[HN Gopher] Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach
___________________________________________________________________
Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach
Author : jgrahamc
Score : 368 points
Date : 2022-08-31 13:13 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.cloudflare.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.cloudflare.com)
| s_ting765 wrote:
| For how long will the majority of internet users be policed by
| special interest groups though? How far along till we all noticed
| it's gone too far?
|
| There are minority groups that propagate general hate too only
| that their brand of hate is sanctioned. Cloudflare can't make it
| up for whatever loopholes that exist outside the law. I wouldn't
| expect any company to go any further than required either.
| 3fcc8rQD8qPJhcd wrote:
| Really disappointed to learn that Cloudflare contributes
| disproportionately to hate speech and misinformation
|
| https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/19292/1906...
|
| Seems like KF is not an isolated incident but a trend which has
| been established for some years now
| zamalek wrote:
| The thing about KF is that it _does_ violate their regulations:
|
| > including content that discloses sensitive personal
| information
|
| It must be a case of somebody knowing somebody, or somebody
| high up being a member of KF.
| deepdriver wrote:
| As others have stated for that's their ToS for hosting, not
| DDoS protection
| Grue3 wrote:
| So, Cloudflare is basically saying they _would_ host Daily
| Stormer, 8chan etc. from this point on. I bet this policy will go
| over like a lead brick in media coverage.
| elefantastisch wrote:
| No they aren't. They are saying they would provide *security
| services* to these companies. They won't host it, but they also
| won't let it get taken down through cyber attacks. They are
| preventing vigilante justice against these companies, that's
| all.
| Grue3 wrote:
| peppermint_tea wrote:
| wow, so many comments that leads nowhere (law/technical/etc)...
| what about a counterprotest? Like bigots voicing their opinions
| on a street corner would attract.
|
| I assume everyone here have a VPN...
|
| would be fun to post some trans positive messages on their rotten
| kiwi farm.
| Ticklee wrote:
| Well the actual reason is of course that the people involved
| with this movement do not want their threads read. It shines a
| light on everything shady, dishonest and bad they have done,
| social media influencers want to appear holy as a saint in
| front of their audience as it increases their influence, so
| telling your entire audience to engage with a thread that makes
| you look like a horrible person is a bad move.
| peppermint_tea wrote:
| what I was saying is, let's hop on a vpn and put a bit of
| humanity in their venom
| BryantD wrote:
| It's a thoughtful document and I appreciate the time it took to
| write it.
|
| I think there may be a missing factor in their decision-making
| process. I'll quote the document itself: "We also believe that an
| Internet where cyberattacks are used to silence what's online is
| a broken Internet, no matter how much we may have empathy for the
| ends."
|
| That seems correct to me. It is intuitively understandable how it
| applies to some people who want Kiwifarms to go away. It is,
| perhaps, less clear how it applies to Kiwifarms itself, so let's
| dig into that some.
|
| First: if it's bad to use cyberattacks to silence what's said
| online, it's presumably also bad to use other forms of attack to
| silence what's said, online or otherwise.
|
| Second: does Kiwifarms (or sites like instant-stresser.com, noted
| in another comment) overall have a silencing effect?
|
| That's a hard determination to make! I actually wouldn't want to
| be in the business of making that decision. You need to have a
| clear public rubric and evaluation process, you should be very
| transparent about it, and you should be willing to defend your
| decisions and not allow your criteria to slip based on pure
| public opinion. I am heartened by their description of their
| ability to make that decision for the Daily Stormer and hold to
| their principles despite attempts to create slippage -- that
| tells me that, as an organization, Cloudflare is capable of
| making nuanced decisions.
|
| However, we shouldn't avoid hard decisions just because they're
| hard, or even because we might make mistakes from time to time.
| We should do a real risk analysis, evaluate the effect of making
| mistakes, and compare that to the effect of not making decisions
| at all.
|
| I'd encourage Cloudflare to go back and consider whether or not
| the principle of maximizing the ability to speak has implications
| about providing services to sites which are in the business of
| making fun of people -- sometimes lethally -- for things they
| say.
| karcass wrote:
| It is not "less clear" how this applies to Kiwifarms. Their TOS
| says they "may" remove content that:
|
| "Is otherwise illegal, harmful, or violates the rights of
| others, including content that discloses sensitive personal
| information, incites or exploits violence against people or
| animals, or seeks to defraud the public."
|
| Kiwifarms doxxing and swatting is documented six ways from
| Sunday, and it's hardly just keffals.
| BryantD wrote:
| To be perfectly clear about my own bias: I think Kiwifarms is
| among the worst Web sites on the Internet, I think it's
| caused immeasurable harm, and I don't want it to exist.
|
| However, I am (probably) talking to people who aren't
| convinced of this as well as people like you and I, and I
| also strongly understand the desire to form general
| principles above and beyond a single person making decisions,
| so I wanted to come at it from a relatively neutral
| direction.
| ta1235414335 wrote:
| Please provide some evidence of KWF actually swatting
| someone, this is being repeated non-stop and every time
| evidence is asked for the subject is changed. Do show this
| vast documentation of swatting. They do dox people regularly
| however, yes.
| BryantD wrote:
| I think that you have to take responsibility when your
| actions (doxing) result in a higher probability of other
| actions (swatting). The exact degree of responsibility
| varies.
|
| You believe the same thing. Cloudflare dropping Kiwifarms
| wouldn't directly result in Kiwifarms going dark; it's just
| a highly predictable outcome. If you don't think a company
| is responsible for anything but their direct actions, the
| argument for providing service to Kiwifarms becomes much
| weaker.
| banannaise wrote:
| It is deeply weird to read the sentence "We also believe that
| an Internet where cyberattacks are used to silence what's
| online is a broken Internet, no matter how much we may have
| empathy for the ends." as a _defense of KiwiFarms_.
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| Cloudflare services are really only useful _when a site is under
| attack_ - otherwise it 's just a CDN to reduce hosting costs.
|
| If "kicking someone off cloudflare" makes them unavailable, it
| means they're undergoing ongoing attacks of some sort.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| You bet they'd get attacked if they ever stopped using a proxy.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| When I checked last week, their origin IP was trivially
| available. I found it by typing "kiwifarms" into
| search.censys.io
| afiori wrote:
| Right now their server can simply block all IPs and all
| certs not from Cloudflare.
|
| Firewalls resists DDoS better than web servers and DBs
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| If they allowlist Cloudflare IP addresses, they should be
| careful that list only includes the IPs of the caching
| servers, and not of the exit nodes for the free WARP VPN
| service.
|
| These both share the same AS number, I think. I'm not
| sure if Cloudflare segregates WARP traffic or publishes a
| list of WARP exit IP addresses.
|
| Aside: It's not that simple of a problem, is it? Because
| there's also CF workers, which execute on caching servers
| and can therefore send outbound requests with the IP of
| the caching server. (That said, I don't know the details
| of this routing config, although I'm now curious to test
| it.)
|
| Anyway, I think an IP allowlist is probably the most
| crude starting point - I'm pretty sure CF has some
| products that are better suited for it (mTLS maybe, and
| that server side WARP VPN product they had at some point
| - I'm not up to date on this).
| superkuh wrote:
| As shown here, it wouldn't just be denial of service
| attacks. It'd be legal attacks on their DNS provider, their
| registrar, their hosting, their hosting's upstream
| providers, etc, etc.
| derefr wrote:
| I mean, sometimes you need a CDN because your hosting costs
| would be untenable otherwise, and CloudFlare's the only one
| that's free / a flat $20 for as much traffic as people can
| throw at it. So losing CloudFlare can mean that your only other
| option is to pay egress-bandwidth bills / other CDN service
| bills you can't pay; and so you just don't bother to put your
| site back up at that point.
| tus666 wrote:
| > or seeks to defraud the public
|
| What does that even mean? How does one defraud the public?
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| CloudFlare opened Pandora's box. It will never be able to shut
| it.
|
| When private companies become enforcers of public morality, you
| will quickly find morality is shaped by what is profitable. This
| is a horrible idea.
| JYellensFuckboy wrote:
| Cloudfare's stance is pretty clearly amoral.
| wbl wrote:
| Every isp in the world has an AUP and enforces it.
| dmix wrote:
| As we see with Facebook getting pressured by the FBI to
| preemptively censor information before evening finding out if
| it's misinformation or not (or even coming from Russia or not).
| They were basically trusting the FBI to have people's best
| interests at heart and letting the details work itself out
| later.
|
| All of these attempts at moderating the internet always get
| misused, the scope forever expands, and usually does little IRL
| to stop ideas from spreading (even the FBI example resulted in
| a massive Streisand effect, because censorship immediately
| makes people pay attention).
|
| Trusting billion dollar tech companies with this responsibility
| should be treated like crazy-talk. Even stuff like transparency
| on motives, transparency on algorithm changes, processes for
| challenging it, etc etc, are usually not part of the deal.
| hnbad wrote:
| Every individual in a society is "enforcer of public morality".
| Corporations are just different to regular people in that they
| wield a disproportionate amount of power and capital.
|
| If you want to abolish the system allowing corporations levels
| of power effectively equivalent to public utilities and
| branches of government, we can have that conversation. But if
| you want to continue them to have that and are still outraged
| about their decisions it's not because of a principled stance
| about them being "enforcers of public morality", you just
| disagree with their morality.
| johnklos wrote:
| Cloudflare showed themselves to be profit-driven and
| irresponsible years ago when they said they could not and would
| not take down blatantly illegal sites they host / facilitate (I
| don't buy in to their bullshit attempts to redefine "host") [1].
|
| I get that you shouldn't be able to contact them, or any other
| entity, and just make a claim to get a site taken down (look at
| abuses of the DMCA), but when the illegality is unquestionable,
| it's just a sign that Cloudflare clearly doesn't want to set any
| kind of precedent about doing the right thing.
|
| What's unquestionably illegal, you ask, because you're about to
| tell me how much of a grey area that is? Bank of America phishing
| sites are unambiguously illegal. Any reasonable human would say
| that anyone pretending to be Bank of America to try to steal
| credentials has no place doing so, and that there's no reason to
| not take direct action.
|
| Sites hosting Adobe Flash "updaters" are also unambiguously
| illegal.
|
| The fact that Cloudflare says they can't take down sites like
| these because they're protecting "First Amendment rights" shows
| that they don't want to be bothered with abuse complaints and
| they care more about profit than anything else [2].
|
| It's disingenuous at best and purely evil at worst. It's saying,
| "I have the tiniest thread of a reason to continue facilitating
| illegal behavior because who really knows who BoA are?"
|
| They said the same about Adobe Flash "updater" sites that provide
| Trojan / virus downloads.
|
| If that's not bad enough, they refused for many, many months to
| answer a question directly, without diversions. I asked them:
|
| "When I send abuse complaints to abuse@cloudflare.com, I get a
| form response that implies, but does not clearly state that
| action will NOT be taken unless I also visit Cloudflare's web
| site and fill out an abuse form there. Is it true that no action
| will take place unless I also fill out that form?"
|
| They refused to answer directly, instead constantly telling me
| that filling out the form helps them improve abuse handling, et
| cetera. They would not answer yes or no, even when asked directly
| to answer yes or no. Who does that except assholes?
|
| The form, by the way, has all sorts of issues which makes using
| it arduous and time consuming, which is, I suspect, exactly what
| they want.
|
| When people have an opportunity to communicate unambiguously yet
| choose to double down on being vague, they show themselves to be
| assholes who want to manipulate others. They did, after many
| months, finally answer my question and acknowledge that they
| don't process abuse complaints if the web form is not filled out,
| but this was only after months of repeatedly asking.
|
| I get that some people use their products and want to assume the
| best about Cloudflare because they like the products, but any
| shitty company with shitty, profit driven people running it can
| still have good products. I encourage those who think Cloudflare
| is good because their products are good to consider the end
| result should Cloudflare get their way.
|
| Imagine this: a majority of the world hosts using Cloudflare's
| DDoS protection. They all have Cloudflare in their WHOIS. Much of
| the world also use DNS-over-https in their browsers. Cloudflare
| becomes a monopoly and gladly continues to ignore court orders
| and legal subpoenas. Network admins can no longer control their
| own networks - they can't block exposure to malicious sites using
| DNS or by blocking networks, can't stop CaC access, can't stop
| exfiltration of data because everything is going to and coming
| from Cloudflare, legitimate and malicious.
|
| Not only have they re-centralized the Internet and have become a
| big, glaring, single point of failure, but they've weakened our
| networks and taken control of them away from us. They're privy to
| every DNS lookup we make and every web site we visit. As an
| entity based in the United States, all of this data is almost
| certainly available to the United States' surveillance
| apparatuses.
|
| [1] "hosting" is providing material services without which
| certain things on the Internet wouldn't function. Consider the
| fact that Clouflare wants to redefine "hosting" to mean directly
| hosting a web site (not DNS, not email, not proxy services), but
| hosting existed before the web existed.
|
| [2] It doesn't matter if scammers use Cloudflare's free services;
| the motivation for profit means they want everyone to use them,
| good and bad, so people can't easily block the bad without
| blocking the good. Protecting scammers sets precedents that
| discourage people from trying to blame Cloudflare for
| facilitating and hosting. Also, they want and intend to be a
| monopoly, so enticing people using free services is still profit-
| based, for those who can't think that far ahead.
| Borgz wrote:
| It's rather disappointing that Cloudflare's policy is to not host
| content that is "illegal, harmful, or violates the rights of
| others, including content that discloses sensitive personal
| information, incites or exploits violence against people or
| animals, or seeks to defraud the public", but they do not apply
| that same policy to content that they provide DDoS mitigation
| services for.
|
| I don't see why their policies should differ depending on whether
| they are hosting or protecting the content in question. Either
| way, they are in part responsible for making that content
| accessible. I get the feeling that this is just an arbitrary
| distinction that they've made since hosting this content is more
| likely to have legal consequences for Cloudflare than simply
| providing DDoS mitigation services for it.
| dannyw wrote:
| The public library may not want to curate Neo-Nazi books, but
| the police should not refuse to protect a Neo-Nazi from murder.
| yarrel wrote:
| Now do the scenario where the police help the Neo-Nazis
| commit the murders, but will not protect the library.
|
| Because that's CloudFlare.
| elefantastisch wrote:
| They address this:
|
| > Giving everyone the ability to sign up for our services
| online also reflects our view that cyberattacks not only should
| not be used for silencing vulnerable groups, but are not the
| appropriate mechanism for addressing problematic content
| online. We believe cyberattacks, in any form, should be
| relegated to the dustbin of history.
| [deleted]
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| They speak to it, I wouldn't say that's addressing it.
| They're simply repeating a variation of the liberal viewpoint
| that nazis shouldn't be punched, they should be convinced of
| their wrongs through peaceful social means (which invites
| naziism right in) or law enforcement (which, well, piggies
| like their own kind).
|
| If Matt Prince were the head of the Inglorious Basterds, he'd
| evidently reform them to vote blue instead of scalping nazis
| Borgz wrote:
| My point is this: if there are certain types of content that
| they deem unacceptable to host, why do they deem it
| acceptable to protect?
|
| I disagree that the paragraph you quoted is relevant to that.
| But if it is, then it doesn't seem good that their goal of
| eradicating cyberattacks is more important to them than
| actual human lives.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| To use the analogy in the blog post: renting out a building
| to drug dealers is different from having firefighters save
| the drug dealers from a fire.
| schleck8 wrote:
| That analogy is obviously manipulative. A DDoS is not
| going to kill anyone unlike a fire (or swatting
| evidently).
| yarrel wrote:
| Kiwi Farms recently DDoSed a suicide prevention hotline.
|
| So you are factually wrong.
| schleck8 wrote:
| You can't DDoS a phone number can you? Maybe their
| website but google snippets should cache the number
| viraptor wrote:
| I can't tell if you're missing the point or trolling, but
| just in case: There's only a limited number of people in
| the call centre. By overwhelming the queue, you prevent
| others reaching the service.
| elefantastisch wrote:
| So, if someone is standing trial for murder and it turns
| out the evidence against them was collected illegally, they
| will end up getting away with it even if everyone knows
| they did it.
|
| It's not that we value police procedure more than we value
| the life of the victim. We value rule of law and due
| process as a society more than any individual gap in
| applying justice in a given case.
|
| Yes, if we ignore procedure and lock that murderer up
| anyway, we will have done better justice for the victim.
| But then we will no longer have a functioning criminal
| justice system, and that's much worse in the long run.
|
| If Cloudflare allows DDoS to take down these horrible
| sites, the world will definitely be a better place in many
| ways. But then it will also be a world where we deal with
| problems via DDoS and whether you get to keep your site up
| or have it DDoSed is subject to the whims of Cloudflare.
| DDoSing sites won't be "wrong" anymore, it'll be a question
| of whether they deserved it or not.
|
| This is not how we do justice as a society. If someone
| punches you in the face without instigation, we don't ask
| if you deserved it, we charge them with assault.
|
| Cloudflare allowing DDoS of content they don't like would
| be a bit like allowing assault of people we don't like.
| Maybe there are some people we're happy to see punched in
| the face, but in the long run, our society suffers.
|
| Protecting people from getting punched in the face, even
| when they deserve it, is fundamental to maintaining rule of
| law in society. Wrongdoers are punished after due process
| of law, not arbitrarily by any vigilante who decides to
| give them what they deserve.
|
| That is essentially what Cloudflare is arguing.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| > So, if someone is standing trial for murder and it
| turns out the evidence against them was collected
| illegally, they will end up getting away with it even if
| everyone knows they did it.
|
| That very much depends on jurisdiction; don't assume that
| American laws and norms are universal, nor that they are
| the best way of doing things.
| endtime wrote:
| Rule of law and due process are the best way of doing
| things, and are not exclusively American concepts.
| groby_b wrote:
| > So, if someone is standing trial for murder
|
| If Cloudflare would like to be nationalized, I'm happy to
| have a discussion of applying government rules to them.
| Until then, they're a private company, "due process" does
| really not apply.
|
| If we think that protecting sites from DDoS is a public
| good (and I think that's a good question), that is a task
| that should fall to government entities.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Agree, there are double standards in work here and I think
| cf must pick a side.
| subsistence234 wrote:
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| Cloudflare. The company known for protecting DDOS-for-Hire
| websites.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| The policies differ chiefly because of massive difference in
| revenue
| sophacles wrote:
| More realistically the policies probably differ because they
| are different technologies and different use cases with
| different legal requirements.
| sophacles wrote:
| DDoS attacks don't just hurt the target of the attack. If any
| link on the path to the target is overwhelmed by the attack
| traffic, all users of that link are affected. Large attacks are
| hundreds of Gbps - a datacenter with 100Gbps of internet
| connectivity would be effectively offline. A datacenter with
| that much connectivity will likely host more than one site.
|
| I know you aren't advocating that other sites be taken down,
| but that is the effect of allowing DDoS against a site. Perhaps
| you don't mind collateral damage but it should be acknowledged
| as a consequence of your suggestion.
| tauntz wrote:
| Hosting and DDoS protection are different services. Think of
| them like a landlord (hosting) vs fire department (ddos)
| situation - one of them can morally refuse their services to
| people that they think are doing wrong/illegal/immoral things,
| the other one doesn't.
|
| Not that I agree or disagree with this argument - just wanted
| to point out what their reasoning seems to be.
| somesortofthing wrote:
| > Think of them like a landlord (hosting) vs fire department
| (ddos) situation
|
| This is kind of a ridiculous comparison. A real-world
| landlord is a private individual extracting rent from their
| tenants while a real-world fire department is a publicly
| funded institution with a duty to protect everyone.
|
| Cloudflare offers both its hosting and DDOS services as a
| private company. They aren't morally obligated to provide
| anything, regardless of whether the DDOS protection is
| offered for free.
| 015a wrote:
| But that's the point! CF sees this aspect of the policy as
| acting like a public utility.
|
| Is that so wrong? Isn't that better than the alternative?
| Maybe, if we lived in a world where the government provided
| CDNs and DDoS mitigation and DNS zone file hosting and
| resolution and such, then its a reasonable argument to say:
| We have an entity beholden to Higher Laws which we can hold
| responsible, and marginalized voices have recourse when
| they're failed by private infrastructure.
|
| We don't live in that world, and its not on the radar.
| Sure, private companies aren't beholden to Free Speech
| laws. But maybe its better that some opt-in to a standard
| higher than "if Jassy hasn't had his coffee this morning we
| better have an extra on-call SRE". Or, more commonly: when
| deplatforming decisions are made either by a blackbox AI
| written by engineers who left 2 years ago, or Twitter
| outrage.
| kube-system wrote:
| This is totally orthogonal to your argument, but most fire
| departments are volunteer in the US (and a number of other
| countries).
| yarrel wrote:
| They are both caching, which is hosting. We'll leave out that
| DDoS protection is a PII nightmare, and that CloudFlare is
| essentially spyware. For now.
|
| Their reasoning is the best that they could come up with
| under pressure. Which is to say - lol.
| deepdriver wrote:
| Let's get some facts straight:
|
| Cloudflare's statement comes in response to an effort to
| deplatform and illegally DDoS the website Kiwi Farms. Kiwi Farms
| is essentially a mean Internet gossip forum. This push is
| currently driven by Keffals, a Canadian male-to-female
| transgender Twitch streamer.
|
| Keffals and their close friends run and promote a site that
| instructs and encourages minors to order hormones and puberty
| blockers online, behind their parents' backs, without medical
| supervision, from sketchy labs that package these pills with
| lolicon anime box art. They illegally send minors cross-sex
| hormones directly through the mail, again all behind their
| parents' backs. They groom, talk sexually, and flirt with
| adolescents on a Discord server called the "Catboy Ranch" where
| Keffals and other admins are the "ranchers." They are
| manipulating confused, isolated children to self-administer life-
| altering drugs and engage in hypersexual behavior. It is
| monstrous.
|
| This has all been archived, screenshotted and documented by the
| users of Kiwi Farms, a few of whom happen to be trans themselves:
|
| https://archive.ph/JQcGR
|
| So far, Keffals claims to have been SWATed by a user on Kiwi
| Farms. There is no evidence that KF users were involved. KF
| strictly prohibits IRL harassment by policy and bans users for
| suggesting it. Keffals also claims to have been misgendered in
| custody by the Canadian police. The chief of the department in
| question publicly responded to this claim. He says he manually
| reviewed all footage from while Keffals was in custody and found
| no evidence of misgendering whatsoever. Meanwhile, Keffals has
| raised over $100,000 USD on GoFundMe in connection to this
| incident.
|
| Many streamers have been doxed and SWATed, big ones especially,
| often numerous times. To my knowledge, none felt the need to flee
| North America and raise money off it as Keffals has done. This
| event so far has been very financially lucrative for Keffals.
| Again, there's zero evidence linking any of the real-world
| harassment to KF. Based on the assembled information, Keffals'
| personal history, and Keffals' own call for the SWATing and
| harassment of other people and their family members, I am highly
| skeptical of Keffals' claims and motivations. I am highly
| sympathetic to the animus felt toward this person by Kiwi Farms
| users (I am not one, for the record).
|
| I believe Keffals and associates should be criminally
| investigated for their illegal distribution of puberty blockers
| and cross-sex hormones to minors, and sexualized contact with
| underage persons online. It boggles my mind that all of this
| somehow flies below the radar while the only website looking into
| it gets illegally DDoS'ed and targeted for deplatforming. Can
| only conclude that few have the patience to wade through the Kiwi
| Farms thread and see what they've actually uncovered.
| a_shovel wrote:
| archive.ph links don't work for me for some reason, so I can't
| see if there's any evidence in there.
|
| I have seen some screenshots claiming to show underage people
| talking sexually in the Catboy Ranch server, and it's been
| confirmed that those screenshots are not actually from the
| server.
|
| The money is going to be used to sue the police department that
| swatted her. Suing a police department is very, very expensive.
|
| A couple hours ago someone posted a picture of the outside of
| the building where Keffals is staying in Europe, with a note
| containing transphobic slurs, her deadname, and references to
| Kiwi Farms and its owner. You can find it on her Twitter. So
| that's at least one instance of real-life harassment, just
| today. Call it a false flag if you like, but I'll trust Occam's
| Razor on this one.
|
| Keffals shares information on informed consent clinics and safe
| sources of HRT supplies. This is not illegal.
|
| > _I am highly sympathetic to the animus felt toward this
| person by Kiwi Farms users (I am not one, for the record)._
|
| Sure, buddy.
| deepdriver wrote:
| > archive.ph links don't work for me for some reason, so I
| can't see if there's any evidence in there.
|
| Alright, so you're ignoring the bulk of the evidence. Site
| works on my machine.
|
| >I have seen some screenshots claiming to show underage
| people talking sexually in the Catboy Ranch server, and it's
| been confirmed that those screenshots are not actually from
| the server.
|
| Says who? By the way, Keffal's hard drive was confiscated in
| the Canadian police raid. It was immediately after they took
| this drive that Keffals fled the country.
|
| >Keffals shares information on informed consent clinics and
| safe sources of HRT supplies. This is not illegal.
|
| They specifically encourage minors to buy blockers, hormones,
| and needles online with Bitcoin from sketchy labs, and to
| self-dose behind the backs of their parents and doctors.
| Keffals' close friend Bobposting, who together with Keffals
| runs the "DIY HRT directory," has bragged about sending
| minors controlled substances via the mail; this is expressely
| illegal. See link in my parent post for details.
|
| >The money is going to be used to sue the police department
| that swatted her. Suing a police department is very, very
| expensive.
|
| I look forward to news of this nonexistent lawsuit. The
| police chief in question has made strong public statements
| about officers' videotaped conduct.
|
| >Call it a false flag if you like, but I'll trust Occam's
| Razor on this one.
|
| Occam's Razor means something different for people like
| Keffals who have a history of lying, theft, manipulation, and
| doxing and harassment of others.
| intunderflow wrote:
| This just reads like Cloudflare trying to dodge all culpability /
| wash their hands of the harm caused by those they knowingly
| provide services to by shifting the buck elsewhere.
|
| Pretending courts are oracle machines that perfectly determine
| which sites should be permitted in countries and inferring
| selecting websites to provide security services to is a totally
| binary choice.
| jefftk wrote:
| _Two times in the past we decided to terminate content from our
| security services because we found it reprehensible. In 2017, we
| terminated the neo-Nazi troll site The Daily Stormer. And in
| 2019, we terminated the conspiracy theory forum 8chan.
|
| In a deeply troubling response, after both terminations we saw a
| dramatic increase in authoritarian regimes attempting to have us
| terminate security services for human rights organizations --
| often citing the language from our own justification back to us.
|
| Since those decisions, we have had significant discussions with
| policy makers worldwide. From those discussions we concluded that
| the power to terminate security services for the sites was not a
| power Cloudflare should hold. Not because the content of those
| sites wasn't abhorrent -- it was -- but because security services
| most closely resemble Internet utilities.
|
| Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if you
| say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in
| consultation with politicians, policy makers, and experts that
| turning off security services because we think what you publish
| is despicable is the wrong policy. To be clear, just because we
| did it in a limited set of cases before doesn't mean we were
| right when we did. Or that we will ever do it again._
|
| I take this to mean they now think they shouldn't have terminated
| the Daily Stormer or 8chan, and won't be terminating Kiwi Farms.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Upon a third reading, I'm not interpreting it to be that too.
| What the _fuck_?
