How Cloudflare Helps Serve Up Hate on the Web | Hacker News Reader

How Cloudflare Helps Serve Up Hate on the Web

propublica.org

11 pointskanamekun7 comments

Good to have the 1st Amendment protecting our free speech from government interference. But why any individual our company thinks that helping to promote hate speech has anything at all to do with free speech is beyond me. The right to choose what not to publish is as much an act of free speech as any.

CloudFlare doesn't promote anything, it just helps sites survive DDoS attacks (which are illegal).

This piece seems to be needlessly focused on one part of the stack rather than asking the broader question of what role commercial organizations should play in suppressing voices that society no longer wants to hear.

> it just helps sites survive DDoS attacks

That's false. CloudFlare also passes along the personal contact information of people who complain about the hate sites. I agree CloudFlare tries to hide behind the "we are only providing a service" excuse, but it is their choice to put blinders on about who they provide services to. According to the article, the only reason they shy away from providing services to ISIS is because it's illegal. If it were legal, CloudFlare would help ISIS... kill and terrorize the world. That says it all for me.

That's required for transparency and they indicate as such directly on their abuse page: https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form

This kind of thinking will drive service providers to invade customer privacy as a risk management strategy. How could Amazon, for example, allow customers to operate private workloads if society expects them to police said workloads for undesirable conduct?

"That's required for transparency"

Other companies handle abuse reports just fine without ever having to give away the identity of the whistle blower.

> This kind of thinking

A public website is not a private workload. You are comparing apples and oranges. And in any case, Amazon prohibits offensive content in their acceptable use policy. https://aws.amazon.com/aup/. If someone reported you for unacceptable use, count on Amazon invading your "privacy".

> But why any individual our company thinks that helping to promote hate speech has anything at all to do with free speech is beyond me

"Helping to promote" meaning what? Letting someone have the freedom to speak, or the freedom to own property to post speech, etc? How do you NOT think free speech has something to do with defining speech you don't like? SMH

Individuals and companies in the USA have always been allowed to suppress speech they do not agree with. You are not obligated to employ someone whose speech you disagree with. You are not obligated to give them a place to speak. You are not obligated to provide internet services. The 1st Amendment only protects us from government interference, and rightly so. If you are an ass in life and everyone refuses to help you spread your bad ideas, that's called the consequences of being an ass. And if you think you don't define speech you don't like, then please leave your phone number so I can call you with my 8 hour sales pitch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com