is to have critical infrastructure like this solely in the hands of private entities with no forms of democratic control or expectations of pro-social behavior?
Maybe the real problem then is to have critical infrastructure like this solely in the hands of private entities with no forms of democratic control or expectations of pro-social behavior?
Do we know how exactly Cloudfare cooperated with law enforcement? Could they for example have collected the IP addresses of everyone posting to the site and handed them to the FBI? Whatever they...
that solution unlike Cloudflare may not be cooperating with law enforcement to monitor the site and attempt to reduce the harm it can cause
Do we know how exactly Cloudfare cooperated with law enforcement? Could they for example have collected the IP addresses of everyone posting to the site and handed them to the FBI? Whatever they did, they failed to stop three horrific terrorist attacks, so I'm not convinced that cooperation is a big loss.
If they were actually interested in harm reduction, there's a simple and quite subtle way they could have done it: Throttle 8chan's bandwidth. By damaging the user experience, 8chan would have lost users to competing message boards, and Cloudfare could have lied and blamed it on the 8chan's software.
You think you would have heard about the ones they did stop? As far as I'm aware, nobody anywhere has ever stopped any form of mass shooting. That kind of stuff isn't really reported in the news...
Whatever they did, they failed to stop three horrific terrorist attacks, so I'm not convinced that cooperation is a big loss.
You think you would have heard about the ones they did stop? As far as I'm aware, nobody anywhere has ever stopped any form of mass shooting. That kind of stuff isn't really reported in the news like the """successful""" shootings are.
Deplatforming works. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work And if all of the extremist settle into one or two niche providers, it makes it easier to block them, as a...
And if all of the extremist settle into one or two niche providers, it makes it easier to block them, as a whole.
I cant block cloudflare users without losing a lot of people. I can, however block a tiny network segment that caters to only hate groups, and lose nothing.
Deplatforming works and if you look at my comment history you'll find I'm in favour of it. But that doesn't apply to every platform; it mostly applies to platforms that carry an audience. Why on...
Deplatforming works and if you look at my comment history you'll find I'm in favour of it. But that doesn't apply to every platform; it mostly applies to platforms that carry an audience.
I can, however block a tiny network segment that caters to only hate groups
Why on Earth would you though? Just don't visit their sites. This reminds me of all those people that need to nullroute facebook.com to prevent themselves from visiting it...
Every platform caters to an audience. The audience for Cloudflare is the internet, as a whole. As for why would I block network segments that cater to hate groups, exclusively? To protect my...
Every platform caters to an audience. The audience for Cloudflare is the internet, as a whole.
As for why would I block network segments that cater to hate groups, exclusively? To protect my users. I am not a fan of the "I only run a service" defense. I am a human being, who can exercise the (little) power I have to make the internet a better place.
The more people who null route those segments, the better.
Can guarantee you less ethical providers will be lining up to provide free service based on the publicity it'll create. Niche providers don't have the customer base to lose from activism, and will...
The only positive I see coming from this is if 8chan move to a niche provider is that it might be more expensive than Cloudflare and thus drive up their operating costs.
Can guarantee you less ethical providers will be lining up to provide free service based on the publicity it'll create.
Niche providers don't have the customer base to lose from activism, and will 100% benefit from the whole "bad publicity is still publicity" thing. Just getting their name out there.
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter...etc... They all earn money from the content of their users. CloudFlare and other infrastructure providers don't have that same incentive to keep them as customers.
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter...etc... They all earn money from the content of their users.
CloudFlare and other infrastructure providers don't have that same incentive to keep them as customers.
Does anyone know what competitor they're using? I don't really know that much about this space but probably should know more.
Almost exactly two years ago we made the determination to kick another disgusting site off Cloudflare's network: the Daily Stormer. That caused a brief interruption in the site's operations but they quickly came back online using a Cloudflare competitor
Does anyone know what competitor they're using? I don't really know that much about this space but probably should know more.
Daily Stormer was using BitMitigate last I heard (in 2017) and probably still are, especially considering BitMitigate is now owned by Epik, who proudly took over as domain registrar for Gab when...
...and then this happened: UPDATE: Looks like @voxility just cut off all of Bitmitigate's prefix at their edge routers, shutting down not only their customers but Epik's corporate systems. for...
most likely a smaller service that's only nominally a competitor. there's a whole little nexus of hosting/DDoS protection/general website services that cater specifically to the free speech and...
most likely a smaller service that's only nominally a competitor. there's a whole little nexus of hosting/DDoS protection/general website services that cater specifically to the free speech and extremist crowd.
