Very interesting. Cloudflare have always positioned themselves as a neutral network provider and have not policed the content they serve. Many not so nice parts of the web such as DDoS-for-hire sites are protected by Cloudflare - I wonder if this signals a more general change in attitude?
Yeah, this is downright shocking to me. They make a free speech argument when it comes to censoring criminal commercial content, but political content they're OK with shutting down? Seems exactly backwards from what most companies do.
Not that I want them messing with any content, but it's quite self-evident that nazi ideology isn't somehow so insanely viral that it needs to be kept away from people rather than rightly ridiculed on its "merits". If you're fine with a hands off approach when it comes to people actively conspiring to DDoS people, you should be fine with nazis saluting each other and sucking Hitler's ghastly member or whatever it is they get up to.
They make a free speech argument when it comes to censoring criminal commercial content, but political content they're OK with shutting down?
We're talking about nazism here. Nazism is a crime in a number of countries.
Europeans hate nazis since we are reminded everywhere about what they did last time.
This is coming from someone that thinks other would classify him as clearly right-leaning i.e. values individual freedom, conservative economic policies etc. Actually it gets better because I see nazism (short for national socialism) as just an criminally evil form of normal socialism (strong national state, very little individial freedom).
> I see nazism (short for national socialism) as just an criminally evil form of normal socialism (strong national state, very little individial freedom).
The political spectrum isn't a line, it's a circle. Go far enough either direction and you wrap around somewhat to the other side, but generally by taking ideals past the point of common sense, much less usefulness.
Well, Cloudflare is a US company where no political ideologies are criminal, and I'm personally of the opinion that if your political order is so fragile that it can't survive the free expression of some reprehensible ideas, you've got bigger problems than "those people are saying something awful."
Either way, like I said - I was actually fine with them being a dumb pipe. I don't think they should be acting as an arm of the law in the first place, I was just making the point that most companies usually don't make a principled stand on free speech with respect to actual crimes with identifiable victims (e.g. DDoS or even copyright infringement), but then censor someone based on their political ideology / incorrect beliefs.
Read about the paradox of tolerance. At some point you need to draw the line. This line is going to be fuzzy as hell, but if you don't you're going to end up with a ton of intolerance.
A Cloudflare executed says they ditched us because "email on this is massive." So much for an anti-DDoS company. The only traffic you have to send them just has to be in the form of valid SMTP, and they'll kill your site.
Disappointingly, this appears to be an unusual special case, and may not reflect any larger change in policy:
> The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.
Yes -- apparently they dropped every zone from their account, and ended rebill, so this was an administrative action.
Technically the Cloudflare TOS is written in the normal weasely way: https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/ TERMINATION "(j) any use of the Service deemed at Cloudflare’s sole discretion to be prohibited" -- so it's within their TOS rights.
Cloudflare also kicks people off when they get ddos'd for too long.
Two days ago whe GoDady booted them, and Jester was running campaign against Daily Stormer, CloudFlares statement was that they wont bot them based on brigading flagging.
A Cloudflare executed says they ditched us because "email on this is massive." So much for an anti-DDoS company. The only traffic you have to send them just has to be in the form of valid SMTP, and they'll kill your site.
When I saw Daily Stormer had relocated to a .ru address, I noticed that the first thing displayed upon opening the site was a full screen notice that Cloudflare was checking my browser.
I understand Cloudflare generaly trying to be a neutral provider, but if the first thing people will see when gawking at a Neo-Nazi hate site is your logo in the center of the screen, it's not a big surprise that Cloudflare decided keeping them would be bad for their PR.
On the other hand, it seems to me that minimum censorship is vital to CloudFlare's partnerships and business. It probably has many datacenters located in questionable regimes, and any hint that it performed moral discrimination would probably attract attention from govts. wanting to pressure censorship on CloudFlare, which would be an avoidable drain of resources.
I wrote a bit yesterday about Cloudflare's previous stance on this issue, which has always been that the company does not think it's its place to pick and choose whom it does business with:
So far, Cloudflare has not made a statement or confirmed in any way that it has dropped Daily Stormer or any other website based on its content. If it does, I expect the confirmation will first come from Cloudflare's official blog:
The action would represent a major philosophical shift in the company's approach to these kinds of issues, and all we have to go on so far is a screenshot of a non-descriptive email, posted on a Gab.ai account that _appears_ to be run by the editor of a neo-Nazi website.
Personally, I think what these sites are doing now(dropping support for websites that distribute nazi propaganda) is the moral thing to do.
However, I am bit worried that this seems to happen in response to social media shit storms and not because the people in charge of these companies actually just acquired a moral backbone.
Most of the people I subscribe to on Twitter are (American-) left leaning, and in the past when I saw similar shit storms happening (e.g. GamerGate, Milo Y. etc.) I always thought "Good! What these people are doing is awful, so they had it coming."
But the recent James Damore thing got me a bit worried. I wasn't fully on board on what was the dominant narrative on Twitter and the like, and was a bit horrified with what conviction I saw people who were espousing a different viewpoint were treated.
