
Terminating Service for 8Chan - sandmansandine
https://new.blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/
======
cambalache
Who is going to deplatform Facebook and Twitter? After all plenty of shooters
have used them too. Before the usual: " But 8chan is a cesspool of bla bla"
Probably it is, but, either the users are doing something ilegal in the site
and you close it if the owners refuse to comply with a legal request, or they
are not doing anything illegal so they have to be left alone.

For the "Free Speech is freedom from government prohibition and this is a
private company" brigade. I dont want to live in a world where colored people
is being prohibited to enter a night venue, or gay people cannot order a
simple cake, or YES, dudes who think their race is more superior being able to
blabber their nonsense online as long as it is nothing illegal. After all
similar sentiments are expressed (veiled or openly) from many powerful spheres
and nobody does nothing.

~~~
abootstrapper
People of color, and LGBT are demographics. White supremacy is an ideology (a
reprehensible one at that). People choose their ideology, not their race, or
sexuality. They are not the same thing. Third party businesses should not feel
any obligation to do business with "dudes who blabber" about the murdering and
hate of others.

~~~
Smithalicious
I think this is shaky ground. Plenty of people think LGBT "choose" their
sexuality (though I do not). White supremacists, religious people etc think
their beliefs reflect objective reality, which is clearly not something they
can choose. I think making "you chose this" a valid reason to
censor/attack/etc. something opens the door to some pretty dangerous things,
since it's not difficult to accuse things of being a choice that aren't.

~~~
feanaro
No one chooses anything since their is no free will and people are biological
automatons.

~~~
feanaro
Uhhh, *there.

------
losvedir
Does this start to open CloudFlare up to legal issues for all the sites they
host? I was under the impression they were more of an infrastructure/utility
type service, and weren't liable for what took place, the same way gun
manufacturers aren't liable for shootings or gas stations for car crashes.

But if now they're manually deciding who goes on their network and who
doesn't, it seems like they're more responsible for everything else that's on
it that they allow.

They're a private company and I support them choosing to do business with
whoever they want, but I thought there was some sort of legal distinction if
they were totally agnostic to what travels over their wires. Is that not the
case?

~~~
Lazare
They've kicked people off their service before for content based reasons (eg,
Daily Stormer), so this changes nothing. In any case:

> I thought there was some sort of legal distinction if they were totally
> agnostic to what travels over their wires. Is that not the case?

Not as far as I'm aware, no. The closest thing I can think of is if they were
discriminating based on people's membership in a protected class, eg, if they
announced a strict "no female clients" policy. This is clearly vastly
different.

From a PR point of view, yes, every time they kick someone off for being bad,
the more their failing to kick someone off will be seen as an implicit
endorsement. But again, that ship has sailed.

~~~
tedivm
They've also removed sex worker websites (including a forum that was just sex
workers talking to each other), but for some reason no one complains about it.

~~~
Lazare
I believe you'll find that this was driven by SESTA/FOSTA, rather than being a
discretionary choice by Cloudflare, and if you hang out in the right circles,
it gets complained about a lot. (EFF, ACLU, Wikimedia, and many more opposed
it.)

I think it's unconstitutional and the worst thing to happen to the internet in
many years, as well as one of the worst things to happen to civil liberties
(which is a pretty high bar!). Unfortunately, it passed senate 97 votes to 2,
which suggests legislative fixes will not be coming soon.

------
Lazare
On the one hand, I like the idea of a free, open, and distributed internet,
where no one company or government has the power to control what is
distributed or discussed. As the great John Gilmore said, more aspirationally
than accurately even then: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes
around it."

On the other hand, we don't live in that world, and I don't know how well it
would work in practice if we did. In this world, corporations and governments
have enormous power. Cloudflare has made it clear that it will use that power
in a fairly limited and restrained way, but it _will_ use it as it sees fit.

Given that, this seems like a reasonable exercise of that power, and that's
about the best we can hope for.

~~~
FourScore
So you're willing to give unchecked control of online discourse to a private
corporation?

~~~
edna314
Do we really need to talk about closing down a site where people encourage
each other to kill other people (no matter who does it)? Why is it so
important that there are no exceptions to freedom of speech? Seriously, I just
don’t get how the purity of the concept of freedom of speech can be so
important that it beats common sense.

~~~
raxxorrax
Have you an example in history when a lack of censorship posed a problem?

I don't, so I value it very much. There were attrocities in my countries in
the name of common sense on the other hand.

Even if intuitive, censorship isn't an answer to anything.

~~~
edna314
I don’t consider deleting calls for violence towards minorities censorship.
And I do think that history has shown too many times that propaganda is a
powerful tool, that needs to be restricted. I mean you are free to doubt
common sense, but I think doubting common sense is always the first step of
becoming fanatic. What would be the country you are talking about? The way I
could imagine for someone to commit atrocities out of common sense would be if
he has a gun pointed to his head.

