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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

I was all set to write a comment about how I'm not OK with private companies deciding who can exist on the internet - but then I remembered that all CloudFlare does is caching and DDOS protection.

Without CloudFlare the website would still be accessible on the Internet. And to me that makes a big difference.

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The implication is that Keffals and friends will DDoS the site out of existence, as they have apparently tried to do numerous times. This is of course criminal but goes unmentioned.

Requests made as part of a ddos are as free as any other form of speech. A lot of people don't like to admit it, but it's true.

Is it? I'm one of those free speech people, I think, but I do recognize that some 'speech' is harassment when combined with action. Not because of the content, but because you're intending to disrupt somebody, such as following them around all day and yelling. DDoS seems like that. Doesn't it? I mean you're not even saying anything. It's like saying throwing rocks at a window is speech. "What? I'm just trying to say I don't like you. Speech!"

As an absolutist, this line of thinking just doesn't have a stopping point. Speech acts are inherently violent. There is no line to draw.

Yeah, i'm guessing you have no idea what violence actually means.. It must be pretty privileged to be able to hold such a view of things.

Absolutely wrong, DDoS attacks are illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, section 1030(a)(5):

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R46536.pdf

There's a lot of things we should be able to say but can't. Confusing what we can speak and should be able to speak is an error in thinking.

It's not like the IP range of the origin servers isn't known. It's more that Cloudflare is the one thing that makes the site financially viable.

The owner of Kiwifarms, Joshua Moon has written an article about why being dropped by CloudFlare would he a huge threat to the site [0]

[0]: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-10-28/where-sidewalk-end...

I am so disappointed in this species. I mean, I was before I read that too.

This article was extremely worth reading, thank you for posting.

You are aware that DDOSAs are illegal, and that KF doesn't do anything legally even questionable right?

CF is an infrastructure service company and thus are the very LAST people who should be picking and choosing.. not if we want the net to keep working freely.

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