I guess I worry that corporations and people now bow so easily over social media pressure that in the future they could be easily pressured to do something that morally repugnant or some such.
Or maybe that's just how society has always been, and social media just exacerbates it.
Using social pressure to silence certain viewpoints is a terrible precedent to make. Social consensus is a terrible benchmark on whether or not something is bad. It was once consensus that black people were inferior to whites. It was once consensus that socialists were the enemy, and tons of people were pushed out of the labor market for it[1].
Internet corporations bowing to social pressure to silence certain viewpoints is abhorrent. It's starting with Nazis, but chances are good that it won't end there[2].
how bout we just silence rhettoric directed at broad groups...regardless of who says it..oh that's pretty much everything that comes out of a Nazi's mouth...so yeah..warranted.
Also -- Nazi's aren't far from a terrorist organization should these companies also allow ISIS and Taliban sites to recruit new members on their servers? Because - - censorship!
> how bout we just silence rhettoric directed at broad groups
By that definition, we should silence any discussion of Democrats, or Republicans, or blacks, or latinos, or whatever "broad group" you'd like to suppress discussion of at the moment.
An actual good argument is that we should suppress views that may lead to terrorism. I'm pretty sure it would be easy to argue that Nazi viewpoints can be pretty terroristic. But then where do we draw the line? How do we as a society decide what is allowed and what isn't without opening up the system to exploitation by an authoritarian regime?
There was a thread yesterday about the registrars dropping them, and this was the big question my mind, too.
To any lawyers and/or law-aware people who know the answer as it relates to Cloudflare, I'd also be interested to learn about how/if it applies to registrars.
Of course not. Choosing whether to retain or terminate a customer does not qualify as moderating content.
The case you're citing was a very different situation. Postings on the LiveJournal community in question, including the ones containing the infringing content, were being actively approved by LiveJournal employees and volunteers. This situation wouldn't have applied to most LiveJournal communities -- ONTD is a special case, as it's sponsored directly by LJ -- and certainly cannot apply to a web host or ISP.
Excerpt (from May): Cloudflare, a prominent San Francisco outfit, provides services to neo-Nazi sites like The Daily Stormer, including giving them personal information on people who complain about their content.
EDIT: Also: In a post, the site’s [Daily Stormer's] architect, Andrew Auernheimer, said he had personal relationships with people at Cloudflare, and they had assured him the company would work to protect the site in a variety of ways — including by not turning over data to European courts. Cloudflare has data centers in European countries such as Germany, which have strict hate speech and privacy laws.
Company officials offered differing responses when asked about Auernheimer’s post. Kramer, Cloudflare’s general counsel, said he had no knowledge of employee conversations with Auernheimer. Later, in an email, the company said Auernheimer was a well-known hacker, and that as a result at least one senior company official “has chatted with him on occasion and has spoken to him about Cloudflare’s position on not censoring the internet.</i>
"Actively supporting" is an inaccurate characterization of that article. It alleges they were such a dumb, neutral pipe that their processes sent the personal contact information of complainants to the perpetrators.
I don't doubt weev knows a person or two at CloudFlare, but it sounds like he's relaying their default position - they don't generally moderate content and fight court orders aimed at their users.
Free speech necessarily does have limits, obviously, otherwise I could claim my ddosing your web server or my uploading of CP was simply me expressing my free speech.
Does my free speech only end when my actions infringe other laws? Or should my free speech overrule the consequences other laws? People want to claim free speech is a moral perogative, not just some words written into a Constitution, but you can't mix unlimited free speech with the real world, at some point, idealism has to give.
And I won't say GoDaddy, Google or Cloudflare necessarily should be the ones to draw that line, but someone has to. Something had to give after Charlottesville, and we're see that here.
They have been the fundraising site of choice for white nationalists & Nazis involved in violence. The latest fundraiser is from the Nazis involved in the murder of Heather Heyer[1]. One of those attending has cheered stabbings before[2], calling it a war they were engaged in. His name is Matthew Heimbach, he is a Nazi, and he has already been in legal trouble for assaulting someone at a Trump rally[3].
Rootbocks recently lost their original host[4] after people realized kicking Nazi's asses was as easy as contacting unknowing companies to detail who their customers were[5].
After searching around for new hosts they appeared to of moved to a different domain, now using Rootbocks.co instead of .com until they are able to migrate the .com domain.
These types are to be treated like sites pushing malware, their hosts are to be contacted and pressured before their IP space can be tainted by clusters of Nazis & others promoting terrorism and violent attacks. If clickfraud is serious enough to pressure hosts into removing users then Nazis urging the purging of 'Jews and genetic filth' via violent means surely counts.
I have no problem with this since they're a private company and they can do that with their own services. Dropping an easy target like some racist idiots is one thing... yet Cloudflare apparently has no problem hosting Ripoff Report, a company whose business model is entirely about defaming people online and then extorting them to remove the content. This shittiest of shitty companies that has real-world devastating consequences for people does a lot more damage than some clowns on a racist forum.