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| now*
| thegeekbin wrote:
| What this really says that they opened a hole which got them
| into a questionable legal area by removing them, and they
| regret not just remaining neutral.
| empathy_m wrote:
| Yes that's how I read it, too - they regret having taken those
| sites down and wouldn't do it again.
|
| This feels like it's going in the opposite direction of
| Yishan's "Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul" (
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140913105157/http://www.reddit...
| ) and reddit's subsequent evolution.
|
| In retrospect I was a little naive in the 90s. I read The
| Hacker Manifesto, I read "The Net interprets censorship as
| damage and routes around it", I didn't stop to think what would
| happen when weev was in charge.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _I take this to mean they now think they shouldn 't have
| terminated the Daily Stormer or 8chan, and won't be terminating
| Kiwi Farms._
|
| That's certainly a possible interpretation, but I think it's
| more a call out of a fallacy, stating explicitly that
| "precedent doesn't make right." i.e. just because something was
| done before, doesn't mean it was correct.
|
| In other words, people will argue "you should take down KF
| because you took down <x> and KF is worse" and they are saying,
| "yes we did take down <x>, but just because we did doesn't mean
| it was the right decision. It might have been right, it might
| not. We just don't want to make a decision now regarding KF
| simply because we did something in the past."
|
| An extreme response to help illustrate the fallacy might be,
| "just because <x> committed genocide against <y> doesn't mean
| genocide against <y> was correct and should be used in support
| of genocide against <z>"
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I disagree with CloudFlare's distinction between "hosting" and
| "security services". From a technical perspective, CloudFlare is
| still holding the TLS certs[0] for servers behind their reverse
| proxy and fronting the bandwidth for those sites. Legally
| speaking, there is also no basis for this distinction; the law
| does not chase pointers.
|
| The CloudFlare argument dances around the central complaint
| people have with their service today. That is, distributing
| personal information _is_ a cyberattack. Doxxing and harassment
| are forms of speech-shaped censorship that exists to cause people
| to stop talking and delete their account. Forums that act as
| clearinghouses for dox are using their reverse proxy, and
| CloudFlare refuses to act against _a violation of their own AUP_
| under the belief that this would somehow create a precedent
| against other sites we don 't find abhorrent.
|
| My nightmare scenario is actually the opposite: CloudFlare does
| _not_ act on harassment campaigns, someone important gets mad
| about it, and they pass a law creating a new kind of intermediary
| liability specifically designed to force CloudFlare to do so. The
| history of intermediary liability[1] is such that most companies
| do not bother defending their customers over it, and just chuck
| it to automated systems or underpaid and overworked reviewers
| that will operate on a guilty-until-proven-guilty system. And
| like I mentioned, the law will not respect CloudFlare 's internal
| distinction between origin and proxy servers.
|
| So we have two choices:
|
| 1. CloudFlare enforces their AUP on at least the most obvious
| targets of criticism.
|
| 2. They do nothing until some country _makes_ them do something,
| and the state of Internet hosting gets slightly worse.
|
| We're currently on track #2 here. Safe harbors are something the
| EFF and friends had to fight for, and they are being slowly
| chipped away at as platforms get more and more power that they
| either do not use or abuse.
|
| [0] Remember when principled techies hated CloudFlare because
| they were an effective MiTM on all web traffic? Pepperidge Farm
| remembers.
|
| [1] DMCA 512, EUCD Article 17, EU TERREG, FOSTA, and others
| superkuh wrote:
| I am amazed at how cloudflare has turned around and become a
| reputable, reliable company re: arbitrary breaches of contract
| based on the CEO's personal opinions. After he breached contract
| with the Daily Stormer because of "a bad mood" I was sure it'd
| just devolve into a no-holds barred censorship-fest.
|
| Instead he's managing to hold the line against all of the
| authoritarians and individuals wanting to rip each other down. I
| never thought I'd say this, but, well done cloudflare.
| sealeck wrote:
| It's not actually commendable to host content for white
| supremacists and transphobes. Free speech may be deserving of
| protection, but white supremacists using the internet to
| coordinate real-world activities (such as terrorist attacks)
| doesn't actually qualify as "free speech" deserving protection
| against "authoritarians and individuals wanting to rip each
| other down".
| yanderekko wrote:
| >Free speech may be deserving of protection, but white
| supremacists using the internet to coordinate real-world
| activities (such as terrorist attacks) doesn't actually
| qualify as "free speech" deserving protection against
| "authoritarians and individuals wanting to rip each other
| down".
|
| Then I'm sure these activists will have no trouble moving
| proving their arguments in a courtroom, which is the proper
| space for such an assertion to be adjudicated.
| striking wrote:
| Unfortunately, it's extremely hard to prove allegations of
| abuse by skilled actors that know how to use their tools
| (tools that are really easy to use).
|
| KF's lead admin states it plainly: use a VPN, because KF
| complies with subpoenas. If folks were committing high-end
| acts of terrorism against elected officials regularly, the
| baddies might not be safe.
|
| But if you're a trans streamer with a small following, if
| the folks coordinating attacks on you are diligent enough
| to make sure they're doing so off-platform, behind a VPN,
| calling folks while obscuring their identities, and so on?
| There's no chance for you.
|
| I led a team in infiltrating a small community that acted
| as KF does. Even with screenshots in hand, even being on
| Discord, the Discord T&S team couldn't do very much for us
| because we didn't have nearly enough evidence in hand. We
| had to do a public expose with what we had in hand and
| basically bluff that these folks could get in trouble as a
| result. Only that, along with the fact that we had bits and
| pieces enough of their identities, got them to go away.
| There's absolutely no way that I can tell that anyone would
| be taking anyone else to court. The best we could do was
| make our group so hard to attack that it wasn't worth it.
|
| How is anyone supposed to defend themselves from this?
| subsistence234 wrote:
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Have you thought about the reverse side of your argument?
| Someone falsely accusing you or your persons of insert-
| your-favorite-harm and then having your life upended by
| the social justice mob or corporate actions?
|
| It needs to go through a trial. That's what its for.
| Natsu wrote:
| > Have you thought about the reverse side of your
| argument? Someone falsely accusing you or your persons of
| insert-your-favorite-harm and then having your life
| upended by the social justice mob or corporate actions?
|
| I doubt they'd be as happy if sites that host speech
| critical of MTG were being held responsible for
| contributing to the three SWATings she had recently, to
| name the most recent example, but this is too emotional
| and I think people want the corps to respond because they
| know that the law is harder to change.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I mean, given that most signs point to the culprit site
| there _being kiwifarms_ , yes, yes!
|
| More generally, swatting people is bad (and also
| illegal!), people should not do it. Sites that encourage
| it should not be supported. No equivocation there.
| Natsu wrote:
| > I mean, given that most signs point to the culprit site
| there being kiwifarms, yes, yes!
|
| So, when someone does a thing that's designed to hurt
| both Kiwifarms and MTG and your assumption is that KF is
| responsible?
|
| > More generally, swatting people is bad (and also
| illegal!), people should not do it.
|
| I'd agree, anyone caught doing this should be imprisoned
| for attempted murder. I worry more about people trying to
| expand this list to anyone adjacent to them or critical
| of that person who does not engage in such harassment or
| any platform they use to speak, even when that platform
| removes anyone doing such things.
|
| That said if we do go down that road, FB, Twitter & co.
| should be first on the chopping block and I won't miss
| them.
|
| > Sites that encourage it should not be supported.
|
| I don't visit KF, except that I read their response
| earlier regarding the byuu thing (when they were being
| DDoS'd which prevented them from responding much) and it
| didn't seem like the platform had meaningfully encouraged
| this or interacted with byuu in any way.
|
| It's a sad loss, because I was loosely acquainted with
| byuu and byuu's work and you can see some of those
| comments between us here on HN. I also did what little I
| could to try to help find that package of lost video
| games, not that I actually was able to contribute
| anything, but I tried.
|
| Despite KF getting lots of blame, I didn't actually see
| any proof of them participating in that in any meaningful
| way. Maybe I missed something, because again, I don't
| actually use that site and I only went there to look at
| what was going on with the story since it involved byuu.
|
| But the response was pretty clear that there was a small
| thread with people not even interacting with byuu and
| it's hard to see a link between that and driving someone
| to suicide. None of the articles I read about the whole
| thing actually did anything but quote someone who said
| there was a link, so with no evidence but some person I
| don't know's say-so, I'd say that case is rather weak by
| people who already hate KF.
|
| Feel free to point to more showing that KF is bad,
| because to me they're just another angry part of the
| internet, kinda like FB or Twitter, that I tend to avoid
| for that very reason. I'm suspect that they in particular
| should be deplatformed compared to the other platforms,
| though, because to me they're all angry nasty things that
| have driven people to suicide.
|
| And I'm pretty sure that on FB in particular, someone was
| successfully sued for that, which already puts them a
| level worse than what I've seen proven of KF so far.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| >So, when someone does a thing that's designed to hurt
| both Kiwifarms and MTG and your assumption is that KF is
| responsible?
|
| When kf doxxes someone, and she's swatted the next day,
| yeah I'll blame the site that posted her address the day
| before and is known for inciting swatting attacks.
|
| > That said if we do go down that road, FB, Twitter & co.
| should be first on the chopping block and I won't miss
| them.
|
| I don't follow, KF _doesn 't_ remove, and even tacitly
| (and not so tacitly) encourages, harassment, while that
| isn't true of FB or twitter or even reddit.
| Natsu wrote:
| Does KF refer to the posters on the site, or the site
| itself? When you say "KF doxxes" I assume you mean the
| posters, but it's not clear and in that case they would
| generally have no liability from 3rd party posters.
|
| > I don't follow, KF doesn't remove, and even tacitly
| (and not so tacitly) encourages, harassment, while that
| isn't true of FB or twitter or even reddit.
|
| If "harassment" is the legal type (i.e. true threats),
| that's not first amendment protected and those who post
| it can be charged criminally. That's not generally
| something the platform is liable for.
|
| That said, FB and others have been sued in similar
| circumstances:
|
| https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/04/12/mother-
| sues-f...
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is. I've never made any
| claim about legal liability. I said that sites that
| support/encourage/facilitate the things that KF (as a
| site) does should not be supported. We are under no
| obligation to define morality based on legality.
|
| Like, your defense here seems to amount to "what they're
| doing isn't _technically_ illegal ", which, sure, but
| that's not a defense to most people.
| Natsu wrote:
| Well, the answer to "it's not illegal" is to change the
| law to define what should be illegal to make it match up
| with morality better. I conjecture that most such changes
| would possibly take down FB & Twitter, but I've already
| said that I don't really think that would be a net loss.
| LeonTheremin wrote:
| KiwiFarms can both be guilty itself of attacking some
| people while also having it's name used as a false-flag
| by other terrorists who exploit existing grievances to
| escape blame.
|
| Byuu was targeted by 4chan terrorists who just used his
| history with KiwiFarms for misdirection. Taking down
| KiwiFarms may stop some, but not all of the terrorism
| associated around it.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| What is the evidence it was 4chan?
| striking wrote:
| Of course I have thought about the reverse side of this.
| Everyone involved in the matter on my end treated it with
| the seriousness it deserved. And for what it's worth, I
| too used to believe that words couldn't hurt people and
| that justice was out there for those who do get hurt.
|
| Having experienced it firsthand, I know that to not be
| the case. Good luck serving the subpoenas on Large
| Faceless Internet Giant(tm) and John Does 1-100,
| especially when you don't have anything near the standard
| of evidence necessary to do that or the law degree
| necessary to make such filings. Good luck doing anything
| less than that, because no one actually cares as long as
| the money keeps flowing.
|
| The only way I could prove malice was by infiltrating
| their community. The only way I could shut them down was
| to sow enough distrust that they couldn't operate and to
| expose their malice to the world. And you know what? Our
| coordinated effort won out. We only had to fight an
| uphill battle against complete strangers, with our real
| lives put at risk. And they aren't so much as banned from
| the platform. They just know well enough not to mess with
| us again. Just the one group, because any other group
| could swing by and make our lives hard again.
|
| And I'm not even the person who was being attacked. I'm
| privileged enough that I could have turned away and told
| them they were on their own. Just like some folks running
| some companies that help these folks do their dirty work.
| I didn't, because helping someone without any other
| recourse was the right thing to do.
| kmlx wrote:
| > Unfortunately, it's extremely hard to prove allegations
| of abuse by skilled actors that know how to use their
| tools (tools that are really easy to use).
|
| so the problem is actually somewhere else.
| striking wrote:
| Cloudflare is one of many such tools, but I won't contest
| that CF didn't affect the situation I was in.
|
| That doesn't mean they don't lower the barrier to entry
| for good, bad, and _ostensibly not bad but we all know
| whose side they 're on_ actors alike. Just means my
| comment and lived experiences were just not perfectly
| applicable.
| aeturnum wrote:
| There are two elements of this position that I urge you to
| consider:
|
| First - if KF is guilty of crimes that would stop
| CloudFlare from providing them services - then it's both
| reasonable and normal for people to encourage CloudFlare to
| act before a verdict. It's extremely common for commercial
| actors to have policies based on their impressions of
| likely criminality (i.e. credit card transactions are
| marked fraudulent before a court of law weighs in). Also,
| even though it's impossible to perfectly provide services
| to all 'good' customers and deny services to all 'bad'
| customers - it seems desirable to minimize the services you
| provide to 'bad' customers. I.e. It's good to cut off
| likely fraudulent transactions before a court verdict and
| we should encourage companies to act ahead of verdicts.
|
| So if you think a customer is _probably_ doing something
| you 'd cut off service for if it was determined in court,
| you should generally change your posture towards that
| customer _somewhat._ This is often a difficult
| determination and a difficult line to draw - but it 's
| clearly a good thing to try and do.
|
| Second, the ability to prove a case in court depends on a
| great number of elements aligning. There are a number of
| scenarios where an actor is doing things that, could they
| be proved in court, would get them denied service - but for
| reasons unrelated to the actions themselves a determination
| cannot be made. The moral weight of providing services to
| those actors is the same and it's still desirable for
| companies to seek to avoid providing services to bad
| actors. Your legal responsibility is different, but you
| would still like to avoid serving clients whose actions you
| abhor.
|
| Otherwise, you get into the position where moral action is
| impossible outside of the opinion of an authority. Let's
| say you see a stranger's bag grabbed by someone else on the
| street - would you say the only moral course of action is
| to cooperate with an official investigation (if one
| happens)?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Agreed, we have a justice system based on what we agreed as
| a society. The rule of law.
|
| If you want to prohibit speech to white supremacists, fine,
| let's pass a law and if it doesn't hold constitutional
| muster, go ahead convince everyone to amend the
| constitution. But since our founding fathers made this
| process difficult on purpose, let's take a different
| approach: that's what social justice is. It is anti-
| democratic mob lunacy where corporations and governments
| are playing a proxy authoritarian game.
| chc wrote:
| This appears to be describing a parallel universe. The
| justice system we have in America today is arcane,
| strongly favors monied interests, is subject to perverse
| incentives ("tough on crime" DAs, lack of interest in
| pursuing crimes against groups without institutional
| power), frequently produces results that go against the
| common understanding of what is just, and is generally
| inaccessible to the most vulnerable people in society.
|
| The idea that this is what "we agreed as a society" is
| absurd. The justice system is a thing that evolved in our
| society largely as a result of powerful people feeding it
| when it protects their interests.
| infamouscow wrote:
| > The idea that this is what "we agreed as a society" is
| absurd. The justice system is a thing that evolved in our
| society largely as a result of powerful people feeding it
| when it protects their interests.
|
| The people elect representatives to pass and/or change
| laws.
|
| What you're saying is we should disregard voting because
| you know best - an argument famously supported by every
| genocidal maniac in the 20th century.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I think US has one of the best judicial systems, if not
| the very best in the world.
|
| I loathe about American exceptionalism, but the
| constitution and American legal system truly is:
| https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0
| robert_foss wrote:
| I do believe hate speech is illegal already.
|
| Certainly online harassment leading to someone committing
| suicide is.
|
| KF is a platform that facilitates these activities.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Neither of those things are illegal in the US.
| Natsu wrote:
| > I do believe hate speech is illegal already.
|
| Not in the USA, no.
|
| https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-
| critique-...
|
| > Certainly online harassment leading to someone
| committing suicide is.
|
| Harassment can be, but here "harassment" means making
| threats of violence, not just criticizing someone. That
| falls under "true threats":
|
| https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1025/true-
| threats
|
| Note that the older "fighting words" doctrine is probably
| obsolete and even then only applies to face-to-face
| conversation. For more on that see the prior link to
| Popehat.
| yanderekko wrote:
| >Certainly online harassment leading to someone
| committing suicide is.
|
| Documenting people's lives is not harassment.
| robert_foss wrote:
| It most definitely can be.
|
| To have all of your privacy taken away from you.
| paulmd wrote:
| Which jurisdiction are you speaking about? Do you have
| legal qualifications to dispense this advice?
|
| The US is rather unique in their absolutist view of free
| speech and other countries don't work the same way.
| Generally, for example, this would be a violation of UK
| law.
| whalecancer wrote:
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Read the 10th amendment. The powers not delegated to the
| government are delegated to the states, _or to the
| people_. What you describe as "social justice" is
| constitutional, if you want to fix that, change the
| constitution and make it illegal, but you're quite right,
| the founders made that difficult, perhaps because they
| believed mob justice had its place sometimes, I mean in
| the eyes of the British, what were the Unionists but a
| mob rallying behind blatantly illegal ideas?
| ndiddy wrote:
| I'm glad that Cloudflare didn't bow to the pressure here. I
| don't want to live in a world where people can
| extrajudicially boot a site off the internet by running a
| social media campaign for a few days to get their DDoS
| protection removed and then paying criminals to DDoS the
| site.
| sealeck wrote:
| hecatoncheires wrote:
| aniforprez wrote:
| White supremacists are not fighting for the right of white
| people to exist or advocating for anything. They would just
| as easily readily throw a gay or trans white person under
| the bus. They are terrorist groups that fester through
| spreading conspiracies about other races and peoples and
| want nothing less than ethnic cleansing
|
| That said, it's commendable that Cloudflare hosts them
| while making sure to donate to an equivalent cause to
| offset the grime. I don't really want them to be a
| censorship authority
| hecatoncheires wrote:
| You seem to be operating under a definition of "white
| supremacy" that is at least 5 years out of date.
|
| You see "whiteness" is an illness that uniquely afflicts
| white people, and causes them to act in their group's
| self-interest (which is only bad for white people as we
| all know). Unless you fight against this urge by being
| actively "anti-racist," i.e. agitating for the benefit of
| non-white people, then you are a white supremacist
| (because by simply existing as a passive not-racist white
| person, you are supporting the white supremacist
| superstructure).
|
| > _terrorist groups that fester through spreading
| conspiracies about other races and peoples and want
| nothing less than ethnic cleansing_
|
| Given the above definition who exactly is spreading
| conspiracies about races and agitating for ethnic
| cleansing? Who is inculcating white children with self-
| hatred?
|
| Spend 10 minutes on TikTok listening to POCs talk about
| "palm-handed" people, "mayo demons," colonizers etc. with
| billions of views and the support of academic, media and
| corporate orthodoxy, and compare that to some basement
| dwellers at Stormfront most people have never heard of.
| Should TikTok be banned?
| sealeck wrote:
| > That said, it's commendable that Cloudflare hosts them
| while making sure to donate to an equivalent cause to
| offset the grime.
|
| I _think_ they are/were providing these services free of
| charge.
| sealeck wrote:
| > It actually is commendable because white people have a
| right to exist, and to mutually organize to advocate for
| themselves, same as any other racial identity.
|
| This is clearly not what the Daily Stormer were doing -
| they were discussing ways to harm other ethnic groups, and
| deny them their "right to exist, and to mutually organize
| to advocate for themselves". The claim that "X group should
| be afforded their human rights" (effectively how your
| comment frames it) is completely different from "X's
| affordance of their human rights allows them the right to
| believe themselves superior to others and to act against
| them on that basis".
| tekla wrote:
| "I support free speech except the things that I don't like"
| banannaise wrote:
| The Daily Stormer is a Nazi website dedicated to promoting
| genocide and organizing people who support genocide. That's
| not "things that I don't like" unless your argument is that
| we shouldn't actually do anything about genocide until the
| genocide has been done.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| The site in question is one of the most notorious doxxing
| and harassment forums, linked to multiple suicides of their
| victims over the years. I'm not sure what principled
| political speech you think is being protected here.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| Transparency in a society is extremely important. It is a
| fundamental right to gather and publish information
| bringing to the publics attention harmful, disturbing and
| potentially illegal behavior.
|
| What principled political speech should be protected you
| ask? My answer is investigative journalism.
|
| If you believe investigative journalism should exist and
| plays an important function in society, you should have
| no problem with outlets doing that.
| autoexec wrote:
| KF is not "investigative journalism." It's just a site
| where people gather to point and laugh at mentally ill
| people with a web presence. Anything they dig up on
| someone is in service to that singular goal. There's no
| reason to pretend that they do what they do for any other
| reason. Clouflare shouldn't be shutting down websites
| because of their content, but making fun of mentally ill
| people is not "an important function in society".
| ladyattis wrote:
| How exactly is Kiwi Farms helping with this when the vast
| majority of their forum threads are like "LOL tr--ns
| talking about X." Seriously, just go skim their site,
| tell me exactly where they fulfill this function?
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| Harassing, doxxing, and swatting random people on social
| media is not investigative journalism.
| convery wrote:
| Guess we should take down traditional media as well then
| when they dox LibsOfTiktok and other creators so that the
| Twitter mob can harass and SWAT them, since they can't
| hide behind 'journalism'. Or does it only apply to the
| bad guys?
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| It's a pretty big false equivalence to say revealing the
| name of a prominent psuedonymous account linked to
| doxxing, harassment and bomb threats is remotely the same
| as what KF or Libs of TikTok do.
| whalecancer wrote:
| scifibestfi wrote:
| Now do Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp
| and perhaps even HN in the case of founders whose life's
| work got torn apart to shreds.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Free speech does not cover defamation.
| subsistence234 wrote:
| cowtools wrote:
| fjordelectro wrote:
| Sounds like something for the courts to handle and not
| cloudflare.
|
| https://casetext.com/case/scott-v-moon-1
| Pxtl wrote:
| You could say that about a lot of things that are
| normally covered by abuse policies. For example, we
| expect hosts to remove content that violate copyright,
| why is copyright more worthy of protection at the
| corporate level than defamation?
| howdyfolks wrote:
| Because society created laws in that way?
| nradov wrote:
| The DMCA specifically requires hosts to remove content
| upon an allegation of copyright infringement. There is no
| law requiring hosts to remove defamatory content (without
| a specific court order). Congress has deemed copyright
| protection more worthy of protection at the corporate
| level than defamation. If you are unhappy with that
| situation then you should contact your members of
| Congress.
| cowtools wrote:
| Interesting. I typed up a comment that mentioned the name
| of the person co-ordonating the DDoS campaign, and I got
| instantly flagged. Test.
| sealeck wrote:
| I broadly support free speech, but not hate speech.
| subsistence234 wrote:
| "Hate speech" is ill-defined, basically it's just "speech
| that people with enough power don't like." and what that
| is can changes at any time.
|
| Many people more intelligent than you (and me) have spent
| many decades thinking about this issue. E.g. if you can
| show in court that KF is defaming someone, you can go
| after them, or if you can show they're involved in other
| illegal activities. But "I don't like some of the things
| they're saying on their own forum" is NOT a valid reason.
| from wrote:
| The Soviet equivalent of this is saying you support free
| speech but not for capitalists.
| wussboy wrote:
| Free speech is a good, but it is not the highest good. We
| do not need to throw civil society away because it might
| infringe on free speech.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I don't believe that's a power a company like Cloudflare
| should hold, instead delineating it to the justice system to
| weed and parse out.
| throwrqX wrote:
| If they are doing anything illegal (like coordinating
| terrorist attacks) we luckily have law enforcement agencies
| with lots of power to address that.
| ladyattis wrote:
| KF users have already SWATed someone if I recall correctly.
| So, they're already in the worse possible situation if any
| further evidence comes to light.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Ironically law enforcement are part of the problem: if you
| want someone murdered over the internet in the US, by far
| the easiest way is to make a bogus phone call to the
| police. Doesn't work all the time but it's pretty risk free
| for the perpetrator.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Unarmed police shootings are amazingly rare on a yearly
| basis.
| judge2020 wrote:
| And yet there are compilation videos of streamers being
| swatted on stream[0]. If someone has an address, all it
| takes are some anonymous calling techniques / a burner
| phone to traumatize the occupants by calling in a fake
| hostage situation or something of that caliber.
|
| 0: https://youtu.be/coa7tP54kDY?t=6
| staringback wrote:
| Are these people getting shot and killed on their stream?
| This is not related to the topic.
| schleck8 wrote:
| Yes, that has happened repeatedly before. People have
| been killed by swatting. In the United States of course.
| umvi wrote:
| what % of the videos in the compilation involve an
| "unarmed police shooting" vs. a "swatting"? The original
| assertion by GP was that actually dying at the hands of
| police during such an event is extremely rare, an
| assertion that your link does not seem to refute.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Stopping terrorist attacks is also how the NSA vindicates
| spying on every internet user. It's up there with "think of
| the kids!".
|
| It's an excuse though - and people will extend "terrorist
| attacks" to include non-violent protests when it suits them.
| sealeck wrote:
| Except this isn't a "we should record everyone's
| interactions to stop terrorism" it's "we should stop
| hosting propaganda for terrorists, especially when that
| cessation doesn't harm others (dropping hosting for their
| website does't impair other people's liberties, whereas
| spying on everyone's messages would)"
| subsistence234 wrote:
| vorpalhex wrote:
| It harms everyone. It harms yourself.
|
| Either free speech is absolute or we can suppress the
| speech of anyone we don't like. At some point society
| will dislike you.
| mort96 wrote:
| The people who are against CloudFlare supporting authoritarian
| terorrists... are authoritarians. Got it.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| Leave it to HN to prioritize this weird bastardized
| philosophical theory of free speech over actual people who
| have been harassed, doxxed, and driven to suicide. This isn't
| even a case of "simple" hate speech which this community
| views as morally gray, it's straight up harassment and
| violence.
|
| It doesn't help that the focus of these harassment campaigns
| are people that right wing tech types have little sympathy
| for, but this thread is one of the more ridiculous examples
| of how much "free speech" has become an infallible ideology
| that must be defended regardless of who it hurts, or kills in
| this case.
| [deleted]
| cyral wrote:
| > Instead he's managing to hold the line against all of the
| authoritarians and individuals wanting to rip each other down.
| I never thought I'd say this, but, well done cloudflare.
|
| Are you aware of what site this blog post is about?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Proudly supporting teenagers urging each other to suicide. A
| great moral stance.
| rvz wrote:
| Well Cloudflare isn't going to do anything, so maybe try
| running and write a letter to ICANN or RIPE, like what the
| Ukrainian government did and stop them then? (It didn't work)
|
| Maybe this time it will work? (It won't)
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Chloe Sagal seems to have had mental health issues - if not
| Kiwifarms then it would have been something else that trigged her
| suicide.
|
| It really baffles me when people are targeted by trolls - trolls
| have been around since the days of Fidonet and BBS - without
| strict moderation it is a wild west.
|
| Also the solution seems kind of obvious to me - just disconnect
| yourself - delete social media , curate your feeds and stop
| posting about your real life on twitter , your job or where you
| live and find another avenue not twitter to engage with.
|
| 4chan, kiwifarms - another site will just pop up to cater for
| trolls.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Chloe Sagal seems to have had mental health issues - if not
| Kiwifarms then it would have been something else that trigged
| her suicide.
|
| Harassment is associated with suicidality.[1][2]
|
| > Also the solution seems kind of obvious to me - just
| disconnect yourself - delete social media , curate your feeds
| and stop posting about your real life on twitter , your job or
| where you live and find another avenue not twitter to engage
| with.
|
| This was prompted by the harassment of a professional Twitch
| streamer if I understood right. Just delete your career.
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34968122/
|
| [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4808508/
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| If that is your chosen way to make money then you need to
| consider it to be be part of the job just like the
| possibility of getting shot at when you join the police or
| armed forces - a actor or popstar with stalkers.
| yakkityyak wrote:
| > Also the solution seems kind of obvious to me - just
| disconnect yourself - delete social media , curate your feeds
| and stop posting about your real life on twitter , your job or
| where you live and find another avenue not twitter to engage
| with.
|
| It seems for a number of people, online social media is the
| only viable, but paradoxically abusive outlet for social
| connections.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| There are safe avenues on the internet but you won't get as
| much attention or likes but then I am a boomer and never got
| this oversharing on places like TikTok.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Once again, let's take note that HN users are championing free
| speech on a site that has a very strict moderation policy.
| deepdriver wrote:
| The difference is that this site doesn't underpin most of the
| Internet, or function essentially as a utility.
| hnbad wrote:
| That's a lot of words to say that they don't want to drop
| Kiwifarms.
|
| It's interesting how companies like Cloudflare will stylize
| themselves as public infrastructure when it comes to who they
| should take money from but would fight tooth and claw if you
| argued they should also be regulated as such.
|
| This is simply free speech fundamentalism posing as being
| "unpolitical". Free speech taken to the extreme results in the
| suppression of speech (not to mention all the other reasons most
| countries have laws tackling demagoguery, hate speech and
| incitement). The "Paradox of Tolerance" still applies.
| howdyfolks wrote:
| Did you bother to read the post? They're not taking money from
| them
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > _Some argue that we should terminate these services to content
| we find reprehensible so that others can launch attacks to knock
| it offline. That is the equivalent argument in the physical world
| that the fire department shouldn 't respond to fires in the homes
| of people who do not possess sufficient moral character._
|
| > _For instance, when a site that opposed LGBTQ+ rights signed up
| for a paid version of DDoS mitigation service we worked with our
| Proudflare employee resource group to identify an organization
| that supported LGBTQ+ rights and donate 100 percent of the fees
| for our services to them. We don 't and won't talk about these
| efforts publicly because we don't do them for marketing purposes;
| we do them because they are aligned with what we believe is
| morally correct._
|
| These are the two strongest points for me. The former is one I
| already believed, and the latter makes me more hopeful as someone
| in that specific minority community.
|
| In addition, I think it's touched on but Cloudflare is huge. Even
| if they changed their mind on terminating amoral customers, how
| would that go down? Another automated moderation system that
| checks for certain keywords? Ask the LGBTQ people banned from
| Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Google/etc. if those systems really work
| all that well. All too often person A implying that X group
| deserves violence skirts the system, while the actual text
| calling out Person A's beliefs from an advocate is considered
| hate.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| I somewhat agree with these two points as well. When you're
| running a business, you'll often have customers you find
| disagreeable. That doesn't mean that they're invalid customers,
| but you may feel gross helping them. For the exceptionally bad
| cases, why not jack up the prices 10x and donate those
| proceeds?
|
| > Another automated moderation system that checks for certain
| keywords? Ask the LGBTQ people banned from
| Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Google/etc. if those systems really
| work all that well.
|
| This is so, so true. Both automated and human review systems
| often times don't handle or protect minority users well.
|
| (Reasonable Disclosure: I still terminated my services with
| CloudFlare over this.)
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > For the exceptionally bad cases, why not jack up the prices
| 10x and donate those proceeds?
|
| Even paying victims can't fix all harms. Never mind donating
| to someone else.
| [deleted]
| weberer wrote:
| And let's be real. DDoS attacks are acts of digital terrorism.
| They're attacking infrastructure due to political motives.
|
| These people who want to revoke DDoS protection for groups they
| don't like are essentially promoting terrorism. Why else would
| they fight so hard to remove DDoS protection, if not because
| they simply want those attacks to succeed?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You seem to be treating all political conflict as terrorism.
| Couldn't you say the same about people who organize on
| Kiwifarms and flood social media with specious allegations of
| bad character or nefarious actions? For that matter, the site
| has been heavily associated with doxxing and swatting.
| weberer wrote:
| No, as I've posted below.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberterrorism#Defining_cyber
| t...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _The Technolytics Institute defines cyberterrorism as_
|
| The premeditated use of disruptive activities, or the
| threat thereof, against computers and/or networks, with
| the intention to cause harm or further social,
| ideological, religious, political or similar objectives.
| _Or to intimidate any person in furtherance of such
| objectives._
|
| _The National Conference of State Legislatures, an
| organization of legislators created to help policymakers
| in the United States with issues such as economy and
| homeland security defines cyberterrorism as:_
|
| The use of information technology by terrorist groups and
| individuals to further their agenda. This can include use
| of information technology to organize and execute attacks
| against networks, computer systems and telecommunications
| infrastructures, _or for exchanging information or making
| threats electronically._
|
| --
|
| Just taking the first two, they could easily be extended
| to Kiwifarms, where information on individuals is
| compiled and shared in public fashion and discourse
| revolves around how such people deserve to be harrassed.
| I haven't been following the Keffals episode in
| particular but Kiwifarms already had a reputation for
| facilitating and fostering personal harassment.
| chc wrote:
| The group they're trying to target here _is_ a terrorist
| group. Not even in a metaphorical sense. It 's people who try
| to harass random transgender people to the point of suicide
| or murder.
| 3sGPqEu59EGDFUn wrote:
| If they are a terrorist group (or otherwise doing something
| "wrong"), then the appropriate means to deal with that is
| courts and law enforcement, not a CDN.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| pigs and domestic terrorists are the same group
| https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-
| history...
|
| and they collude secretly with corporations to advance
| their powers mutually
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/emails-show-amazon-
| rin...
|
| I don't ask someone to shoot their own foot to protect
| myself
| banannaise wrote:
| This assumes that law enforcement is both effective and
| fair. It is neither.
|
| "Police exist, therefore nobody except the police is
| allowed to do anything about anyone's bad behavior" is a
| terrible argument.
| paganel wrote:
| It is the best argument we can have in a liberal regime.
| Anything else would lead us directly to tyranny, and not
| the metaphorical one.
| amrocha wrote:
| Spoken like someone who has never had to distrust police
| in their life
| autoexec wrote:
| Our justice system is far from perfect, but it's better
| to have due process and transparency than to have
| corporations or mobs selectively enforcing "the law"
| however and whenever they see fit.
|
| There's no reason to think that just because police exist
| people can't do anything about other people's bad
| behavior though. For example, when someone says something
| you don't like you aren't allowed to silence them because
| that violates their rights, but you are allowed to use
| your own rights to speak out against them and what
| they've been saying.
|
| Crimes should be dealt with by our legal systems, but
| there are plenty of other ways to deal with things that
| simply offend us.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| IANAL. KF appears to me to be woefully in violation of US
| Federal law since it is a forum more or less dedicated to
| cyberstalking.
|
| > The federal law concerning cyberstalking is 18 U.S.C.
| SS 2261A(2). It provides that it's unlawful for any
| person to engage in a course of conduct through
| electronic communication that makes another individual
| reasonably fear death or serious bodily harm to
| themselves or another (including a pet or service
| animal). The behavior may also be illegal if it causes or
| could cause "substantial emotional distress." A course of
| conduct means two or more acts suggesting that the
| individual has or will continue the behavior.
|
| https://www.duimiamilawyer.com/blog/2020/12/is-there-a-
| feder...
|
| The decision of investigators to turn a blind eye to it
| over the past decade is curious.
| chc wrote:
| I agree, I wish we had a law enforcement apparatus that
| cared about protecting transgender people. But we don't
| have a clear path to that at the moment, and in the
| meantime we want to avoid more people being killed. Thus
| you have people trying to argue for more informal
| procedures that revolve around social pressure, telling
| companies basically "This is obviously way beyond the
| pale, you should not associate yourself with this." It's
| not a good state for things to be in, but pretending
| things are better than they are is an even worse
| solution.
| throwrqX wrote:
| What evidence is there for the law enforcement apparatus
| not protecting transgender people in this particular
| case? Have their been similar cases for cisgender people
| where the law enforcement apparatus has cared more? I am
| not sure saying we need mob action to stop other mob
| action is a good long term solution.
| amrocha wrote:
| Jesus Christ dude, there's people dying here and you're
| arguing over technicalities. The site is still up!! No
| one's been arrested! You'd rather people keep dying while
| you argue that both sides are bad, while one side is
| killing people?
| throwrqX wrote:
| No, I'd rather people report things to the proper law
| enforcement authorities if they believe there is criminal
| activity going on instead of trying to pressure
| CloudFlare into taking down websites for their moral or
| political beliefs. They have already resisted pressure
| from Ukraine regarding Russia which no offense is a
| directly killing far more people than Kiwifarms ever
| indirectly will.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/6/23/21295432/police-
| bla...
|
| https://incite-national.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/08/TOOLK...
|
| etc
| throwrqX wrote:
| Key words in my post were _in this particular case_.
| Neither links talk about any similar cases regarding
| cisgender people and harassment either.
| chc wrote:
| I can't think of any instances of people being persecuted
| for being cisgender. But I suppose you can draw a
| reasonable comparison to The Pirate Bay, which has
| received much more attention from law enforcement for
| cutting into record labels' profits than Kiwi Farms has
| for terrorizing queer people.
| throwrqX wrote:
| Things involving industry and large sums of money have
| always gotten police attention easier. What is in
| question here is regarding discrimination against
| transgender individuals compared to cisgender ones with
| regards to harassment.
