

CloudFlare Forced to Censor Anti-Censorship Site - paralelogram
https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-forced-to-censor-anti-censorship-site-150710/

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themeekforgotpw
The United States has a threat intelligence system with patterns of malicious
activity including malware and cyber attacks.

This threat intelligence system is also used to specify patterns of foreign
propaganda. However, similar to the story above, patterns that are too broad
can silence legitimate speech by citizens.

An example of this is stopfasttrack.com. Their domain name was similar to
Russian propaganda, so then the switch was flipped to censor the Russian
domain from Facebook, Twitter and popular email providers, their site was
caught in the net as well.

They posted to Reddit about it.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/duplicates/38pmg8/hey_re...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/duplicates/38pmg8/hey_reddit_someone_is_trying_really_hard_to_erase/)

(The US government and NATO use the terms 'troll' and 'spam' as synonyms for
foreign online propaganda)

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josteink
SPAM has a clear definition, and I don't think you will find anyone anywhere
who disagrees that it needs to be blocked.

But "troll" is hard to put an objective lid on. If I try to argue science to
antivaxxers I may be labeled a troll. If I try to oppose HTML DRM because I
believe it's bad for the internet, some people will label me a troll for that.

If I enter a Muslim internet forum and insist that Muhammed was a pedophile, I
may have my facts straight, but it will be hard to argue that I'm anything but
trolling.

So where do you draw the line on troll? Who decides what troll can be
censored? This sounds extremely shady, and if I may raise the conspiracy flag,
intentionally open to interpretation.

~~~
themeekforgotpw
It's a good question, but I think there's a pretty clear distinction between
propaganda and trolling that is not just intent but has to do with the 'spin'
of the information. The same vagaries that would allow the US to block a
'troll' from Russia - if they could not tell that it was propaganda - would
cause them to block similar misgivings from the American population. This
isn't the case. They can attribute propaganda to its progenitor. They use the
label 'troll' and 'spam' for political reasons and reasons of civil affairs.
However these terms are dishonest.

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geobmx540
Any lawyers help me out here - if there is a legitimate concern of censorship
of parties that clearly shouldn't be affected - and CloudFlare refused to
comply - wouldn't someone have to take them to court where they could argue
their case?

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ams6110
I don't think you can refuse to comply with an injunction unless you're
willing to go to jail. You can challenge it, probably, but in the meantime you
have to comply. IANAL