For Cloudflare, this is more about PR than morality. The company wants to attract business and kicking these nazis off will make Cloudflare seem like a good company in the eyes of many, while only nazis will see it in a negative light. Retaining DS will do the opposite. There are many more non-nazis than nazis, so from a business perspective it makes sense. Occasionally, business goals and morals do align.
This just seems weird given their previous stances, but it’s their network so it’sfine they did it, but they have lost all protections of an ISP and became a curator. I stopped using them, and I can’t pretend that I would’ve contributed anything to their bottom line, but I know my future clients won’t either.
> they have lost all protections of an ISP and became a curator
YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, etc. ban people without losing their safe harbor provisions. Not sure why you'd think it's any different in CloudFlare's situation.
Maybe not legally but obviously morally at least in my eyes. I think we should protect all content, but I’m not saying it’s illegal for them to drop Stormer.
The problem is that if the political winds were blowing the other way it could be your favoured group whose beliefs are deemed beyond the pale. We set a dangerous precedent when we outlaw speech we don't like.
This isn't outlawing. As the GP noted it's a private company.
I have no obligation to be part of the platform for a position I don't support. It's not censorship when I don't give my support. It is when I try to exert control over others. It is when the government exerts that control over us all.
Outlawing, censorship, call it what you like - it's about removing someone's right to communicate. The fact that it's a private company should worry us more.
> it's about removing someone's right to communicate.
Exactly. Their rights. No rights were affected here. They were given permission to use cloudfare, and that was revoked. The fact they can still go somewhere else proves that no rights were affected.
Doesn't the ceo / admins of cloudflare have their 'freedom' to choose what goes through their servers? Censorship / Freedom of speech does NOT include companies --it just states the government can't stop free speech (except in some cases like child porn)... but companies aren't the government... stop thinking they are held to the same standard as the constitution.
The thing is, if my favoured group specifically revolved around oppression of groups of people (ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, what have you), I would deserve it.
This isn't a tough definition. I'm fine with republicans hating "lefties", broncos hating raiders, xbox hating playstation. When hate is directed at non-chosen traits, that's the red line.
Am I crazy? I feel like I am with all this defense of literal nazis (flags, signs, salute, speech and all).
What gets me is that Nazi ideology is itself violent.
This isn't a disagreement about taxes or social programs, it's an ideology that led to the Holocaust.
Last weekend's terrorist attack on the anti-racist protest, leading to the murder of one anti-racist, tells us exactly where this is going again.
That's what makes all the "well free speech" stuff seem so hollow and stupid to me--we know what's at the other end of the Nazi road, and it's nowhere we want to go.
The site is a hate site for neo-Nazis. In the wake of the recent Nazi march, they were kicked off their previous registrar (GoDaddy), then off Google, and settled on Cloudflare. A lot of folks (myself included) assumed that CF would allow them to remain, as they have with many sites in the past. However, it appears that something has convinced them that it's not worth it to be the facilitator of a mouthpiece for genocide.
If they broke the law then each instance should be dealt with. We are not on the precipice of war, no matter what the MSM would have you think - until we are I think the tactics of war i.e. censorship are not the answer.
>We are not on the precipice of war, no matter what the MSM would have you think
It is not "MSM" stating anything like this but the Nazis.
This is Matthew Heimbach, the Nazi who attacked someone during a Trump rally[1], cheering on the stabbings of others calling it a war: http://archive.is/ZBOOa
They believe they are at war -right now-. This is not "MSM" but the Nazis themselves stating this after engaging in stabbings. Matthew Heimbach was also at Charlottesville[2] as documented by Vice.
Nazis who overtly state they are at war with others engaged in yet another violent attack, this one large scale enough to capture "MSM" attention.
>I think the tactics of war i.e. censorship are not the answer.
Again, this is not "MSM" causing this or furthering it, it is the Nazis. Their tactics of include censorship, and things like stabbings/ramming attacks.
I wonder if Stormer should push to e.g. ZeroNet. Which is a cool project I should check out more often. Unfortunately, there's not much content of any kind.
The poster is a Twitter-verified journalist for a major news site. I've issues with Salon's journalism at times, but it's at least a fairly reputable source.
Matthew Sheffield's belief in the claim was not based on hard evidence at the time, but rather based entirely on two tweets from white supremacists known for trolling. He parroted the claim in the off-chance that it might be true. He's a gambler, not a reliable source.
Fair point and I agree that the tweet on it's own didn't sufficiently back up the claim. I posted the link in response to your comment for other readers who might stumble on this discussion.
In my case I did research the claim on my own and verified with other sources prior to submitting, as I certainly don't want to participate in spreading false information :)
I'm surprised and impressed by this. Cloudflare has historically been a company which wants to pretend it's a dumb pipe from content to users, but the content is coming from them in every way that matters -- in particular, every method for figuring out how to address problematic content will lead you to speaking with Cloudflare. At least they supposedly don't pass your contact info back to their clients anymore.