~~~
raxxorrax
We are not talking propaganda here, these are individual actors. Some just
like to provoke a reaction, some have these believes and I have seen people
turning their back on these platforms innumerable times.

Regardless of the reason people visit these places, the moment they get
external pressure, their believes get vindicated. We see a large surge in
issues with these communities since we got on our little censorship trip. It
is just plainly the wrong move to make.

There have been Nazis on the internet since shortly after its inception. But
random people going out and shooting crowds in this frequency is a new
phenomenon.

Historically censorship has always been applied for the right reasons of
course.

------
icpmacdo
"the speed with which tech cos change after a bad PR cycle seems like solid
proof that none of this is abt principles but abt trying to keep from making
hard choices as long as possible. earlier today they argued that keeping 8chan
within its network is a “moral obligation”"

[https://twitter.com/cwarzel/status/1158193462459506693](https://twitter.com/cwarzel/status/1158193462459506693)

~~~
kart23
This always has been and always will be about publicity. 8ch started getting
mentioned on national television, and there started to be questions directed
at cloudflare. Reddit used to happily host discriminatory, violent
communities, and only banned them once people started paying attention and
companies became afraid to advertise on reddit because of its perceived
connections to hate by the public. The message to hate communities is to lay
low and not get noticed by the media.

~~~
DATACOMMANDER
Speech cannot be violent.

To the downvoters: speech cannot be violent, _by definition_. Using your own
private definition of a word—in this case, _violence_ —without making an
explicit disclaimer is inherently deceitful.

~~~
DanBC
Buy a dictionary. Volence doesn't have to use physical force.

~~~
manfredo
Violence does refer to direct physical harm. There's a subset of people,
predominantly in the social sciences, that is trying to redefine violence to
include things like "economic violence" and "social violence" (e.g. breaking
up with an SO you don't like, or not being friends with someone anymore). This
is not the average person's understanding of the word, and personally I feel
that it drastically washes down the meaning of violence.

If these things constitute violence then lots of violence is completely legal.
In fact, you commit violence probably every day when you decide who to be
friends with and who not to be friends with, who gets hired, etc.

------
ALittleLight
When I was younger I thought I was a few speech absolutist. Then I went to
where was free speech was absolute and saw what was discussed. Now I favor
moderation.

~~~
madamelic
>When I was younger I thought I was a few speech absolutist. Then I went to
where was free speech was absolute and saw what was discussed. Now I favor
moderation.

How do you determine what speech is "good" and what speech is "bad"? I feel
like there is no absolute way to determine this. (I am being genuine in
asking, I want to know what caused this change and how you see "free speech")

All speech is good in my opinion. Some actions are bad. 8chan is _supporting_
these actions, they've crossed the line.

~~~
tim58
> How do you determine what speech is "good" and what speech is "bad"?

Ultimately the courts determine which speech is "good" or "bad" by
interpreting the law, but all property owners can determine what speech is
permitted on their property (like what cloudflare is doing).

I accept some limits on free speech. I think you shouldn't be able to start a
panic without cause (yelling fire in a crowded theater). I think conspiracy is
a crime. I think threats are a crime. I support the idea of copyright laws
even if I think our current system is bad.

From an internet freedom standpoint I think this signals we have an over
dependence on cloudflare, not that we have a free speech problem.

~~~
umvi
> I think you shouldn't be able to start a panic without cause (yelling fire
> in a crowded theater)

I would argue this isn't speech any more than saying a phrase to Alexa that
causes an API to be called which then detonates a bomb is speech.

I define speech as expression of ideas. Basically, say I maintain a blog.
Should there be limits on which ideas I'm allowed to express on that blog?
Should I be thrown in jail if I express a "bad" idea?

~~~
belltaco
>Basically, say I maintain a blog. Should there be limits on which ideas I'm
allowed to express on that blog? Should I be thrown in jail if I express a
"bad" idea?

Aren't Al Quaeda and ISIS websites shutdown all the time? If ISIS was using
8chan to spread Jihadi propaganda that ended up leading to killing on US soil,
they'd be shut down quick. But since the extremists belong to a political
side, it's called free speech. When Twitter/FB/YT/Reddit remove such speech,
it's spun as political bias.

~~~
Sacho
> Aren't Al Quaeda and ISIS websites shutdown all the time

Ironically for your argument, Cloudflare hasn't really shutdown any alleged
ISIS sites. This was even noted in their first blog when shutting down the
Daily Stormer.

------
colejohnson66
CloudFlare is not a notice board. They are practically a utility. PG&E aren’t
a government, and they can’t cut off your electricity because you’re an
extremist.

What about ISPs? Should Cox, Comcast, Frontier, etc be liable for what flows
through their pipes? Media companies say yes, but what do you do when your ISP
says “bye” because you visit 4chan? Go to another ISP? In most areas of the
US, you _can’t_

~~~
mikeash
A utility is typically a natural monopoly providing some sort of essential
service. Cloudflare is neither.

~~~
sytelus
What happens if all other providers refuse you as well on same basis? What if
Comcast refuse you to provide any internet service because they don't like
your views on net neutrality?