Does it hit anyone else how direct and clear this is? Imagine if we got this kind of "fuck this, we're not gonna take this shit, but also this won't solve the problem as a whole and here's what this means for everyone else" on the level that users directly interact with, with sites like YouTube speaking like this when dealing with similarly harmful spaces on their platform (where, if anything, they have much less reason to be uncomfortable about exerting control than Cloudflare does). We're so used to these companies tiptoeing around this shit and hoping that their wishy washy statements will lead to real action, but seeing something like this really puts in perspective how much better it can and should be. I like that they go into the implications of not being neutral to who they do business with but don't use it as an excuse when not doing something..it's just honestly exploring the concerns of actions that they do take. What we get is "this is how it's gonna be because it obviously needs to happen, now let's sort out what that all means." That's how it should be.
Is this the norm in this area? Is this an exceptionally well-handled situation, or is this a standard they're typically held to because of a different business model or something? I'm thinking that their biggest customers being large businesses means that they have to be very clear about what's going on so they're still trusted...but that's just a guess pulled out of my ass since I have no idea how business on that level goes. Help an outsider out if you can :P
It depends on the company, but various other hosting/cloud computing/content delivery network/etc. service providers and registrars have publicly expressed similar sentiment when they kicked various hatespeech sites off their platforms. However, I will say that when it comes to Cloudflare and Matthew Prince specifically, this response is actually a bit of an unexpected curve-ball. See:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/cloudflares-ceo-has-a-plan-to-never-censor-hate-speech-again/
So based on this latest announcement, something clearly seems to have changed in Matthew Prince's mind. Perhaps he finally realized that he and his company were part of the problem. In any case, kudos to him!
Matthew Prince isn't exactly a free speech absolutist, I'm fairly certain that quote was pulled out of context.
I get Cloudflare's philosophy and I respect it a lot; a lot more than "free speech absolutism". They believe in being a "dumb pipe".
Problem of course is that Cloudflare is getting shredded no matter what. If they cut people off arbitrarily, people yell at them. If they don't, people yell at them. I see a lot of really smart people in my Twitter feed get taken in by the pseudoctivism and claim Cloudflare is evil because they defend 8chan.
This response is brutal honesty, and I like seeing it. I honestly like seeing 8chan get called out, get kicked out, and no longer be their problem; but only because even if this happens once in a while, I believe they legitimately still believe in their philosophy as much as ever.
"[it] takes heat off of us, it does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online". This to me reads like "Congrats activists, you win, we no longer host them. This won't help."
And they're right. Cloudflare isn't the problem. If 8chan uses AWS, AWS isn't the problem. The power grid that feeds electricity to 8chan's servers isn't the problem.
But calling for CF to kick 8chan out feels achievable. Even if it does nothing, it's a goal that (clearly) can be reached, much more easily than, say, fixing America's gun issues, and whatever other deep-seated political and cultural problems that country has.
The quote may not include the full context, because to do that would require several paragraphs, since the interviewer and Prince get into a circuitous and incredibly rambling conversation with many tangents taken by both of them, but IMO it's not been taken "out of context" as in being purposely misrepresented in any way. If you watch the talk it's taken from, it's pretty clear that Prince said pretty much exactly what he meant and truly believes, even going on to mention being a believer in the "marketplace of ideas" and following up with a similar argument to the ol' "sunlight is the best disinfectant" line of reasoning. You can watch the entire interview to see all that for yourself. Here is the timestamp of the interviewer's question that leads to Prince's statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4zy_eBo9kA#t=34m50s
And I have seen that power grid comparison plenty of times before too, and IMO it falls apart almost immediately under scrutiny for one major reason; Utility companies do not have any realistic means of determining if the resources they supply through their lines are being used by someone to break the law, disseminate hatespeech and/or incite violence, but Cloudflare cannot make the same claim. Journalists, watchdog groups and anti-hatespeech advocates have been warning Cloudflare for years of the various sites using its services that have been doing exactly that, and Cloudflare has largely ignored them. That's a choice and, unlike the public utilities, they actually do have the power and legal right to take that information and do something productive with it by stopping providing services to those clients.