Why is Matthew Sheffield asserting this so strongly? Did Cloudflare make a public statement indicating they deliberately stepped in to drop the site? I can't find one. The content of the tweet merely makes it seem like the guy's plan simply expired and he failed to renew it.
If Cloudflare were actually interested in avoiding alt-right dumpster fires, then I think they would also stop protecting sites like 4chan and 8ch.
Joke policing is absolutely wrong and one of best indicators at judging how authoritarian people are.
Everyone who supports this or pretends that jokes are serious hate speech with intention to suppress someones right for free speech is worst kind of human.
It's not joke policing to assume some values of an individual based on their speech. It may make people incorrect, but as long as they are making personal decisions, comedians alienating audiences is nothing new. As long as the comedian isn't forced (actually forced, not just incentivized by poor reactions) to stop telling the joke, no censorhip is taking place, and the problem is self correcting.
Many consider whole Daily Stormer webpage as satire.
Majority of their readers read it for its creative but controversial humor.
Twitter sat ladies that cry bullied this big IT companies to deny service for Daily Stormer caused webpage to not be accessible. People who enjoyed this style of humor cant enjoy it anymore. This is very definition of censorship.
Cat ladies not visiting web page would be enough to not hurt their feelings. Them going out of their way to prevent others to enjoy this is very authoritarian and one of reasons why tragedies happen.
> Twitter sat ladies that cry bullied this big IT companies to deny service for Daily Stormer caused webpage to not be accessible.
It's no different than a club cancelling a comedy booking because they don't want that type of comedy at their club, because they don't think their patrons will support it.
> People who enjoyed this style of humor cant enjoy it anymore. This is very definition of censorship.
No, it's not. They can go somewhere else. They can find a different provider, or publish a pamphlet or go to a street corner. You know what it means as a comedian when you can't book a club? Not enough people are interested in what you have to say to make it worthwhile to give you a pulpit, or at least not enough people to offset the distaste you cause in others. That's not censorship, that's social pressure.
Censorship is about ability and rights. Nobody is restricting the ability or rights of the daily stormer. It's still legal to post what they want, and they have avenues to do so (with enough money, they could become their own host). Freedom of speech is just as much about letting the daily stormer say what they want as it is letting cloudfare and others decide they don't want to support it.
>how much of /pol/ is actually alt-right and how much is using it as an affect for the lulz
A lot of people on 4chan are getting tired of /pol/'s shenanigans, constantly putting 4chan in the spotlight and dealing with a constant stream of new users that don't assimilate, destroying the culture of smaller boards.
Very interesting. Cloudflare have always positioned themselves as a neutral network provider and have not policed the content they serve. Many not so nice parts of the web such as DDoS-for-hire sites are protected by Cloudflare - I wonder if this signals a more general change in attitude?
Yeah, this is downright shocking to me. They make a free speech argument when it comes to censoring criminal commercial content, but political content they're OK with shutting down? Seems exactly backwards from what most companies do.
Not that I want them messing with any content, but it's quite self-evident that nazi ideology isn't somehow so insanely viral that it needs to be kept away from people rather than rightly ridiculed on its "merits". If you're fine with a hands off approach when it comes to people actively conspiring to DDoS people, you should be fine with nazis saluting each other and sucking Hitler's ghastly member or whatever it is they get up to.
They make a free speech argument when it comes to censoring criminal commercial content, but political content they're OK with shutting down?
We're talking about nazism here. Nazism is a crime in a number of countries.
Europeans hate nazis since we are reminded everywhere about what they did last time.
This is coming from someone that thinks other would classify him as clearly right-leaning i.e. values individual freedom, conservative economic policies etc. Actually it gets better because I see nazism (short for national socialism) as just an criminally evil form of normal socialism (strong national state, very little individial freedom).
> I see nazism (short for national socialism) as just an criminally evil form of normal socialism (strong national state, very little individial freedom).
The political spectrum isn't a line, it's a circle. Go far enough either direction and you wrap around somewhat to the other side, but generally by taking ideals past the point of common sense, much less usefulness.
I thought something similar before but it doesn't feel correct.
Well, Cloudflare is a US company where no political ideologies are criminal, and I'm personally of the opinion that if your political order is so fragile that it can't survive the free expression of some reprehensible ideas, you've got bigger problems than "those people are saying something awful."
Either way, like I said - I was actually fine with them being a dumb pipe. I don't think they should be acting as an arm of the law in the first place, I was just making the point that most companies usually don't make a principled stand on free speech with respect to actual crimes with identifiable victims (e.g. DDoS or even copyright infringement), but then censor someone based on their political ideology / incorrect beliefs.
Read about the paradox of tolerance. At some point you need to draw the line. This line is going to be fuzzy as hell, but if you don't you're going to end up with a ton of intolerance.
"In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I'll give you an upvote for that and continue to disagree in this particular case.
(But as I already mentioned I'm well aware that any possibility to censor speech seems likely to be abused.)