~~~
kelnos
In my personal opinion, the size of "all others" matters.

If you have a monopolistic ISP that refuses to provide service to you because
they don't like your content, and they're your only option, then that's a
problem.

If you have multiple tens of CDN providers and they all don't want to carry
your content, then perhaps you should really take a look at your content and
have a hard think about why it isn't wanted.

And regardless, a CDN isn't necessary to host a website. A CDN certainly makes
it easier to achieve lower-latency global reach, and is useful in helping you
weather certain types of attacks on your infrastructure, but they're by no
means required. And there are other ways to achieve those goals.

~~~
mikeash
Exactly, with similarity being a second important thing. For example, maybe
you’re lucky enough to have three ISPs to choose from, but they’re all big
American companies with nearly identical corporate cultures, and odds are good
that if one of them kicks you off, the others will too.

Hosting a site, on the other hand, has a multitude of very different providers
to choose from. Even if you manage to get banned from every hosting provider
in the US, ship a server to a colo in Kyrgyzstan or whatever, and keep right
on going.

------
mopsi
That pseudointellectual appeal to "rule of law" was painful to read. If a
website really engages in illegal activities, then the FBI gets a court order,
raids its servers and that's the end of it.

What really happened: Cloudfare came under PR fire from the Washington Post,
made a quick cost/benefit analysis and dropped 8Chan.

------
Iv
Tor's onion service will always there to provide hosting to the less popular
ideas. The censorship-resistant network is there. Make sure to give it some
love.

Last time I checked, people were discussing how to murder, exchanging nazi
manifestos and conspiracy theories. I was looking for anarchist discussions
but I actually ended up having these on reddit.

Don't get fooled by the current positioning of IT firms, it only depends on a
fistful of people who will transmit their power to their biological offspring,
no matter how fucked up they are.

~~~
tenpies
> I actually ended up having these on reddit

I am actually quite surprised how complicit the media is in not reporting what
goes on Reddit. It's the one place on the "mainstream" internet I run into
where you can see calls for political assassinations in default subs, sub-
reddits devoted to theft, ethno-nationalism, terrorism, and all sorts of
content that makes 4chan seem tame in comparison.

Then there is the huge cross-polination of moderators with radical ideas, who
just happen to moderate radical sub-reddits _and_ some prominent
default/mainstream sub-reddits.

If advertisers only paid attention. If journalists only cared.

~~~
ViViDboarder
If reported, Reddit (the company) will usually moderate or shut down subs like
those. Recent example being what they just did with /r/T_D.

~~~
collyw
I get the impression that Reddit only shuts down right wing leaning Reddits. I
hear that there is plenty of calls for violence on left leaning ones such as
late stage capitalism.

~~~
root_axis
Some famously banned subreddits:

/r/incels

/r/fatpeoplehate

/r/jailbait

/r/pizzagate

/r/beatingwomen

/r/watchpeopledie

/r/thefappening

/r/ni----s

How many of those would you consider right wing?

~~~
collyw
Ok, I meant in a political context, you have deliberately cherry picked non
political subs to make your point. Though i guess Pizzagate would probably
class as right-wing as it was a conspiracy against Hilary, no?

~~~
root_axis
> _you have deliberately cherry picked non political subs to make your point_

If I'm cherry picking then please offer up some examples of "right-wing" subs
that have been banned to compare with my list.

------
jkells
Good reasoning in the article. Acknowledges that refusing them service won't
take the site offline but makes a good argument for doing so.

"They are no longer Cloudflare's problem, but they remain the Internet's
problem."

These sites are breeding grounds for extremism, more and more I feel this free
for all on the internet probably hasn't been a net positive.

------
simula67
Free speech is a cultural value. It sometimes manifests itself in the form of
codified laws like the first amendment to the US Constitution. However, free
speech is not limited to the USA.

The idea behind free speech is that people are allowed to put forward new
ideas ( especially ideas about how to organize society, what is good and moral
etc ) so that people can consider and accept or reject them. The idea is that
no entity has a monopoly on truth and if you want to propagate your ideas,
make your arguments persuasive and refute your opponents' arguments.

Free speech is ultimately a bet on human capacity for reason and goodness. The
idea is that good ideas should win adherents and bubble to the top while bad
ideas sink to the bottom as they lose followers.

Sometimes, governments are the most powerful enemy of free speech while
sometimes other entities can be.

I am not saying free speech is a good thing, but there is no "exclusive to
government" limiting principle to free speech.

~~~
sytelus
Free speech is also a technological (or lack thereof) outcome. In 1700s, if
you had a misguided evil thought, your chance of realizing full effect was
still low because your thought must travel through multiple hops, each hop
evaluating your idea and possibly terminating the propagation with some
probability. So in societies without technological advancements, bad ideas and
their damaging effects can stay contained in small groups. But what if
technology can directly inject any bad ideas to entire population all at once
instantly? Is free speech still viable or do we need new philosophical
principals on human communication?