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| Law enforcement is the tool being used to do the violence
| ffs, they're not protecting anyone
| inquirerGeneral wrote:
| Yeah make up your facts better.
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| so wacky so made up https://kotaku.com/keffals-clara-
| sorrenti-twitch-streamer-tr...
| throwrqX wrote:
| Law enforcement are doing the right thing responding to
| potentially emergency situations. The problem isn't that
| they are responding to SWATing, the problem is people
| calling them in when there is no emergency.
| rvz wrote:
| They're right you know, report them to the authorities.
| Not to an entity like Cloudflare.
| aeturnum wrote:
| No one is claiming that, in a perfect world, this would
| be Cloudflare's problem. Some other authority would step
| in and take care of it I suppose.
|
| But we don't live in a perfect world. It's a pretty weak
| response to say "this should not be their problem" -
| because, for a bunch of reasons, it is their problem.
|
| There are bigger, harder questions along the lines of
| "how do we as a society deal with this kind of issue."
| Cloudflare does not need to solve the general case before
| it deal with the specific actions of this specific
| website - and the desire to solve the general case is not
| a defense against confronting the specifics.
| Longlius wrote:
| KF's policy is very straightforward - do not engage with
| the people involved. Doing so or conspiring to do so is
| grounds for an immediate sitewide permaban.
| paganel wrote:
| Is Homeland Security actively following and prosecuting
| that group you mentioned? I mean, on account of them being
| allegedly "terrorists".
| cfvsdfasdfasd wrote:
| mmmpop wrote:
| chc wrote:
| That was not my definition. Kiwi Farms will post their
| target's private info, the private info of everyone their
| target knows, send death threats to their target and
| their family, report false crimes to try and get SWAT
| teams to kill their target, etc. Ben Shapiro doesn't seem
| like a good person and I suspect he is probably
| sympathetic to many terrorists, but he is not himself a
| terrorist as far as I know.
| mmmpop wrote:
| So you don't sympathize with a single "terrorist" on the
| planet? Don't lie.
| whalecancer wrote:
| tlonny wrote:
| What's your source on the SWAT-ing + death threats
| originating from Kiwi Farms?
|
| My understanding of that website is that it is moderated
| based on the philosophy of "look, don't touch". Your
| statement runs contrary to this...
| chc wrote:
| They are the top suspects in the swatting of the Twitch
| streamer Keffals and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene just in
| the past month. There have been many news articles about
| it -- I would suggest Googling and picking the source
| that seems most credible to you, since I've found linking
| specific sources tends to lead to people debating the
| source itself. (I'll be honest, I'm skeptical on the MTG
| one, but they are still the top suspects there.)
| ta1235414335 wrote:
| pseudo0 wrote:
| I read about the Marjorie Taylor Green incident. The
| swatter apparently claimed to be a specific moderator
| from the website (by username, not actual name), while
| commiting a serious felony against a prominent
| politician... If anything, it looks like a two-for-one
| swatting, getting the moderator and the site a visit from
| the feds in addition to Marjorie Taylor Green.
| tlonny wrote:
| I think expunging a website from the internet for
| "suspected" involvement in crime is a huge overreach.
|
| I think such a posture would encourage some to commit
| "false flag" SWAT-ing as a means to silence those they
| disagree with.
|
| SWAT-ing is a very serious crime, and if they are "top
| suspects" as you claim, I expect LE would be robustly
| investigating them.
|
| Thoughts?
| Karunamon wrote:
| The fact that they post dox (names, addresses, other
| personally identifying information) makes that a pretty
| weak defense in my mind. If you write up this long post
| about how someone is a terrible human being and include
| their PII right next to it, what happens next isn't
| exactly hard to guess. And these people are not stupid,
| they _know_ what will happen next even if they don 't
| actually ever harass the person.
|
| I wouldn't have a problem with them discussing other
| people among themselves, but including addresses and
| phone numbers and such is such a bad faith "I'm not
| touching you I'm not touching you ha ha ha" that I
| wouldn't mind seeing them burned down on principle.
| whalecancer wrote:
| malfist wrote:
| Wow. So de-platforming Nazis is terrorism now?
| naasking wrote:
| malfist wrote:
| Are you implying that if cloudflare kicked a nazi off
| their services, that would murder them?
| naasking wrote:
| No. Clearly you're having trouble understanding basic
| logic so I'll spell it out for you:
|
| 1. Terrorism is not a judgment of the target but of the
| action.
|
| 2. The OP classified DDoS as terrorism.
|
| 3. DDoSing Nazis is thus terrorism.
|
| By parity of reasoning, I pointed out that murdering a
| Nazi is still murder, regardless of the fact that the
| target was a Nazi. The nature of the target is immaterial
| to the classification of the action taken against them.
| cowtools wrote:
| DDoS is a product of an inherent weakness of the internet
| infrastructure, namely BGP. Cloudflare "solves" this by
| acting as a middleman, and charging for their service.
|
| I don't know if I would describe a DDoS attack as "digital
| terrorism", but it is annoying and hard to stop on an
| individual level because of the design of the internet.
| [deleted]
| greyface- wrote:
| > namely BGP
|
| DDoS attacks would still occur if we used a routing
| protocol other than BGP. It's not created by BGP, it's
| created by the fact that the Internet is end-to-end
| oversubscribed.
| cowtools wrote:
| The weakness in the internet that allows for DDoS is that
| you can't tell your peers to filter incoming traffic on
| your behalf, so you need to discriminate on the edge. The
| attacker still gets to eat up your bandwidth and CPU
| time.
| greyface- wrote:
| BGP absolutely does allow you to tell your peers to
| filter traffic before passing it to you. https://www.rfc-
| editor.org/rfc/rfc7999.html
| cowtools wrote:
| This is just IP-based filtering, which is useless as the
| attacker can purchase more IP space.
|
| What you need is something like a whitelist-by-public-key
| or hashcash or something.
| ancarda wrote:
| Isn't the issue more with how we implemented IP than BGP?
| AFAIK, DDoS attacks would be far less effective if every
| ISP implemented BCP 38.
| xdennis wrote:
| > And let's be real. DDoS attacks are acts of digital
| terrorism.
|
| No, it's not. Not everything that's bad is terrorism.
|
| Terrorism is specifically about using violence. Don't water
| down terms.
| Ticklee wrote:
| Speech can be violence. This can for instance be seen on
| the very website we are discussing.
| naasking wrote:
| > Speech can be violence
|
| No. Don't blur this line or you not only lose
| credibility, you descend into absurdity.
| weberer wrote:
| Terrorism includes attacks on infrastructure, not just
| bodily harm. Firebombing an empty building still counts. In
| this case, it would fall specifically within cyber
| terrorism.
|
| >the premeditated use of disruptive activities, or the
| threat thereof, against computers and/or networks, with the
| intention to cause harm or further social, ideological,
| religious, political or similar objectives. Or to
| intimidate any person in furtherance of such objectives
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberterrorism#Defining_cyber
| t...
| blibble wrote:
| > And let's be real. DDoS attacks are acts of digital
| terrorism. They're attacking infrastructure due to political
| motives.
|
| in my experience most of the time it's due to:
| - boredom ("gotta nuke something") - revenge for being
| banned/fragged/... - extortion ("ban this person I
| don't like, or else")
| Ticklee wrote:
| Another big reason is to inhibit the competition, this is
| often seen in video game servers DDoS attacking each other
| in order to get people to switch
| kodah wrote:
| I would call it vigilantism which is a type of definitional
| terrorism. People in the US don't like that word, but there's
| a good many things that _are_ terrorism that we don 't call
| such. At the end of the day, violence with political aims is
| terrorism.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > I would call it vigilantism which is a type of
| definitional terrorism.
|
| Only if it's sufficiently political. Lots of DDoS is not.
| And that bar gets higher for an attack that's minimally
| violent.
| sealeck wrote:
| > They're attacking infrastructure due to political motives.
|
| They're attacking KiwiFarms for their agenda of trying to
| drive people to commit suicide.
| patmcc wrote:
| True.
|
| Let's say KiwiFarms was entirely hosted/located in a shed
| in the middle of nowhere. Someone walks up to it and sets
| it on fire. Should the local fire department put it out?
| Assume it's not going to spread to other buildings/etc.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Is Cloudflare a government service? Do local fire
| departments remove copyright infringers' sheds?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| First of, not all fire departments are government
| services. Sometimes they are private associations of
| volunteers that receive marginal if any taxpayer support.
| Other times, they are for-profit corporations. This is
| particularly true when another company needs specialized
| firefighting services because they are remote or handle
| materials and situations the local government-supported
| firefighters aren't equipped to handle.
|
| > _Let 's say KiwiFarms was entirely hosted/located in a
| shed in the middle of nowhere._
|
| A shed in the middle of nowhere, so let us suppose the
| nearest government supported fire department is a two
| hour drive away, and so KF hires a private for-profit
| firefighting company. With that modification to patmcc's
| comment, what is your response now?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Cloudflare is not a private association of volunteers.
| Private fire fighting services are not called fire
| departments commonly, are plural, and are not local
| frequently. My response is still the analogy is bad. We
| can understand the situation better without trying to
| imagine what fire would be like if it didn't spread.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I did not compare cloudflare to a private association of
| volunteers. I am suggesting they are comparable to a
| private for-profit firefighting company. Can you respond
| to this?
|
| If KF farms hires a private for-profit firefighting
| company, and then political activists commit arson
| against KF, should the private for-profit firefighting
| company put out the fire? Or does your political ideology
| oblige firefighters to side with arsonists?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > I did not compare cloudflare to a private association
| of volunteers.
|
| The point was your lecture on fire fighting services was
| irrelevant to the context.
|
| > I am suggesting they are comparable to a private for-
| profit firefighting company. Can you respond to this? If
| KF farms hires a private for-profit firefighting company,
| and then political activists commit arson against KF,
| should the private for-profit firefighting company put
| out the fire?
|
| I did respond. I said the analogy had negative value.
| Continuing to mutate the analogy is just more evidence of
| it.
|
| > Or does your political ideology oblige firefighters to
| side with arsonists?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Can you explain why the comparison between a private fire
| department that frustrates vigilante arsonists and a
| private DDoS protection service that frustrates vigilante
| DDoSers is an analogy with "negative value"?
| tomrod wrote:
| It's a platform of services like a government service is
| typically provisioned. While not a democratically elected
| government, they use governance all the same.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > It's a platform of services like a government service
| is typically provisioned.
|
| It's a monopoly funded by taxes obligated to serve
| everyone?
|
| > While not a democratically elected government, they use
| governance all the same.
|
| This is meaningless.
| tomrod wrote:
| I can see you're not interested in discussion at this
| time. No worries, we all have those days.
|
| I did not say it was a government service, I said a
| platform functions a lot like a government service,
| especially when multihoming is limited due to switching
| costs.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > I did not say it was a government service, I said a
| platform functions a lot like a government service,
| especially when multihoming is limited due to switching
| costs.
|
| You said it was like a government service is typically
| provisioned. And the costs of switching governments dwarf
| the costs of switching online services.
|
| > I can see you're not interested in discussion at this
| time. No worries, we all have those days.
|
| The same to you.
| paulmd wrote:
| They aren't legally obligated to, actually. The US courts
| have consistently held that civil servants have no
| _particularized_ duty to individuals - "protect and
| service is just a motto and not a binding legal duty" is
| more or less the exact wording.
|
| That's probably different elsewhere, you might find a
| very different take in Europe, but that cuts both ways.
| The privacy violations that KF engages in would be
| illegal in the UK - citizens have a right to privacy and
| newspapers cannot just print personal information (for
| example) about random people unless there's some aspect
| of it that makes it of general public interest.
| psyc wrote:
| If you want to take the most naive and facile way of
| looking at it, sure. See my other comment. Kiwi Farms has
| no such agenda and never has. This is either a
| misunderstanding or a lie.
| canistista wrote:
| users aren't the hosts
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Those two statements are not in contradiction though. If
| KiwiFarms is trying to get people to commit suicide in a
| willful way that breaks the law, surely they can be brought
| before the law. If you are attempting to DDoS the
| infrastructure of somebody because you disagree with them,
| you are committing an illegal act too. Perhaps terrorism is
| a bit far, but what gives the people who commit the DDoS
| the right to do so? No society should allow people to be
| punished without a due process.
|
| I also can't go shoot up suspected criminals, that's called
| vigilantism and is criminal. Even if I knew they did it.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| sealeck wrote:
| > Do you believe investigative journalism has a place in
| our society?
|
| Yes and KiwiFarms is not investigative journalism -
| they're harrassing and doxxing private individuals with
| clearly personal malicious intent. The key part of
| investigative journalism is the "investigative", which
| there is no evidence of on KiwiFarm's part. No attempts
| to hold power to account, to expose serious breaches of
| power - just a horrid, all-consuming hatred and failure
| to respect other people's right to exist.
|
| For _actual_ investigative journalism, see
| https://www.icij.org/
| EdiX wrote:
| sophacles wrote:
| sophacles wrote:
| I'm sure someone brave enough to post this from a
| throwaway account really beleives it... Sure, that makes
| sense.
|
| Even if you actually do hold this position, that doesn't
| make it right. Just because some idiot holds the opinion
| that the earth is flat, it doesn't mean the earth is
| flat.
| dfsadfas wrote:
| sophacles wrote:
| Imagine thinking this drivel somehow applied to this
| thread.
|
| You shouldn't make new accounts for this sort of thing
| you know - cowards who hide from perfectly legal doxxing
| and "investigative journalism" in defense of such
| "harmless" actions come across as sus. Why should you be
| ashamed of your opinion - you are entitled to free speech
| right?
| google234123 wrote:
| It's actually relevant since it's one of the only sites
| on the web where you can express an opinion like that and
| not be removed
| [deleted]
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| If you believed that KF was performing "investigative
| journalism", you wouldn't be posting this with a
| throwaway.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| Perhaps political dissidents in the USSR should have been
| more open with their criticisms as well :)
| jimbob45 wrote:
| "throwawayacc2" is an account well over a year old with
| 400+ karma. His name does not appear to be correlated
| with his actual account activity.
| pjc50 wrote:
| If people really believed that doxxing was harmless,
| they'd be posting under their real names and addresses.
| wyre wrote:
| Except using an alias online is a large part of internet
| culture. There are also a lot of people that do use their
| real names online.
|
| I'm not telling strangers, in-person or online, my
| address.
| joshmanders wrote:
| And that would make sense when it comes to people like
| you or others with aliases, but an alias like "wyre" or
| "pc" aren't exactly hiding themselves, just using a
| nickname, similarly to how in high school my peers called
| me Seneca (because my first day I wore my old school's
| t-shirt). I wasn't hiding who I am by going by that, just
| not using my real name.
|
| But "throwawayacc2" doesn't get that same meaning.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| You are exactly the kind of person that makes me use
| names like this.
|
| Ideas need no name. Argue the idea, not the human behind
| it.
|
| Or failing that, perhaps consider relocating to China or
| Russia. You will find their attitudes to internet
| anonymity more to your liking.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > I'm not telling strangers, in-person or online, my
| address.
|
| But what if there was a website that told strangers your
| address associated with your handle?
| throwrqX wrote:
| Some users of KiwiFarms may have the agenda of wanting to
| drive people to commit suicide, you seem to be accusing the
| website as a whole of a) having an agenda and b) that
| agenda being to drive people to kill themselves
|
| What evidence is there for this? I haven't kept up with the
| website recently, is Null telling people to harass people
| to death?
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > _is Null telling people to harass people to death?_
|
| I'll treat you as though you're honest, but I might point
| out this is a dishonest person's favorite argument.
|
| Here's the common answer in Twitter thread form: https://
| twitter.com/IamRageSparkle/status/128089253502461952...
| Longlius wrote:
| That bartender's name? Albert Einstein.
| throwrqX wrote:
| An argument should be able to stand on its own regardless
| of which people believe in it or use it.
|
| As for the Twitter thread I've heard plenty of similar
| arguments before but I'm not a particularly big believer
| in them. Lots of people have very awful company (take for
| example Hollywood actors associating with predators) but
| that doesn't particularly mean that they are promoting or
| in agreement with the actions of their company.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > * An argument should be able to stand on its own
| regardless of which people believe in it or use it.*
|
| Which is why I continued on with addressing the argument.
|
| > _Lots of people have very awful company (take for
| example Hollywood actors associating with predators)_
|
| False equivalency I'd say. Yes, the entertainment
| industry as a whole SUCKS. But if you think about it for
| even a second, you'll realize there is a difference
| between being an actor and being an open Nazi.
| throwrqX wrote:
| You didn't give me an argument you gave me a twitter
| thread. The argument I interpreted from the thread was if
| you let your bar be associated with a Nazi (because you
| served them) then down the road they will invite their
| other Nazi friends and eventually your bar will become a
| Nazi bar. In the context of this HN thread I take this
| argument to mean, well Null is associating with people
| who harassed this woman to death, therefore Null supports
| it. Which is why I gave the response I did.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Close, but you're missing the point. It becomes a Nazi
| bar, regardless of the owner's intentions for the bar. So
| arguing the semantics of one admin's beliefs is
| irrelevant.
| throwrqX wrote:
| What defines it being a Nazi bar? One patron? A dozen? A
| certain percentage of the patronage?
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Also irrelevant. The Nazi bar is a metaphor.
| throwrqX wrote:
| Metaphor for what? Supporting harassment to the point of
| suicide? There's lots of harassment on almost every
| social media site so the question of what defines it
| 'going over the edge' so to speak is a very important one
| to me.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| A metaphor that can't be examined for implications has no
| value.
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| Official statement from KF on Aug 26th:
|
| > What I fear more than losing my site, being sued, or
| dealing with police is living in a world where fat
| eunuchs can groom little boys into castrating themselves
| and nobody is allowed to say anything about it.
|
| Wow very neutral site with no agenda here
| bakugo wrote:
| QuinnWilton wrote:
| It's difficult to take comments like this in good faith
| when the Github profile linked on your account
| prominently features your signature on a letter calling
| for Richard Stallman to be reinstated to the FSF after
| his resignation, following his comments defending sex
| with minors and child pornography.
| [deleted]
| omginternets wrote:
| I don't see anything about wanting to drive people to
| suicide.
| deepdriver wrote:
| squabbles wrote:
| Keffals brags about sending hrt to minors without their
| parent's knowledge.
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with that
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Somebody who isn't a doctor, giving medications to a
| child without their parent's knowledge or permission?
| That's surely in violation of the law.
| a_shovel wrote:
| What law? She's not giving anyone hormones, you know. She
| shares information about informed consent clinics, the
| effects of hormones, and places to buy safe supplies.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| >> _Keffals brags about sending hrt to minors without
| their parent 's knowledge._
|
| > _There is nothing wrong with that_
|
| This is the claim and response I am responding to.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| sdfasdfasdfsa wrote:
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| throwrqX wrote:
| That may be your opinion but lots of parents would not
| agree with it.
| ygjb wrote:
| Yeah, but not all parents have the best interests of
| their children at heart. This is generally recognized,
| and the reason why there is increasing clarification of
| the boundaries between the rights of parents and the
| rights of children. It's the reason that forced marriage
| and child brides have been outlawed in many countries.
| It's also the reason why child labour and child welfare,
| and protective services for children exist.
|
| Should someone be providing HRT to children? Generally
| no. Has the child been prescribed that medication, and
| the parents are refusing, unable to, or actively
| preventing the child from getting that medication?
| Absolutely!
|
| If this was in relation to insulin, antibiotics, or any
| other generally accepted medical prescription, the
| individual would be lauded. Because of transphobia and
| ignorance, sites like kiwifarms are being targetted by a
| bunch of relentless shitweasels who are hiding behind
| Freedom of Speech or Freedom of Expression, something
| which Cloudflare is under absolutely no legal requirement
| to provide.
|
| I don't want tech companies to become the arbiters of
| free speech, but I also don't think companies are
| obligated to provide services to a website owned by a
| person who gleefully celebrated the suicide of a victim
| of harassment.
|
| Now that I am not an employee there anymore, one thing I
| am absolutely thrilled to say is that the Fastly approach
| with a Good Neighbour policy is awesome, and that alone
| (among many awesome things over the 5 years I was there)
| makes it a better company to work for than CloudFlare.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| throwrqX wrote:
| There's nothing in the original comment to suggest
| parents are ignoring the orders of a doctor.
| ygjb wrote:
| Do you actually have something to add to the
| conversation? Your comments haven't particularly
| meaningful or insightful, so that's a genuine question.
|
| There isn't a complete picture here. In this particular
| case, Keffals shared that she was supporting alternate
| paths to get HRT, and providing support for folks who
| were legally blocked from receiving gender affirming care
| due to laws passed by a government largely captured by
| right wing politicians.
|
| Given the complexity of pursuing HRT, it's not
| unreasonable to reach the conclusion that a child in
| those circumstances being denied care is largely related
| to a lack of parental support, or from being actively
| prevented from getting treatment that doctors were
| clearly providing (since the government had to ban
| medical treatment in order to stop it).
| throwrqX wrote:
| What do I have to add? I am giving the opposing opinion
| here which from anecdotal experience is also the opinion
| of almost every parent I've met (n~=40) in contrast to
| the opinions of some people trying to give the impression
| that it's normal for children to be getting drugs from
| people they know online because that's what they want.
|
| If the government bans some form of medical treatment and
| Keffals is trying to bypass this ban then this obviously
| would raise questions of legality.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| Seriously?
| nervlord wrote:
| a_shovel wrote:
| Do you think that supports the claims made above?
| beneboi wrote:
| yes, ofcourse
| [deleted]
| throwrqX wrote:
| There's a big difference between talking shit about
| people and telling others to harass people until they get
| to the stage they commit suicide. You've shown me that he
| talks shit about people, you haven't shown me him having
| an agenda of trying to get these people he's talking
| about to kill themselves, which was one of my original
| claims.
| psyc wrote:
| I would have thought the big brain rationalists here with
| their Fallacy Detector 9000s would have been up for the
| simple task of teasing the agenda of laughing at people,
| from the agenda of "trying to get them to top themselves"
| ta1235414335 wrote:
| The website does have an agenda of not being shut down,
| yes, this is why it is so intent on following US laws and
| cooperates with US authorities. The person trying to shut
| it down was being described in the terms above, so its
| not surprising this is the characterization being used.
| The website defends free expression under US law, i
| suppose that also is an agenda.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| They do have an agenda for sure. That wasn't the
| question, tho. The question was whether they condone or
| even encourage their users to target people with the goal
| of driving those people into suicide?
|
| This might be well the case. I am not one of their users
| nor am I educated in this matter, so I'd like to know
| too. When somebody makes this claim, as has been made
| multiple times in the threads here, with demands to
| therefore remove kikifarms from the internet, I think it
| is reasonable to ask for at least some evidence of such a
| claim.
| CJefferson wrote:
| Would you accept posts which say people should kill
| themselves which have not been removed (and their posters
| not banned)?
|
| I could easily find hundreds of such posts, but I don't
| want to waste my time if you wouldn't consider them.
| naasking wrote:
| Are you suggesting that not removing those posts is tacit
| agreement with their content rather than a principled
| stance on free speech for it's members? It could be both
| of course, but I always err on the side of charity even
| if you don't think they deserve it.
| CJefferson wrote:
| It is support -- kiwifarms isn't a free-for-all, they
| have their list of "lolcows" (people who have a thread
| dedicated to them), and only moderators can add new
| threads.
| naasking wrote:
| So only moderators can add new threads, and I assume
| users can post in threads, and I assume the users are the
| ones posting that the people should kill themselves. So
| how does this translate into the moderators or site
| operators/owners endorsing the content of user posts?
|
| Edit: to be clear, "allowing content" does not entail
| "endorsing content" per my original reply.
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| Josh Moon (founder) gloating on stream about getting
| Chloe Segal to kill herself after KF harassed her for 5
| years
|
| https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1564490554754433025
| psyc wrote:
| I don't even have to watch to know you're lying. I know
| exactly what Josh thinks about Chloe, so you can't Gell-
| Mann me, though I'm sure you can fool every other eager-
| to-believe dummy here.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| For context, because I didn't know and I'd think others
| might not either: Apparently Chloe Segal killed herself
| by going to a public park and lighting herself on fire,
| telling witnesses in a spoken suicide note her reasons
| were homelessness and mental health issues.
|
| Josh Moon then playing "Fire" ("I am the God of hellfire
| and I bring you fire") is in extremely bad taste and
| outright vile. I can very well see this as gloating.
|
| And yet, it does not prove kiwifarms direct involvement.
| It's a short extract from a stream he did. Playing
| devil's advocate for a second, it for example might very
| well have been a response to media at the time already
| claiming he/kiwifarms was to blame for the suicide and
| therefore a rather misguided attempt to poke fun at what
| he might have considered unfair reporting.
| throwrqX wrote:
| I don't see him gloating about getting Chloe Segal to
| kill herself in that tweet or video. What I see is him
| making fun of her death? Reminds me of a video I saw of a
| photo of Donald Rumsfeld being burnt when he died last
| year. What am I missing?
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| He _founded and operates the site_ and he reacted to her
| death by calling himself a god. In what way is that not
| gloating?
|
| If the person burning the Rumsfeld photo _contributed to
| his death_ then I might say they were gloating too.
| throwrqX wrote:
| Where is he calling himself a God?
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Did you not watch the video in the tweet?
| throwrqX wrote:
| Yes? He says he'll play something tasteful as an out-
| trail then some video plays until the end.
| tomrod wrote:
| > What am I missing?
|
| A lot, it seems?
| throwrqX wrote:
| Your comment would be far more useful if you actually
| said what I was missing instead of what you said.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| Not anything I haven't read on Twitter about priests.
| Seriously, that's what everyone is upset about?