Andrew Auernheimer · @weev
A Cloudflare executed says they ditched us because "email on this is massive." So much for an anti-DDoS company. The only traffic you have to send them just has to be in the form of valid SMTP, and they'll kill your site.
https://gab.ai/weev/posts/10791974
Disappointingly, this appears to be an unusual special case, and may not reflect any larger change in policy:
> The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.
-- https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
Yes -- apparently they dropped every zone from their account, and ended rebill, so this was an administrative action.
Technically the Cloudflare TOS is written in the normal weasely way: https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/ TERMINATION "(j) any use of the Service deemed at Cloudflare’s sole discretion to be prohibited" -- so it's within their TOS rights.
This needs to be higher, if what you're saying is correct, CloudFlare didn't drop them because of who they are.
Do you have a source?
You misunderstand. It was that Cloudflare administratively closed the account, rather than that the account-holder or a third party did it.
Cloudflare also kicks people off when they get ddos'd for too long. Two days ago whe GoDady booted them, and Jester was running campaign against Daily Stormer, CloudFlares statement was that they wont bot them based on brigading flagging.
I stand corrected:
Andrew Auernheimer · @weev
A Cloudflare executed says they ditched us because "email on this is massive." So much for an anti-DDoS company. The only traffic you have to send them just has to be in the form of valid SMTP, and they'll kill your site.
https://gab.ai/weev/posts/10791974
When I saw Daily Stormer had relocated to a .ru address, I noticed that the first thing displayed upon opening the site was a full screen notice that Cloudflare was checking my browser.
I understand Cloudflare generaly trying to be a neutral provider, but if the first thing people will see when gawking at a Neo-Nazi hate site is your logo in the center of the screen, it's not a big surprise that Cloudflare decided keeping them would be bad for their PR.
On the other hand, it seems to me that minimum censorship is vital to CloudFlare's partnerships and business. It probably has many datacenters located in questionable regimes, and any hint that it performed moral discrimination would probably attract attention from govts. wanting to pressure censorship on CloudFlare, which would be an avoidable drain of resources.
I wrote a bit yesterday about Cloudflare's previous stance on this issue, which has always been that the company does not think it's its place to pick and choose whom it does business with:
https://qz.com/1053689/cloudflare-is-the-one-tech-company-st...
So far, Cloudflare has not made a statement or confirmed in any way that it has dropped Daily Stormer or any other website based on its content. If it does, I expect the confirmation will first come from Cloudflare's official blog:
https://blog.cloudflare.com/
The action would represent a major philosophical shift in the company's approach to these kinds of issues, and all we have to go on so far is a screenshot of a non-descriptive email, posted on a Gab.ai account that _appears_ to be run by the editor of a neo-Nazi website.
https://gab.ai/AndrewAnglin
I'm not suggesting that Cloudflare has or hasn't done anything, just that we don't have a ton of information on this yet.
Personally, I think what these sites are doing now(dropping support for websites that distribute nazi propaganda) is the moral thing to do.
However, I am bit worried that this seems to happen in response to social media shit storms and not because the people in charge of these companies actually just acquired a moral backbone.
Most of the people I subscribe to on Twitter are (American-) left leaning, and in the past when I saw similar shit storms happening (e.g. GamerGate, Milo Y. etc.) I always thought "Good! What these people are doing is awful, so they had it coming." But the recent James Damore thing got me a bit worried. I wasn't fully on board on what was the dominant narrative on Twitter and the like, and was a bit horrified with what conviction I saw people who were espousing a different viewpoint were treated.
I guess I worry that corporations and people now bow so easily over social media pressure that in the future they could be easily pressured to do something that morally repugnant or some such.
Or maybe that's just how society has always been, and social media just exacerbates it.
Using social pressure to silence certain viewpoints is a terrible precedent to make. Social consensus is a terrible benchmark on whether or not something is bad. It was once consensus that black people were inferior to whites. It was once consensus that socialists were the enemy, and tons of people were pushed out of the labor market for it[1].
Internet corporations bowing to social pressure to silence certain viewpoints is abhorrent. It's starting with Nazis, but chances are good that it won't end there[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
[2] https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392
how bout we just silence rhettoric directed at broad groups...regardless of who says it..oh that's pretty much everything that comes out of a Nazi's mouth...so yeah..warranted.
Also -- Nazi's aren't far from a terrorist organization should these companies also allow ISIS and Taliban sites to recruit new members on their servers? Because - - censorship!
> how bout we just silence rhettoric directed at broad groups
By that definition, we should silence any discussion of Democrats, or Republicans, or blacks, or latinos, or whatever "broad group" you'd like to suppress discussion of at the moment.
An actual good argument is that we should suppress views that may lead to terrorism. I'm pretty sure it would be easy to argue that Nazi viewpoints can be pretty terroristic. But then where do we draw the line? How do we as a society decide what is allowed and what isn't without opening up the system to exploitation by an authoritarian regime?
Wanting specific types of humans dead/removed is a not a valid viewpoint.