The often left unsaid basis of free speech is that each member of the audience
is capable of rationality evaluating the argument, willing to invest in fact
checking and is educated on background material. When these conditions are not
satisfied, there will be members of audience who will make suboptimal choices
based on misinformation with some probability. When scale of audience becomes
large, even small probability can uproot sane society.

All these are very interesting questions and honestly I don't think anyone has
answers.

~~~
joncrane
Good ideas were also suppressed under those conditions. Look at Galileo,
Giordano Bruno, and Socrates.

Allowing all ideas a fertile ground to grow and gain followers is important.

Allowing individuals with a small social reach (e.g. live in a small,
conservative, remote town) to access a wide range of ideas is important.

~~~
citruscomputing
Just wanting to clarify -- are you likening the shooter's manifesto to the
works of Socrates?

~~~
joncrane
I'm not on the side of the shooters. Violence is extremely rarely the right
option and I'm not aware of any mass shooting cases that were even close to
"justified."

------
sytelus
This is the same argument cake shops make against taking order from gay
people. I do believe that so-called manifesto is mind-numbingly dumb, fact-
free and it is dangerous in the sense it will inspire more violence against
innocent people. But that precisely what makes it a good test case for asking
some fundamental questions. Can commercial businesses with deep reach, pricing
power and critical function deny services based on their ideology and beliefs?
The legal answer is yes and that only looks troublesome when you think of how
tables could turn in future. As someone has mentioned what if Comcast started
permanently black listed you if you visited a website that didn't aligned with
their ideology? What if airlines refused to fly you because you said something
on Twitter that didn't aligned with their beliefs?

~~~
mort96
Taking orders from gay people and hosting services for sites which support
far-right terrorism aren't exactly the same though. We can be against
suppressing gay people and for suppressing far-right terrorism even if the
means by which the suppression happens is similar.

~~~
odessacubbage
and what about the the communities for queers and autistics on 8ch that will
be lost in order to cater to your particular sense of indignation while in
effect doing virtually nothing to limit the ability of psychopathic losers to
kill large numbers of people? as an aside assigning any credibility to the
motives of crazy person with no value for human life makes no more sense in
the case of mass killings than it does to treat those of ted bundy or john
wayne gacy or mark david chapman as credible.

~~~
mort96
What about those communities? I'm sure they can stay on 8chan, or find
somewhere else?

I'd not say the recent far-right terrorism is just from some individual
psychopaths with no value for human life. There's a ton of far-right/alt-right
ideas out there, on platforms like 8chan, which actively demonizes certain
groups of people. It's not like these shootings are just crazy people who just
want to kill people at random; they want to kill the people they see as the
"enemy".

~~~
read_if_gay_
>What about those communities? I'm sure they can stay on 8chan, or find
somewhere else?

Then what’s different about extremist communities?

~~~
mort96
I don't understand what you mean. Presumably, they will also either continue
using 8chan or find somewhere else?

~~~
read_if_gay_
Exactly.

~~~
mort96
You're saying that as if you have made a point, but I still don't understand
what you mean. Could you explain what your actual point is?

~~~
read_if_gay_
Well, if far right terrorists can just stay or find another place, then how is
Cloudflare’s action suppressing them? You seem to be defending their action
but at the same time implying it has no effect.

------
sagichmal
> Removing 8chan from our network takes heat off of us, it does nothing to
> address why hateful sites fester online.

It’s not your role to address the “why”. As a platform you’re only obliged to
deal with the “what” and the “how”.

They now have one less platform to choose from, and their ability to do
whatever it is they do is reduced. That’s a win, because wins don’t need to be
absolute to count.

~~~
wbl
Cloudflare wasn't hosting them. NT technologies was, and still is.

~~~
selectodude
Yeah but now they can be DDoS’d.

~~~
busymom0
They will find another CDN. Piratebay and others have been around for ages.

~~~
sagichmal
That's fine. They won't be using Cloudflare, one less option for them. That's
worth doing.

~~~
agumonkey
May create a cascading effect where less and less CDNs will accept them.

~~~
sagichmal
Let's hope.

------
cryptica
It's concerning that Cloudflare is monetizing on these disasters by publishing
this article and promoting it on HN; in a way, they're using these crimes as
an opportunity to improve their brand image. Cloudflare should have dealt with
this privately; this matter is between Cloudflare and 8chan - They were always
able to choose who they want and don't want to do business with. They were
very happy to take the money when it was convenient. If you want to do the
right thing according to your values, you should do it quietly; if you brag
about your action publicly and you stand to gain something out of it then it
completely undermines the intent of the action.

I'd love to see companies actually do the right thing and not talk about it;
just like how they don't talk about it when they do the wrong thing. That
would be a step forward.