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| He's talking about transgender people, not priests
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| That's my point, Twitter has the same content about
| priests. What's the big deal, no one is in a tizzy about
| Twitter hosting that content.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Perhaps the context where priests are part of an
| international organization that has paid off and silenced
| victims and covered for the priests for decades while the
| concern about transgender folks being groomers is all
| bullshit?
| psyc wrote:
| And that just makes all the difference, don't it.
|
| http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
| psyc wrote:
| DoctorOW wrote:
| This is not at all what I'm saying. I'm trans, a lesbian and
| an advocate for feminism.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I just don't want to live in a world where society is governed
| and censored by big corporations. Wanting them to do so to
| further my worldview invites others to further the worldview of
| people I oppose. Leave the governing to the government,
| especially when it comes to systems with very broad usages
| (social networks, internet infrastructure, etc.)
| nightpool wrote:
| Cloudflare choosing to continue to provide their security
| services to Kiwifarms won't do anything about the fact that
| they're unregulated, and can offer or revoke services from
| whoever they choose and whatever time they wish. If you want
| to turn Cloudflare into a regulated monopoly, or utility
| company, then I would be open to that argument, but if you
| leave them as an unregulated, profit-seeking enterprise then
| you have to be critical about _where_ that profit is coming
| from and what moral tactics you 're okay with them to further
| that profit.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I don't want to hear cloudflare's opinions on social
| matters. If kiwifarms or whatever is doing something
| illegal, let the law go after them and encourage that.
|
| I don't want to force cloudflare to be a public utility,
| but it is probably bigger and more dominant than any
| company needs to be, like many others it should be broken
| up into smaller pieces.
| ArrayBoundCheck wrote:
| I don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the
| world a better place better than we do - Gavin B
| amrocha wrote:
| I just don't want to live in a world where my trans friends
| get relentlessly harassed and cyber bullied until they kill
| themselves. Can I have that?
| Banana699 wrote:
| Yes you can, convince your friends to deactivate their
| social media accounts where\when they're harrassed or
| aggressively block those who harrass them. Teach them tips
| and tricks to bully back (bullying is really easy). Find
| them mental health professionals and services, and possibly
| help them financially with those services.
| Cr4shMyCar wrote:
| Harassment isn't something that Just Happens and it's not
| something that's impossible to stop or prevent. If a
| group of people is shooting others, would you only teach
| people what to do if they've been shot or would you find
| and take action against the people shooting others?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Call the cops, file restraining orders, and get a good
| therapist.
|
| Assholes and trolls are still going to exist regardless of
| what any platform does.
|
| You can't have what you want by trying to pressure
| cloudflare, it won't make a positive difference. Do
| something real instead of advocating for something
| toothless and symbolic.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| How exactly do you file a restraining order against an
| unknown group of unnamed people? It seems like a very
| privileged victim-blaming POV.
| remarkEon wrote:
| The FBI, and increasingly police departments, have fairly
| large cyber forensics capabilities. If someone is doing
| something illegal, report it.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Shut the fuck up about privilege. Do not make assumptions
| about people and use social justice bullshit to try to
| silence someone whom you disagree with.
|
| Regardless of any advantages I may have had, I have
| personally needed to file police reports and a had a
| restraining order granted against someone to protect
| myself from harassment.
|
| To answer your actual question:
|
| * Keep records of what happened, when, from what sources,
| etc.
|
| * File police reports with your local jurisdiction or
| federal reports
|
| * Seek out legal advice or other assistance from the many
| available sources of such help depending on your location
|
| * Figure out how and actually file for restraining orders
| as appropriate for your local jurisdiction. Even if you
| are not successful leave as long and detailed of a paper
| trail as possible.
|
| * Doing nothing because you expect not succeed will not
| help you, blaming cloudflare or similar services because
| they are easier targets will not help you
| spencerchubb wrote:
| Harassment is already a crime. No need for companies like
| cloudflare to implement their own bespoke judicial system
| Cr4shMyCar wrote:
| Selling drugs is already a crime, no need for eBay or
| Facebook to implement their own bespoke judicial system.
| Something being illegal doesn't mean people won't do it.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| > I just don't want to live in a world where society is
| governed and censored by big corporations.
|
| You already do. And that's actually a _good thing_. It means
| that in free societies like the USA, these companies are free
| to choose to do (or not do) business with whomever they
| choose. They are not free from the market reacting to those
| decisions, though.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Which is effectively mob rule, or fear-of-mob-rule rule. I
| don't want dominating corporations to be run by people
| afraid of offending a vocal minority.
| mojzu wrote:
| I understand your point and largely agree with the idea
| that corporations shouldn't become de-facto governments
| with regard to morality/free-speech/etc. However I think
| it's important to acknowledge that there's a really
| difficult problem to solve here with regards to spam,
| astroturfing and harassment/trolling (if not more areas)
| where allowing everything that is technically legal would
| make most online spaces unbearable to participate in for
| the vast majority of people (e.g. 4chan and its ilk). And
| the line between moderating those things and censorship
| is incredibly blurry
| colechristensen wrote:
| It is not Cloudflare's job to moderate a website they
| provide network services to.
|
| This is a different issue than a social network doing
| moderation and spam prevention on its own platform.
|
| It is not Cloudflare's job to protect Twitter or wherever
| else from a forum of assholes.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| It's not Cloudflare's job to do anything. They can just
| stop DDoS protection for everyone BUT nazi sites if they
| want to. That's called freedom!
|
| ...but they're not free from public reactions to their
| choices.
| mojzu wrote:
| Although I'd agree there is a difference I think these
| issues are closer than you think, for example if
| Cloudflare was providing network services to a website
| dedicated to spam, trolling or harrassment. These things
| in many jurisdictions are not illegal but many companies
| will refuse to support them because they are actively bad
| for business (driving existing or potential customers
| away, making their own products worse, etc.). Ideals can
| be great but trying to apply them without considering the
| effects, intended or not, can lead to poor results
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Everything is mob rule, or fear-of-mob-rule rule. Most
| companies have principles on how they do business, and
| they adjust those principles based on how people
| (internally and externally) react to them. That's why
| Google shut down its search engine for the CCP - it's mob
| rule at Google, and if you decide to do something that
| enough people find unethical, you won't hear the end of
| it until you stop. Why do you think this is a bad thing,
| or that it's somehow not the way the world works?
| helloworld97 wrote:
| Who decides what's a minority?
| colechristensen wrote:
| By "vocal minority" I mean a small but loud group, the
| literal definition of minority not the social justice
| sense of some oppressed group.
| devmor wrote:
| Oh, so like a forum full of people addicted to internet
| stalking?
| mjr00 wrote:
| Agreed. IMO, people encouraging Cloudflare and other
| corporations to take political stances are very short-
| sighted. With the amount of Saudi Arabian and Chinese
| investment and influence continuing to grow in major
| corporations, you have to imagine that large tech
| corporations being aligned with west-coast US Democrat
| politics isn't going to last forever.
|
| As the article says, "... [not providing services based on
| moral character] is a dangerous precedent, and one that is
| over the long term most likely to disproportionately harm
| vulnerable and marginalized communities."
| newman314 wrote:
| This reeks of "both-siding" which is insanely frustrating for
| me. Look, I get opening a can of worms and "stay out of my
| business" but at the same time, we need to be able as a
| society be able to and be unafraid to say when things are
| clearly bad.
|
| "Nazism is bad" EOM
|
| That wasn't so hard, was it?
| colechristensen wrote:
| It is not "both siding".
|
| I do not want corporations acting as government regardless
| of whose side they are on.
|
| I do not want to normalize or encourage such regulation by
| corporation.
|
| If some behavior is so bad, advocate for a law against it
| or for the enforcement of that law.
|
| If it is not so bad, let it exist even if you don't like
| it.
|
| The whole thing about rule by the people is that having
| individuals or small groups that get to arbitrarily make
| rules and enforce them is bad. Monarchy and despotism is
| bad, whether or not you like what they're doing.
|
| Despotism by corporation is just as bad and shouldn't be
| encouraged. It's not different because you're trying to get
| them to arbitrarily create rules that agree with you.
| protomyth wrote:
| How about social media mobs unfairly categorizes people and
| corporations that listen to mobs or committees are
| untrustworthy.
|
| _we need to be able as a society be able to and be
| unafraid to say when things are clearly bad._
|
| Sadly, "disagrees with me" is considered bad and called
| vile insults these days.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| > "Nazism is bad"
|
| Yes, it pretty much is. Over here it's against the law to
| futher it. What's wrong with enshrining this principle in
| the actual law, that 1) affects the whole society, not just
| users of one particular corporation, 2) it's enforcement is
| dispensed by an actual court, not a PR department pushed by
| a twitter mob?
| amrocha wrote:
| Whose law? US law? KF operates outside the US. Are you ok
| with the US government deciding what's allowed on the
| internet and what isn't? What if the US government
| believes it's totally ok to murder trans people? Do we
| have to keep waiting for a law in that case too?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Is it reachable within the US? Are people interacting
| with US persons? Are you doing business with US companies
| (i.e. Cloudflare)? Then you're crossing the border and
| operating in the US.
|
| >What if the US government believes it's totally ok to
| murder trans people?
|
| It doesn't. You don't need an adjective between murder
| and people.
|
| Also, harassing someone to the point of suicide isn't
| murder, it can be manslaughter.
|
| No new laws are needed. Go bother your local DA or US
| attorney or legislative representatives to get charges
| filed for the actual harassment and the conspiracy to
| harass that lead to what should probably be manslaughter
| charges.
|
| Make actual differences and actually hold the people who
| do these things accountable.
|
| Don't go cheerleading for Cloudflare to do something
| meaningless that wouldn't and won't stop any of this in
| the future.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Have you ever heard of Godwin's law?
| saas_sam wrote:
| Why do you think the generation who actually fought and
| died against Nazis nevertheless held that displaying a Nazi
| flag is protected speech in America?
|
| Do you think you understand something they didn't? Were
| they naive? Are you perhaps more intimately connected to
| the evils of Nazism than they were? Maybe they didn't
| understand that an entire country could fall to the evils
| of Nazism if they were not stamped out aggressively?
|
| Or. Maybe they understood these things even better than
| you. And maybe they believed freedom of speech is _even
| more anti-Nazi_ than banning Nazis.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| I think one easy thing they could do, is stop hosting for
| forums dedicated to doxxing and harassing people, preferably
| before they inevitably bully their victims into suicide.
| subsistence234 wrote:
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| DoctorOW wrote:
| The whole point of my comment is that I don't think it is
| easy. It'd be great, but it certainly isn't easy.
|
| If they get rid of Kiwi Farms, ultimately it's not going to
| fix the problem. They're going to find a new, harder to
| harass vendor for CDN. Cloudflare's detractors are going to
| find a new website to talk about.
|
| If you're talking about all websites that do this kind of
| thing, I have my doubts about how this would look in
| practice. Take down websites that use hate speech? Work to
| debunk hateful myths would likely get caught in that. Suspend
| websites that get X number of reports? Congrats, you've given
| botnets a far more effective tool for DDOS. Don't suspend
| those websites until a human analyzes them? That'd be ideal,
| although it seems like that's the system they have. Those
| humans appear to be instructed to only intervene when
| Cloudflare itself is the one causing harm. Kiwi Farms is
| hosted elsewhere using Cloudflare as a CDN.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| > They're going to find a new, harder to harass vendor for
| CDN.
|
| This is a good thing. It raises the barrier of entry to do
| what they want to do. They will likely provide a worse
| service as well.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > _It raises the barrier of entry to do what they want to
| do._
|
| How so?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I'm not sure hosting something and ensuring it's accessible
| are different really. But the Cloudflare CEO is. And they
| don't host Kiwi Farms.
|
| Or do they? The CEO said CDN isn't hosting. But it fits the
| common definition.
| howdyfolks wrote:
| I see. So maybe we should go after the ISPs transmitting
| the information too?
| mjr00 wrote:
| Guess what? They do. FTA:
|
| > Our decision to disable access to content in hosting
| products fundamentally results in that content being taken
| offline, at least until it is republished elsewhere. Hosting
| products are subject to our Acceptable Hosting Policy. Under
| that policy, for these products, we may remove or disable
| access to content that we believe: [...] Is otherwise
| illegal, harmful, or violates the rights of others, including
| content that discloses sensitive personal information,
| incites or exploits violence against people or animals, or
| seeks to defraud the public.
| Borgz wrote:
| This policy seems to only apply to content that they host.
| It appears that they don't intend to apply this policy to
| websites that they are only providing DDoS mitigation to,
| such as KiwiFarms.
|
| Whether Cloudflare is hosting the content or mitigating
| DDoS attacks against it, they bear some responsibility for
| the content being accessible. I see no good reason for them
| to have different policies between their hosting and DDoS
| mitigation services if they actually care about not
| propagating the content they refuse to host.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > I think one easy thing they could do, is stop hosting
| for forums dedicated to doxxing and harassing people
|
| > This policy seems to only apply to content that they
| host.
|
| Yes, which is exactly what the parent commenter was
| saying.
| chc wrote:
| mjr00 wrote:
| Words have meaning. If you want to understand the
| difference between hosting and providing security
| services, here's a good article:
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-
| and-a...
| nightpool wrote:
| The article says that providing CDN and DDOS protection
| services for KiwiFarms doesn't constitute hosting. The GP
| commenter clearly disagrees. I'll be honest: it really does
| seem like a distinction without a difference to me. If
| Cloudflare stopped doing business with Kiwifarms, it
| wouldn't be online. Kiwifarms is doing a great deal of harm
| to the world by being online. At the end of the day,
| Cloudflare has a moral responsibility to-- _at the very
| least_ --stop contributing their security and networking
| resources to the cause of "Keep Kiwifarms online".
| [deleted]
| bioemerl wrote:
| I think you might be prone to overestimate the net harm
| of kiwi farms and you understate the harm of centralized
| groups like cloudflare making decisions like this.
|
| The harm of kiwi farms is centralized and immediate and
| obvious, the harm of centralized control is insidious,
| long-term, and surprises you without warning once you
| establish the precident years later.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > If Cloudflare stopped doing business with Kiwifarms, it
| wouldn't be online.
|
| Someone said The Daily Stormer and 8Chan are online
| today.[1] But this would mean Cloudflare can stop doing
| business with Kiwi Farms without limiting speech.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32662368
| howdyfolks wrote:
| It is so interesting that you draw that conclusion. I
| draw the opposite: that whether Cloudflare withdraws
| services or not is going to make no meaningful difference
| to whether KF remains online
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > It is so interesting that you draw that conclusion. I
| draw the opposite: that whether Cloudflare withdraws
| services or not is going to make no meaningful difference
| to whether KF remains online
|
| How is it the opposite?
| mjr00 wrote:
| Thank you, this is a more interesting argument than the
| people reacting emotionally without reading the article.
|
| Assuming we all agree that KF is reprehensible, the
| question is where is the line of moral obligation to stop
| supporting them. In the most reductive case, you could
| argue that anyone selling food or water to white
| supremacists is supporting white supremacy. Or that
| firefighters who put out a fire at a white supremacist's
| house are supporting white supremacy. But I don't think
| people generally consider that to be providing support,
| whereas they _would_ consider, say, hosting a conference
| and paying white supremacists to speak at it as
| supporting white supremacists. So where is the exact line
| where it becomes "support"? It's ambiguous.
|
| Cloudflare is in an unenviable position of being exactly
| on the line where moral obligation rests, further
| complicated by providing different products around
| hosting and DDOS mitigation. IMO, there _is_ a clear
| distinction between hosting content and providing DDOS
| mitigation services, as the article suggests. And just as
| you wouldn 't want your electric company unilaterally
| deciding that you were a white supremacist and cutting
| your power, I agree with CF's stance that they shouldn't
| be making extrajudicial decisions about which customers
| to use their DDOS protection.
| flkiwi wrote:
| > In the most reductive case, you could argue that anyone
| selling food or water to white supremacists is supporting
| white supremacy.
|
| This, incidentally, is why the term "racism" (and similar
| supremacist terms) must be understood to refer to
| embedded social structures that may include honest, and
| often honorable, people unwittingly perpetuating them and
| not just being mean to the target. So, the question you
| are in effect raising is how Cloudflare can be ANTI-
| transphobic and not simply trans-supporting, and whether
| it has a moral or other obligation to do so. To me, it's
| a very easy answer with an extremely difficult execution.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _This, incidentally, is why the term "racism" (and
| similar supremacist terms) must be understood to refer to
| embedded social structures that may include honest, and
| often honorable, people unwittingly perpetuating them and
| not just being mean to the target._
|
| When you speak of honorable people unwittingly
| perpetuating racism, do you really mean grocery stores
| that don't perform ideological purity tests on their
| customers?
| stormbrew wrote:
| > the latter makes me more hopeful as someone in that specific
| minority community.
|
| I'm curious what you think the "balancing"
| donation/action/whatever cloudflare could do to counteract the
| very real harms kf causes are?
|
| This isn't a political action group that takes donations and
| lobbies. It's a site where people's personal information is
| offered up to anyone who wants it, knowing that many of those
| people want to do harm with it. The owners and moderators know
| all of this and both allow and encourage it.
|
| I think this kind of "but we donate!" approach is both an
| admission that they enable harm, and a completely inadequate to
| the situation here.
|
| Yes, this should be an issue for law enforcement. But this has
| been going on for years and nothing has been done, in spite of
| many efforts being made and many people _literally_ going into
| hiding due to harassment from this site.
|
| So how is cloudflare going to make this one right to their ERG?
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > _This isn 't a political action group that takes donations
| and lobbies. It's a site where people's personal information
| is offered up to anyone who wants it, knowing that many of
| those people want to do harm with it. The owners and
| moderators know all of this and both allow and encourage it._
|
| I don't think that specific passage was in reference to
| KiwiFarm's paid plan.
|
| > _Yes, this should be an issue for law enforcement. But this
| has been going on for years and nothing has been done, in
| spite of many efforts being made and many people literally
| going into hiding due to harassment from this site._
|
| This is the specific contradiction I'm trying to avoid. It
| feels incredibly odd to me to look at a coordinated campaign
| of harassers and think "it should be easier for organized
| groups of people to control the conversation". You can look
| at my comments in this thread or in others, I'm totally cool
| every time hateful shitbags are taken off the internet and I
| fight back when they're defended. I'm just not in favor of
| any broad policy that puts one organization in control of
| speech.
| stormbrew wrote:
| > I don't think that specific passage was in reference to
| KiwiFarm's paid plan.
|
| I didn't say it was? I don't see why the fact that cf is
| paying for their ddos protection instead of kf paying for
| it themselves is really relevant to the enablement of harm.
|
| Honestly that makes it even worse: in the other situation,
| cf is taking money from a bad actor and funneling it
| towards a good one (both allegedly). Here cf is paying
| expenses (probably in the marketing line of their expense
| sheet) to keep kf accessible, including storing,
| replicating, and distributing their content, doxes and all.
|
| > This is the specific contradiction I'm trying to avoid.
|
| I think this is a contradiction of your own making? The
| problem people have isn't that the targets of kf are being
| "silenced" in some Renaissance ideal sort of way. It's that
| they are put in a position of fearing for their own lives
| and the lives of the people around them. There's no
| contradiction here unless you think the people who want the
| site to stop are secret free speech absolutists.
|
| Anyways, while we're talking about perfect worlds where
| police actually do anything about stuff like this and no
| one has to resort, in my perfect world the internet doesn't
| break because cf does, and cf isn't even in a position to
| arbitrate speech. But we can't always get what we want.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Cloudflare is not a public service, the comparison with
| firefighters is not apt.
|
| I've been seeing this confusion more and more recently,
| probably because of the size and omnipresence of corporations.
|
| I don't know if this confusion is deliberate to justify certain
| acts or simply ignorance, but the distinction has to be
| emphasized. Corporations and public services are completely
| different beasts, with different legislations, incentives, etc.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Maybe a better one would be privatized health care? What is
| the standard for who does or doesn't deserve medical care?
|
| > _I don't know if this confusion is deliberate to justify
| certain acts or simply ignorance_
|
| Also, my guess is ignorance. Cloudflare is essentially
| restoring a platform on the internet that is difficult to get
| and keep for small creators. Their posts on this topic strike
| me as the super libertarian types who take no issue with
| privatizing public services.
| noboostforyou wrote:
| > I don't know if this confusion is deliberate to justify
| certain acts
|
| I see more than one political group purposefully conflate
| this in order to push their own agendas.
|
| For example, when a private company says that won't tolerate
| hate they claim "free speech" infringement but when
| government silences a critic they don't like it's "law and
| order."
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The right to speech is strong, at least in the United States,
| at least for now.
|
| Seeing how vital the Internet is for participation in
| society, it is my opinion that the baseline for "duty to
| serve" is that everyone has the right to a modicum of hosting
| and the ability to have their site accessible. That means a
| FQDN, SSL certificate, and network connectivity.
|
| Should it be a legal requirement? I'm not yet convinced. But
| I don't think CF is wrong to host orgs they morally oppose.
| zzyzxd wrote:
| > Cloudflare is not a public service
|
| Do we consider stuff like DNS, BGP to be public service? I
| mean, Cloudflare can affect everyone who uses Internet.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| That could be an interesting discussion! Cloudflare should
| lead the charge and restructure their company to be legally
| considered a utility.
| rcoveson wrote:
| There are ways in which they are "completely different
| beasts" and ways in which they are similar.
|
| In that they are both organizations made up of human beings
| providing important services to the general public, they are
| the similar. I think that's the similarity that was being
| emphasized by the analogy.
|
| The analogy still works if you imagine private firefighters
| (the kind you might contract for a farming operation) instead
| of public firefighters.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| There are ways in which water and oil are similar. There
| are also analogies which are of little use. When you reach
| for a group "made up of human beings" as a similarity, you
| clinging on the latter.
| rcoveson wrote:
| Quote it as written: "organizations made up of human
| beings providing important services to the general
| public"; not merely "group made up of human beings."
|
| An organization is more specific than a "group."
|
| They both provide services to the general public, i.e.
| they are indiscriminant in who their clients are. This is
| different from, say, a corporate law firm that might
| decide to take just a handful of cases at a time and be
| selective about it.
|
| And finally, their services are important, as in
| livelihood-saving. Of course, firefighters are sometimes
| _life_ saving, so a better analogy would be firefighters
| working for agri-business, but "firefighters" still fits
| better than, say, "AMC theaters" because of the
| importance of the service offered.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Doctors is a better American analogy than firefighters
| pvillano wrote:
| Even an arsonist should be rescued and treated for burns.
| They should also be arrested, tried, and inprisoned. Only
| combined do public services execute the moral values of the
| people. An arsonist should also probably not be sold gas.
|
| A gas station has a moral obligation to sell gas without
| discriminating by race, etc. A gas station does not have a
| moral obligation to sell gas to arsonists.
|
| I'd be suspicious if a gas station made a press release about
| how they'll sell gas to anyone but also donate to charity to
| "make things even". Sounds like they want arsonists to know
| where they can buy gas.
| sschueller wrote:
| If a cooperation becomes a de-facto monopoly the rules that
| apply need to change. If there is no competition you can go
| to and there is no way around it then the government has to
| step in.
| krapp wrote:
| Cloudflare is not a de-facto monopoly. There is plenty of
| competition.
|
| Simply being popular is not having a de-facto monopoly.
| activitypea wrote:
| The point here is that Cloudflare's core product, despite
| being run by a private for-profit company, is as close to an
| essential service as it gets in the digital world. This is
| not the same as saying "posting on Twitter is a civil right"
| tambourine_man wrote:
| >is as close to an essential service as it gets in the
| digital world
|
| Thankfully, that's not true at all. About 16% of all sites
| use Cloudflare (80% of 20%)
|
| "Cloudflare is used by 79.8% of all the websites whose
| reverse proxy service we know. This is 19.1% of all
| websites."
|
| https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cn-cloudflare
|
| >This is not the same as saying "posting on Twitter is a
| civil right"
|
| It's pretty much the same thing, yes.
| ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote:
| Now do what % of people ever need rescuing by the fire
| service.
| pvillano wrote:
| would you clarify your intent
| phillipcarter wrote:
| So then the answer is for Cloudflare to restructure their
| company. If they want to be seen as a utility so
| desperately, make it so!
|
| Not having the legal obligations of a utility, while acting
| like one (i.e., getting to pull the "neutrality" card in
| the face of public pressure to drop nazis) is not okay.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Cf themselves are disincentivized to make that change
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Yes, exactly. They want all the benefits of being seen as
| a utility, but none of the obligations of actually being
| one. That's called being slimy.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Why not go a step further and call the incentives and the
| ones who prop them up slimy?
| robryk wrote:
| What change would that be? I don't know of anything they
| could do to make themselves a utility besides behaving
| like one and publicly starting that they intend to do so.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| yes there is a deeper systemic crux to this symptom and
| it won't be solved by a business
| robryk wrote:
| I'm sorry, i don't see how this answers my question. What
| do you mean by "this symptom"?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| there's no serious suggestion that cf reform themselves
| away from their incentives. their negative behavior is a
| symptom of a wider structural problem
| robryk wrote:
| What incentives do you claim they are under? I'm sorry,
| but you seem to be assuming some context i seem not to
| have.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| just capitalism lol sorry for speaking a little
| suggestively on a vc forum
| robryk wrote:
| I really mean my original question. I think what CF is
| doing is trying to behave like a utility, and i think
| it's arguably in their best interest[1]. You seem to
| think that it's very obviously not in their interest.
| Care to elaborate on why?
|
| [1] because their business scales very well, so they'd
| prefer to be considered reliable, so that competition
| doesn't have that available as a differentiator; any
| attempt at applying content-dependent rules either uses
| lots of heuristic automation or is reactive in response
| to Twitter storms, neither of which is predictable and
| reliable
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I think it's an easy and attractive talking point for
| them to posture publicly and internally, and to feel a
| connection to their personal philosophies. So far Cf has
| at most discussed the thought and process behind their
| policies and actions. I don't see them offering up real
| public control and accountability of their service policy
| and enforcement. They'll want to keep control over their
| business operations and seek the business dealings
| convenience of perceived neutrality, which they can do
| through thought leadership bs etc.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| As a private company, they can choose how they serve
| users.
|
| Isn't this what gets said everytime Twitter bans someone?
|
| Cloudflare is allowed to offer services to people you
| don't like.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| And we're allowed to pressure them to act more ethical.
| Banana699 wrote:
| Ok, but your pressuring is not working. We're just trying
| to save you from wasting your time.
| pvillano wrote:
| Private companies are allowed to do a lot of immoral
| things because lobbying prevents the law from accurately
| reflecting the values of the voting public.
|
| Nazis shouldn't get a website, even if the law permits
| it, and everyone has a moral obligation to fight fascism.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Everyone has a right to speech, even speech that is not
| good. That applies to gay people at Stonewall and the KKK
| marching in DC equally.
|
| If you would restrict one then you restrict both. The
| freedom is absolute or it does not exist for anyone
| except the current favored group.
|
| It's like laws on the treatment of prisoners of war - we
| don't have those rules because we love our enemy, it's
| because we want our brothers to not be tortured.
| bakugo wrote:
| > Cloudflare is not a public service,
|
| Isn't it, though?
|
| I see people are still desperately clinging to this "websites
| aren't public services" narrative but as the years go by it's
| becoming increasingly clear that it just isn't entirely true.
|
| The whole logic behind the "it's a private space/service so
| they can deny service to whoever they want" argument is that,
| if a user is denied service, they can seek service from an
| alternative provider elsewhere, usually without much
| difficulty. If the other providers also don't want to provide
| the service, fair enough. But this isn't really the case in
| the modern web because you often don't have alternatives. If
| you are denied service by cloudflare, you can't just go to
| another cloudflare down the street. Same with many other
| major online services that are effectively monopolies in
| their field.
| nightpool wrote:
| > If you are denied service by cloudflare, you can't just
| go to another cloudflare down the street
|
| ... Why not? Fastly, AWS, CDN77, Google, etc all still
| exist.
| bakugo wrote:
| Which of those provide a similar feature set to
| cloudflare for the same price?
|
| Even ignoring the fact that none of them have a free
| plan, they all cost significantly more than cloudflare's
| base paid plan and almost certainly provide less. I can't
| even see Fastly's prices without signing up.
| sfe22 wrote:
| That means cloudflare is such a good company for offering
| cheap and good service, yet somehow we find a way to
| attack them because their competition is not "as good".
| What a shame that this company that is not supporting
| their competitors?
| tambourine_man wrote:
| > Isn't it, though?
|
| Nope. Do we elect the board? Do they charge mandatory taxes
| in the currency only they can emit and will they have an
| armed force arest you if you don't pay?
|
| > But this isn't really the case in the modern web because
| you often don't have alternatives.
|
| Facebook and Google really are a monopoly in the West and
| that's a problem with must deal with. Cloudflare,
| thankfully, is far from being a monopoly anywhere but in
| our tech bubble.
| sfe22 wrote:
| I have been waiting for someone to mention this board
| stuff. A question for you: If facebook opened up their
| board for votes by public, imposed mandatory taxes on
| Americans and had a police to control the population,
| would we still be living in a democracy?
| tambourine_man wrote:
| The only way I can kind of envision what you're saying is
| for Facebook to be nationalized. Is that what you're
| referring to? If so, sure, it's a democracy still.
| bakugo wrote:
| I'm not speaking in a strictly legal sense. Because this
| isn't a strictly legal issue.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| To be clear, I think Cloudflare should take the offending
| site down because it is, IMO, the right thing to do.
|
| Just don't justify whatever decision you make by conflating
| public and private services.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I think this brings up an important topic though that we need
| to grapple with as a society - at what point do we recognize
| that we NEED public services related to the internet?
|
| Something similar to basic Cloudflare but run as a public
| service by the government that is free to all might be a good
| thing to have. If there are majorly amoral actors that use it
| we should be going after them for their crimes (from a legal
| sense) which other parts of the government can of course aid
| with.
| krapp wrote:
| >Something similar to basic Cloudflare but run as a public
| service by the government that is free to all might be a
| good thing to have.
|
| Until the government decides your content no longer
| deserves protection because of your politics or religion or
| whatever.
|
| This is the same problem as government "regulating" social
| media companies and forcing them to publish certain kinds
| of speech against their will, which people also seem to
| want. Inevitably it boils down to an end-run around the
| First Amendment, as it gives government direct control over
| speech at a far greater scale than any corporation, backed
| up by a monopoly on violence.
| splitrocket wrote:
| 100% concur.
|
| Illinois _has_ to allow the Nazis to march: they are the
| government.
|
| You don't _have_ to allow nazis into your private party, nor
| do you _have_ to publish their books.
|
| You, as an individual, and corporations as entities are
| emphatically _not_ the government.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >Illinois has to allow the
|
| Per the existing law, but given the Constitution can be
| changed, should they have to allow? Arguing they have to
| because the law currently prevents them from doing
| otherwise seems a different argument than it being good for
| government to have such restrictions because the benefits
| are worth more than the detriments (or vice versa).
| DoctorOW wrote:
| But see this is where I get tripped up. I don't think laws
| should dictate morality. So barring the fact that it's the
| way the law is written in the United States. Why is
| Illinois morally required to protect speech and Cloudflare,
| who almost certainly has far greater control
| (theoretically) over speech not?
| phillipcarter wrote:
| This is fast approaching the whole, "why is anyone
| morally required to do anything?" sort of existential
| discussion.
|
| The US Government has laws in place like this because
| those were written as founding principles and interpreted
| in certain ways by our legal system over time. That's
| only it. But it's all calvinball in the end. Congress
| could strike the 1A from the constitution, or all our
| courts could start ruling against the 1A tomorrow. We're
| just making it up as we go. Now this would likely result
| in a mass uprising, but that's besides the point.
|
| The only reason why this is _a thing right now_ is
| because CloudFlare(a) is in a position to stop digital
| protection of Kiwi Farms (and thus force them to fully
| own the consequences of their speech), and (b) has
| explicitly chosen _not_ to do anything about it, much to
| the chagrin of myself and a whole lot of other people. My
| belief, as is the belief of others, is that Kiwi Farms
| are violating their TOS and should be removed. That 's
| it. CloudFlare, like Calvin when playing Calvinball, is
| deciding to make it up as they go, and we aren't happy
| about that.
| taxyz wrote:
| You seem to be pretty active in comments for this post
| and you have made several arguments around the ideas
| that: * CF is not a utility and is not bound by the First
| Amendment (although you keep saying free speech) * CF is
| somehow immoral because they are otherwise compelled to
| remove content/service protections for stuff you disagree
| with (however correct you may be that the content is
| morally reprehensible).
|
| The first point may be technically true but the second
| doesn't leave room for the possibility that CF might have
| a more absolutist approach to free speech in which case
| they find it more immoral to remove content/protections
| from one of their customers that the content itself.
| Since neither you nor I work at CF, we probably have to
| take them at their word in this press release. Trying to
| adjudicate what violates their TOS, what is immoral for
| them to do, or what is good/bad for their business from
| the outside is a foolish exercise.
|
| There was a time the ACLU defended neo-nazis and it
| wasn't because they agreed with them. Just another aside,
| if you feel this strongly about CF, then don't patronize
| them if you are in the position to not have to use their
| services, but I'd avoid taking a moral stand only when
| its expedient to do so if you otherwise don't live with
| that level of conviction (presumably you didn't stay at
| Microsoft for 6 years because you aligned with them
| morally).