Less than a century ago we used artillery, machine-guns and nukes to silence the same viewpoints. A little bit of social pressure ain't so bad.
Does this active intervention based on site content put Cloudflare's DMCA safe harbor protection at risk?
Given the 9th Circuit's shenanigans I'm not sure the answer is a definite "no".
http://www.focusonthedata.com/2017/05/federal-appeals-court-...
There was a thread yesterday about the registrars dropping them, and this was the big question my mind, too.
To any lawyers and/or law-aware people who know the answer as it relates to Cloudflare, I'd also be interested to learn about how/if it applies to registrars.
Of course not. Choosing whether to retain or terminate a customer does not qualify as moderating content.
The case you're citing was a very different situation. Postings on the LiveJournal community in question, including the ones containing the infringing content, were being actively approved by LiveJournal employees and volunteers. This situation wouldn't have applied to most LiveJournal communities -- ONTD is a special case, as it's sponsored directly by LJ -- and certainly cannot apply to a web host or ISP.
Cloudflare has been accused of actively supporting hate groups, not just being a dumb, neutral pipe for them:
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-serv...
Excerpt (from May): Cloudflare, a prominent San Francisco outfit, provides services to neo-Nazi sites like The Daily Stormer, including giving them personal information on people who complain about their content.
EDIT: Also: In a post, the site’s [Daily Stormer's] architect, Andrew Auernheimer, said he had personal relationships with people at Cloudflare, and they had assured him the company would work to protect the site in a variety of ways — including by not turning over data to European courts. Cloudflare has data centers in European countries such as Germany, which have strict hate speech and privacy laws.
Company officials offered differing responses when asked about Auernheimer’s post. Kramer, Cloudflare’s general counsel, said he had no knowledge of employee conversations with Auernheimer. Later, in an email, the company said Auernheimer was a well-known hacker, and that as a result at least one senior company official “has chatted with him on occasion and has spoken to him about Cloudflare’s position on not censoring the internet.</i>
"Actively supporting" is an inaccurate characterization of that article. It alleges they were such a dumb, neutral pipe that their processes sent the personal contact information of complainants to the perpetrators.
Dumb, sure, but active support? No.
Please see my update to my comment, which I think went up after your comment.
I don't doubt weev knows a person or two at CloudFlare, but it sounds like he's relaying their default position - they don't generally moderate content and fight court orders aimed at their users.
Free speech necessarily does have limits, obviously, otherwise I could claim my ddosing your web server or my uploading of CP was simply me expressing my free speech.
Does my free speech only end when my actions infringe other laws? Or should my free speech overrule the consequences other laws? People want to claim free speech is a moral perogative, not just some words written into a Constitution, but you can't mix unlimited free speech with the real world, at some point, idealism has to give.
And I won't say GoDaddy, Google or Cloudflare necessarily should be the ones to draw that line, but someone has to. Something had to give after Charlottesville, and we're see that here.
A site to watch is Rootbocks.
They have been the fundraising site of choice for white nationalists & Nazis involved in violence. The latest fundraiser is from the Nazis involved in the murder of Heather Heyer[1]. One of those attending has cheered stabbings before[2], calling it a war they were engaged in. His name is Matthew Heimbach, he is a Nazi, and he has already been in legal trouble for assaulting someone at a Trump rally[3].
Rootbocks recently lost their original host[4] after people realized kicking Nazi's asses was as easy as contacting unknowing companies to detail who their customers were[5].
After searching around for new hosts they appeared to of moved to a different domain, now using Rootbocks.co instead of .com until they are able to migrate the .com domain.
These types are to be treated like sites pushing malware, their hosts are to be contacted and pressured before their IP space can be tainted by clusters of Nazis & others promoting terrorism and violent attacks. If clickfraud is serious enough to pressure hosts into removing users then Nazis urging the purging of 'Jews and genetic filth' via violent means surely counts.
[1] https://rootbocks.com/projects/unite-right-legal-defense-fun...
[2] http://archive.is/ZBOOa
[3] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-...
[4] https://twitter.com/RootbocksDotCom/status/89721410991314124...
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024767
I have no problem with this since they're a private company and they can do that with their own services. Dropping an easy target like some racist idiots is one thing... yet Cloudflare apparently has no problem hosting Ripoff Report, a company whose business model is entirely about defaming people online and then extorting them to remove the content. This shittiest of shitty companies that has real-world devastating consequences for people does a lot more damage than some clowns on a racist forum.
Where can we report other sites to Cloudflare that we feel they should stop supporting with their services for ethical reasons?
https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form
Please reserve this for actual nazis unless you want everyone to report anything from PETA and Greenpeace to who knows.
There are AntiFa, BLM and even ISIS sites on Cloudflare.
As much as I think antifa are criminals they aren't conspiring to kill all of us.
They sure have less humor on their web pages than Daily Stormes has.
And dont forget antifa painted graffiti in Berkeley saying "Liberaly get the bullet too"
Oh and New Jersey DHS recently declared them domestic terrorist group.
what does humor have to do with it?