~~~
rocqua
There have been many vocal calls for cloudfare to drop 8chan. This is not a
move to get publicity, but cloudfare giving in to public pressure.

~~~
mieseratte
> This is not a move to get publicity, but cloudfare giving in to public
> pressure.

Well I'm not sure which is worse. Using tragedy for publicity or caving to a
mob.

~~~
sokoloff
Seems they can’t win then.

~~~
raxxorrax
True in a way. But in such a situation the better option is always not to act
and invoke plausible deniability. Otherwise we will see repeated efforts.

Although 8chan is probably just a sacrificial anode for 4chan and some other
sites, the pressure of censors will probably not subside for a while. Even if
their chances are slim, it is really bothering how quickly people throw away
rights just to have an opportunity to point their fingers on people they
believe are worse than themselves.

------
rdl
If you build a system that is technically possible for someone to censor,
particularly if you make it easy to do (and in fact where not doing so would
cost them potentially billions of dollars in market cap in an upcoming IPO,
recruiting, sales, vendors, etc), you shouldn’t be at all surprised when they
do censor. It is interesting that Cloudflare has only really censored two
sites (dailystormer and 8chan) outside of a fairly clearly articulated terms
of service. There are clearly a large number of sites on Cloudflare which are
a net liability to them and always will be, so the “free speech” stance is
genuine.

~~~
scrollaway
Kicking out and not providing service isn't the same thing as censoring. One
is customer-driven, the other is content-driven.

You can kick a customer out because they espouse certain views or whatever,
and it's fine to call it discriminatory, but it's not censorship. This isn't
usually a relevant distinction, but here it is because Cloudflare hasn't built
"a system that is technically possible for someone to censor".

They _could_ , and thank fuck they don't, because _that_ would absolutely be
the day I'm getting off Cloudflare.

~~~
stevenicr
The article mentioned that they are now and have been monitoring content of
web sites they route and have been sharing information with various agencies
based upon that content.

They have removed at least two portals, and higher up in the thread it is
mentioned that they have also axed various sex related sites - and they are
providing monitored info to agencies that use courts and guns to force people
to do things... that is starting to sound more and more like a censorship
system than a dump pipe which prevents overuse (ddos) - to me..

------
krackers
I thought they had just stated they weren't going to end suport:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20607945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20607945)

~~~
doctorpangloss
Yes, but Cloudflare needs talented engineers, and talented engineers don’t
sign up to serve clients like 8chan. Software doesn’t run on one person’s
contrarian politics.

~~~
chroma
Cloudflare serves many odious sites, such as
[https://godhatesfags.com/](https://godhatesfags.com/). They only terminate
service when some site gets a lot of heat in the news.

I like to think I'm a pretty talented engineer. I've avoided using Cloudflare
and I've avoided applying to them because of their wishy-washy stance on
censorship. They are a utility. PG&E doesn't terminate electricity service
based on what was said on a property. So too should it be for data services.
Otherwise, you get people lying and doing false flags to get their enemies
kicked off the internet.

~~~
ambicapter
> They are a utility.

They are not even close to a utility.

------
CM30
I don't like 8chan as a website, but I'm still not a fan of this move. Feels
like no one online wants to just provide a 'dumb pipe', and always want to act
like a pseudo publisher trying to dictate what's allowed and what isn't.

Imagine if real life utilities did this. If because someone used your property
for offensive purposes, the water company cut off the water supply, or the
electricity company refused to provide electricity, or your phone provider cut
off service or what not. That would be ridiculous, yet it's exactly the
situation we're in with internet services. No one wants to just be a utility.

I believe online service providers in at least some markets should be
regulated like utilities. Maybe Cloudflare, definitely domain name registrars,
perhaps cloud services and CDNs in general. Because at the moment, it seems
any controversy at all means losing access to anything internet related.

~~~
toyg
_> because someone used your property for offensive purposes, the water
company cut off the water supply_

This actually happens in Europe, typically when authorities decide squatters
should not be tolerated.

TBH, services like Cloudflare should be free to operate as they please. A
publisher is simply not entitled to a CDN. If there is a demand for specific
niches, a supply will eventually emerge, like it has for porn.

~~~
onli
> _TBH, services like Cloudflare should be free to operate as they please. A
> publisher is simply not entitled to a CDN_

If a CDN is necessary to support the site being a public platform that's not a
given. This whole "A private company should be able to act like it pleases"
that Cloudflare mirrors in their news is an ideological standpoint, not an
absolute truth. It's certainly possible to see it differently: If a company
becomes a public platform important for the public discourse or for the
function of journalism, regulation and laws can limit what a company can do.
Like Germany does with Facebook.

 _Edit:_ Thinking about this a bit more, I'm really frustrated with Cloudflare
about this. With the announcement they are causing the political discourse
after the massacre to be about free speech, while the one thing important here
is gun control. This stuff happens in the US because the easy access to guns
allows murderers to act like this. It does not matter whether 8chan falls now
or whether it survives or whether the US limits their extreme stance on free
speech as long the US society continues to accept that those massacres happen
in favor of having guns available to everyone.

~~~
jumbopapa
I genuinely do not believe the access to the guns are the issue here. There
are plenty of ways to accomplish something like this without a gun, so
removing the guns from the picture would just change the method. It's lazy to
just say that "gun control will fix this" because you're ignoring solving the
actual problem of why people are doing this.