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I'm genuinely struggling to see how this answers my
| question. You continually discuss laws when I made it
| abundantly clear that because laws are, as you put it,
| Calvinball they are irrelevant to what should be done.
|
| > _CloudFlare (a) is in a position to stop digital
| protection of Kiwi Farms_
|
| So too is Illinois to stop police protection of Nazi
| activists. I ask again, why SHOULD one organization
| protect speech and another shouldn't, given our agreement
| that any specific laws/amendments do not dictate what
| SHOULD happen?
| phillipcarter wrote:
| I think you're losing the plot here. Nothing has any
| moral obligation to do anything in this universe.
| Morality doesn't exist. And we're all just making it up
| as we go.
|
| Now that we've established that nothing matters, the
| reason is because a lot of us feel that Cloudflare should
| do something about it.
| taxyz wrote:
| You should entertain the idea that they claim they have a
| stronger responsibility to the principals of free speech
| than the communities you claim are harmed by their
| customers content.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Bloody hell, I am definitely losing the plot. The reason
| you feel that way is because a lot of other people do?
| You have absolutely no rationale or thought process for
| the disparities between organizations x and y except that
| people are mad at organization y and not organization x?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Illinois is not morally required to protect speech. They
| are prevented from using government powers to restrict or
| punish speech.
|
| If counter protestors show up and shout over the Nazis,
| Illinois is not morally required to silence the counter
| protestors so the Nazis can speak.
|
| And if Nazis want to gather on private land, Illinois is
| not morally required to force the private landowner to
| permit that.
|
| The morality of equality is compromised by the practical
| execution of law. It's legal for a cop to pull a gun and
| force you to the ground; it's not legal for you to do
| that to me (or vice versa). So we place constraints on
| when the government can apply those special powers.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| But you as a private individual or company can choose to
| hold the right to free speech in high regard.
| BryantD wrote:
| I hold it in such high regard that I have considered the
| question of whether or not Kiwifarms inhibits free
| speech.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| check the paradox of tolerance
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Are you ok with prohibiting the spread of Islam?
|
| Islam is incompatible with tolerance. Women's rights,
| depictions of Muhammed, etc.
|
| If we accept the paradox of tolerance you must either be
| anti-Islam or the paradox is broken.
|
| The fix is not new and is older than the paradox of
| tolerance: your rights end where mine begin. You have a
| right to write and speak what you will - I have a right
| to not listen. I do not have a right to stop speech I
| find offensive. Islam has a right to exist and take
| offense, but it may not use violence or law to get it's
| way.
| splitrocket wrote:
| Yup. And if your choice is pro-nazi, the rest of us can
| decide for ourselves what that means about you.
|
| For what it's worth, you can't be just a little bit Nazi.
|
| It's like poop in ice cream: if you have ten tons of ice
| cream and an ounce of poop, if you mix them together,
| you've just created ten tons of poop.
| naasking wrote:
| > It's like poop in ice cream: if you have ten tons of
| ice cream and an ounce of poop, if you mix them together,
| you've just created ten tons of poop.
|
| In that case your argument fails, because there are
| regulations for how much rat feces are permitted in
| processed food, and just FYI, it's NOT zero.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| If everyone who disagrees with you is a Nazi and you
| believe we should restrict their rights, limit their
| speech and so on... you may be projecting.
| delroth wrote:
| The negative value of a website being serviced by Cloudflare is
| usually significantly higher than the price they pay for the
| service.
|
| How much do you think Cloudflare donated for the 3 suicides
| caused by Kiwi Farms in the recent years?
| cowtools wrote:
| [deleted]
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > _How much do you think Cloudflare donated for the 3
| suicides caused by Kiwi Farms in the recent years?_
|
| Suicides that are awful, and were caused by Kiwi Farms. The
| quote I used clarified that Cloudflare's aim is to not profit
| from abhorrent behavior.
| bfgoodrich wrote:
| fivre wrote:
| > We don't and won't talk about these efforts publicly because
| we don't do them for marketing purposes
|
| in a post that further goes out of its way to say, "look at
| these morally good things we're doing (Galileo and Athenian)
| that aren't themselves part of the abuse process, and then has
| their logos as two of the three images in the article body?
| Okay, sure, this may not strictly be marketing material insofar
| as it's not an ad the marketing team purchased, but c'mon, did
| ya'll put those in place to help explain the abuse process or
| because they're nice "but look, we also do good things!" window
| dressing on an article you think otherwise may not have the
| best reception?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The projects with logos are not part of "these efforts" in
| the sentence you're quoting.
|
| Yes, they market some _other_ things they do.
| schainks wrote:
| You make a good point that policing who is who is difficult
| enough that letting bad guys pay $20 month or whatever is
| "cheaper" than actively validating who they are and then
| kicking them off your service for moral reasons. I get the
| feeling that 9/10 times these bad actors are on the cheapest
| cheapo plan available so it's actually very expensive to deal
| many tiny customers versus one huge one.
|
| Oh, but wait, CloudFlare HAS the resources to validate and act,
| since they know whose fees to send to rights organizations.
|
| And as for being the fire department? Excuse me? They are a
| company that exists to make money, not a public service
| beholden to a specific, lawfully mandated social contract.
| Their first point is a false equivalency and they can go fuck
| themselves for even bringing that up.
|
| This statement from them is PR fluff.
|
| Paradox of tolerance. You must be _intolerant_ to these
| intolerant people or they will fuck up everything for everyone.
| Cloudflare is letting cancer of society erode public trust,
| just like every other hyper scale tech company, because
| businesses exist to make money.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > _They are a company that exists to make money, not a public
| service beholden to a specific, lawfully mandated social
| contract._
|
| Part of the reason for my position as stated above and
| throughout the thread. I believe that SPECIFICALLY at
| Cloudflare's scale, they have more control than most
| governments in the realm of speech. Therefore, they are
| MORALLY (not legally) required to enact the same social
| contract. I believe any alternative where they break that
| social contract will have unintentional repercussions for
| minority groups.
|
| To have my position changed, I would need to be convinced
| those repercussions wouldn't happen in practice.
| a_shovel wrote:
| > _...we worked with our Proudflare employee resource group to
| identify an organization that supported LGBTQ+ rights and
| donate 100 percent of the fees for our services to them._
|
| I'm sure their LGBTQ+ employees will appreciate that when they
| get doxxed, swatted, and harassed every hour of the day and
| night because they're providing critical resources to the
| groups doing so.
|
| Their position probably really does come from genuine belief in
| principles of anti-censorship and free speech, but the version
| that LGBTQ+ people are gonna hear from them is that every death
| threat, every picture of them taken without their knowledge,
| every coordinated campaign of harassment, every SWAT officer
| pointing a gun at their face when they wake up, every suicide
| after years of abuse, has the full backing and support of a
| multi-billion dollar corporation, and there's nothing they can
| do about it. And they're kinda right.
| shrubble wrote:
| So, you have at least one example of this scenario (gay
| Cloudflare employee gets doxxed and harassed) ready to tell
| us about, right?
| chc wrote:
| I can provide lots of examples of Kiwi Farms doxxing and
| harassing queer people. Whether they happen to work for
| Cloudflare at the time is a matter of chance, and not
| particularly relevant to the point.
| Bigpet wrote:
| Swatting people is illegal, if you have evidence of a
| crime you should bring it to the police, not to
| cloudflare.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Oh, what willful ignorance. KF is the kind of
| "technically legal" operation that the charge of
| racketeering was invented for. Everyone knows what's
| happening and why things are laid out as they are, but
| nobody immediately responsible for the illegal act can be
| found.
| Bigpet wrote:
| Then charge them with racketeering.
|
| If that doesn't work make the part you don't like
| illegal. Enshrine something like the "right to be
| forgotten" stuff into law and make them take down threads
| if the people they refer to don't want them up.
|
| I know it's hard to word something like a "right to be
| forgotten" without making it to broad and a tool for
| abuse of chilling speech but it seems worth the effort if
| the consequences are this dire.
| dmatech wrote:
| A "right to be forgotten" is probably fundamentally
| incompatible with the First Amendment in the USA. While
| people have the right to their own identity, they do not
| have the right to absolute control over their
| reputations. The best they can do is sue when they are
| defamed.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Making defamation lawsuits less inaccessible to a
| significantly poorer party would be a start.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| In America defamation lawsuits are hard because of the
| First Amendment, not just because lawsuits are expensive.
| Even if you make defamation lawsuits cheap and
| accessible, it will still be an uphill battle if you're
| trying to sue somebody telling unsavory truths about you.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| I already live in an EU country - as do many of the
| people with threads on KF. I don't even have the
| minuscule amount of control voters in the US would have
| over this, and Cloudflare only cares about US legislation
| (as with the anti sex work legislation in the article).
|
| If you would stop derailing the conversation with
| unfeasible solutions.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| One problem is that one can't bring a prosecution
| oneself; not only does the state maintain a general
| monopoly on the use of violence, but it typically
| maintains a monopoly on prosecution. If police or
| prosecutors dislike you (perhaps because you are a member
| of some socially disfavored out group) what recourse do
| you have?
| sascha_sl wrote:
| I haven't checked, but I expect the chilling effect is
| getting most of them to not rock the boat too hard.
|
| If you want an example for such targeting though, Liz Fong-
| Jones has a thread on Kiwifarms because she's outspoken and
| worked at Google (and thus being seen as more influential /
| more of a threat). The thread has also significantly slowed
| down after she left Google.
| ta1235414335 wrote:
| Her thread was made only yesterday:
| https://kiwifarms.net/threads/liz-fong-jones-elliot-
| william-...
|
| What you are thinking of is the thread that was created
| once she started trying to harass third parties into
| dropping KF during the trans lifeline kerfuffle. The
| thread was created because afaik all correspondence
| received by null of this manner is made public for
| obvious reasons, it is done with legal orders as well.
| This is the thread in question, just 8
| pages:https://kiwifarms.net/threads/2017-08-18-liz-fong-
| jones-hara...
|
| Shouldn't be too hard to double check those things before
| repeating them.
| delroth wrote:
| > made public for obvious reasons
|
| Read: to put a target on the back of anyone making an
| abuse report about the website.
| sophacles wrote:
| splitrocket wrote:
| We will soon enough, now that cloudflare has published
| this.
| devwastaken wrote:
| And when that happens, Cloudflare is in the perfect position
| to provide evidence. Your unwittingly advocating for these
| websites to use more sophisticated methods, where their
| actions will be much harder to prove and prosecute.
|
| If not Cloudflare, then someone else, that's the reality of
| it. We do not live in a world of no harm and never will we.
| All we can do is manage it.
| throwrqX wrote:
| I can't find it now but I remember reading an article a
| while back about how the FBI with several other worldwide
| law enforcement partner took down a terrorist website, but
| behind the scenes the CIA or NSA wasn't happy about it
| because they had all the information in one place they
| could tap but now that the FBI disrupted that it made their
| job harder.
| zja wrote:
| > If not Cloudflare, then someone else, that's the reality
| of it.
|
| When has this ever been a valid excuse for bad behavior?
| sascha_sl wrote:
| And all that while the company refuses to acknowledge that it
| is full backing.
|
| Cloudflare loves to call back on the law when defending
| Kiwifarms, but then equate themselves to a public utility.
|
| If the law intended for it, DDoS protection would be a public
| utility or at least a protected class of service that can't
| refuse customers. And if you say that it should be and the
| law is just lagging behind (and I'd tend to agree with you),
| I can say the same thing about the technical legality of a
| website that enabled and (indirectly) incentives doxing,
| harassment or even swatting (except on Kiwifarms, people
| might technically have a case for defamation, but good luck
| getting that prosecuted).
| cowtools wrote:
| The law describes DDoS attacks as a felony. The technology
| makes it such that it's infeasable to prevent DDoS attacks
| without a centralized entity like cloudflare.
| [deleted]
| sascha_sl wrote:
| But that still doesn't make Cloudflare the fire brigade.
| It is still their policy decision to value the freedom of
| speech of Kiwifarms more than the safety of those KF
| target, no matter how much they try to pretend they have
| an obligation to protect everyone that asks for it and
| are thus not at all partially responsible for enabling
| harassment - to the point of suicide in at least 3 cases.
| They don't have to protect them. That responsibility
| would be with lawmakers and the executive branch. Just as
| it would be their responsibility to enable feasible
| prosecution of defamation on the site. They don't do
| either.
| nervlord wrote:
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > But that still doesn't make Cloudflare the fire
| brigade.
|
| Why not? That particular service seems a lot like a
| volunteer fire brigade.
| wyager wrote:
| KF doesn't doxx people for being gay. As far as I can tell,
| KF has a huge LGBT presence in their userbase. They have
| doxxed people who _are_ gay, but not _because_ they are gay.
| nightpool wrote:
| > That is the equivalent argument in the physical world that
| the fire department shouldn't respond to fires
|
| This is a false equivalence, because fire departments are
| public utilities provided and regulated by the state.
| Cloudflare is a private business. If Cloudflare was
| democratically elected by its constituents, and it was
| accountable and answerable to them, then I would agree with
| them that they have a responsibility to make their services
| available to all of their constituents, subject to the due
| process of law.
|
| But they aren't a public utility, and they don't get
| democratically elected. Cloudflare is a private business, and
| it exists to capture the surplus value of keeping more websites
| online and marketing their security products to more
| corporations. They can do business with whoever they choose to.
| And they choose to do business with Kiwifarms. Honestly: in
| effect, Kiwifarms functions as a free success story for
| Cloudflare's sales folks--"Look at how many people hate this
| website, and yet they're still online, thanks to Cloudflare!".
| I think that's probably the reason that Cloudflare's support of
| Kiwifarms rankles so much with people who are victims of the
| website--the fact that Kiwifarms is still online is Cloudflare
| working exactly as intended, but amorally.
|
| > For instance, when a site that opposed LGBTQ+ rights signed
| up for a paid version of DDoS mitigation service we worked with
| our Proudflare employee resource group to identify an
| organization that supported LGBTQ+ rights and donate 100
| percent of the fees for our services to them
|
| Okay, you donated the fees, but why continue to accept the
| money from the site that opposes LGBTQ+ rights in the first
| place? Cloudflare still got to keep the benefit of increased
| revenue, and a larger customer base, and the world still got
| worse. Did the donation they make actually offset the harm done
| to the world by keeping that site (whatever it is) online? It
| seems unlikely.
|
| > In addition, I think it's touched on but Cloudflare is huge.
| Even if they changed their mind on terminating amoral
| customers, how would that go down? Another automated moderation
| system that checks for certain keywords?
|
| No, it would go down, ideally, the same way it does today and
| the same way it did for the Daily Stormer and 8chan.
| Terminating services for customers like Kiwifarms is a big
| decision, and it's one that shouldn't be made lightly, and
| frankly: there just aren't that many harassment websites that
| are as big and as long-lived as Kiwifarms. I can maybe think of
| one or two others off the top of my head. I'm okay if
| Cloudflare decides to terminate one or two of the biggest, most
| important harassment sites using their platform per year--doing
| something is better than doing nothing.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > _I 'm okay if Cloudflare decides to terminate one or two of
| the biggest, most important harassment sites using their
| platform per year--doing something is better than doing
| nothing._
|
| I'm sorry, I'd only ever heard of Kiwifarms yesterday. I am
| also okay with that, but I do genuinely believe there will
| always be a next one. People forget they made the exact same
| comments before caving on 8chan and the Daily Stormer. As
| these incidents get closer together I predict we're reaching
| that 1-2 site a year rate. If I can backpeddle a little on my
| parent comment, I far less care about any of these specific
| websites than the implications of Cloudflare not giving the
| big "We hate to do this" speech beforehand.
| dxuh wrote:
| Large corporations policing free speech is a horrible trend that
| often enough goes absolutely wrong and the only way to prevent
| censoring content inappropriately is to not censor anything at
| all. There are laws and courts that judge over what content
| should stay online and it should stay their responsibility. If we
| give that up, we replace democracy with a technocracy, that
| already showed us plenty of times is not something we want. If it
| means that a website like Kiwi farms has to stay up, then that's
| what it takes. A twitter mob should never have the power to take
| any website offline. I doubt anyone in their right mind would lay
| their trust into every Twitter mob. It's just luck that this mob
| is in line with your opinions, but others might not.
| [deleted]
| phillipcarter wrote:
| > Large corporations policing free speech
|
| Let me stop you right there. This is not a free speech issue.
| Please be precise with your terminology.
| psyc wrote:
| And let me get you out the way so gp doesn't get sidetracked.
| Nobody needs pedantry when the subject under discussion is
| existentially important, and every normal person already
| knows what the problem is.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Firstly, this is not existentially important aside for the
| people whose lives are ruined (and will continue to be
| ruined) by Kiwi Farms. Secondly, "every normal person
| already knows..." doesn't mean anything, because (a) you
| don't get to declare what normal is, and (b) you don't know
| that.
| xdennis wrote:
| > This is not a free speech issue. Please be precise with
| your terminology.
|
| Let me take a stab in the dark: you think "free speech"
| refers only to the United States' First Amendment, and not a
| universal principle, which:
|
| * according to Wikipedia, is "a principle that supports the
| freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their
| opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship,
| or legal sanction"
|
| * or, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
| is the "freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
| seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any
| media and regardless of frontiers."
| phillipcarter wrote:
| You're shifting goalposts.
| taxyz wrote:
| Just stating the type of fallacy being made is not
| evidence the fallacy occurred.
|
| You should qualify how the goalpost is being shifted. I
| don't see any evidence to your claim.
| noptd wrote:
| No, you need to be more precise in your wording if you're
| not getting your intended message across.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| There's really nothing else to say here other than, "no,
| you do".
| biotinker wrote:
| That's not true. The concept of free speech, and what is
| specifically allowed and disallowed by the First
| Amendment of the USA, are two different things. Not least
| which is that the latter applies to a small fraction of
| the world's population.
|
| Censorship of ideas by a private company is not a first
| amendment issue. It _is_ a free speech issue.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| It is a free speech issue. It is not a _First Amendment_ (or
| equivalent in non-US jurisdictions) issue. Legal provisions
| that protect speech from government interference provide a
| _minimum_ level of free expression; in a health society
| private citizens and organizations will generally go above
| and beyond that minimum.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Just a reminder that (lowercase) "free speech" always has a
| giant fucking asterisk after it. It has never been, and
| will never be, absolute.
|
| "Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be
| recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or
| boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander,
| obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting
| words, hate speech, classified information, copyright
| violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure
| agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be
| forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for
| such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart
| Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that 'the only purpose
| for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member
| of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent
| harm to others'."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
|
| Additionally, private companies can always throw you off
| their platform for _any_ reason. No shirt, no shoes, no
| service.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| It's an American company hosting content for an American. The
| laws of America apply.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Precisely, they do! Which is why this isn't a free speech
| issue. Cloudflare is not a utility, nor are they a
| government entity.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| taxyz wrote:
| As another commenter already pointed out, you're treating
| first amendment and free speech as synonymous. If you
| request that others be precise with their language you
| should too.
|
| This could be a free speech issue although not a first
| amendment issue. America does have a constitutional
| protection for citizens from their government in terms of
| free speech but we also place cultural value to it and
| laws that codify or restrict certain speech.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Takes some presumption to demand precision in terminology
| while being completely and totally incorrect.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Okay.
| wyager wrote:
| "Free speech" for normal people means "the practical freedom
| to speak freely", not whatever nitpicking legalistic
| definition I infer you're using.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| I don't think you know that this is what it means, nor do I
| think you know what "normal people" entails.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This means that the KF mob can take people offline.
| ajvs wrote:
| What do you mean by that exactly?
| agentdrtran wrote:
| They have a track record of brutal, lengthy harassment that
| has already pushed at least one person to take their own
| life after years of abuse.
| banannaise wrote:
| Per wikipedia, the actual number is three.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Suicides_of_hara
| ssm...
| noptd wrote:
| I wonder how that number compares to other forums and
| social media sites.
|
| Seems odd to me that everyone is hyper-fixating on that
| site, as tasteless as it may be, when much larger ones
| are given a pass.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Mobs always attack the weakest link. KF is not widely
| known- if it were canceled basically nobody would care.
| banannaise wrote:
| I think there are two key reasons:
|
| 1. KiwiFarms was explicitly created for essentially that
| purpose
|
| 2. It's far more extreme. Part of the reason it exists is
| because people on these larger sites (notably, 2000s-era
| SomethingAwful) were getting progressively more concerned
| and uncomfortable with the behavior. Sure, it's a concern
| in other places, but there are checks there. KiwiFarms
| has none of those checks because the behavior is the
| intended use of the site.
|
| So, sure, you could go after some of these other places,
| but KF sounds like a very good starting point.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Twitter mobs can drive people to get fired, websites or
| companies to shut down... But KF literally drives people to
| suicide or calls in fake situations to get a SWAT team to
| ambush a home and in the hopes they shoot the people they
| are harassing.
|
| People are worried more about ending a website than they
| are worried about ending actual lives.
| yanderekko wrote:
| >But KF literally drives people to suicide or calls in
| fake situations to get a SWAT team to ambush a home and
| in the hopes they shoot the people they are harassing.
|
| Are you actually implying that Twitter mobs haven't done
| all of these things too? This is obviously wrong.
| schleck8 wrote:
| So we should keep up Kiwifarms because something similar
| has happened on Twitter? Is that the logic? Instead of
| removing one of the evils let's keep them both up because
| fairness or something like that?
| yanderekko wrote:
| The logic is that we shouldn't use some sort of "one
| drop" thinking to characterize a platform as broadly evil
| based on its worst users.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The problem here is that KF does not have "substantial
| noninfringing uses", it's all harassment even if most of
| it is non-fatal.
| psyc wrote:
| ta1235414335 wrote:
| phillipcarter wrote:
| You can use Google, you know.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >People are worried more about ending a website than they
| are worried about ending actual lives.
|
| People are saying "Call the FBI, not Cloudflare"
|
| If people are doing things that break the law, it's law
| enforcement's job to do the protecting, not an Internet
| company providing services.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| If this is in response to Kiwi Farms, I would say this is very
| disappointing.
|
| Love CloudFlare, think they are amazingly innovative, huge amount
| of respect for the people who work there.
|
| I see where they're coming from, but I don't see how KF is
| defensible whilst 8chan et al aren't.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Since the article talks about how they will use different
| policies for different services:
|
| Which services was kiwifarms using? Are they now using a
| reduced set or none at all?
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's a really tricky situation.
|
| On the one hand, websites like KF and the like are utterly
| reprehensible. On the other hand, Cloudflare taking it upon
| themselves to police the Internet is a nightmare in its own,
| given their bot-prevention services are effectively mandatory
| in order to even keep any sort of larger interactive website
| running.
|
| What is permitted to say is something for the courts, not for
| the whims of private businesses, to decide.
| prvit wrote:
| > given their bot-prevention services are effectively
| mandatory in order to even keep any sort of larger
| interactive website running.
|
| This is bullshit, there are a plenty of alternatives.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Such as...?
| prvit wrote:
| OVH, Voxility, ddos-guard.net and many more.
|
| Shit, even tiny providers like BuyVM offer good enough
| DDoS protection.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| DDoS-protection is only part of it. You also need the
| ability to distinguish automated browsers from real ones,
| or you're going to have several full time jobs' worth of
| cleaning up spam comments from everything that even
| slightly resembles an input field.
| prvit wrote:
| Testcookie handles this just fine, Voxility and DDoS-
| guard can both offer the browser bot detection reverse
| proxy too.
|
| Of course you could also just integrate a CAPTCHA service
| of your choice.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Like with so many SaaS, CloudFlare has perhaps become too
| many digital eggs in one digital basket, so inevitably it
| will result in disappointment and bad decisions ala Twitter,
| GoDaddy etc.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's also sort of hard put the cat in the bag, for the
| service that instituted the policy and for competitors.
|
| If you start a competing free-speech twitter competitor,
| you're effectively "twitter for InfoWars fans, QAnon and
| assorted holocaust deniers". Likewise, the headlines if
| Twitter themselves softened their line would hardly be
| about standing up for free speech ideals...
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The problem is that all those bad decisions inevitably
| spark from these platform companies _not wanting to enforce
| their own AUP_.
|
| We point out a particular bad actor in violation of their
| own policies, and they do nothing. We complain loudly about
| it in the news, and they vaguely commit to "fighting" the
| problems that were _already against their AUP_... but not
| any specific named bad actors. Automated systems are
| chucked at the wall, but the actual people people are angry
| about are exempted in the name of "free speech" until it
| costs the company business.
|
| This cycle repeats until a politician gets a bug up their
| butt about it and passes a law mandating platforms have
| more censorious policies.
| [deleted]
| sealeck wrote:
| Except that they don't respect court verdicts - e.g. in one
| case they lost against an Italian court "US-based Cloudflare
| disagreed. It countered that the Italian court didn't have
| jurisdiction and that the e-Commerce directive didn't apply
| to foreign companies, but those objections were rejected."
| How can you argue that a legal ruling is legally invalid
| (besides appealing it) and use this as a supposed
| justification for not complying with a court judgment?
|
| Even in that article they say "While we will generally follow
| legal orders to restrict security and conduit services," -
| how can you say this? No other business says "while we will
| generally accept court judgments..."
| judge2020 wrote:
| Their point for not respecting verdicts is:
|
| > Unfortunately, these cases are becoming more common where
| largely copyright holders are attempting to get a ruling in
| one jurisdiction and have it apply worldwide to terminate
| core Internet technology services and effectively wipe
| content offline. Again, we believe this is a dangerous
| precedent to set, placing the control of what content is
| allowed online in the hands of whatever jurisdiction is
| willing to be the most restrictive.
|
| It is pretty hard to suggest that someone can sue
| Cloudflare in a random country with either a corrupt or
| weak judicial system (not saying that's the case here, but
| in general) then get it taken down globally. To add, taking
| things down in a single country might not be super
| effective with the way the internet works, and the court
| might see someone browsing from a VPN and claim that a
| geoip-based block is insufficient for compliance.
|
| Although, I don't know the exact case you're referring to
| or if it's covered by this statement.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| How can we leave something for the courts to decide while
| at the same time dismissing all courts other than the US?
| Especially when you consider neither the hosting provider
| of the site in question, nor the target of this wave of
| harassment are from the US.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| Yep, I think this is a critical point. People in this
| thread keep saying things like, "If KiwiFarms is doing
| illegal things, prosecute them!" while ignoring that it's
| Cloudflare and other infrastructure providers that enable
| them to do those things across borders.
| philippejara wrote:
| At that point why bother with cloudflare? if you have a
| credible legal case to take down the hosting of the
| website you make a legal case in the place where it is
| being hosted and use that to get it down. I can't really
| see any reason for a court of law to force cloudflare to
| not service someone given that the obvious implications
| that the one asking for that to happen wants to commit a
| felony, or at the very least make the target susceptible
| to one, assuming cloudflare isn't hosting anything of
| course.
| viraptor wrote:
| Because the hosting company may be not bothered and
| actively supporting the extremist content. (guess if this
| applies in this case...)
| Mindwipe wrote:
| That's exactly what happened with FOSTA and they roll
| over and ask for their tummies to be tickled, because
| Cloudflare's official policy is that the lives of sex
| workers isn't terribly important.
| abigail95 wrote:
| If you pick a jurisdiction, like the US, to settle most of
| your disputes, that provides a minimum floor for everyone
| to understand and work out what should happen.
|
| If you don't - then the legal standards you have will be
| those of the _worst country in the world_. If Iran and
| North Korea issue court rulings banning cloudflare, should
| that affect people using cloudflare everywhere else?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > On the other hand, Cloudflare taking it upon themselves to
| police the Internet is a nightmare in its own, given their
| bot-prevention services are effectively mandatory in order to
| even keep any sort of larger interactive website running.
|
| Maybe we should additionally also focus on that problem as
| well. It should not be the case that you need to pay a
| protection racket just to be able to survive on the Internet.
|
| We definitely need more, also international, efforts to
| establish:
|
| - baseline requirements on IT security (to reduce the impact
| of stuff like hacked IoT devices)
|
| - quick and fast cooperation between governments to identify
| and contact owners of hacked equipment to get them off the
| Internet and patched. Maybe something similar in operation to
| firefighters - you don't have to pay for their assistance
| unless you actually created the fire or were grossly
| negligent?
|
| - procedures to get nation states that are a clear and
| consistent threat to everyone else off the Internet either
| because they actively attack others or because they are
| shielding hacker groups, and judging by where a lot of
| attacks originate, that is Russia, China, North Korea and
| Iran.
|
| Particularly regarding the last point, I'd also advocate to
| take factual declarations of war as what they are _and strike
| back_.
| derefr wrote:
| A protection racket implies collusion between attacker and
| defender, where the defender comes to you offering
| "protection", but then comes again as an attacker to those
| who refuse. CloudFlare aren't a protection racket; they're
| just an ordinary for-hire private security service, for
| businesses in "bad parts of town." They don't come to
| anyone; people come to them. And they have any facility for
| originating outbound requests from any of the sites they're
| protecting, so they can't be used to facilitate an attack,
| either. (Any more than you'd say that the private security
| firm hired to guard a mob hideout "facilitated the attack"
| when the mob leaves their hideout under the firm's care to
| go attack people elsewhere.)
|
| > procedures to get nation states that are a clear and
| consistent threat to everyone else off the Internet
|
| This is the thing: cutting off diplomatic routes is almost
| never the right approach, even during a hot war. Even when
| someone is punching you in the face, you don't want to tape
| their mouth and ears shut that they could be using to
| negotiate no-longer-punching-you-in-the-face.
|
| The Internet is like the Olympics: it provides a way for
| the common people of different countries to see each-
| other's good works and learn to respect one-another; even
| as the leaders of those countries, and asshole minorities
| within those countries, are making the news and fanning
| hawkish sentiment. Throwing out the counterbalance in such
| a scenario is something you'd expect an Emperor Palpatine
| figure to do, to engineer a war.
|
| Tangent: the biggest tragedy of the modern era is that the
| US, Russia, and China have entirely-separate popular social
| networks and blogging/vlogging platforms. The rare Russian
| YouTuber (living outside of Russia) talking to an English-
| speaking audience about their real feelings toward the
| Russian government does so much to build bridges between
| countries; but there would be a ton more of them if YouTube
| and VK had a federated video sharing arrangement, the way
| YouTube does with e.g. music videos hosted on DailyMotion.
| If a posting on VK or Weibo could "spread out" to Western
| audiences without someone manually picking it up and
| reposting it on Western social networks, we'd see so much
| more cross-cultural engagement and understanding. If
| someone on Facebook could add someone on VK as a friend,
| even...
|
| I have a strong feeling that if highly-evolved aliens ever
| tried to uplift our civilization, they'd start by demanding
| the removal of any artificially-imposed culture-level
| barriers to human-to-human communication.
| afiori wrote:
| > This is the thing: cutting off diplomatic routes is
| almost never the right approach, even during a hot war.
|
| The analogous approach would be to speed-limit outbound
| connections.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| This do next to nothing though. Most of the DDoS-traffic,
| while initiated in these places, originates from botnets
| all over the western world. Smart fridges, enterprise
| routers, that sort of things. Many of them seem to come
| from small businesses.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > A protection racket implies collusion between attacker
| and defender, where the defender comes to you offering
| "protection", but then comes again as an attacker to
| those who refuse
|
| For the average Internet citizen, the practical
| difference doesn't matter: unless you're hiding behind
| one of the powerhouses, everyone can shoot you off the
| Internet by renting a botnet for the equivalent of a
| dozen pizzas in Bitcoin, without having to fear any
| consequence. In real life, someone disrupting my business
| for hours would be carted off by police and I could sue
| their butt off for damages.
|
| > This is the thing: cutting off diplomatic routes is
| almost never the right approach, even during a hot war.
|
| There are diplomatic routes beyond the Internet, and
| additionally, at the moment for these four countries
| access to the Internet is like we'd let their landing
| ships take harbor at a port and let them unload their
| tanks in peace. We're not doing that in real life, we
| should not be doing that in cyberspace as well!
|
| > The Internet is like the Olympics: it provides a way
| for the common people of different countries to see each-
| other's good works and learn to respect one-another; even
| as the leaders of those countries, and asshole minorities
| within those countries, are making the news and fanning
| hawkish sentiment. Throwing out the counterbalance in
| such a scenario is something you'd expect an Emperor
| Palpatine figure to do, to engineer a war.
|
| Given the Great Firewall of China, the almost-complete
| censorship in North Korea for everyone not a high-ranking
| party cadre and the Internet restrictions in Russia and
| Iran, it's hard to claim that the Internet in these
| countries actually fulfils that role.
| tomcam wrote:
| This is a little confusing. You talked about protection
| rackets, then you said this company should collude in
| taking entire countries off the Internet.
|
| I think that would make them... A protection racket.
| pjc50 wrote:
| We are not going to war with nuclear armed states. At least
| not to a level we can't plausibly deny.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Heh, I'm not calling for tanks rolling on anyone else but
| the Russians at that moment. But taking down national
| assets? Hacking them back to steal information just like
| they do against us? Why the fuck not?
|
| If you let bullies bully around without consequences,
| they will only escalate, and it's high time someone takes
| on these four.
| derefr wrote:
| > Heh, I'm not calling for tanks rolling on anyone else
| but the Russians at that moment. But taking down national
| assets? Hacking them back to steal information just like
| they do against us?
|
| What makes you think the US military + CIA aren't already
| doing plenty of this to Russia et al? They don't talk
| about it, because plausible deniability is an asset. And
| because the US has so many allies to route traffic
| through, that plausible deniability can be _very_
| plausible.
| hnbad wrote:
| Except it's absolutely up to the whims of private businesses,
| if you want to be consistent with how businesses are
| understood in the US.
|
| In the US corporations are people and money is speech.
| Cloudflare can try to become a public utility if they want
| but right now they're a corporation and they're making a
| political decision to continue to take money from customers
| that use their services to operate harmful social spaces that
| are used to coordinate targeted harassment campaigns and
| drive vulnerable people into suicide.
|
| They frame selling DDoS protection as a neutral and good
| thing because it prevents cybercrime. But would you accept
| the same argument for selling ballistic vests? Plate
| carriers? APCs? Clearly selling defensive equipment to both
| sides of a conflict is still involving yourself in a
| conflict. If you want to be neutral, you don't involve
| yourself, you don't sell.
|
| And to make matters worse, the general consensus is that the
| party they're selling DDoS protection to are "the bad guys"
| in this conflict. The guy operating it literally had to
| create his own hosting company because he ran out of hosting
| providers willing to do business with him. He had to resort
| to crypto wallets because payment providers have long banned
| his site.
|
| Even if there wouldn't be any evidence that he encourages and
| participates in the harassment campaigns his site is known
| for (a site, by the way, that was literally created to harass
| one specific individual), the person maintaining that site
| still took a principled stand to allow this behavior to
| continue despite what it cost him. And now Cloudflare's CEO
| took the same stand to continue doing business with this
| person.
| abigail95 wrote:
| Why do you think it makes a difference whether Cloudflare
| meets California's public utility law? The law, which could
| change, doesn't solve the moral objections you have here.
|
| Or does it? Do you think it's OK to provide network
| protection to Kiwi Farms is California politicians say so,
| but not if Cloudflare says so?
|
| Corporations are people because you can sue them. This is
| good.
|
| Money is not speech, but spending money on your speech is
| legal (and good), just because money flows through a
| corporation doesn't mean speech that would be legal
| otherwise can be restricted. This is good.
|
| Whether Cloudflare meets the legal definition of a public
| utility doesn't matter. Nobody, including Cloudflare
| alleges they have to provide the service. The provide the
| service becauase they want to prevent network attacks from
| everyone.
|
| This position is _mutually exclusive_ to protecting people
| from other, non network attack harasssment.
|
| From their words they want to address and remove the
| negative externalitiies of network attacks, and you can't
| do that if you pick and choose at all.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| > What is permitted to say is something for the courts, not
| for the whims of private businesses, to decide.
|
| To the contrary, in this case it's exactly for Cloudflare to
| decide. They're not a utility.
| fjordelectro wrote:
| They've decided they want to be seen as a utility. You
| undermine your DDOS protection business if you drop
| controversial customers. They are exact type of customer
| who need DDOS protection the most.
| snotrockets wrote:
| Utilities are heavily regulated and mandated. If they're
| asking for the cake, they should have it whole.
| sealeck wrote:
| > They are exact type of customer who need DDOS
| protection the most.
|
| They (KiwiFarms, Daily Stormer) would be better not on
| the internet.
|
| > They've decided they want to be seen as a utility.
|
| This isn't how law works - just as you can't say "we
| don't have a banking license but we'd like to be seen as
| a bank and provide banking services" you can't say "we're
| not a utility but we'd like to be seen as one". Note that
| being a utility also comes with a host of other legal
| restrictions.
| sophacles wrote:
| I think paypal would disagree.
|
| And in other areas: uber, airbnb, various voip services
| have all said "we don't actually have the proper licenses
| for our industry but we want to fulfill the same role"
| judge2020 wrote:
| > They (KiwiFarms, Daily Stormer) would be better not on
| the internet.
|
| Who should decide that? Cloudflare? you?
