...oh wait, yes, they have and they will again. We've given them the power to censor and with the power increasingly comes the onus to do so, to satisfy the political whims of an elite that doesn't like anything counter to their narrative.
One of the greatest strengths of the United States is a belief that speech, particularly political speech, is sacred. A website, of course, is nothing but speech... A website is speech. It is not a bomb. There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain.
When people started asking why Cloudflare hosts racist and neo-nazi content, they eventually relented from their free speech position and stopped hosting one called The Daily Stormer. The CEO wrote a big blog post about how what he was doing is bad for the internet and free speech but he's going to do it anyways (I'm paraphrasing, read original words here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/). Since then, they've stopped working with a number of other sites due to content, like 8chan.
I think it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of situation for Cloudflare. They weren't really looking for political battles, but ended up having them anyways. I think this Wired article adds some interesting perspective: https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/
I believe that number is 1, and that the only two sites they've shut off service to are Daily Stormer and 8chan.
>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.
I am no fan of Cloudflare; as an expat, their service just makes my life increasingly frustrating as I have to go through hoops and perform circus tricks just to look at the bouquet selection selection of a local florist if I want to send flowers to my Mom on Mothers' Day, never mind having the audacity to look at local news sites.
That being said, I get their position if places like Daily Stormer were making invalid claims of support/association with the company. I'd cut them off too without a moments hesitation, since Cloudflare's model is anything but implicit support of the sites it hosts/protects.
I don't see a good-faith effort from Daily Stormer in that post, I see an attempt to use a good-faith effort from CloudFlate to legitimize a bad-faith effort from Daily Stormer; and this is not okay. This is not a free-speech issue from my perspective, and instead, it's a bad-actor continuing to act in bad-faith in response to the good-will offered by Cloudflare.
Again, I do feel Cloudflare nowadays is trash -- I am a US expat and I just close the tab when I hit the Cloudflare redirect or Google Captcha on absolutely senseless pages. (Neverminding my frustration with US corporations blocking me completely, as if the sweet sweet deals at Home Depot or Target are too good for my current country of residence...)
But, that is a separate issue of individuals accessing standard HTTP(s) pages in an expected way versus a rogue group claiming implicit support from Cloudflare to their cause. I totally get Cloudflare's response in the latter.
I used to be a schoolteacher, and no matter what bad or false thing a student said about me, I wouldn't fail them as retribution or to prove them wrong or anything. That would be abuse of power.
Might is right?
A business has no such constraints. If I go to a bar and start telling people that the owner is actually a racist, I’m going to get kicked out even if I want to buy more drinks. That’s not “might is right”; it’s the owner not wanting to do business with an asshole.
If The Daily Stormer had made that claim about some unrelated business, it wouldn't suffer any such consequences because that other business wouldn't have any power over it. If only powerful players can punish weak players and people call that "fair", then that's kind of the definition of "might is right".
The bar analogy isn't quite the same because there are many other bars so the kicked out customer doesn't suffer much loss. If it's the only bar in town and people really need that service, then it would be morally wrong for the owner to use his power to settle personal disputes. Everybody would be living in fear of being banned and would conform their behavior to his demands. That's why monopolies are often regulated to prevent such abuses of power.
But that’s exactly what happened. The Daily Stormer got kicked out of Cloudflare’s bar, and then they found a new one. What’s the issue here?
> If The Daily Stormer had made that claim about some unrelated business, it wouldn't suffer any such consequences because that other business wouldn't have any power over it.
Even if cloudflare was equally sized, they probably would have shut down services over that. Don't misrepresent your business partners if you want them to stay business partners.
> If it's the only bar in town and people really need that service
It's not the only DDoS protection, and most sites don't need significant DDoS protection.
This was not true as far as I know at least. I heard that some random dude in their forum made the claim.
That's not entirely accurate (though I could understand how it seems that way). From the article:
"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."
So the issue wasn't what CF was hosting for DS. Rather, it was DS speaking on behalf of CF. In some ways, that's like taking away ones first amendment rights: I have the right to speak for myself, you don't have the right to speak for me.
While it's nuanced, I feel it's fair. And while I'm not some big defender of CF, I feel in this case, they handled it without compromising their 1st Amendment ideals.
I don't doubt this, but do you have more info on what you're referring to on "they have"? I'm a bit out of the loop on that.
> 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. [0]
That's in a blog post which is a follow up to a leaked memo. [1]
[0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
[1] https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...
Yes, because he is a troll... he got exactly the response he wanted, infamy and people still talking about it years later.
[0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/
And the proper response from CloudFlare should have been: No we don't, but since we're ethical (unlike these assholes), we'll still provide them service.
Literally no one believed then, or believes now, that CF are crypto-Nazis. But we all know they don't actually have any kind of moral or ethical virtue, and will fold for a common troll. Oops.
I don't entirely disagree with it but it's censorship nonetheless.
The same people that got 8chan shut down also hate 4chan, and want to see it silenced.
It has to do with the memes that come out of 4chan, mocking a certain crowd of people for being emotionally fragile and over-reactionary to everything...
Personally, I don't think free speech requires providing services to neo-nazis, but I get the nuances of the case.