And unlike you, I don't respect Cloudflare's stance on being a "dumb pipe" any more than I do if it was based on free speech absolutism (which I'm still not convinced it isn't really about, despite Mr. Prince's claims), since the bottom line is that at some level they are enabling those sites to continue to function. And the whole, "if we didn't do it then someone else would" argument that inevitably follows is the same used by illicit drug and arms dealers, which is not exactly the best ethical company to be keeping. Sure, ending your support might not ultimately change much in the end, but at least it's a step in the right direction, which someone has to be the first to take. But even if Cloudflare doesn't want to, thankfully their bigger clients (who actually have something of a conscience, or at least need to appear to) will likely force them to, by threatening to leave if they don't (which is exactly what Mr. Prince actually talked about happening during the Daily Stormer incident later in that talk the quote is from).
They do though. Utility companies provide to addresses, and addresses can be traced back to people and businesses. The law does sometimes ask utility companies to cut off certain addresses exactly because those are breaking the law.
That's my whole point: The law is supposed to be the arbiter here. And nobody bats an eye when GE, Cloudflare or AWS obey it. Asking companies to start making their own judgement calls is risky, that's all.
If they cut people off the mass murders yell at them. If they don't cut people off the people being murdered by the mass murders yell at them.
Price prefers the money.
Please don't make assumptions, unless you want to call me personally a mass-murderer. I'm fine with CF cutting off 8chan (and was fine with TDS as well), but these are far from arbitrary decisions.
That's a made-up unrealistic dichotomy, at least as wildly stereotyping and as blind to the reality of the Other as far-right is.
It's not though, is it?
On one side we have people supporting mass murder, and on the other side we have people being murdered.
The alt-right fucking loves to talk about the supposed violence of antifa, but ignores the fact that so far antifa haven't bombed any churches, shot up any synagogues, burnt down any mosques, driven cars into crowds, shot into crowds, committed mass murder.
Seems weird to call it pseudoactivism when it worked.
I wasn't calling out whether or not it can work.
But I do wonder then how do we solve that problem, about the deep-seated political and cultural problems the US has. It seems like the general consensus these days is about attacking the branches of the problem, and not the root cause? So how can we try to remedy this issue?
Him changing his mind was very recent. He called it a "moral obligation" to keep providing service to 8chan less than 24 hours earlier when talking to The Guardian (the article has changed somewhat with updates after it was originally published).
My impression from reading a fair amount of different statements he's made about this kind of thing over the years is that Matthew Prince doesn't want to keep aiding these sites, but he's really uncomfortable with making subjective decisions about who's "bad enough", and doesn't feel like they should need to make any decisions like this because Cloudflare is closer to infrastructure.
Despite that, he still seems to eventually hit a breaking point where he just basically thinks, "fuck it, why am I going through all this shit just to protect this worthless garbage site?" and decides to just do it and figure out how to justify it later. They've still only ever taken out the absolute worst of the worst (for example, they're still protecting Voat) so it's not really that commendable, but I'm glad that it's happened anyway.
(@Whom)
Do you think it'll make any difference that they kicked them out, though?
If CF kicking 8chan out did have the potential of having any sort of concrete positive result, I'd be singing a different tune. But as it stands, why do they have to take a stance, any more than AWS/GCP would? (Where "taking a stance" reflects "making a judgement call where the law itself did not")
It's not always about how much of an effect there is in the end, I think it's also important to send a message that they're not welcome, that people don't want to have any part in helping their site exist, and even just to do what's right. We've also repeatedly seen tech companies all refuse to do something until one or two finally "break the ice" on it, and then all the rest follow. For example, nobody would ban Alex Jones, and then when a couple of services finally did, suddenly he was banned from everything within about a week. Sometimes it all adds up, even if each individual action seems insignificant.
You're not wrong, but I think without invoking a slippery slope fallacy, it's fair to ask where it stops. Cf my other comment regarding the power grid.
In my view, it stops at the services we should want to be dumb pipes. Because if it doesn't then we're sending the message we want those services to be arbiters of good and evil. Which is sometimes fine, most of the time not.
Yeah, I agree, it's a really difficult topic. But I also think the root cause of so many issues on the internet is that almost everyone with a significant amount of influence uses the argument of "logically, we shouldn't be the one responsible for making a decision about this".