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Cloudflare. It's in the TOS. They're not a utility, so
| yes, they get to decide.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Ok then: they have decided, and they decided not to take
| KF down.
|
| Their TOS gives them the lateral autonomy to decide what
| breaks the TOS, whether or not something violates their
| TOS, and how harsh of a punishment to enact.
| msbarnett wrote:
| > Ok then: they have decided, and they decided not to
| take KF down.
|
| Right, so what exactly is your point here? "Who gets to
| decide?" -- They do -- "Ok, that's what they decided".
|
| We're all aware of who decided and what they decided.
| Decisions come with consequences, among them being
| criticized for your decision making.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| The sky is blue, yes.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| Right. They get to decide to host these sites, and other
| people get to decide to organize legal economic actions
| against them, like boycotting. This seems like a normal
| and healthy part of a free market, no?
| fjordelectro wrote:
| > They are exact type of customer who need DDOS
| protection the most.
|
| > > They (KiwiFarms, Daily Stormer) would be better not
| on the internet.
|
| DDOS protection only exists because some people are
| willing to illegally target websites they believe would
| be better not on the internet. It's the entire point.
| Folding to publish pressure for one customer weakens
| their case for protecting others.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Dropping nazis from your service generally doesn't weaken
| the case for your service. For example, when Cloudflare
| did this in the past, it didn't harm their business.
| fjordelectro wrote:
| > Dropping nazis from your service generally doesn't
| weaken the case for your service
|
| From the article:
|
| "In 2017, we terminated the neo-Nazi troll site The Daily
| Stormer. And in 2019, we terminated the conspiracy theory
| forum 8chan.
|
| In a deeply troubling response, after both terminations
| we saw a dramatic increase in authoritarian regimes
| attempting to have us terminate security services for
| human rights organizations -- often citing the language
| from our own justification back to us."
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Nothing about that contradicts my statement. Cloudflare's
| business has been doing great ever since 2017.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Much as cloudflare is choosing to ignore victims of
| harassment, cloudflare could simply choose to ignore the
| authoritarian regimes. It is not required to follow a
| particular definition of "fairness".
| yarrel wrote:
| We've already established that they are perfectly capable
| of ignoring people.
|
| The only people they listen to or care about are domestic
| nazis. Those nasty regimes should just register accounts
| on KiwiFarms and then CloudFlare will bend over forwards
| to help them.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >They (KiwiFarms, Daily Stormer) would be better not on
| the internet.
|
| That's not for you to decide, you're not the manager of
| the internet.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| > They've decided they want to be seen as a utility.
|
| Cool! They should restructure their corporation then. But
| they're not, because their greedy CEO is trying to have
| his cake and eat it too.
| causi wrote:
| 8chan literally had sub boards dedicated to child pornography.
| Kiwi Farms is where people make fun of other people. They're
| really not comparable unless you believe "not being made fun
| of" is a human right.
| yanderekko wrote:
| > They're really not comparable unless you believe "not being
| made fun of" is a human right.
|
| This is meant to be sarcastic but a lot of people basically
| do believe this. Most arguments about "stochastic terrorism"
| would implicitly aim to devalue/censor any sort of speech
| that "punched down".
| causi wrote:
| _This is meant to be sarcastic but a lot of people
| basically do believe this_
|
| Indeed they do, and they're free to go on arresting their
| fellow citizens for teaching dogs offensive gestures. But
| Cloudflare is an American company, and they're under no
| obligation to enforce politeness on their customers.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Stochastic terrorism involves actual murder.
| https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/buffalo-shooter-
| stocha...
| yanderekko wrote:
| Yes, and one can argue that everyone who denigrates group
| X is guilty of stochastic terrorism when an attack on
| group X occurs.
| throw149102 wrote:
| A more charitable version of this argument would build in
| a series of degrees as to how likely those denigrations
| are to make stochastic terrorism occur. For example,
| vague insults directed at a group of people are less
| likely to cause terrorism than ones associated with a
| single person. Insults that come loaded with implicit
| threats (like doxxing) are much more likely to cause
| stochastic terrorism than those without. Insults and
| threats against groups who are marginalized in society
| are more likely to cause terrorism. Insults made in a
| space full of mentally deranged people are more likely to
| cause terrorism.
|
| With all of this, it's clear that if you're going to
| argue that stochastic terrorism even exists, you should
| believe that it is happening at Kiwi Farms. Incredibly
| personal, incredibly specific (doxxing), directed at
| marginalized people, and in a space full of people that
| are already predisposed to acts of violence.
| syrrim wrote:
| They dropped support for 8ch after successive terrorist
| attacks, one of which killed 50 innocent people. The CEO has
| stated that he regrets dropping them.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 8chan had the whole mass shooter thing. Comparing the two
| websites is very hyperbolic.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| What did the neo-Nazi site have that the others didn't?
| "Nazis" isn't the answer because I can find Nazis on a lot of
| websites out in the open.
| CommitSyn wrote:
| If kiwifarms becomes the original public manifesto posting
| spot for national mediafest mass shooters, their views may
| change.
| driverdan wrote:
| KF actively pushes people to commit suicide. People have died
| because of them.
| JYellensFuckboy wrote:
| Is this in fact the case? Of course it is being claimed,
| but I always perceived that KF's nastiness was relatively
| self-contained, e.g. when someone encourages suicide, it's
| performative to other Farmers, rather than reaching out to
| a potential victim or their loved ones. All bark, no bite,
| and caged.
| Borgz wrote:
| Wikipedia has information on 3 suicides related to
| KiwiFarms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Suici
| des_of_harassm...
| wyager wrote:
| aa9a0s9dsljk wrote:
| The current push for cloudflare to unlist kiwifarms is in
| response to a well known twitch streamer's attempted
| killing via swatting. They literally had to leave the
| country (canada), and the new address was found, and they
| were swatted again.
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/9097654/twitch-streamer-and-
| trans...
|
| Their "nastiness" (suggestion: terrorism) is never self
| contained. I know several people who've been doxxed on
| there - every single person had to move and change their
| legal name. If a thread on someone in KF is active, they
| will find every member of your family, your workplace,
| friends and loved ones. Then if they find your friends
| are "degenerates", they will doxx them too, and all their
| family workplace friends and loved ones.
|
| The fucking point of the site is harassment - they post
| ADDRESSES and PHONE NUMBERS, why would those ever be
| allowed if it was supposed to be self-contained?
|
| Here is the how the southern poverty law center describes
| Kiwifarms:
|
| > KiwiFarms - a forum with roots in 4Chan culture that
| has become notorious for engaging in extreme trolling,
| harassment, and even stalking
|
| Source: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-
| hate/extremist-files/grou...
|
| Throwaway because its not safe to post on my primary
| account about them while kiwifarms is allowed to operate.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| So does Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and every large
| platform. There is so much harassment, doxing, and other
| disturbing behavior on all the platforms.
| cyral wrote:
| The owners of those platforms don't actively encourage
| that content, and it makes up a small portion of the
| content rather than the main purpose
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I'm not sure that it is the main purpose of KiwiFarms.
| There appears to be a large number of posts not related
| to any of that behavior. I don't use KiwiFarms so maybe I
| just don't know where all these doxing posts are?
|
| Also, due to the sheer size, Twitter and the others
| almost certainly have significantly more of these types
| of posts.
| Borgz wrote:
| All of those platforms regularly remove that type of
| content and ban users that post it.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| throw149102 wrote:
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Twitter and Meta have policies against doxing. Difficulty
| preventing it at much larger scale does not make them
| equivalent to Kiwi Farms.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I don't care if they have policies. They have a huge
| amount of posts directly advocating violence and doxing
| that don't get removed.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Difficulty preventing it at much larger scale does not
| make them equivalent to Kiwi Farms.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| KiwiFarms has a policy against illegal behavior. If your
| argument is that having a policy and half assing it is
| sufficient for Twitter then you should be consistent and
| allow KiwiFarms the same excuse. The size is irrelevant.
| If anything it should mean Twitter should be held to a
| higher standard due to the sheer reach of the platform.
| Twitter has significantly more resources to stop this
| behavior through both automated and manual processes.
| Stop justifying Twitter's complete and utter failure.
| ryneandal wrote:
| And each of those platforms you've mentioned have
| explicit rules AGAINST harassment, doxxing, swatting, and
| other reprehensible behavior KF engages in.
|
| Sure, it may be posted, but lots of it is removed as soon
| as it is identified and/or reported.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Kiwifarms has a policy against illegal behavior (which
| would include some harassment and swatting). I am not
| sure if doxing is illegal?
|
| Policies don't mean anything when a huge amount of it
| stays up and the platform does nothing about it.
|
| There are posts literally and explicitly calling for
| people to murder others on Twitter. The posts have been
| there for multiple years (at least the last time I
| checked). Twitter and the other big players completely
| fail at content moderation.
| sealeck wrote:
| This is a remarkably facile comment; on Twitter, Facebook
| and Instagram you can find people who aren't out to drive
| trans people to commit suicide, and content which isn't
| about how to best call SWAT teams to people's homes. On
| KiwiFarms, that is all there is.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I see plenty of posts on Kiwifarms that don't seem to be
| advocating for anything like that. Where exactly are all
| these posts? If the only thing on Kiwifarms are posts
| like this I should be able to easily see them.
| throwrqX wrote:
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| The forum whose members spend a lot of time harassing
| people has a book club thread! They can't be bad people
| if they spend some of their non-harassing time reading!
| throwrqX wrote:
| There's lots of people on Facebook who talk about abusing
| children. So what? If you want to say the majority or a
| substantial percentage of the forum members harass people
| then show some evidence for it.
| wyager wrote:
| I don't think this is accurate. I've only looked at KF
| briefly, but it seems like the causal ancestor is actually
| that KF tracks people who are loudly and publicly doing
| crazy stuff, which correlates with people who are at risk
| of loudly and publicly killing themselves.
| Borgz wrote:
| 8chan users radicalize each other and encourage each other to
| commit mass shootings. KiwiFarms users post the personal
| information of people and encourage each other to harass them
| to the point of suicide. I don't see how they aren't
| comparable.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Swatting also results in shooting deaths
| paulmd wrote:
| What is the distinction you are drawing between a death
| from a swatting and pulling the trigger yourself?
|
| Is this some "I didn't kill you, I just tied you up and
| left you on the tracks at 11:55 for the noon train"
| distinction?
|
| And just because the attacks aren't explicitly coordinated
| on the site doesn't mean there's not culpability there...
| if an 8chan user is radicalized by 8chan and attacks a
| target suggested by 8chan, that doesn't mean 8chan isn't
| responsible just because the user didn't explicitly type
| "yes I am going to attack on Febtober 7th at 2pm".
|
| That's sort of the problem with the whole "stochastic
| terrorism" thing... there's a transparently thin veneer of
| deniability for everyone involved, even the leaders. We
| obviously don't tolerate those excuses when dealing with
| jihad, you're going to get sanctioned or even bombed even
| if you're "just their spiritual leader and not actually
| involved with planning.
|
| There's no reason to with 8chan or KF either.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Remember, while they took down 8chan, they left up ISIS sites
| hosting ISIS-made videos of ISIS members _burning people alive_
| , popping off their heads with detcord, and the like.
|
| 8chan _bad_ , ISIS ... well, not as bad?
|
| I will never stop reminding people that the CEO said he woke up
| in a bad mood one day and took down protections for one group
| ... but left murdersites alone. Can't be undone.
|
| Remember that whenever they pretend to be unbiased.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _I will never stop reminding people that the CEO said he
| woke up in a bad mood one day and took down protections for
| one group ... but left murdersites alone. Can 't be undone._
|
| Out of loop. What is this in reference to?
| [deleted]
| judge2020 wrote:
| They're effectively saying they were wrong then:
|
| > To be clear, just because we did it in a limited set of cases
| before doesn't mean we were right when we did. Or that we will
| ever do it again.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| And like that, we've gone from "very" to "extremely"
| disappointing. That's a hell of a statement from them.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| If you actually read their article, it seems they are saying
| that 8chan WASNT defensible to them and was a mistake for them
| to do so.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| I did read the article. I read it twice. Once prior to
| commenting, once with someone I showed it to. I think you're
| misinterpreting my comment.
|
| I stated this: "but I don't see how KF is defensible whilst
| 8chan et al aren't"
|
| This meant: I don't understand how they can invoke the
| removal of 8chan and a neo-Nazi site, yet retain KF.
| pessimizer wrote:
| But if they "invoked" the removal of 8chan to say that they
| shouldn't have done it, I don't understand the relevance.
| Since you simply changed defended to "invoked," it seems
| that you're also aware that they aren't defending removing
| "8chan et al."
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| I think I misunderstood the statement.
| dastbe wrote:
| then why don't they publicly invite back 8chan and the daily
| stormer, possibly for a discount/free? similarly, are they
| lobbying to get FOSTA revised so they can bring back Switter?
|
| their opinion is that it is (almost always?) ethically wrong
| for them to withhold security products. for the two websites
| i mentioned, nobody is stopping them from providing services.
| for a third, they could lobby to fix fosta and/or not transit
| switter traffic in the us.
| bell-cot wrote:
| There must be a lot of times when Cloudflare's leaders wish that
| they were a janitorial supply company. Or a roofing firm. Or a
| ball bearings manufacturer. Or _anything_ where there was ~zero
| public expectation that they would monitor and be "held
| responsible" for the business models, behaviors, and morals of
| the millions of people and organizations using their products &
| services.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| I find the article hopeful for the future of free speech on the
| internet. Even though the ability to host content on the net is
| one thing and lacking access to most platforms (where the users
| actually are) like youtube, facebook, instagram, tiktok is
| another. The most important thing nowadays is access to the
| siloed user bases for people who try to express dissident
| opinions, not the access to the net as whole, even though that is
| important as well.
|
| >For instance, when a site that opposed LGBTQ+ rights signed up
| for a paid version of DDoS mitigation service we worked with our
| Proudflare employee resource group to identify an organization
| that supported LGBTQ+ rights and donate 100 percent of the fees
| for our services to them.
|
| I find this section peculiar. Why does the company have "values"?
| I though companies were supposed to be looking after the intrests
| of their shareholders, i.e., profit. Do the shareholders consent
| to the lost profit being donated to political motives? This
| broader trend of companies becoming political organizations is
| terrible, frankly.
|
| But even with that said, I find their stance in the article to be
| hopeful, and sincerely wish that they stay true to their words in
| this paragraph.
|
| >To be clear, just because we did it in a limited set of cases
| before doesn't mean we were right when we did. Or that we will
| ever do it again.
| berjin wrote:
| > Why does the company have "values"?
|
| Look into ESG scores and Black Rock.
| fleddr wrote:
| I'm with you that they did the right thing by taking this
| neutral stance, the peculiar section you should see as
| "managing optics" and keeping hysterical activists off their
| backs.
| maxboone wrote:
| There's a growing amount of shareholders and boards that care
| about more than direct monetary profits.
|
| They also care about providing value / reducing costs in terms
| of e.g. sustainability.
| subsistence234 wrote:
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > I find this section peculiar. Why does the company have
| "values"? I though companies were supposed to be looking after
| the intrests of their shareholders, i.e., profit. Do the
| shareholders consent to the lost profit being donated to
| political motives? This broader trend of companies becoming
| political organizations is terrible, frankly.
|
| This ship has sailed since about 2008:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_cor...
|
| I would like to see new companies that completely reject the
| status quo in every way:
|
| - No HR departments
|
| - No virtue signaling whatsoever
|
| - Cubicles are back, no open offices
|
| - Only hire based on competence
|
| - Explicitly prohibit any kind of activism at work
|
| - No politics at work
|
| - No tolerance to anything but work. If you sexually harrass
| someone, instantly fired.
|
| - No woke HR training (no one watches it, yet no one has the
| courage to say anything about it)
|
| - No green washing pledges (these are not as effective as
| public thinks)
|
| I'd sign up for a job there. People need to read 1970's annual
| reports. They were so amazing.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > - No tolerance to anything but work. If you sexually
| harrass someone, instantly fired.
|
| > - No woke HR training (no one watches it, yet no one has
| the courage to say anything about it)
|
| Given that a chunk of the HR training is about reminding
| people not to sexually harass, I'm not sure how you can
| achieve both of those? Especially when you don't have an HR
| department. Who's investigating the allegations? In practice
| this kind of culture leads to "if you are sexually harrased,
| you have to keep your mouth shut or you will be fired".
| hooverd wrote:
| Who gets to decide what is "political", too.
| afiori wrote:
| Topics that cause disagreements not related to the job
| can be classified as personal and/or political.
|
| We should not take X as client, they are bad -> political
|
| We should not take X as client, my ex work there ->
| political
|
| We should not take X as client, they are unreliable with
| payments -> not political
|
| We should not take X as client, clients W, Y, and Z will
| drop us -> not political
| foldr wrote:
| Those principles could lead to taking on some really
| awful clients, though. Think of e.g. companies like IBM
| that provided support to organizations engaged in
| genocide.
| kevinh wrote:
| Is a man talking about his wife political?
|
| Is a man talking about his husband political?
|
| Is a person transitioning political?
| afiori wrote:
| Talking about eating apples could be political in the
| definition I gave.
|
| I don't think it is a good idea but it is a solution to
| the question of who get to decide what is political and
| what it not: everything not job related is political.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > We should not take X as client, clients W, Y, and Z
| will drop us -> not political
|
| "Why would they drop us?"
|
| "I'm sorry Dave, corporate code forbids me from
| discussing that"
| afiori wrote:
| Caring about PR is in the interest of shareholders.
|
| If companies had to always maximize short term profits there
| would be very few companies around.
|
| wrt shareholders for public companies they have a duty not to
| defraud them[0]; for everything else they are another
| stakeholder between employees, the public, the company itself
| as an institution, and other.
|
| [0] For example how Musk had Tesla overpay for the failing
| SolarCity to save face [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSUQhfYv3wc
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYGgeRxVS_E
|
| [3] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-
| eVf9RWeoWHFuSgmmpMlMlVf...
| skybrian wrote:
| Companies have values because they are not machines. They are
| organizations of people, who do have values. (And sometimes
| even agree on them.)
|
| Also, you're decades out of date on shareholder capitalism. ESG
| is big now. Even the shareholders don't necessarily want to you
| to maximize profit.
| tzs wrote:
| I'm surprised at the number of people making the argument that if
| something is not illegal corporations should keep their own
| feelings on the morality of that thing out of it.
|
| That has a real risk of leading to the law being expanded to
| cover those things. I think we are better off with the law as a
| second or third layer of morality enforcement rather than it
| being the first layer.
| creeble wrote:
| >We believe cyberattacks, in any form, should be relegated to the
| dustbin of history.
|
| Unless, of course, you are an _enabler_ of such attacks.
|
| This is where CF's hypocrisy shines through.
|
| instant-stresser.com str3ssed.co freestresser.co metastresser.com
| (dozens more)
|
| These are all sites hosted with CF DNS, who provide services that
| are literally the opposite of free speech -- they are in the
| business of _suppressing speech_, for money (or for free!). They
| are the providers of the service CF protects its paying customers
| against. There could be no more simple definition of a shakedown
| racket than this: Pay us for DDoS protection, or risk being
| brought down by one or more of our (non-paying) customers!
|
| For all their completely defensible talk about free speech, this
| is a category of customer that is indefensible, and completely
| identifiable.
|
| Except for one thing: If they were "relegated to the dustbin of
| history", so too would be CF's business model.
|
| So before defending CF's stance on "free speech", take a good
| look at their business model, and who they support.
| Borgz wrote:
| This is very interesting, thanks for posting.
|
| According to completedns.com, instant-stresser.com has been
| using Cloudflare on and off for almost 8 years, and
| continuously for the last 3 years. It's also the 2nd result on
| Google for searching "free stresser". It seems impossible that
| this site hasn't been reported to Cloudflare by now, indicating
| that they have made the decision to continue protecting it.
| Very bad.
|
| I haven't checked the other sites you mentioned, but if this
| pattern holds, it definitely changes my perspective on
| Cloudflare.
| creeble wrote:
| Well, maybe this site will help:
|
| ddosforhire.net
|
| They're a lovely recommendation/review site that lists a few
| dozen DDoS-for-hire sites. Take a random look at who hosts
| the individual sites' DNS.
|
| Their business is fundamentally a shake-down racket,
| disguised as a free-speech defender.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Wait, you're suggesting they had board room discussions
| where they consciously, actively chose to protect and
| encourage ddos-for-hire sites because the threat of ddos
| attacks helps keep cloudflare in business?
| creeble wrote:
| I'm saying that, despite frequent reports of DDoS-for-
| hire sites using CF for protection, they do nothing. And
| they do nothing because they profit from their existence.
|
| Again, this isn't free speech -- it is the antithesis of
| free speech. That's called hypocrisy.
|
| And yes, of course they cooperate with the FBI on
| specific cases (or, at least one specific case) of DDoS-
| for-hire prosecution. Not only because they are compelled
| to do so by law, but because they are the only company
| that can identify where the perpetrators are actually
| hosted.
| ldldksks wrote:
| photochemsyn wrote:
| So, the claim is that Cloudflare is acting like the window
| glass shop that drums up business by running around smashing
| windows at night? That's quite the claim.
|
| Here's a recent report on a DDoS-for-hire outfit that was
| criminally charged and convicted, related to downthem.org and
| ampnode.org
|
| https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2022/06/ddos-for-hire...
|
| Interestingly, the affidavit in that case does note that
| Cloudflare provided services for downthem.org and ampnode.org.
| However, this is a criminal indictment of the guilty party. I
| suppose the issue is, what kind of 'public reporting of
| criminal activity' is needed to provoke CF to drop services? In
| cases like this I also imagine CF cooperates with FBI
| investigations.
| gpm wrote:
| > In cases like this I also imagine CF cooperates with FBI
| investigations.
|
| Seems to be the case,
|
| > The FBI's Anchorage Field Office and its Los Angeles-based
| Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit investigated this
| matter. [...] Cloudflare, Inc. [...] assisted this
| investigation.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/illinois-man-
| sentenced-...
|
| Edit: And for anyone looking for the affadvit reference by
| parent, I believe they mean this: https://storage.courtlisten
| er.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.73...
| creeble wrote:
| > So, the claim is that Cloudflare is acting like the window
| glass shop that drums up business by running around smashing
| windows at night? That's quite the claim.
|
| That is not my claim; they don't operate any DDoS-for-hire
| sites. My claim is that their "free speech, we won't shut
| them down" claims are utter hypocrisy when they do nothing to
| shut down their support for DDoS-for-hire sites, the ultimate
| (on the internet, anyway) anti-free speech perpetrators.
| pier25 wrote:
| > _If they were "relegated to the dustbin of history", so too
| would be CF's business model._
|
| If DDoS didn't exist I'm sure CF would still thrive as a CDN
| and all the other services they provide (Argo, Workers, etc).
|
| If anything, I'm sure CF would be more than happy to stop
| providing DDoS protection for free. They'd save a lot of money.
| tedivm wrote:
| Cloudflare has always hidden behind this stance as a way to
| justify doing awful things.
|
| When I worked at Malwarebytes we had regular issues with
| malware being hosted on Cloudflare. Now I don't mean like "hey
| download this file so you can learn"- that kind of thing we
| fully supported. I mean that these files were being explicitly
| used in drive by exploit attacks- if a user with a vulnerable
| browser went to the wrong webpage, that webpage would load
| exploit scripts from the Cloudflare network and then inject the
| malware.
|
| To me this is a very simple example of abusing a network. It is
| not a free speech issue, unless you think punching someone in
| the face is free speech. We proved that this was happening by
| providing pcap files showing the entire network transaction and
| the fact that users were not initiating this on purpose.
|
| Their response was to ignore us until we started blocking their
| end nodes, at which point they came to our forum and straight
| up lied.
|
| > Unfortunately, the new system is unlikely to resolve the
| current controversy which is more political than technical in
| nature. The current controversy involving Malwarebytes blocking
| CloudFlare IPs is centered around one site. To be clear, this
| site does not distribute malware itself and visiting it will
| not infect your computer. It does, however, provide information
| on how to create malware. Philosophically, we believe there is
| a difference between distributing malware -- which we will
| prohibit through our network -- and distributing information
| about malware. We do not believe our role is to play censor to
| any information on the Internet, even information we find
| disturbing. Publishing the Anarchists Cookbook does not make
| you a terrorist. Blocking sites based on the information they
| contain, as opposed to the actual harm they do, takes a step
| down a slippery slope I find deeply troubling.
|
| https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/108447-my-site-using-c...
|
| This was a 100% dishonest lie, and it's the same pattern
| Cloudflare has been following for a decade now. In this case
| they lied claiming we were blocking educational material, which
| is something Malwarebytes never did. He said all of this after
| we sent the pcap files proving that this wasn't an issue with
| educational sites.
|
| From my perspective Cloudflare has always been willing to hide
| behind free speech even if it isn't relevant. It's their go to
| excuse for any bad behavior.
| schleck8 wrote:
| This entire 'freedom of speech' absolutism bullshit is so
| incoherent.
|
| They host and protect a website only dedicated to muzzling
| people the userbase disagrees with...
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Ding ding ding. There is never sanity in splitting (black
| and white thinking) and it's characteristic of mental
| disorder in individuals.
| schleck8 wrote:
| Everything is characteristic of mental disorder when you
| are out of arguments in an online discussion.
| tedivm wrote:
| Ironically the last time I really criticized them one of
| their higher up security people (who no longer works there)
| started to digitally stalk me. This guy followed all of my
| accounts everywhere and went out of his way to troll me.
|
| He was employed on their security time. I wouldn't be
| surprised if it turns out a ton of their staff were
| kiwifarm users.
| 015a wrote:
| Hosting a DNS zone file is not tantamount to enabling attacks.
| Its like saying Google enabled murder because Maps provided the
| directions for a murderer to get to the victim's house.
| creeble wrote:
| It's also not tantamount to saying "relegating cyberattacks
| to the dustbin of history" either.
|
| Maps isn't a service used for suppressing free speech. It's
| the hypocrisy that is galling.
|
| If you stand up for free speech, it is inconsistent to
| support those whose business plan is the suppression of free
| speech.
| karcass wrote:
| IDK if y'all know this, but this is 100% due to
| kiwifarms/keffals. Of course the doxxing and swatting on
| kiwifarms is not limited to keffals.
| Borgz wrote:
| I don't understand why Cloudflare believes it is their
| responsibility to protect content that they admit to finding
| morally reprehensible when they are under no moral or legal
| obligation to do so.
|
| It seems that Cloudflare believes that they are the only ones who
| can protect the websites hosting this content from being DDoS'd
| out of existence, and thus they are protecting their right to
| freedom of speech. But the owners of these websites can just use
| a different provider that is more aligned with their sense of
| morality, and Cloudflare doesn't need to protect websites that
| they morally disagree with.
|
| DDoS-Guard still exists and I have no doubt they would be
| perfectly happy to protect websites like The Daily Stormer,
| 8chan, and KiwiFarms. They have shown themselves to be capable at
| mitigating large-scale DDoS attacks against the Russian
| government, so it's not like Cloudflare is the only place these
| websites can survive.
|
| Cloudflare should only continue to provide services to websites
| like these if whatever they gain by having them as customers
| outweighs their moral disagreement with them. And I can't see how
| a few thousand dollars per year does that.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I feel like you missed the core points of this post.
|
| - Precedent from decisions on The Daily Stormer and 8chan was
| used to pressure Cloudflare to deplatform human rights
| organizations by authoritarian governments. Refusing to
| deplatform isn't about protecting Kiwifarms, but protecting
| other groups in a global environment where they face legal and
| social pressure on differing and conflicting views. A hands-off
| policy on moderating the content of their customers removes the
| possibility of using deplatforming to suppress human rights.
|
| - They rarely get paid by any of these sites, and when they do,
| tend to donate the proceeds to charities opposed to such awful
| websites.
| [deleted]
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Other people who might want to host content that certain groups
| of people and/or governments don't want kept online are surely
| noticing and may start or continue using CF as a result of this
| message. Even someone in this situation who is completely
| opposed to KF's content should be able feel some comfort in
| that.
| phantom_of_cato wrote:
| > Not because the content of those sites wasn't abhorrent -- it
| was -- but because security services most closely resemble
| Internet utilities.
|
| > Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if
| you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in
| consultation with politicians, policy makers, and experts that
| turning off security services because we think what you publish
| is despicable is the wrong policy. To be clear, just because we
| did it in a limited set of cases before doesn't mean we were
| right when we did. Or that we will ever do it again.
|
| Based. It seems that @eastdakota is following through with his
| plan: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/cloudflares-
| ceo-...
| [deleted]
| none_to_remain wrote:
| Cloudflare successfully defends against an extended DDoS with
| social engineering components
| trollied wrote:
| No good will come from discussing this here.
