Comment by eyelidlessness

The only thing that bothers me about this decision is the fact that they made a wrong-headed announcement of principle that calls the decision into question.

Free speech absolutism which extends beyond legal protection, and which demands private organizations and individuals to materially protect and service all speech is hopelessly naive. Volunteering to do it is past the point of absurdity.

By engaging in that absurdity, they undermined the credibility of their motives making this decision today. They knew there’s a red line, and if at least two adults were in a room before the previous statement was issued it would be almost impossible to believe that they hadn’t discussed that red line. That knowledge should have guided them against making any statement at all, because even clarifying their red lines would create perverse incentives.

I don’t begrudge Cloudflare their principles, nor their decision to deviate from them in the face of reality. I also don’t doubt their motives as written in both statements, though I think they may wildly underestimate how much trust and good will that requires… and how little reason they have to assume it’s present. I do personally wish they’d reached this decision sooner, as a non-binary person who could certainly be targeted by KF campaigns. But I have a strong free expression instinct too, and a set of privileges of my own which sometimes delay my recognition of real present danger that I don’t experience directly.

If any Cloudflare staff is reading this comment: you made the right decision. Please try to use caution when such a decision is potentially on the horizon but hasn’t yet been made. Just as real human lives are at stake when you provide (or don’t provide) services to any particular customer, real human lives are at stake when you damage your credibility making that decision.