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Comment by andrewinardeer | Hacker News Reader

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andrewinardeer

CloudFlare can terminate any account for any, or no reason as per their ToS.

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-au/website-terms/

Hackernews can do the same to your account on their site.

https://www.ycombinator.com/legal#tou

It is what you agree to when you use someone's service.

Pretty much every online service has this clause buried away in their ToS.

Twitter deplatformed an ex-POTUS and he went and built his own platform.

CloudFlare is well within their rights to do so. It might not be "right" to you, but it is their right to do so and they pulled the trigger on KF.

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No one is arguing about the legal merits, so these kinds of comments are just noise. Like the room is having a discussion and you are not engaging in the actual discussion and just telling everyone "It doesn't matter because Cloudflare can do whatever they want anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

Yeah sure -- you're right, but you're avoiding the real topic.

What do you perceive as the "real" topic here?

That CF is trigger happy?

That KF has put forth their argument and CF is being dishonest?

That free speech is being curtailed?

I also, from my perspective, see a lot of "noise" in this discussion. Just as you see noise in my previous comment and that's okay.

Whether you are Team CF, Team KF or a neutral the fact is CF has pulled the trigger for their own reasons and that's that.

We use a world wide network that started with high hopes for openess and freedom, it got monetized, coalesced into a number of large players who proprierized their forks of FOSS standards (IRC == Discord, XMPP == WhatsApp, etc) and we all know governments around the world has allowed this to happen.

Agreed. Plus, it's not like CF "deplatformed" KF as suggested by others. CF simply decided that this customer wasn't worth the trouble and pulled the plug on the services they provide. Their services being a means to anonymize their hosting provider to the general public and DDoS protection. KF can go elsewhere -- hell, look at PirateBay and what they've done to stay online despite similar issues and much more aggressive attempts to "deplatform."

The argument is about whether it's "morally" ("ethically"?) right for Cloudflare to terminate services after their public stance. Yeah, I get Cloudflare can do whatever they want, but I want to know if I can trust Cloudflare to not go back on their public positions.

Even as someone who never visited KF before this saga, you must admit that this campaign against KF is coordinated and that you can't expect either side to be completely honest. It's already been documented that Keffal's side has been either dishonest or has strongly exaggerated details during parts of the campaign and her origin story really doesn't help her case. I've also seen some of the rhetoric coming from KF, and it's incredibly toxic and understandable why someone wouldn't want it online.

Cloudflare originally voiced their support (albeit not mentioning KF by name) for offering security services to _any_ customer -- a stance I can understand and can support. But it's difficult for me to keep supporting CF because it took less than 1 week for them to go back on their public stance. It also doesn't help that CF was not more specific about the threat made that made them change their mind. It would help me be more on their side instead of it just looking like a copout.

If I had to choose a bucket, I'd lean more into the neutral category, because this situation is just so incredibly complicated and nuanced if you've looked deeper than the news stories. I don't think a coordinated social media campaign started by a leader with an incredibly dubious history should win outright, and I can completely understand CF's position of not wanting to be affiliated with KF anymore.

> you must admit that this campaign against KF is coordinated and that you can't expect either side to be completely honest

Stating the obvious. Coordination is a prerequisite for any campaign/change movement, and no one is perfect.

But on coordination: I began advocating against CF after listening to @lizthegrey [1], a leader of the campaign, lay out the evidence of harassment - not exclusive to keffals - going back years [2]. (I mildly trust keffals by proxy, but I too am unsure of her history.)

My involvement of message amplification was purely voluntary and I received zero direction from anyone. The new friends I made along the way seem to be in the same boat. This was organic political discourse over an issue that finally came to a head.

[1] https://twitter.com/lizthegrey [2] https://twitter.com/lizthegrey/status/1560771369134170113

> No one is arguing about the legal merits

Demonstrably untrue. There are literally dozens of posts here in this very ycombinator discussion explaining loudly and often that none of the kiwifarms content was illegal, never mind discussions in other places.

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