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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

I'm the last person to defend Cloudflare. They do a fair bit of crappy things (treat TOR poorly amongst them).

But, we do have freedom of speech in the US. And while that doesn't mean everyone has to give you a platform for that speech, it does mean a content provider needs to decide between being a judge or allowing everything.

Sure, Neo-Nazis seem like an easy case - nobody likes Nazis. But, what about people calling for a boycott of Israel? Or what about critical political speech? Should Cloudflare (or anyone) be in the business of making judgements about those kinds of content and if they're allowed or not?

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I think the more important issue in here is that Cloudflare forward the personal information of anyone who complains about the site to the site owner. Other major providers don't do this, and it's not clear that people filing complaints know what they're getting into.

So, if you go to Cloudflare's abuse form (https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form) they do state:

> CloudFlare will notify the site owner and, where appropriate, the web hosting provider for the site in question.

That being said, it's in body sized font, in a huge block of text, and if I wasn't looking for it, I wouldn't see it.

So, it's "stated" but probably not very clear that abuse reports may be forwarded. As a webmaster/previous ISP, I expect (again, prior knowledge here) that abuse complaints will be forwarded. But, does the average person? Probably not.

My $0.02 - Cloudflare states it, but they need to make it much more clear if they intend to keep the policy, or possibly revise the policy. However, bad UI seems a weak reason to vilify them.

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Edit: Actually, they state it twice - including right before the submit button in larger font size. It's pretty hard to miss.

I don't know where the expectation of anonymous complaint came from.

If you complain about a business or person, you ought to expect that they'll be allowed to defend themselves against you.

Especially if you complain to some 3rd party who already has an existing relationship with them... why would one expect preferential treatment?

Regarding your comment about Tor, I hope my recent comment on the subject can make you more skeptical of that claim: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14251007

I trust Tor more: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/trouble-cloudflare

You also mention Cloudflare hosting onion addresses, which is possibly the worst-case-scenario. Can you imagine Cloudbleed on Tor?

You sure "nobody" likes Nazis? They sure seem to be enjoying a nationalist resurgence lately for nobody liking them. Even the President wont expressly disavow them anymore. :(

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