~~~
homonculus1
If it were a gun access problem then it would have peaked when gun access was
easiest, i.e. back when machine guns were sold by mail order.

Now it's happening in a time of rampant depression, polarization, social
isolation, 24-hour news, and social media. That can't be a coincidence.

~~~
d35007
Mass shootings are a meme in the United States, like a sort of cultural
epidemic. You fight epidemics with techniques like quarantines to stop the
spread, medicine to help those that are already infected, and inoculations for
people who haven’t been.

I think the quarantine is for information in this case. Instead of breathless,
stop-the-world coverage of these events, treat them like traffic accidents:
“22 people were murdered by a white supremacist terrorist in an El Paso Wal-
Mart this afternoon. Now here’s Bob with the weather.”

Gun buyback programs are 1 kind of medicine. Some people won’t take it, but we
should try. Maybe we can institute some kind of guns-for-Medicare program
(only sorta joking).

Gun control legislation is the inoculation. I don’t think we can get to full-
on prohibition in the US without repealing the 2nd amendment, but we can
implement licensing and registration requirements and longer waiting periods.

We also need to improve the existing systems. The ATF has a “gun registry”,
but it’s not a searchable database. See [https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-
non-searchable-database...](https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-
searchable-databases/)

~~~
vorpalhex
I agree with your first two points. Point 3 I have sort of fussy disagreements
with (firearms have value, buybacks tend to short change this value, and
overarching tend to target already poor folks).

4\. What good does registration do? Like, awesome, now you have a database
with all the gun owners in it.. but for the purpose of stopping mass shooters
how does that help you? Likewise, what licensing requirement do you foresee
which will help with (1)?

5\. Again, how does this help?

~~~
d35007
Good points.

I’d argue that 3 is an implementation detail. If we’re serious about getting
guns off the streets, then we need to make it worthwhile to trade them in.

As to 4 and 5, I’ll just say that not all shooting are “mass shootings” like
we saw in El Paso. Chicago alone has something like 1500 shootings each year,
many of which go unsolved. The article I linked says that the ATF gets 1000
gun trace requests per day and it takes an average of 4-7 days to compete one
of them. That seems a bit slow to me, but I honestly can’t say what effect
speeding that up would have on our ability to prosecute perpetrators of gun
violence.

------
stevenicr
This is one of the most disturbing things I've read this year. Now I
definitely do not feel like any of my sites are safe on cloudflare.

I would appreciate even more transparency details to be published. When
talking about cloudflare following the rule of law - will you all be more
specific about which countries and which locales?

There are rules in the UK I have read about that people wanted to bust through
cloudflare to get to people.

Will the countries that have anti-gay laws be included in this rule of law
thing? What about ones that have laws about sex info? How about religions?

How many people need to be up in arms about something before cloudflare ejects
something? If we get enough of religion A to be angry about the lawless
killing espoused in Religion B's texts - can we get all of the various
religious sites ejected?

To read that this is all going on with cloudflare is terrible - but I am glad
you all decided to share that you have also monitoring web site content and
sending information to multiple law enforcement agencies as well.

I'm shocked, but not surprised at this point. As soon as stormer was removed
you changed from being a dumb pipe infrastructure company into one that can
eject and censor at will. It's been rolling down that hill ever since it
seems.

Cloudflare has really opened the floodgates to be used for additional
censoring by many other groups and gov agencies at this point.

The internet needs more anti-ddos options aside from this has been company.

I have personally suffered months of agony from people using 4chan in the
past, but I would not ask internet companies to shut them down. Around that
time is when I started looking for a service like cloudflare. It was too easy
to dox and ddos - cloudflare helped.

Are you guys also going to pull service for blackhat hacker forums? I've
suffered from posts on those as well.

There will likely be an 18chan dot com and a 818chan dot com and a
blackerhatter dot net and a... I look forward to an updating listing of sites
that are not reachable via the cloudflare internet in various places.

~~~
mschuster91
> As soon as stormer was removed you changed from being a dumb pipe
> infrastructure company into one that can eject and censor at will.

You're defending the Daily Stormer, do I read that correctly?

> I look forward to an updating listing of sites that are not reachable via
> the cloudflare internet in various places.

Cloudflare is not "the Internet". If Stormer or 8chan get kicked off of them,
you can still access them if they find an upstream provider - which Stormer
managed to do and 8chan likely will, too.

> Are you guys also going to pull service for blackhat hacker forums? I've
> suffered from posts on those as well.

