Comment by orf
4 years ago
Pretty crazy turnaround. I really liked the pretty clear and reasoned abuse policy[1] they put out recently, and I don't envy the position they are in. On one hand, yes, this specific site is terrible. But they are trying very hard to not become the arbiters of what is terrible and what isn't terrible, and I respect them for that.
It's not an easy line to take, and other companies like Google and Facebook have not made that same choice to stay neutral.
> Some argue that we should terminate these services to content we find reprehensible so that others can launch attacks to knock it offline. That is the equivalent argument in the physical world that the fire department shouldn't respond to fires in the homes of people who do not possess sufficient moral character
1. https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...
I genuinely believe that it's entirely possible to be seen as very neutral and also just ban nazi sites, troll farms, etc. because you choose not to do business with them.
"Neutral", maybe, but their stance goes beyond neutral. They clearly position themselves as "infrastructure". HNers should appreciate this more, as it's often a recurring theme here to talk about ISPs as infrastructure.
Infrastructure doesn't privately discriminate, period. Water/Electricity utilities don't cut the supply to rapists and terrorists just because they're rapists and terrorists. They cut it when law enforcement ask them to.
This conflicting discussion is better had on this level: "Should Cloudflare be considered infrastructure, or not?". It's not straightforward.
> They clearly position themselves as "infrastructure". HNers should appreciate this more, as it's often a recurring theme here to talk about ISPs as infrastructure.
That's trying to have cake and eat it too. I am highly sympathetic to operating like infrastructure, and I would love to see regulatory bodies take this up as an issue to try and figure out. What I am not sympathetic to is having a documented history of not acting like a utility, but then puffing up chests and saying that they are a utility only when it happens to serve them.
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If rapists and terrorists used their water or electrical service as a primary means to rape and terrorize, then those infrastructure services would find themselves feeling justified pressure to develop terms of service prohibiting that conduct, and to cut off the rapists and terrorists who violated those terms.
"Infrastructure" has the luxury of being value-neutral. Cloudflare wishes that were also true of it, frequently and publicly, to no avail.
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Are airlines not a form of infrastructure? Because they make extra-legal decisions on banning customers, usually based on obnoxious behavior.
They’re also private infrastructure unlike water/power, which is the position that cloudflare is in.
I don't care for artificial binary categories. Thinking by analogy or by category always confuses the situation. Evaluate each unique situation on its on own idiosyncrasies from first principles and by studying the unique details.
I think what you’re saying is true for water and electricity, but if you were to talk about phone lines I’m not sure that argument holds anymore. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of phone numbers being disconnected for abusive behaviour.
> Water/Electricity utilities don't cut the supply to rapists and terrorists
These services are not typically used in the act of raping or terrorising someone.
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> and also just ban nazi sites, troll farms, etc.
Question: How many nazi sites, troll farms, etc, is Cloudflare still providing services to? I bet you the answer is not zero.
We can debate the merits of a consistently applied policy of "we won't provide our services to nazis/racists/trolls/etc" – but it doesn't appear that is Cloudflare's actual policy.
It appears their actual policy is "we will happily provide services to anybody, nazis/racists/trolls/etc included – until the social media heat gets too hot for us to handle, at which point we will drop the individual site which is the target of that controversy, but continue offering our services to all the other sites like it"
As much as I don't like nazi's and troll farms, I believe they have the right to internet service until they start using it to threaten others with violence.
This said, this will always lead to the nazi's getting banned. At the end of the day they are incapable of not calling for violence. It is their modus operandi.
I genuinely believe that it's entirely possible to be seen as very neutral and also just ban anyone I disagree with or who even just annoys me.
Being neutral with Nazis is supporting them, period. We've seen in 1933-45 where staying neutral or appeasing them leads to.
Nazis need to be fought everywhere, otherwise their cancerous ideology just grows.
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A nice hack for advancing a hypocritical political position on HN: just say
>I genuinely believe [contradictory proposition].
That way, anyone who was to question the value of said belief or the wisdom of sharing it with others could be construed as having engaged in some form of "personal attack".
Its so weird how everyone we don't like is a nazi.
Your opinion appears to be popular though. Through enough pressure we have successfully removed ddos protection from a site that people on here hope gets ddos'ed.
One day, this conversation and this thread will be remembered. How there was a period where everyone celebrated corporations silencing individuals or allowing mobs to ddos them. What happened to our internet.
or will they remember how people appealed to corporations trying to force them to provide services…I suppose we shall see
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> also just ban nazi sites, troll farms, etc. because you choose not to do business with them.
This is literally the opposite of neutral.
I don't get this constant need for mental gymnastics. Just say you believe in censorship.
There can be limits on speech and free speech. There are many places where we've agreed there should be limits on speech, for instance it's illegal to lie under oath, or to threaten someone with physical harm, or to falsely advertise.
It's not black and white.
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Is it censorship? Or freedom of association?
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I read comments like this and it reminds me just how much critical thinking has been stripped away from people via their social media over consumption.
Did you forget when a duly-elected president of a Democratic nation was deplatformed under your same “easy no brainer” principles?
Yeah, yeah, that’s different, that guy sucked (is a Nazi even?).
What happens though when you don’t think he sucks or it’s a to a marginalized group?
You can’t understand why these ideas are controversial?
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Are they taking KF money? CF DDoS protection is free.
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Are they a paying customer in the first place?
Most major sites started out as being pro-free speech, and ultimately bowed to public pressure in removing various forms of content. There is little reason to assume that cloudflare won't ultimately do the same. It's admirable that they are trying to avoid becoming censors, but I predict it will ultimately be futile.
You're too charitable. They are already censors and have been for a long time, but talk disingenuously and hypocritically about it every time they pull this shit off in public.
> I really liked the pretty clear and reasoned abuse policy[1]
Except it's neither. The way they try to brand their caching reverse proxy as only a "security service" instead of a "hosting service" is absurd and not based on any well reasoned logic.
How ? They aren't hosting the server and aren't hosting the backend itself.
So what if they aren’t hosting the backend? How do you even define “the backend”? Is it the PHP frontend code serving the site? Or the database server?
Cloudflare definitely was hosting the content through their CDN. That’s hosting, there’s really no reasonable debate to be had about this.
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> But they are trying very hard to not become the arbiters of what is terrible and what isn't terrible
I don't think so. "Trying very hard" would entail doing the actually hard thing which is to continue to provide service to the controversial website. That's the only action that would allow them to stay true to the principles they claim to believe in.
Censoring kiwifarms is the easy way out. It reveals exactly what Cloudflare has become: arbiters of which sites are allowed to stay up on the internet.
Keeping them on the service is also making a decision - that they don't think they're terrible enough to remove them.
Correct. There is a status quo bias that infects people's thinking, as if deciding not to deplatform somebody isn't itself a decision. Similar fallacy that people bring to the Trolley Problem which can maximize the number of dead people.
I'm thinking someone got a reality check from a lawyer and got cold feet real quick.