The internet is pretty much just a bunch of platforms connected together. Arguably Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. are all "dumb pipes" in their own way. But if all of the major players keep clinging to the "not our fault, we're just a platform!" excuse, there isn't anyone else with any power that can actually do anything to address the problems.
So I've had some time to think about your answer and I think the difference is that with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc those websites offer a platform with an audience that can't be replicated easily. Whereas with cloudflare, the service itselt can simply be replaced by another.
I think that is where I draw the line at what a dumb pipe is: offering an audience.
Doesn't Cloudfare offer and audience in some way? If you built a stage in the town square and had control over who got up on to it, you might rightfully get yelled at if a bunch of white supremacists were getting and your stage and spewing bullshit. You didn't bring the crowds there, but the Internet is a shared space in much the same way.
They don't offer an audience, they offer technology that counters random people bringing giant speakers playing deafeningly-loud screeching noises to the square.
Nobody wants those screechers anywhere. Maybe it's "okay" if they screech at the psychos like 8chan but that should be someone else drawing the line. And they should be drawing the line by preventing them from entering the square at all, not by removing AntiScreech.
Maybe the real problem then is to have critical infrastructure like this solely in the hands of private entities with no forms of democratic control or expectations of pro-social behavior?
Do we know how exactly Cloudfare cooperated with law enforcement? Could they for example have collected the IP addresses of everyone posting to the site and handed them to the FBI? Whatever they did, they failed to stop three horrific terrorist attacks, so I'm not convinced that cooperation is a big loss.
If they were actually interested in harm reduction, there's a simple and quite subtle way they could have done it: Throttle 8chan's bandwidth. By damaging the user experience, 8chan would have lost users to competing message boards, and Cloudfare could have lied and blamed it on the 8chan's software.
You think you would have heard about the ones they did stop? As far as I'm aware, nobody anywhere has ever stopped any form of mass shooting. That kind of stuff isn't really reported in the news like the """successful""" shootings are.
Deplatforming works.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work
And if all of the extremist settle into one or two niche providers, it makes it easier to block them, as a whole.
I cant block cloudflare users without losing a lot of people. I can, however block a tiny network segment that caters to only hate groups, and lose nothing.
Deplatforming works and if you look at my comment history you'll find I'm in favour of it. But that doesn't apply to every platform; it mostly applies to platforms that carry an audience.
Why on Earth would you though? Just don't visit their sites. This reminds me of all those people that need to nullroute facebook.com to prevent themselves from visiting it...
Every platform caters to an audience. The audience for Cloudflare is the internet, as a whole.
As for why would I block network segments that cater to hate groups, exclusively? To protect my users. I am not a fan of the "I only run a service" defense. I am a human being, who can exercise the (little) power I have to make the internet a better place.
The more people who null route those segments, the better.
I can't verify the article sources because the website is completly broken for me (it just doesn't charge), but on twitter I've seen this tweet (https://twitter.com/ninaandtito/status/1158204753056284673):
It could be a big reason for this late change of heart. As always money is a good enough incentive.
Can guarantee you less ethical providers will be lining up to provide free service based on the publicity it'll create.
Niche providers don't have the customer base to lose from activism, and will 100% benefit from the whole "bad publicity is still publicity" thing. Just getting their name out there.
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter...etc... They all earn money from the content of their users.
CloudFlare and other infrastructure providers don't have that same incentive to keep them as customers.
Does anyone know what competitor they're using? I don't really know that much about this space but probably should know more.
Daily Stormer was using BitMitigate last I heard (in 2017) and probably still are, especially considering BitMitigate is now owned by Epik, who proudly took over as domain registrar for Gab when Gab similarly got kicked off all the other services/platforms they were using too.
looks like 8chan is migrating there, so yeah.
...and then this happened: UPDATE: Looks like @voxility just cut off all of Bitmitigate's prefix at their edge routers, shutting down not only their customers but Epik's corporate systems.
for some context: In case you were wondering, it looks like the new host of 8chan and Daily Stormer will effectively be @voxility. It looks like Epik/Bitmitigate owns very little of their own hardware and instead rents Voxility's servers and AS.
I just saw this too. WOW
most likely a smaller service that's only nominally a competitor. there's a whole little nexus of hosting/DDoS protection/general website services that cater specifically to the free speech and extremist crowd.
The comments on the article are also a cesspool, just like 8chan.
No kidding. I’m surprised they haven’t disabled comments.
Smart to leave them up - it makes a good argument in favour of their actions.