I would seriously hope that this happens rather sooner than later.

~~~
michaelt

      You're defending the Daily Stormer,
      do I read that correctly?
    

No, you're reading that incorrectly.

stevenicr is referring to Cloudflare's values of "total content neutrality"
[1] where they argued they were similar to a 'common carrier' and should
provide services to everyone, like a phone company or mail service would.

Such values have been articulated by Cloudflare's CEO himself [2].

Hence, the DDoS protection service would protect the Taliban, child
pornographers, stolen credit card sellers, DDoS-as-a-service providers and,
yes, neo-nazis. So this policy had odious consequences, but was at least
consistent and clearly articulated.

The new policy seems a lot less clear - drop service to neo-nazis, by all
means. But why haven't they dropped the Taliban and paedophiles and DDoS
providers and carders at the same time?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cloudflare&oldid=...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cloudflare&oldid=909409762#Controversy)
[2] [https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free-
speech/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free-speech/)

~~~
DanBC
> stevenicr is referring to Cloudflare's values of "total content neutrality"
> [1] where they argued they were similar to a 'common carrier' and should
> provide services to everyone, like a phone company or mail service would.

...in the US

All of these free speech arguments need to be really clear that they're
talking about the extremist version of freedom of speech used in the US.

Other countries have postal services and phone companies that place limits on
what can be sent over them.

------
futureastronaut
> we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire
> tragic events and are lawless by design

What does "lawless by design" mean?

~~~
NikkiA
8chan claims not to be able to ban content because of the way they are set up,
as such they have no real control even over people running pedo boards.

That is pretty obviously 'lawless by design'.

~~~
55555
> 8chan claims not to be able to ban content because of the way they are set
> up

How is this implemented?

~~~
duskwuff
> How is this implemented?

By throwing up their hands and claiming that it's too hard to implement.

8ch is not running a highly sophisticated software stack. (Quite honestly,
their code [1] is pretty terrible -- it's a bunch of frameworkless, hacked-
together PHP.) Nothing about their setup is especially elaborate or unusual;
at best, "we can't ban content" is an admission of their incompetence.

[1]: [https://github.com/OpenIB/OpenIB](https://github.com/OpenIB/OpenIB)

------
rand_r
The best argument I’ve heard for being a free speech absolutist is that speech
is the highest form of thought in Humans. We think via dialogue. We arrive at
the truth via dialogue.

Criminalizing free speech limits our ability to think and arrive at the truth,
and that can’t be good for anyone long term.

I haven’t heard of a good rebuttal to the above reasoning.

~~~
ALittleLight
To extend your metaphor, imagine that part of humanity's brain is engaged in
thinking about the abduction and exploitation of children. Another part is
lionizing mass murderers and advocating for copy cats. A different part of the
brain is contemplating the state of the art for financial and cyber crimes
etc.

If you come to believe that the time humanity's brain spends occupied with
these pursuits leads to negative real world consequences then I don't think
the argument you've presented is very compelling. Put another way, if I were
someone's therapist and my patient confided in me that, the more time he
spends thinking about shooting up his school, the more he feels like actually
doing it - I might advise him to spend less time thinking about shooting up
the school. If I had the power, I might forbid him from thinking about it at
all.

Really, what, but the amusement of edgy people, does humanity gain from
entertaining these dark conversations? Perhaps such conversations play a role
in the detection or prevention of bad outcomes. For example, police detectives
are sometimes taught to identify with the criminal to understand their
behavior, and so maybe having access to dark thoughts would help in that
regard.

To me, the question of moderation hinges on whether you think permitting
speech will be, on net, positive or negative. I don't have data or solid
evidence - but I do have intuitions.

~~~
rand_r
That’s a good point. Thoughts can be dangerous. My post only works if you have
a bias against thought-crime.

As an aside, if someone’s thoughts are ill-intentioned, you should be able to
dispel them by forcing an honest examination of everything.

~~~
kelnos
> _As an aside, if someone’s thoughts are ill-intentioned, you should be able
> to dispel them by forcing an honest examination of everything._

Unfortunately the human brain doesn't work that way. It tends to resist new
information -- even if logically presented and supported by hard evidence --
that contradicts its world view.

And I'm not even talking about people who suffer from some sort of mental
illness, or who are poorly educated, or anything of that nature. Everyone's
brain works this way.

------
umvi
It would be better if cloudflare terminated service for all media outlets.
Every time you turn a mass shooting into a national spectacle, it inspires
copycats in rapid succession as we've just seen.

Mass shootings (generally) don't kill that many people. They are scary, yes,
but not that deadly (statistically). Keep it local news, don't publish the
name of the killer, basically keep the story away from the front lines.