For Cloudflare, this is more about PR than morality. The company wants to attract business and kicking these nazis off will make Cloudflare seem like a good company in the eyes of many, while only nazis will see it in a negative light. Retaining DS will do the opposite. There are many more non-nazis than nazis, so from a business perspective it makes sense. Occasionally, business goals and morals do align.
And with net neutrality being attacked ironically by trump, ISPs might start doing the same.
This just seems weird given their previous stances, but it’s their network so it’sfine they did it, but they have lost all protections of an ISP and became a curator. I stopped using them, and I can’t pretend that I would’ve contributed anything to their bottom line, but I know my future clients won’t either.
> they have lost all protections of an ISP and became a curator
YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, etc. ban people without losing their safe harbor provisions. Not sure why you'd think it's any different in CloudFlare's situation.
Maybe not legally but obviously morally at least in my eyes. I think we should protect all content, but I’m not saying it’s illegal for them to drop Stormer.
Private businesses refusing to do business with Nazis? Great!
When did this become a moral gray area?
The problem is that if the political winds were blowing the other way it could be your favoured group whose beliefs are deemed beyond the pale. We set a dangerous precedent when we outlaw speech we don't like.
This isn't outlawing. As the GP noted it's a private company.
I have no obligation to be part of the platform for a position I don't support. It's not censorship when I don't give my support. It is when I try to exert control over others. It is when the government exerts that control over us all.
Outlawing, censorship, call it what you like - it's about removing someone's right to communicate. The fact that it's a private company should worry us more.
> it's about removing someone's right to communicate.
Exactly. Their rights. No rights were affected here. They were given permission to use cloudfare, and that was revoked. The fact they can still go somewhere else proves that no rights were affected.
Doesn't the ceo / admins of cloudflare have their 'freedom' to choose what goes through their servers? Censorship / Freedom of speech does NOT include companies --it just states the government can't stop free speech (except in some cases like child porn)... but companies aren't the government... stop thinking they are held to the same standard as the constitution.
The thing is, if my favoured group specifically revolved around oppression of groups of people (ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, what have you), I would deserve it.
This isn't a tough definition. I'm fine with republicans hating "lefties", broncos hating raiders, xbox hating playstation. When hate is directed at non-chosen traits, that's the red line.
Am I crazy? I feel like I am with all this defense of literal nazis (flags, signs, salute, speech and all).
What gets me is that Nazi ideology is itself violent.
This isn't a disagreement about taxes or social programs, it's an ideology that led to the Holocaust.
Last weekend's terrorist attack on the anti-racist protest, leading to the murder of one anti-racist, tells us exactly where this is going again.
That's what makes all the "well free speech" stuff seem so hollow and stupid to me--we know what's at the other end of the Nazi road, and it's nowhere we want to go.
Agree.
You could also argue this from the "shouting fire in a crowed room" argument - free speech doesn't protect that.
Actually spreading nazi ideologogy is even more dangerous.
So, if I were a member of isis and demanding death to all infidels..on my website..cloudflare should be cool w/ that?
Cloudflare provide their service to ISIS sites
The sites you mention are not utilitarian services as Cloudflare or a DNS provider or a hoster.
I really dislike these events.
Each of them owe their continuing existence to the DMCA's safe harbor provisions.
cloudflare also kicks people off when they get ddos'd for too long
context appears to be: Cloudflare removing The Daily Stormer, some kind of far right website?
note: not particularly keen to research what it is, just going off what I can gather from the twitter comments.
It's a neo-nazi, white supremacist website.
Yep, and in this case it is actual neo-nazis, not just annoying or politically incorrect people.
Like, legitimate seig-heil, gas-the-jews nazis.
The site is a hate site for neo-Nazis. In the wake of the recent Nazi march, they were kicked off their previous registrar (GoDaddy), then off Google, and settled on Cloudflare. A lot of folks (myself included) assumed that CF would allow them to remain, as they have with many sites in the past. However, it appears that something has convinced them that it's not worth it to be the facilitator of a mouthpiece for genocide.
It is a self-identified neo-Nazi website. It takes its name from the Nazi propaganda "Der Stürmer". You can read more about it on the SPLC page for its founder: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...
Thanks for providing more context (and everyone else). I'm honestly speechless after reading that.
This is a Nazi site that regularly urged on violence against 'leftists & Jews' then later after Charlotteville called the Nazi's murder victim a slut.
If they broke the law then each instance should be dealt with. We are not on the precipice of war, no matter what the MSM would have you think - until we are I think the tactics of war i.e. censorship are not the answer.
>We are not on the precipice of war, no matter what the MSM would have you think
It is not "MSM" stating anything like this but the Nazis.
This is Matthew Heimbach, the Nazi who attacked someone during a Trump rally[1], cheering on the stabbings of others calling it a war: http://archive.is/ZBOOa
They believe they are at war -right now-. This is not "MSM" but the Nazis themselves stating this after engaging in stabbings. Matthew Heimbach was also at Charlottesville[2] as documented by Vice.
