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Comment by mhoad | Hacker News Reader

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They likely (IANAL) had a much firmer legal footing in those cases.

Also, I should add: I don't think Cloudflare is letting IPFS or the IPFS movement or whatever down, here. The protocol was deliberately designed not to force users to touch illegal or otherwise "hot" content against their knowledge or against their wills, and on the other side of that coin it doesn't provide them much to hide behind legally or otherwise if they do host it. That question is effectively out of scope for base IPFS, and Cloudflare isn't doing anything unexpected or especially treacherous in complying with copyright takedown requests.

Nazism is not illegal in the US. Copyright infringement is. Easier to stand up for your principles if government doesn't threaten you directly.

What I don't get is why all the tech companies don't put their money where their mouth is - and do the same that MAFIAA, radical Christians, Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Tobacco etc are doing: massively donate to young, tech focused aspiring politicians' campaigns, donate to the Democratic Party (or progressive parties in other countries), and otherwise engage in barely legal bribery.

We don't really need to wonder why we have octogenarians with zero clue how the Internet works in power (every Congressional investigation about anything tech is enough meme fodder for the rest of the year)... the tech industry might be absurdly large in financial terms, but it is a complete joke in political lobbying.

Because they don't care at all about progressive politics and their mouth just says what the most vocal people want to hear. It's all just woke washing.

Am I misreading your comment or are you seriously stating that the tech industry doesn't lavish support on Democrats?

On the 2022 midterm campaigns, the only tech-focused donor to Democrats was Sam Bankman-Fried of all people [1].

[1] https://thehill.com/lobbying/3720141-here-are-the-biggest-do...

Not every tech worker is a billionaire, or even millionaire. I would say more of the tech workers donating are doing it in much smaller amount, but the aggregate is likely fairly high.

That said most VCs aren't progressive, they're libertarian (until their bank crashes).

And yet they tried to take down KiwiFarms for less.

Who is “they” in that context? Cloudflare? There was no CF or internet in the 30s, I don’t understand your comment.

Man.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5yxxg/cloudflare-is-protect...

Thanks. Wasn’t aware of this.

- Cloudflare offers hosting to everyone, including content such as this: Cloudflare are the Nazi fascists of the internet!

- Cloudflare makes decisions who to offer hosting to, refusing to offer hosting to Nazis and the like: Cloudflare are the Nazi fascists of the internet!

No matter what they do, they can never win; someone is always going to complain loudly.

One thing they can certainly be criticized for is having no consistent criteria for deciding who or what to provide service to.

What would that even look like? There are far too many variables and nuances to have a comprehensive set of written rules. That's why we have judges.

For example, "we will serve anyone who will pay, as long as we don't break the law in doing so". That seems easy enough to do, I'd say. If you can't get a service provider to tell you in clear terms under what circumstances they may cut you off, they're not a provider you should rely on.

That would be situation one from the earlier comment, and would end with "Cloudflare are the Nazi fascists of the internet!" from some people.

It's also what the Cloudflare policy is, AFAIK, barring a few notable extreme exceptions which can be counted on one hand – a miniscule portion of their user base. I think it's too strong to say "they're not a provider you should rely on".

If there are exceptions then they're not consistent.

A common symptom of having too much power

They also hire nazis

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