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| and yet here we are, sustaining psychic damage
| phpnode wrote:
| Worst HN thread in living memory imo
| wikitopian wrote:
| Cloudflare is doing an admirable and thoughtful job of trying to
| ethically navigate its anticompetitive monopoly control of
| internet access.
|
| It is, however, a design flaw that a publicly traded corporation
| run by some dude (a cool dude) is in the situation of determining
| who can and cannot communicate on the Internet.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| They talk a lot about "human rights" in this post. At what point
| does someone's right to personal safety and privacy trump another
| person's right to host whatever they want on the internet?
| cowtools wrote:
| freedomben wrote:
| > _At what point does someone 's right to personal safety and
| privacy trump another person's right to host whatever they want
| on the internet?_
|
| If you're willing, I'd be interested to hear your own answer to
| the question you ask. It's an interesting question (though I'm
| not sure I agree with the premise(s), but I think that's a
| different conversation).
|
| Also interesting would be to hear your answer to the reverse:
| _At what point does someone 's right to host whatever they want
| on the internet trump someone's right to personal safety and
| privacy?_
| didibus wrote:
| My favorite set of human rights is the UN one:
| https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-
| huma...
|
| The two rights at play would be:
|
| > Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion
| and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions
| without interference and to seek, receive and impart
| information and ideas through any media and regardless of
| frontiers
|
| > Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary
| interference with his privacy, family, home or
| correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and
| reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the
| law against such interference or attacks
|
| > Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in
| dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and
| conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of
| brotherhood.
|
| In my opinion, it's a relatively clear case, though I reckon
| sometimes there might be a grey area.
|
| Article 19 says you're free to express your opinions and
| ideas to others through any media. So you should be able to
| do so on the internet as well.
|
| Article 12 says that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary
| interference with his privacy, family, home or
| correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and
| reputation.
|
| To me, this means your thoughts and ideas you express cannot
| arbitrarily interfere with others privacy, home,
| correspondence, or attack their honor or reputation without
| due cause.
|
| This means that doxxing is not acceptable, hacking and
| revealing private information you obtained without consent
| isn't acceptable unless you have due cause (whistleblowing
| for matters of laws being broken). Harassment is not
| acceptable either, because it's interference with ones right.
|
| You'd need a court to establish what right you broke, and
| this is probably what we're lacking today, since a large
| percentage of the voting population doesn't actually value
| all human rights equally, I think the courts have been
| hesitant to enforce them, and so the right to privacy isn't
| particularly respected, but the right to express opinions or
| private information and harassment is strongly defended.
| Since the courts are failing, people are having to take the
| case to the public spheres.
|
| Finally, Article 1 says that everyone is endowed with reason
| and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit
| of brotherhood. I included this one because it too clearly
| rejects harassment and hate. It clearly mandates that people
| must act in spirit of brotherhood with everyone else.
| Obviously all behavior that go against that is not supported
| by the human rights.
| weberer wrote:
| I would say when it breaks a specific law. And if its that
| serious, get the police and feds involved, not some board
| members of some hosting company.
| pjc50 wrote:
| In this case, the police are involved, and part of the
| problem: a KF user got somebody SWATted. The police are
| amazingly useless at dealing with organized harassment; there
| have been a couple of cases where people have already been in
| touch and _told_ them "you will probably receive a hoax call
| about me", and still got SWATted.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| What KF user got someone SWATted? Please name and shame
| them if you have evidence.
|
| KF makes a very convenient scapegoat and there's no reason
| for someone opposed to them to false flag as them when
| calling in a SWAT, or for someone to SWAT themselves or
| just fake a SWATting entirely and blame it on someone at KF
| or just KF in general. I'm not saying for sure that has
| happened in Keffals' case, but it can't be proven that
| something like that didn't happen yet either.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >At what point does someone's right to personal safety and
| privacy trump another person's right to host whatever they want
| on the internet?
|
| When it breaks a law and becomes a problem for law enforcement
| and not corporate PR.
| fsociety wrote:
| Only when it makes them more money than claiming to be a
| "bastion of free speech".
| lettergram wrote:
| > Is otherwise illegal, harmful, or violates the rights of
| others, including content that discloses sensitive personal
| information, incites or exploits violence against people or
| animals, or seeks to defraud the public.
|
| Talk about a catch all term "... or is otherwise harmful ..."
|
| I understand there are examples, but this literally leaves the
| door open to anything they deem harmful. Free speech means
| enabling potentially "harmful" content. Really depends who seems
| something "harmful". Dead naming on Twitter is considered "hate
| speech", does that mean an old website that deadnames can be
| harmful?
|
| Imo just stay out of the regulation business unless someone MAKES
| you. Otherwise it's a slippery slope.
|
| Which it appears they realized, after being rather aggressive in
| their "canceling" of others:
|
| > Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if
| you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in
| consultation with politicians, policy makers, and experts that
| turning off security services because we think what you publish
| is despicable is the wrong policy. To be clear, just because we
| did it in a limited set of cases before doesn't mean we were
| right when we did. Or that we will ever do it again.
|
| My bet is they also opened the door to companies from Russia who
| would allow said free speech. From a business case, when I saw
| cloud flare drop customers I recommended everyone I know to move
| to someone else (at least one large company I know of moved due
| to this incident). Why risk your business with someone who
| arbitrarily changes policies and terms?
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| That's a lot of text for "sticks and stones may break your bones,
| but words protected by CloudFlare will never hurt you".
| Inityx wrote:
| Swatting and stalking may end your life, but...
| yarrel wrote:
| This is a truly wonderful example of corporate communication that
| should be taught on university communications courses.
|
| Because it is absolutely the worst example of not even bothering
| to lie to CYA I have ever read.
| patmcc wrote:
| >>Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if
| you say awful, racist, bigoted things
|
| I've been thinking about this for a few days, in regards to all
| the Kiwi Farms stuff.
|
| Where do we want censorship to happen? It seems like most people
| agree that "bullying people to suicide" is something we shouldn't
| tolerate, but where do we stop it? No DNS hosting for them? No
| CDN, no DDOS protection? Go after their hosting directly?
| Alternatively, we could start at the other side, build a great
| firewall and have ISPs route everything through it. Make
| Apple/Microsoft/etc build "safety" filters that check packets as
| they leave your computer. Or hell, we're nearly at the stage
| where a keyboard could have enough processing power to real-time
| censor what you write. Why not do that?
|
| I wish Kiwi Farms didn't exist, it sounds like a terrible place.
| I'm not convinced Cloudflare should be in charge of deciding
| that.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Law enforcement, charging by government attorneys, criminal
| courts and civil courts.
|
| If you're being harassed, the communication venues on which the
| harassment happens should be compelled legally to unmask the
| harasser so they may be charged and served with restraining
| orders.
|
| Who cares if kiwifarms exists if you have competent and
| empowered law enforcement and judicial systems that can bring
| justice to the people actually taking illegal actions?
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Never thought I'd see the Left trying to weaponize corporations
| to suppress speech they dislike. Reminds me a LOT of Evangelicals
| in the 2000s - I know that comparison has been made frequently
| but that's the last group that made a serious censorship push.
|
| I wonder how all of this will end? I support CloudFlare here -
| they should act as a utility, not as an arbiter of content. This
| ends poorly and one day will bite the people that are pushing for
| this.
| schleck8 wrote:
| The irony of using a throwaway account to advocate for a site
| that doxxes people.
|
| You guys are the ones undermining the legitimacy of freedom of
| speech by passing doxxing off as merely being an opinion while
| it in fact surpresses actually bipartisan discussion.
| Disgusting.
| yanderekko wrote:
| Yeah, I remember when "net neutrality" was something that the
| left was demanding.
|
| Once they realized that _they_ had a systematic advantage in
| petitioning hosting companies to deplatform disfavored content
| without due process, however, all of the underlying arguments
| for net neutrality were quietly discarded.
| zanecodes wrote:
| Net neutrality was never about deplatforming, due process, or
| censorship. It was about ISPs prioritizing traffic or
| providing free bandwidth for their own services and
| throttling or charging extra fees for third party services
| (e.g. Time Warner providing access to their own streaming
| service without counting towards your bandwidth cap, but not
| doing the same for Netflix).
|
| It was an economic issue, not a political one.
| yanderekko wrote:
| >It was an economic issue, not a political one.
|
| The two can't be disentangled. Woke censorship is often
| justified through economic self-interest nowadays. Do you
| really believe activists 20 years ago would be placated if
| ISPs had simply promised to throttle only based on politics
| rather than economics?
| sealeck wrote:
| Hosting content and distributing it are different things
| (in the same way that printing letters for someone is
| very different to operating a mail service carrying
| everyone's letters).
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| This is the point that Cloudflare is making in TFA.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| Yes, but on the upside now we know who the liberals are and
| who the authoritarians-posing-as-liberal are.
| seneca wrote:
| > Reminds me a LOT of Evangelicals in the 2000s - I know that
| comparison has been made frequently but that's the last group
| that made a serious censorship push.
|
| It's the exact same pattern: Zealots trying to use censorship
| to suppress those that don't adhere to their ideology. The
| reason it's confusing is because you're looking at it as a
| left/right issue when it's not. It's an authoritarian/libertine
| or extremists vs everyone else issue.
| mort96 wrote:
| ladyattis wrote:
| It's nothing like the evangelicals by any stretch of the
| imagination. The fact of the matter is that Kiwi Farms is a
| cesspit full of people who revel in obsessing over people and
| then harassing them not only at their jobs but even through
| their private communications (phone numbers, personal email
| addresses, etc). How you react if dozens of people just started
| calling you at all hours because you're trans and are visible
| in a social network? How would you react to having to explain
| to your employer that it's just "some kids" constantly
| badgering you and them when you're busy doing work? How would
| handle the act of them calling the police with false reports
| that result in a SWAT raid? This isn't hypothetical, it's
| happened many times due to Kiwi Farms and other forums.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| It's nothing like the SJWs by any stretch of the imagination.
| The fact of the matter is that
| Reddit/ResetERA/Twitter/DailyKos is a cesspit full of people
| who revel in obsessing over people and then harassing them
| not only at their jobs but even through their private
| communications (phone numbers, personal email addresses,
| etc). How you react if dozens of people just started calling
| you at all hours because you're Christian and are visible in
| a social network? How would you react to having to explain to
| your employer that it's just "some kids" constantly badgering
| you and them when you're busy doing work? How would handle
| the act of them calling the police with false reports that
| result in a SWAT raid? This isn't hypothetical, it's happened
| many times due to Reddit and other forums.
|
| Yes, I remember the "Moral Majority" era. I remember the
| religious right, the fundies, the evangelicals, and the grasp
| they had on speech. I remember how they tried to ban porn in
| the late '90s and the courts had to smack it down. And I saw
| how the left has taken over institutional power since then,
| still crying about victimhood status while holding government
| majorities, running education and the media, and so on.
|
| It looks like the pendulum has started swinging back in
| recent years. I don't really want to go back to the late '90s
| in terms of culture and government (especially culture) but I
| won't be at all surprised if it happens and the right shows
| the same lack of magnanimity as they were shown this past
| quarter century. And a good way to make sure that happens is
| to continue to stifle their speech and give them every
| opportunity to cry victim and wish revenge. The left made hay
| from these opportunities and the right has been watching. A
| lot of their activists have read Rules for Radicals too.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| A really key difference that I feel gets missed is the "who
| swung first" aspect.
|
| A great deal of what gets called "cancel culture" is people
| reacting to someone behaving in a way that harms others,
| including but not limited to...
|
| - Discrimination (gender, orientation, religion, race,
| whatever) - Harassment - Threats, ranging from the subtle
| to the overt - Actual violence
|
| Quite often, the targets of this behavior have done nothing
| beyond exist and be honest about who they are and how they
| see themselves. Their harassers swung first.
|
| To take your porn example (I too am old enough to remember
| the 90s), the moral majority was swinging first. They were
| offended by porn, but no one was forcing them to consume
| it. No one was threatening or harassing them.
|
| Maybe the right wing (which is where the moral majority
| centered as well) should consider why they keep swinging
| first instead of why sometimes people swing back.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| You are pretty much saying "but it's okay when we do it."
|
| If doxing and criticizing people for their beliefs and
| practices is not okay for the right to do, then it's not
| okay for the left to do either.
| ladyattis wrote:
| So you're fine if I post your SSN on this site? And let's
| assume the mods also co-sign that decision in this
| hypothetical, so you're okay with your PII being out
| there for anyone (and I mean anyone) to see and use? You
| wouldn't even try to subpoena Y Combinator for my
| information on file such as my IP logs and email address
| (necessary for registration) to serve me notice? I
| seriously doubt that. I'm sure you would lawyer up rather
| quickly and probably contact the mods here to have my
| comment deleted and my account permanently banned. So
| don't pretend you're some kind of "information wants to
| be free" maximalist because when it comes down to it, we
| all want privacy and no one should be using the Internet
| as a cudgel to gain compliance from anyone when you can
| just leave well alone. But it seems you're fine with Kiwi
| Farms literally posting SSNs, bank balances, passwords to
| accounts, and much more. The contradictions in your mind
| must border on some kind of Escher print.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| I'm not sure how you jumped to that conclusion from my
| post. If I have reason to believe that you committed a
| crime by acquiring and posting my SSN and I was
| victimized by it, I would try to get restitution, sure. I
| don't see how that's in conflict with what I've
| previously said, though; if a crime was committed by
| someone doxing someone else on KF, that person is free to
| subpoena KF and try to bring the doxer to justice. Go for
| it.
|
| But before you do, you should make sure that a crime was
| actually committed, and mere criticism, or sharing
| information you posted yourself, or sharing information
| which can be found via the 21st-century equivalent of a
| phone book, is not criminal in the United States. And
| that's usually what a "dox" is; very rarely does it
| involve hacking into government databases or something
| like that.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| I am saying that if someone is harassing you when you
| haven't done anything to them, it should be pretty OK to
| tell others about the harassment and others should be
| able to say "I'm not going to interact / do business with
| that jerk."
|
| "Beliefs and practices" is, again, leaving aside the "who
| swung first" aspect. Have all the beliefs and practices
| you want that don't involve harassing others. If your
| beliefs are homophobic/transphobic/racist/sexist/etc and
| you choose to then "practice" those beliefs by harassing
| people you don't like, you swung first and you shouldn't
| be surprised if society looks down on you for it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| abigail95 wrote:
| anyone caring about who swung first is trying to create
| an unresolvable problem or a forever war.
|
| this is not a solution for untangling disagreement.
|
| i've not seen any conflict solved by doing this
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| That's great that you think that, but there's this group
| of jerks that keeps swinging first.
|
| At some point you have to start addressing the people who
| are actively trying to make others' lives worse through
| harassment, discrimination, and violence.
| ladyattis wrote:
| Show me how SJWs are going around with PII like your social
| security number, bank account number, passwords to social
| media accounts, and other sensitive data? Hint, no one
| that's a supposed SJW has ever done this on a large scale
| whereas Kiwi Farms users have and do.
|
| >Yes, I remember the "Moral Majority" era. I remember the
| religious right, the fundies, the evangelicals, and the
| grasp they had on speech.
|
| They still do, where you been? In cryo?
|
| >I remember how they tried to ban porn in the late '90s and
| the courts had to smack it down.
|
| Again, where have you been? Max Hardcore was sentenced for
| 4 years in prison (I think he got out sooner but still).
| And that was around the early 2000s. The fact you ignore
| that even the current government treats even OnlyFans like
| content creators as the same as sex traffickers (see EFF's
| FOSTA articles) is amusing to me.
|
| > And I saw how the left has taken over institutional power
| since then, still crying about victimhood status while
| holding government majorities, running education and the
| media, and so on.
|
| Exactly where has this happened? The left does not exist in
| the United States. The CIA knocked us out during the 60s
| (COINTELPRO). The fact you seem to not know this means
| you're probably under 35, so I'm not sure I should bother
| discussing this with you.
|
| >It looks like the pendulum has started swinging back in
| recent years.
|
| It never swung. We've still a solidly right wing neoliberal
| society. Just because you might see a gay couple kiss each
| other's cheeks and hold hands on prime time TV don't mean
| we're some kind of social democracy or a socialist state.
|
| >The left made hay from these opportunities and the right
| has been watching.
|
| Again, what Left? Don't say the Democrats who literally
| have millionaires among their ranks like most of the
| currently seated party members (Pelosi has a net worth in
| the tens of millions) and have many of the most well known
| capital owning members of society on their quick dial.
|
| It baffles me how someone like you can exist when history
| of the United States is well documented for the last
| century but all you seem to say is talking points from
| Mises.org or some other right wing claptrap. And you even
| think DailyKos is far left which amuses me. Wake me up when
| DailyKos and company support the abolition of intellectual
| property like an anarchist does (hint: I'm a mutualist
| anarchist).
| Cyberdog wrote:
| You seem to think there's no left wing in America when
| self-avowed leftists if not socialists are the ones who
| have been doing this whole #DropKiwifarms campaign in the
| first place. If there's no solid leftist base in America
| and western society as a whole, where is this opposition
| to supposedly alt-right fortress coming from?
|
| As for my age, I'm 40, which means I went to college
| between 2000 and 2004 - and was awash in leftist
| propaganda there, to the extent that I did not feel
| comfortable in some classrooms doing anything other than
| regurgitating what the professors were telling us despite
| what I actually believed. I've heard the situation has
| not improved since then. To say that leftists do not have
| institutional power at least in academia is ridiculous,
| but of course it goes far beyond that.
| ladyattis wrote:
| >You seem to think there's no left wing in America when
| self-avowed leftists if not socialists are the ones who
| have been doing this whole #DropKiwifarms campaign in the
| first place.
|
| Some are socialists, but in terms of actual politically
| power individuals? No. Seriously, no. There's no
| socialist or social democratic institution that has power
| in DC or even a state government within the United
| States.
|
| >If there's no solid leftist base in America and western
| society as a whole, where is this opposition to
| supposedly alt-right fortress coming from?
|
| Liberals, seriously go study some political history.
| Liberalism is not left and it's not anti-capitalist. I
| don't think you really understand political history and
| theory which is surprising since I barely crack open
| political theory works by anyone since I find the subject
| boring.
|
| >As for my age, I'm 40, which means I went to college
| between 2000 and 2004 - and was awash in leftist
| propaganda there
|
| Same here, I'm 42. I'll say there's not much in the way
| of any leftist positions or professors beyond a few
| colleges here and there. Most have aged out and been
| replaced by social liberals (again liberalism is not left
| nor socialist).
|
| >to the extent that I did not feel comfortable in some
| classrooms doing anything other than regurgitating what
| the professors were telling us despite what I actually
| believed.
|
| That's probably because your views are further right than
| you want to divulge here. I won't press or bully you but
| I'll say that maybe you should ask yourself why you see
| socialists everywhere when everyone else who is a leftist
| or comes from a leftist position (I come from Mutualism
| but I use to be into Syndicalism) doesn't?
|
| >To say that leftists do not have institutional power at
| least in academia is ridiculous, but of course it goes
| far beyond that.
|
| Having a couple college departments is not having the
| commanding heights (I love FA Hayek's use of phrases).
| These aren't people who shake hands with Pelosi, Schumer,
| Hoyer, McCarthy, or McConnell. These aren't the people
| that get their proposals even into the hands of Biden's
| undersecretaries of any department. They don't get much
| play at billionaire retreats either. So, I'm absolutely
| confused as to what you define as power because it sure
| doesn't seem like it.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Eh. You win, I guess. I've already argued too much about
| politics on the internet than I should have. Everyone
| just gets angry and nobody's mind changes.
|
| You have your perspective about reality, I guess, and
| I'll have mine.
| RichardCNormos wrote:
| pjc50 wrote:
| > you can't project violence over the internet
|
| You absolutely can, and that's how CloudFlare got into this
| situation: by posting people's location on the internet they
| can be made vulnerable to SWATting.
|
| > we've shifted away from violence as a means of enforcing
| social order
|
| The intent of KF and similar absolutely is to use violence as
| a means of enforcing social order, by encouraging stochastic
| and opportunistic terrorism against trans people.
| yanderekko wrote:
| wbl wrote:
| Null isn't banning these people. He's encouraging them
| with a wink or a nod. It's like Nazis and bars. See a
| Nazi, 86 the Nazi or the friends will show up and make
| your bar a Nazi bar.
| yanderekko wrote:
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Other forums don't allow posting some kinds of
| information because they know allowing it means swatting.
| yanderekko wrote:
| And? That doesn't make those sites pro-swatting unless
| they had no other legitimate reasons to allow this
| content, and as much as people hate doxxing it is clearly
| not only useful for swatting or other illegal activities.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > as much as people hate doxxing it is clearly not only
| useful for swatting or other illegal activities.
|
| What other use has come from posting home addresses on
| Kiwi Farms?
| yanderekko wrote:
| Home addresses can be used to find lots of other public
| records associated with an individual.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| What use has come from that?
| throwrqX wrote:
| Not that this example is relevant to this thread, but
| owning shell companies?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I agree it's not relevant to this thread. And how many
| shell company owners used their home addresses?
| throwrqX wrote:
| I've owned something similar to a shell company before
| and used my home address as required by local laws.
| Obviously some more nefarious actors would not but plenty
| of stupid criminals around.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| You didn't answer the question. And people only care
| about shell companies when used to hide true ownership of
| something else.
| throwrqX wrote:
| I don't know the statistics of how many shell company
| owners use their home address nor do I know of any
| sources for such information.
| greyface- wrote:
| The purpose of a system is what it does.
| yanderekko wrote:
| No one actually believes this outside of brain-rotted
| partisan contexts. eg. The fact that I'm not donating all
| my money to combat malaria in developing nations does not
| make me pro-malaria.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > No one actually believes this outside of brain-rotted
| partisan contexts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_
| wha...
|
| > The fact that I'm not donating all my money to combat
| malaria in developing nations does not make me pro-
| malaria.
|
| Are you a system?
| yanderekko wrote:
| Is this forum a system?
|
| Is ycombinator's failure to delete the posts of me and
| others in this thread also indicative of an intent to
| "use violence as a means of enforcing social order, by
| encouraging stochastic and opportunistic terrorism
| against trans people"?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| yes lol, just look at yc ceo's political activism and
| yc's public championing of it
| throwrqX wrote:
| I would be interested in knowing what percentage of the
| users of this website agree with that statement, I doubt
| it's particularly high.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Is ycombinator's failure to delete the posts of me and
| others in this thread also indicative of an intent to
| "use violence as a means of enforcing social order, by
| encouraging stochastic and opportunistic terrorism
| against trans people"?
|
| Do you think your comments and this forum increase
| stochastic and opportunistic terrorism against trans
| people? Probably you don't think Kiwi Farms does either.
| But you chose a different argument.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| What's your source, KF's owner's public statements and
| posturing? lmao
| yanderekko wrote:
| Mostly a general skepticism towards clearly-opportunistic
| attempts to engage in composition fallacies.
| RichardCNormos wrote:
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| irrelevant degree for the term. you're like a
| meteorologist flaunting their academic credentials to
| show that thundering herd is not a real thing in software
| engineering
| pjc50 wrote:
| https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/buffalo-shooter-
| stocha...
| throwrqX wrote:
| They're referring to a niche academic term that has
| within the past few years started gaining usage outside
| of academia. It can be approximately defined as[0]:
|
| > The use of mass public communication, usually against a
| particular individual or group, which incites or inspires
| acts of terrorism which are statistically probable but
| happen seemingly at random.
|
| [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stochastic_terrorism
|
| Only very loose connection to the stochastic processes of
| mathematics.
| noptd wrote:
| Sounds synonymous to "speech that could anger people".
| What a load of bollocks.
| bfgoodrich wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into ideological
| flamewar. Your comment here is a noticeable step in that
| direction, relative to the GP. We want comments to step in
| exactly the opposite direction. This is not a site for
| ideological battle, which destroys the _curious_ conversation
| HN is supposed to be for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| This thread is going to be a nightmare to moderate with how
| riled up everyone is. Good luck!
| [deleted]
| pjc50 wrote:
| > I wonder how all of this will end?
|
| In gunfire.
|
| The stochastic terrorism problem is gradually increasing while
| people debate what the boundary between free speech and
| incitement to violence is. I can't predict - nobody can, that's
| what stochastic means here - where it will be and indeed how
| large it has to be, but a sufficiently large mass casualty
| incident or one that involves politicians by a domestic terror
| group will dramatically change the situation and get a lot of
| people kicked off the internet or jailed.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Accusing people of being terrorists sure sounds like
| incitement to violence. Perhaps you should stop perpetuating
| the problem?
| fjordelectro wrote:
| The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
| The push to platform everyone you don't like is accelerating
| radicalization. Instead of just existing as a small number of
| weirdos on mainstream platforms with millions of users, they
| are now building their own silos. Forced from internet
| infrastructure and payment networks, they are forced to build
| their own platforms and banks. This is happening now. The end
| game is an entirely segregated society. As the bar of allowed
| speech continues to zoom past opinions of large numbers of
| normal people, they too will be forced to move on to the
| alternative platforms.
| sealeck wrote:
| > Instead of just existing as a small number of weirdos on
| mainstream platforms with millions of users, they are now
| building their own silos.
|
| This is _not_ about that - these people are building their
| own siloes; Cloudflare are hosting them. If Cloudflare stop
| providing services to them it will reduce their ability to
| host their own siloes.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| Is that a good thing?
| sealeck wrote:
| Yes
| fjordelectro wrote:
| > If Cloudflare stop providing services to them it will
| reduce their ability to host their own siloes.
|
| Yeah no it won't, well at least not in the long run. If
| anything good comes from all of this, it is that the
| internet by necessity will become more resilient.
| Unfortunately, enhanced resiliency will come at the cost
| of bifurcation. We told the exiled to just 'build your
| own platform' and 'build your own bank' but we didn't
| think that they would listen.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Perhaps we should discuss the problems with the term (and
| implications of) "stochastic terrorism" -
|
| namely, the conflation of a terrible, deliberate act with
| clear and consenting, perpetrators (terrorism); with that
| accusation that the wrong kind of free speech might lead to
| terrible consequences, and the implied accusation of
| malicious intent.
|
| Lets approach this as if ST was literally a crime - do the
| recipient communities of said terrorism bear no
| responsibility e.g. those that choose to be provocative? Will
| they also be accused of ST and be told to shut up? Or just
| those with no stake in the matter?
| XorNot wrote:
| There's a HackerNews user, goes by the handle Chris2048.
| And I just don't know what his problem is you know? Back in
| my day we had a solution for those types of people. If he
| wasn't hiding behind the internet I bet he wouldn't be so
| tough.
|
| Just imagine if we knew who he was and he couldn't hide
| like that, wouldn't that be great? I recommend you all go
| look up his posts. That's Chris2048 on HackerNews, have a
| really good look at the things he's said. People shouldn't
| be able to get away with saying stuff like that, you know?
| One day he'll slip up and I bet someone will do something
| about it.
|
| So tell me Chris2048, do you think the last two paragraphs,
| maybe said by a speaker to a large audience, show no
| malicious intent?
| abigail95 wrote:
| Can I kindly ask you to explain what is the problem with
| this kind of message?
|
| I see this all the time - journalists critique
| pseudononymous internet writers. All through these pieces
| there's references to "who they really are" and "could
| they get away with saying this in public with their real
| name".
|
| Why is this a bad thing? I know the NYTimes isn't the
| most moral upstanding institution, but they are hardly
| stochastic terrorists?
| defen wrote:
| This is called fedposting and it's basically the message
| board version of what the FBI does to entrap Muslim
| terrorists and white supremacists IRL. The problem you're
| going to have with making it a crime is, where do you
| draw the line?
|
| If someone gets in front of a big crowd and says "Donald
| Trump is a fascist, he's the next Hitler", and then one
| of those people takes the matter into his own hands - do
| you think the speaker should be found guilty of a crime?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| This is why the left also needs a gun rights and ownership
| culture
| pjc50 wrote:
| Possibly, but as soon as it became a thing it would be
| raided by the police, as per what happened to the Black
| Panthers.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Police are also a reason the left need a strong gun
| culture (I mean we are talking about the same groups of
| people, police and right wing extremists, terrorist
| groups, white supremacist gangs etc). BP didn't go far
| enough and were hamstrung by lack of support from the
| left due to racial division within working class and
| those in poverty
| colpabar wrote:
| Good thing the left is so supportive of the working class
| now lol
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It's bad as ever, I'm not suggesting we've reversed those
| divisions. And now the left have gained an anti-gun
| stance on top of it, and in typical liberal fashion, have
| started with giving up their own individual gun ownership
| before addressing ownership at large in society
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| btw BP were raided when they started taking direct action
| to support their communities through programs like the
| free breakfast service. guns didn't do BP in, socialism
| did
| [deleted]
| anotherrandom wrote:
| Big turn of the tables. Back in the 2000s Bush administration
| we had pornography site raids and suppression, now we have
| ideologically-motivated censorship of a different form.
| causi wrote:
| _Never thought I 'd see the Left trying to weaponize
| corporations to suppress speech they dislike._
|
| It is a terrible fact of human psychology that being abused in
| a particular manner make you much _more_ likely to abuse others
| in the same manner, not less.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| > I support ButtFlare here - they should act as a utility, not
| as an arbiter of content.
|
| So then advocate for them to actually be a utility. Right now
| they get to benefit from being treated like one, but not being
| held to the same legal standard of an actual utility.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Being a utility doesn't make them any less of a de facto
| arbiter or any better of a company. Utilities can suck too.
| And, worse, they do it with the political backing of the
| state.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Indeed, it doesn't! But having much stricter legal
| obligations means there are more tools to hold their feet
| to the fire.
| abigail95 wrote:
| hold their feet to the fire to do what?
|
| provide more network protection to objectionable
| websites?
|
| i'm not getting the idea, reading this thread, that is
| what people here want.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| Left your cloud2butt extension on by any chance?