Nazis who overtly state they are at war with others engaged in yet another violent attack, this one large scale enough to capture "MSM" attention.
>I think the tactics of war i.e. censorship are not the answer.
Again, this is not "MSM" causing this or furthering it, it is the Nazis. Their tactics of include censorship, and things like stabbings/ramming attacks.
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-...
[2] https://youtu.be/P54sP0Nlngg?t=10m11s
Ok, this is a valid viewpoint as well as long as you find a way to do it.
For me though it is even simpler: advocating nazism means you are planning to kill.
I wonder if Stormer should push to e.g. ZeroNet. Which is a cool project I should check out more often. Unfortunately, there's not much content of any kind.
Is this a reliable source?
Yes
The poster is a Twitter-verified journalist for a major news site. I've issues with Salon's journalism at times, but it's at least a fairly reputable source.
No. It's a guy with an itchy tweet finger who wants to make headlines first and ask questions later.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922
Matthew Sheffield's belief in the claim was not based on hard evidence at the time, but rather based entirely on two tweets from white supremacists known for trolling. He parroted the claim in the off-chance that it might be true. He's a gambler, not a reliable source.
Fair point and I agree that the tweet on it's own didn't sufficiently back up the claim. I posted the link in response to your comment for other readers who might stumble on this discussion.
In my case I did research the claim on my own and verified with other sources prior to submitting, as I certainly don't want to participate in spreading false information :)
I'm surprised and impressed by this. Cloudflare has historically been a company which wants to pretend it's a dumb pipe from content to users, but the content is coming from them in every way that matters -- in particular, every method for figuring out how to address problematic content will lead you to speaking with Cloudflare. At least they supposedly don't pass your contact info back to their clients anymore.
Why is Matthew Sheffield asserting this so strongly? Did Cloudflare make a public statement indicating they deliberately stepped in to drop the site? I can't find one. The content of the tweet merely makes it seem like the guy's plan simply expired and he failed to renew it.
If Cloudflare were actually interested in avoiding alt-right dumpster fires, then I think they would also stop protecting sites like 4chan and 8ch.
I've often wondered how much of 4chan is actually alt-right and how much is using it as an affect for the lulz?
Also known as the Alf Garnett effect. When you're telling jokes about killing The Jews you're probably just a nazi, not some edgy ironic satirist.
So the thought policing extends to humour now does it?
Apparently so!
Your comment makes no sense based on the current conversation, or if it does, you didn't provide enough context to explain and contribute.
At least one downvote was explicitly because of that, and nothing to do with your position.
I get your point, but I'm not sure if it still applies if the joke isn't relying on support for your position, but vehement opposition.
And I mean that in the literal sense of I'm really not sure. This type of humor, if not new, seems to have at least been extremely fringe in the past.
Joke policing is absolutely wrong and one of best indicators at judging how authoritarian people are. Everyone who supports this or pretends that jokes are serious hate speech with intention to suppress someones right for free speech is worst kind of human.
It's not joke policing to assume some values of an individual based on their speech. It may make people incorrect, but as long as they are making personal decisions, comedians alienating audiences is nothing new. As long as the comedian isn't forced (actually forced, not just incentivized by poor reactions) to stop telling the joke, no censorhip is taking place, and the problem is self correcting.
Many consider whole Daily Stormer webpage as satire. Majority of their readers read it for its creative but controversial humor.
Twitter sat ladies that cry bullied this big IT companies to deny service for Daily Stormer caused webpage to not be accessible. People who enjoyed this style of humor cant enjoy it anymore. This is very definition of censorship.
Cat ladies not visiting web page would be enough to not hurt their feelings. Them going out of their way to prevent others to enjoy this is very authoritarian and one of reasons why tragedies happen.
> Twitter sat ladies that cry bullied this big IT companies to deny service for Daily Stormer caused webpage to not be accessible.
It's no different than a club cancelling a comedy booking because they don't want that type of comedy at their club, because they don't think their patrons will support it.
> People who enjoyed this style of humor cant enjoy it anymore. This is very definition of censorship.
No, it's not. They can go somewhere else. They can find a different provider, or publish a pamphlet or go to a street corner. You know what it means as a comedian when you can't book a club? Not enough people are interested in what you have to say to make it worthwhile to give you a pulpit, or at least not enough people to offset the distaste you cause in others. That's not censorship, that's social pressure.
Censorship is about ability and rights. Nobody is restricting the ability or rights of the daily stormer. It's still legal to post what they want, and they have avenues to do so (with enough money, they could become their own host). Freedom of speech is just as much about letting the daily stormer say what they want as it is letting cloudfare and others decide they don't want to support it.
You mean
>how much of /pol/ is actually alt-right and how much is using it as an affect for the lulz
A lot of people on 4chan are getting tired of /pol/'s shenanigans, constantly putting 4chan in the spotlight and dealing with a constant stream of new users that don't assimilate, destroying the culture of smaller boards.