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Always.
| ryandv wrote:
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for using HN primarily for
| ideological/political/religious battle. That's not what this
| site is for, regardless of which ideologies or religions you
| prefer. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules
| with.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| NoraCodes wrote:
| It's very telling that this post does not mention Cloudflare
| dropping switter, a social media site by and for sex workers
| which was, at the time, not violating any laws. They regret
| dropping self-described Nazis but not legal sex work? Cloudflare
| has an ideological agenda which they are masking behind supposed
| neutrality.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > It's very telling that this post does not mention Cloudflare
| dropping switter, a social media site by and for sex workers
| which was, at the time, not violating any laws.
|
| Not true, it was dropped in response to SESTA being signed into
| law less than a week earlier which greatly expanded their legal
| liability.
|
| Law:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_...
|
| Reporting: https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17256370/switter-
| cloudfla...
| NoraCodes wrote:
| Ah, I had the timeline wrong, thanks for the correction.
| Still shitty in context, given how many laws KF violates, but
| more consistent for sure.
| tlonny wrote:
| common sense prevails...
| anotherrandom wrote:
| Considering cloud compute providers and similar services a la
| Cloudflare are at this point basically necessary utilities, I am
| beginning to wonder if the ability to select who can and can't
| use the services based on a lawful use case is truly the
| prerogative of the service provider.
|
| See: AT&T being prevented from shutting down dial-a-hate lines by
| regulators and courts in the name of the first amendment
| slothsarecool wrote:
| I understand the point CF is trying to make; however, I still
| have a hard time trying to ignore many of the content that is
| being protected by CF.
|
| With that being said; I have seen cases where the T&S team
| flagged legitimate sites by mistake so... I get why CF wants to
| be careful with any action they decide making on this regard.
| thegeekbin wrote:
| I'm glad Cloudflare is taking a neutral stance to this. I've long
| said if a service provider, in any capacity, starts moderating
| content without a court order then it's a slippery slope. I'm not
| saying the sites are good, but, why does Cloudflare need to be
| the internet police here? They can't and shouldn't be.
|
| Neutrality is key, how would you feel if your content was
| suddenly pulled because someone on the internet disagreed?
| mmastrac wrote:
| At least for me, "I disagree with what you say, but I'll protect
| your right to say it" doesn't cover verbal abuse leading to
| suicide.
| convery wrote:
| Kind of doubt someone on a random website laughing at you being
| silly online would be the primary reason for kicking the
| bucket.
|
| Of the 3 people Wikipedia mentions, 1 had severe mental issues
| and blamed different groups for their issues, 1 was disproven
| as the US tracks overseas deaths of their citizens and no one
| had died in the months following the claim. Haven't read up on
| the last one yet, but for a major talking-point that's repeated
| over and over, it's not very solid so far.
| mmastrac wrote:
| If you have "severe mental issues" and someone prods you
| knowingly towards your death, that is a crime.
| convery wrote:
| Do cite the penal-code / law that outlaws talking about
| mentally ill people.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Involuntary Manslaughter.
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/mic
| hel...
| wbl wrote:
| Lots of ISPs have AUPs that would prohibit a site like KiwiFarms
| and the sky hasn't fallen. Why can't Cloudflare do the same?
| thegeekbin wrote:
| It comes down to content moderation. If a company begins to
| moderate content that travels through its network, it can be
| held liable and forced to remove things that any entity or
| governmental body could disagree with.
|
| For example that means if the Republican Party was hosting on
| Cloudflare and the Democrat Party disagreed with the Republican
| Party, they could force Cloudflare to remove the Republican
| Party's websites from transiting their network.
|
| Another example is if the Washington Post and Fox news both
| went through Cloudflare, and Fox disagreed with the Washington
| Post they could force Cloudflare to remove the Washington Post.
|
| The moment you set the precedence it becomes an expectation --
| by Cloudflare remaining neutral they can't be forced into that
| position.
| wbl wrote:
| This hasn't happened with ISPs that prohibit harassment.
| [deleted]
| ladyattis wrote:
| The problem isn't that certain customers are bigots, but that
| they actively seek to allow harm to be done by their own end
| users like Kiwi Farms. The fact they have an exhaustive wikipedia
| for one person (Chris Chan) should have been the "nope" moment
| for them. Like if I was a host or a provider of a service and
| Josh Moon came to me with his site I'd just turn him away because
| he's like nuclear waste dangerous. It's not a matter of morals,
| it's a matter of social vs anti-social. Josh Moon, his own
| mother, and many of the loudest users on Kiwi Farms are anti-
| social to such an extreme that if they even tried to do their
| antics in real life beyond SWATing and cyberstalking, they'd
| probably be in prison now. It's not a matter of dealing with
| something like some religious organization that thinks being gay
| or trans is immoral, it's a group of thugs that skirt the law
| through various means and sometimes even cross into illegal acts
| that are hard to track/monitor (ex. SWATing).
| Cyberdog wrote:
| The CWCki is not operated by KF, and at any rate is critical of
| Chris but not at all wishing death or violence on him. (And it
| is a wiki, not "a Wikipedia." Wikipedia is itself a wiki.)
|
| And what does Josh's mother have to do with anything?
| aa9a0s9dsljk wrote:
| Swatting is illegal, users of the site are doing the swatting,
| and KF simply pretends they aren't. They aren't arrested
| because the reason they use swatting is so they can't be
| tracked and thrown in jail themselves.
|
| Meanwhile people's lives are ruined, their friends and family
| contacted, harassed, and they live in terror of people who
| congregate, anonymously, on that site, which is hosted out in
| the open with large corporations providing them services. A
| donation to the trevor project does nothing to protect those
| people, it just tells them their lives are expendable and
| they'll try to save someone else's.
|
| Something must be done to stop them. I haven't heard any legal
| arguments for what could be done to stop them - one is told
| simply "you can't fight back, and you can't protect yourself,
| legally". When people are told that, they take more drastic
| measures, because the system that exists won't protect them.
|
| Honestly a good proposal I've heard is to at minimum shut down
| SWATTing or add consequences and tracking of the requestor.
| Police being able to be consistently deployed on a ruse is, to
| me, insane.
| ladyattis wrote:
| Honestly, I agree that there needs to be work done. I think
| the first step is to get the police to not be as ignorant as
| they are. The fact that Keffals tried to notify the police of
| a potential harassment effort and they chose to ignore her
| should've never happened. Police today are poorly trained and
| educated but still get an exorbitant budget. I think it's
| time for people to declaw them or retrain them or possibly
| both on top of dealing with Kiwi Farms directly.
| aa9a0s9dsljk wrote:
| Quite agree, but it also seems like that won't change for
| many years. This is why the campaign to get service
| providers like cloudflare to drop hate and terror sites is
| the only real solution for the short term. Now that
| cloudflare has declared that they will keep providing
| services to the hate and terror sites (and the sites that
| attack them, remember), its an open question what will
| happen next.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| "The problem isn't that certain customers, in my personal
| biased subjective opinion that is subject to no oversight
| whatsoever, are bad people who advocate doing bad things. The
| _real_ problem is that certain customers, in my personal biased
| subjective opinion that is subject to no oversight whatsoever,
| are bad people who advocate doing bad things. "
| ladyattis wrote:
| Things being subjective doesn't mean they're not true. What
| you mean to say is my arbitrary or biased view, which also
| doesn't invalidate their truthfulness. The fact that folks
| like you think subjectivity means arbitrary or biased or that
| it has no truth or factual value is disturbing and your
| position is also a deflection. In the United States, you can
| be sued at any time by other private parties. The fact that
| Josh Moon refuses to reign in his site users because he
| agrees with them (you can look in the posts he's made) means
| any business you do with them sets you up for liability. And
| guess what? Cloud Flare's CEO is endangering the bottom line
| and if I was a minority holder I'd be calling up the board to
| override his decisions, even if it meant a complete
| stockholder revolt against him. Letting the rejects of the
| most rejected group of people congregate and do misdeeds that
| either are explicitly illegal or border on illegality isn't a
| sound business decision. Wake me up you have an actual
| argument rather than trying to do 4chan level antics and
| mockery.
| daemoens wrote:
| This Kiwifarms website uploaded Keffals new address and pinned it
| to the site. Someone has already taken a picture of her apartment
| and has already been swatted.
|
| https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1565050152510947330
|
| https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1565061484073390084?s=20&...
| deepdriver wrote:
| Keffals is not a good-faith actor, as Kiwi Farms has amply
| uncovered and archived:
|
| https://archive.ph/JQcGR
|
| So far Keffals has raised over $100,000 via GoFundMe in
| connection to this incident. At the same time they've called
| for the harassment of family members of the Kiwi Farms
| administrator, failed to provide evidence linking the SWATing
| to Kiwi Farms, stonewalled credible accusations of sexually
| grooming minors on Discord, and continued to promote their "DIY
| HRT" website to minors.
|
| This site encourages confused underage children to procure and
| self-administer puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones behind
| their parents' backs. It teaches children how to illegally
| acquire and use these life changing drugs and without medical
| supervision. (These drugs are risky even in a supervised
| medical setting; Sweden, Finland, and the UK recently curtailed
| their use on minors based on reviews of the evidence.)
|
| Keffals has been caught in several lies and exaggerations
| already in connection to this incident. Take their Twitter
| posts with an enormous heap of salt, especially statements
| about Kiwi Farms' owner Joshua Moon.
| daemoens wrote:
| This swatting incident happened just over an hour ago in
| Northern Ireland. The address was pinned to the top of the
| homepage by the owner, Joshua Moon.
| deepdriver wrote:
| We have photos someone posted anonymously on 4chan claiming
| responsibility. Do I believe them? Maybe. Do I think
| Keffals is encouraging this circus to continue in order to
| crowdfund and clout-chase? If Keffals hadn't been caught
| systematically lying and encouraging the SWATing and
| harassment of others before now, I'd be a lot more
| sympathetic.
|
| Given Keffals' long documented history of lying,
| manipulation, and sociopathic behavior, I think it's an
| even chance that this was faked/called in by Keffals and
| friends to keep the GoFundMe going. Again, Keffals'
| response to this "harassment" is abnormal. Nearly all big
| streamers face doxing, SWATing and harassment. Streamers
| like xQc, Pokimane, and LilyPichu have discussed this on
| YouTube. The standard response to minimize harassment is to
| _not_ give it airtime, especially right when it happens, so
| as not to feed the trolls and encourage it.
|
| Keffals in contrast is broadcasting play-by-play updates
| and raising tens of thousands of dollars while doing so.
| I'm normally pretty open-minded, but the history of
| stealing from political organizations to fund a drug habit,
| lying about the actions of the Canadian police to gain
| sympathy from viewers, and encouraging children to obtain
| and self-administer cross-sex drugs behind parents' backs
| is highly, highly suspect. This person is not an innocent
| bystander. Nor are they apparently in any kind of danger.
| The Irish cops sound pretty helpful, and I hope they catch
| whoever made the fake call.
|
| I don't see the address stickied on KF. Could you link to
| the page or an archive? I also don't see how this conflicts
| with Keffals' own principle of, for example, doxing nurses
| and getting them fired from their job for gender-critical
| Twitter posts.
|
| By the way, what are your thoughts on Keffal's sexual
| grooming of minors? See:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32667192
| rdtsc wrote:
| > In a deeply troubling response, after both terminations we saw
| a dramatic increase in authoritarian regimes attempting to have
| us terminate security services for human rights organizations --
| often citing the language from our own justification back to us.
|
| So, that's the reason then? It becomes hard to justify also not
| shutting down activists or dissidents and such. But why can't
| they just say "no"? They are a US company, if someone from some
| authoritarian regime wants them to make logical or consistent
| decisions or points out some "hypocrisy", they can still shrug
| and say "so what, we wanted to terminate that service, but we
| won't terminate this other nonprofit organization's service you
| want us to, tough luck".
|
| Or, perhaps, they do want to have a nice relationship with those
| authoritarian regimes, and keep getting business from them...
| gigatexal wrote:
| I don't understand why CF insists on protecting platforms that
| obviously spew hate. Not being their ddos load balancer doesn't
| mean they're gone from the internet (how pompous would one have
| to be to think that... maybe CF is...) but it just gives them an
| opportunity to find ddos protection from somewhere else and
| washes the hands of CF of being handmaids to hate and terror and
| all that is shit in this world. They took a stand on free speech
| absolutism when they shouldn't have.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| I disagree extremely with cloudflare's position here.
|
| One area I'd like to call out is that they think they are a
| utility. But they are not bound to the same legal restrictions as
| a utility. It's greedy and slimy to fall back on that argument.
|
| If you're actually a utility, then change your company so you're
| treated like one legally. I'm sure you'll love it, Cloudflare
| leadership.
| wil93 wrote:
| IMHO, the legal definition of "utility" is not necessarily
| useful. The law is slow, while the real world quickly becomes
| dependent on pieces of tech. I believe that one day the law
| will finally catch up and these providers will be likened to
| utilities.
| [deleted]
| sealeck wrote:
| I would be very interested to meet the lawyer who cleared the
| phrase "While we will generally follow legal orders to restrict
| security and conduit services," for publication
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > While we believe we have an obligation to restrict the content
| that we host ourselves, we do not believe we have the political
| legitimacy to determine generally what is and is not online by
| restricting security or core Internet services. If that content
| is harmful, the right place to restrict it is legislatively.
|
| Agreed, but realistically: for the near future _there will be no
| legislative restriction in the US on harmful content_. Congress
| is far too grid-locked for that, not to mention the question if
| meaningfully combatting hate speech and bullying can actually be
| done via laws or requires constitutional amendments - which are
| even more unrealistic.
|
| Meanwhile, sites like KF (or rather: their users) will cause a
| lot of harm, including cyber-bullying people to suicide. At what
| point will you draw the line? Or clearer: how many dead people
| will it require?
|
| The whole insistence on "we need a legislative solution" reminds
| me way too much of European inner politics on refugees:
| politicians all over the EU said "we won't deal with refugees on
| our own, we want an European solution" - all while knowing that
| thanks to the destructive-obstructionist Polish and Hungarian
| governments there was _no chance_ of such an "European
| solution", and as a result nothing changed - and _thousands_ paid
| with their life [1] as a result as they drowned in the Middle
| Sea.
|
| In the end it's always the same: placing abstract morals over
| clear and provable actual harm to people's health and sometimes
| life.
|
| [1]
| https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/892249/umfrag...
| tekla wrote:
| > In the end it's always the same: placing abstract morals over
| clear and provable actual harm to people's health and sometimes
| life.
|
| Good.
| pjc50 wrote:
| ?!
| nilespotter wrote:
| Indeed. Plus these sites invariably come back online, it
| doesn't make a difference anyway. I just checked - The Daily
| Stormer and 8Chan are online today.
| immibis wrote:
| It will happen as soon as one of the dead people is a
| Republican politician or close friend thereof. Not a moment
| sooner.
| chmorgan wrote:
| This is a crazy take on responsibility. It isn't Europe's
| responsibility when people decide to take unsafe passage on the
| sea and drown. Could they do more? Yes, I'm sure they could,
| but are they directly responsible for drownings? No, this is
| too far.
|
| I'd argue the same for Kiwi Farms. If people are cyber-bullying
| (ie, reaching out to people and harassing them) then those
| people should be addressed. Arguing that any speech you or
| someone else deems "hurtful" or "hateful" should be banned is
| nuts, since no one has to go and read those words, its an opt-
| in process. AND, if people can disagree about whether something
| is really "hateful" then its even more difficult to justify
| taking action simply for communication of ideas that we find
| offensive.
|
| CloudFlare is in a tough spot that they put themselves in. If
| they'd like to avoid legislation then they've got to be the
| pipe, not the moderator. Once they switch to moderator they are
| responsible for all moderation. They can't pick and choose. Imo
| they'd be better served by acting as a utility and staying out
| of the moderation game. We've already seen a ton of attacks on
| free speech by powerful Internet companies, in the US at least
| the 1st amendment (freedom of speech) needs a defender like CF
| to help.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > This is a crazy take on responsibility. It isn't Europe's
| responsibility when people decide to take unsafe passage on
| the sea and drown. Could they do more? Yes, I'm sure they
| could, but are they directly responsible for drownings? No,
| this is too far.
|
| "With great power comes great responsibility", a principle as
| old as civilized humanity. Germany alone is the fourth
| largest economy by BIP, and the entire EU as a whole the
| second largest.
|
| We have the capacity to help the people fleeing from the
| bullshit that was mostly caused by us in the first place, we
| actually have the rights to asylum in our constitutions, but
| we're not doing anywhere near what we actually could do.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Yes, I'm sure they could, but are they directly responsible
| for drownings? No, this is too far.
|
| Several European states have chosen to prosecute volunteers
| rescuing the drowning, so they've definitely taken on
| responsibility for making sure that they drown.
| derefr wrote:
| Why does it have to be a _US_ legislative solution? Any country
| CloudFlare serves could come up with a harmful-content policy
| for issuing takedown orders; and CloudFlare would likely have
| to obey that takedown order globally (not just to that
| country's view) in order to be in compliance, such that their
| only other option would be to remove their POPs from that
| country and block all clients from that country.
| yanderekko wrote:
| >Agreed, but realistically: for the near future there will be
| no legislative restriction in the US on harmful content.
| Congress is far too grid-locked for that, not to mention the
| question if meaningfully combatting hate speech and bullying
| can actually be done via laws or requires constitutional
| amendments - which are even more unrealistic.
|
| Alternatively, such restrictions would just be unpopular,
| especially if they were seen as likely to be enforced in a way
| that lacks due process. Asking for powerful private companies
| to effectively restrict people's rights as an end-run for
| democracy and due process is rightfully unsettling.
| drannex wrote:
| sammy2255 wrote:
| Ah so you would support Fire brigades that dont respond to the
| homes of people you find morally questionable?
| drannex wrote:
| They are not a utility, owned by the public, volunteer-led, a
| nonprofit, or are anywhere close in relation to the wonderful
| services of a fire department.
|
| This is a company that is harboring and upholding the very
| act of terrorism and violence being sickened on a population.
|
| They are upholding fascist hatred, and so are you if you
| aren't seeing that.
| gadgetoid wrote:
| I may be missing a trick here, but what - exactly - gives
| Cloudflare - a company that provides web services - the moral
| authority to flatly claim:
|
| "that is a dangerous precedent, and one that is over the long
| term most likely to disproportionately harm vulnerable and
| marginalized communities."
|
| ... and use that as a defense for inaction?
|
| It's like saying "Oh, well I can't give the poor money, they
| might spend it on drugs."
|
| Since they claim that their own moral compass aligns with those
| asking them to fire a customer, what precedent - exactly - would
| be set? Are they relying upon the notion that the moral tides
| might sway, and that the vulnerable and marginalized communities
| might become those under fire next? Why- given their moral
| standing- would they be complicit?
|
| This doesn't add up. It feels like they're only paying lip
| service to a corporate moral stance that lacks any real substance
| (if it exists at all), and requires that they do nothing in
| public that might upset their customers/shareholders. It's rote,
| corporate apolitical cowardice. Morals sacrificed upon the alter
| of profit.
|
| In conclusion it seems to me that claiming to know better than
| the marginalized and vulnerable people clamoring for action is a
| really deeply condescending take. Coupled with the narcissism
| dripping from the fire service analogy this all serves to do them
| rather less justice than just... saying nothing, or sticking with
| "free speech absolutism".
|
| And... that's quite a feat, for something that only really
| intended to say "Sowwy, taking too visible a political stance is
| bad for business but we pinky pwomise we're tooootally on your
| side."
| Covzire wrote:
| What gives you or anyone else the moral authority to censor
| legal speech? I know doing so is a common fad in California/SV
| but it's doing tremendous harm to society already.
| [deleted]
| fleddr wrote:
| Inaction of what? They're saying they're not the opinion
| police.
|
| Look at the list in the beginning of the article that has clear
| criminal violations, human rights violations, the like. They
| comply with take-downs in that domain, as they should and are
| legally required.
|
| Yet they go on to mention that the vast majority of the
| complaints they get has nothing to do with those, rather they
| are take-down requests for things the reporter considered
| "offensive".
|
| There's no right to not be offended. Further, the bar for
| "harm" is so low that it's on the ground. You can't let Twitter
| rage mobs on either side of politics decide on who gets to use
| internet infrastructure.
|
| This stance to preserve the freedom of expression, opinion and
| even the right to insult is not apolitical. It's classic
| progressive liberalism, one of the pillars of our society.
| pjc50 wrote:
| hankchinaski wrote:
| The intolerant minority bandwagon expecting big companies to take
| political stance to progress further their agendas, provokes me a
| utter sense of disgust. Democratically elected governments and
| regulators decide what should be censored. Not the loudest person
| in the room
| duxup wrote:
| That wad of text was hard for me to read / get a lot out of.
|
| The image though made sense to me:
|
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/content/images/2022/08/pasted-im...
|
| I think I'd take a similar approach. Basic services, transit and
| etc would involve less moderation. Actually hosting someone
| else's BS on my systems more potential moderation.
|
| Personally I wouldn't host some jerk at my house, I still would
| argue they deserve basic protections, even if they're horrible.
| dannyw wrote:
| A thief should still be protected from murder.
| a2128 wrote:
| In my experience Cloudflare goes too far with offering their
| security services to everyone.
|
| There is a website that's constantly ripping and stealing
| artistic content from a community I used to be part of. They have
| an automated process for ripping and reuploading content not
| meant to be downloadable from small independent artists in this
| community without informing the artist, obtaining permission or
| anything. Outragingly, when content is marked as "private", they
| upload it anyway but charge "credits" for users to "purchase" the
| download for the stolen private content. This website is clearly
| not existing in good faith, even has the word "rip" in its domain
| name, and they ignore most takedown requests.
|
| Their website and any information about their true host is
| protected by Cloudflare. Over the course of a year I have sent
| several abuse reports about this website to Cloudflare and have
| never heard back. They seem to absolve themselves of any
| responsibility by saying they just forward reports and leave it
| up to the host or the website owner(???) to take action. In this
| case, the owner and the host already know they're stealing
| content so they just ignore the reports.
|
| Due to the fractured nature of the community, no single artist so
| far has had the time or money to take legal action or even the
| knowledge of who to take legal action against (the owners are
| anonymous), so it appears the website will continue existing,
| proudly protected by Cloudflare.
| 015a wrote:
| You're 100%, undoubtedly, focusing your anger at the wrong
| party. Taking CF out of the equation of your problem won't fix
| the problem. It won't take the site down. It won't stop their
| behavior.
|
| What I think is happening: you've exhausted several paths of
| recourse; the no-name website operators aren't responding; the
| fly-by-night hosting provider in eastern europe says they won't
| do anything; but you hit a stroke of luck. In some small,
| insignificant way, in a tracert or a dig to the perpetrators
| site, an American Big Tech company popped up. Finally; a name I
| recognize; someone may listen. Anger is given focus.
|
| CF could act. It wouldn't change anything. Not for the site;
| not for the artists you support; not for you. I don't know what
| the right course of action to fix your problem is; I don't have
| any experience in that domain. I hope you find it, because that
| situation does suck. But I do know: you can blame CF today,
| maybe they act, and tomorrow it'll be someone else. You'll be
| stuck on that treadmill forever.
| jefftk wrote:
| It sounds like getting together and using the legal system is
| your best bet here
| Cr4shMyCar wrote:
| I think I know what site this person is talking about, and I
| can say that the legal system is typically out of reach for a
| lot of people creating the art that's stolen. It takes a lot
| of money to bring a lawsuit against someone, and it might not
| even go anywhere.
| kmlx wrote:
| > Over the course of a year I have sent several abuse reports
| about this website to Cloudflare and have never heard back.
|
| why would you send abuse reports to cloudflare about a website
| that hosts copyrighted material? why not send the reports to
| the website itself? and if that website ignores them then there
| are other ways to get that content offline, no?
| kevingadd wrote:
| How do you send abuse reports to a website with no abuse
| contact? The host is the first port of call in that case.
| nradov wrote:
| This is not a Cloudflare problem. The copyright holders should
| follow the procedure in the DMCA to protect their content. If
| they're not willing to spend the time to do so then what can
| they expect? No one else is going to do their job for them.
| healsdata wrote:
| And by time, you really mean money. Because if you send a
| DMCA notice and the hosting company ignores you, the next
| step is court. Can they afford to get justice? How much does
| it cost for an indie artist to take a fairly anonymous
| website host to court? How do you serve a company that's
| anonymous thanks to Cloudflare?
| seneca wrote:
| It's interesting watching the responses roll in here. What CF is
| laying out here was essentially the standard viewpoint of western
| society until something like 10 years ago. "I disagree with what
| you say, but I'll protect your right to say it" is a basic tenant
| of liberalism. If you find that shocking, you should examine why
| that is.
| Grue3 wrote:
| When was a platform for doxing and harassment a tenet of
| liberalism? "Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my
| nose begins".
| howdyfolks wrote:
| It wasn't. That it would be dealt with by the courts if it
| broke the law -- that was
| Grue3 wrote:
| So you agree that Cloudflare should be criminally liable
| for hosting extremist content? (yes, providing CDN service
| counts as hosting, as the content is stored on Cloudflare's
| servers)
| jasonshaev wrote:
| "Protect your right to say it..." from _the government_. There
| has never been a reasonable expectation that private businesses
| are or should be required to allow all speech. Doing so
| prevents the business from exercising their own first amendment
| protections.
| computerfriend wrote:
| Nobody is talking about 1A. Freedom of speech is a principle.
| That there are laws codifying it is incidental.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Stop shifting the goalposts.
| jasonshaev wrote:
| If I reword my reply to:
|
| "There has never been a reasonable expectation that private
| businesses are or should be required to allow all speech.
| Doing so prevents the business from exercising their own
| freedom of speech protections."
|
| it still holds. Freedom of speech does not mean that a
| company should be compelled or required to host speech it
| disagrees with.
| computerfriend wrote:
| You can go much further: freedom of speech also means
| freedom from compelled speech.
|
| Glad we both agree on the importance of free speech.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Except they're not, because they shut down Switter.
| [deleted]
| pjc50 wrote:
| > western society
|
| No, just America, and even then the famous free speech has
| always had significant exceptions. Usually by the process of
| defining stuff as "not speech" or "obscene". Free speech
| surrounding sex is censored, most recently by FOSTA/SESTA.
|
| The stable consensus also relied on mass media not being a
| complete free for all. The airwaves are censored by the FCC.
| There's a limited number of big producers who are vulnerable to
| political pressure, giving you things like MPAA censorship and
| the conflict with the RIAA over rap lyrics.
|
| The phenomenon that you can say to a mass audience "this person
| is a degenerate, wouldn't it be great if someone harmed them"
| and sit back and wait for it to happen is genuinely different.
|
| (Only the other day I found out about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Film_Corp._v._Industria...
| , in which for a period of about 20 years the Supreme Court
| held that films weren't free speech. Going back further you
| have to explain Comstock laws, and so on.)
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| "protect your right to say it" and "help you distribute copies
| of Mein Kampf" are two different actions.
| throwrqX wrote:
| Exactly this, for an example, consider Blackstone's ratio[0]:
|
| "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one
| innocent suffer."
|
| This was not some minority view among scholars and has been
| hugely influential on our (Western) legal systems for a long
| time (at least two centuries).
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
| alphabettsy wrote:
| I don't understand how this can be true and yet our legal
| system looks the way that it does now. And It used to be even
| more unfair.. Maybe it's true for scholars but not elected
| officials?
| shadowfacts wrote:
| That's a lot of words to say they're not dropping Kiwi Farms. In
| spite of the fact that I think they plainly meet this condition
| for removal:
|
| > Is otherwise illegal, harmful, or violates the rights of
| others, including content that discloses sensitive personal
| information, incites or exploits violence against people or
| animals, or seeks to defraud the public.
| almost_usual wrote:
| That was under "Hosting Products", KW probably falls under
| "Security Services".
|
| > Hosting products are those products where Cloudflare is the
| ultimate host of the content. This is different from products
| where we are merely providing security or temporary caching
| services and the content is hosted elsewhere
| partdavid wrote:
| Which is the most frustrating thing about this document,
| because CloudFlare is ostensibly explaining why their AUP for
| hosting services is different from their AUP for security
| services; but instead of talking about the points of their
| AUP, they talk about how they don't want to terminate
| security services just because they feel the content is
| "immoral or disgusting" or "reprehensible".
|
| They are adopting the same strawman that critics of "cancel
| culture" believe exists: they are answering the question of
| "Why don't you cancel security services to people whose
| content is 'immoral or disgusting' or 'reprehensible'?"
|
| But that's not the relevant question. One presumes Kiwi Farms
| would violate CloudFlare's _Hosting_ AUP not because they 're
| "immoral or disgusting" or "reprehensible" either (because
| those aren't stated violations of the hosting AUP) but
| because it "Is otherwise illegal, harmful, or violates the
| rights of others, including content that discloses sensitive
| personal information, incites or exploits violence against
| people or animals, or seeks to defraud the public."
|
| So the question they _should_ be answering, for each of the
| AUP violations they prohibit in their Hosting AUP, is _why_
| they allow these activities for services protected by their
| security services:
|
| * Do you, or why do you allow security service subscribers to
| distribute material that violates intellectual property
| rights? * Do you, or why do you protect security service
| subscribers' ability to publish defamatory content? * Do you,
| or why do you protect security service subscribers' ability
| to distribute malware and control botnets?
|
| And if it turns out you _don 't_ allow them to do that, then
| why would you make a special exception for the last plank of
| your hosting AUP:
|
| * Do you, or why do you protect security service subscribers'
| ability to distribute content that is otherwise illegal,
| harmful, or violates the rights of others, including content
| that discloses sensitive personal information, incites or
| exploits violence against people or animals, or seeks to
| defraud the public?
|
| Those are the activities in question, not whether something
| is "immoral or disgusting" or "reprehensible". So why the
| misdirection? Why not answer why you think it's important to
| provide security services specifically to people that incites
| harassment to people?
|
| In my opinion, it's because they are overcorrecting and
| actually _favoring_ groups like Kiwi Farms exactly because
| they 're repugnant and reprehensible, and giving them a
| special bye that they wouldn't to, say, a revenge porn site.
| And that's participating and aiding in the targeting of Kiwi
| Farms' victims.
| lucakiebel wrote:
| Yep, the passage would only apply if kf was run on cloudflare
| pages, or hosted images on cf imgs.
| hadrien01 wrote:
| I see more that as a consequence of a failure of the US to
| legislate hate speech. Cloudflare, as a private company,
| doesn't want to police hate speech (which I fully understand
| and support, personally).
|
| In my country, France, this website is simply illegal. It would
| be prosecuted, and only then the hosting company (such as
| Cloudflare) would have to shut down the website.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > I see more that as a consequence of a failure of the US to
| legislate hate speech.
|
| What's considered "hate speech" is completely arbitrary and
| liable to change depending on who is in power. There's untold
| "hate speech" against Christians, straight white males,
| wealthy people etc - where does it stop and why is
| criticizing one group of people "hate speech" and another
| not?
| JYellensFuckboy wrote:
| This is a great point. Regardless of how one may feel about
| hate speech laws, it is disturbing that a large percentage of
| citizens believe that Washington D.C. is completely impotent.
| People have given up on the idea of their government helping,
| to the point where it's not even brought up as a possibility.
| computerfriend wrote:
| This is a cycle. Some day, fascists will attack Cloudflare for
| protecting a site that hosts e.g. the home addresses of supreme
| court judges that ruled in favour of reducing civil liberties.
| Everyone criticising Cloudflare now had better remember it when
| the time comes and they realise that they don't actually care
| about frameworks and values, only about winning.
| ajvs wrote:
| Except that example is already against their existing ToS.
| squabbles wrote:
| It's worth noting, for people unaware, that there are no suicides
| associate with the KiwifFarms. There have been people with
| threads who kave killed themselves, unrelated to them having
| threads, and one person who poorly faked a suicide after failing
| to extort the KiwiFarms into removing his thread. The site is a
| gossip site, not some boogeyman Law&Order-esque cyberhateden
| dedicated to cyberbullying gay people to death. It's absurd
| seeing the caterwauling the site has generated--they don't even
| reach the level of paparazzi who really do stalk people. All the
| KiwiFarms does is collect information that was already publicly
| available.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| > undated blog post
|
| > Cloudflare launched nearly twelve years ago.
|
| I wonder if they are going to keep updating it as time passes...
| theknocker wrote:
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Not sure what the law says here. There are many sites built with
| SSGs today that can never work without the cf cache. In practice,
| cf hosts the sites. From a dev perspective it is much easier to
| understand how cf works if you treat cf as a host also for
| proxied content not hosted by cf, as recommended by cf btw.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-31 23:01 UTC)