By turning every mass shooting into a hysterical emotional maelstrom, you
signal a green light to all the other potential shooters that _this_ is how
you get attention.

~~~
yongjik
In every other, let's say, G20 country, someone shooting up a shopping mall
and killing 20 will absolutely make national news - they will talk about it
for months and it will be ranked "top ten worst news for $country in 2019", if
not the absolute worst. In some countries (let's say, Korea) reporters will
probably dig into the shooter's elementary school transcripts and interview
second cousins.

In other words, if anyone is aiming for notoriety, shooting up people in Seoul
or Tokyo will give you an eternal place in national zeitgeist, while in
America you will be famous until the next shooting: A few months? Weeks?

Yet nobody's (thankfully) taking up the opportunity in these other countries.
Certainly not every week, or even every year.

It's not the media. It's not attention-seeking. It's not games (duh). Maybe
it's a bit about mental health, but other countries also have problems with
crazies and they don't just shoot up schools and nightclubs.

Can we stop beating around the bush?

~~~
gruez
>In other words, if anyone is aiming for notoriety, shooting up people in
Seoul or Tokyo will give you an eternal place in national zeitgeist, while in
America you will be famous until the next shooting: A few months? Weeks?

Good luck buying guns in Korea/Japan (or any country[1] for that matter) as a
tourist, or smuggling them in. It's significantly easier to get guns where you
normally reside.

[1] Except maybe the US. Is the gunshow exemption still around?

~~~
javagram
There’s no gun show exemption. There’s a private sale exemption, because the
law doesn’t allow private sellers to access the background check system.

Registered FFL holders selling guns at a show have to do the same background
checks they’d do anywhere else.

------
bart_spoon
I'm not sure I understand what those here rallying in defense of "free speech"
are arguing. Free speech has not been violated. The government did not mandate
this. As an individual citizen, I am allowed to say whatever I want under the
protection of free speech. But I am not entitled to others providing me a
platform for my speech. Other people/companies can't be coerced to provide me
such a platform. And even if every person and company refuses to provide me a
platform, my rights still aren't being violated, so long as the government
isn't mandating it. Its just tough nuts.

~~~
Ajedi32
As has been explained in this thread multiple times now, Free Speech is a
principle, not a law. If, for example, someone in North Korea spoke against
their government and was executed for it, that'd be a violation of Free
Speech. Arguing "but North Korea doesn't have a law protecting people who
speak against the government" would be ridiculous.

Similarly, if a person or organization in the United States is silenced
because they were deplatformed by a corporate oligarchy, it's ridiculous to
argue "the US doesn't have any law which prevents that, so Free Speech has not
been violated".

Free Speech has _absolutely_ been impinged by this decision.

~~~
x86_64Ubuntu
I'm always amazed at how right wingers are all "property rights, property
rights". And when something like this happens, they quickly switch from
demanding that the property rights of CloudFlare be observed, to "free speech,
free speech" concerning the conservatives on 8chan.

~~~
Ajedi32
In this case, "property rights", as you put it are at odds with free speech. I
don't think it would be ideologically inconsistent to believe that free speech
trumps property rights in cases where the two principles conflict.

I also think there's a lot more nuance to this situation than you seem to be
implying. I very much doubt there are a significant number of people ("right
wingers" or otherwise) who believe property rights are _the_ most important
concern in all situations, nor are there many who believe in an absolute right
to Free Speech at any cost. (The constitution itself allows for narrow
exceptions for _both_ of those rights.)

~~~
x86_64Ubuntu
So CloudFlare gets absolutely no say in what they host and serve on their
private property because of "Free Speech"?

~~~
Ajedi32
Maybe. We've already banned companies from discriminating on the basis of
race. Would a limited ban on telecommunications infrastructure companies
discriminating on the basis of ideology really be all that bad?

If anything, it would certainly free those companies from having to act as
arbiters of moral truth.

~~~
zzzcpan
That would be great, but sadly the companies are not doing it out of their own
free will, they are pushed by the government in some way to do that. And so
far legislations around the world only move in a direction to make that
government involvement more explicit, not enforce more freedom.

------
cryptonector
That a crazy person posts a screed somewhere then commits mass murder is not
by itself sufficient reason to destroy the forum where they posted their
screed. It's not remotely clear to me that 8chan glorified previous mass
murders -- of course, I've not looked, but then, Cloudflare doesn't post any
evidence of this either. But even 8chan they did, that's essentially what the
media is doing every time they give wall-to-wall coverage to any mass murder
-- future would be mass murderers may fantasize about being the one the news
media talk about next. No one talks about de-platforming CNN. Before we
deplatform the 8chans of the world, at the very least we should have some
evidence of how they failed to moderate content, and we should give them a
chance to fix it.

~~~
dangxiaopin
According to Cloudflare's logic, ISPs should have stopped peering with
Facebook after NZ shooter livestreamed there.

~~~
cryptonector
Perhaps only if commenters glorified it? I'm sure you can find people to do
that on FB or anywhere else, and it may take time to moderate such commentary.
But no one would deplatform FB or Twitter -- they're too big. This approach
means we have a powerful dynamic in place to limit the reach of any social
media that isn't already "too big to deplatform".

~~~
yhamv
In fact Facebook said they didn't remove the nz shooter livestream because
nobody bothered to report it until very late

~~~
dangxiaopin
I would argue that the actual graphic livestream of a real mass murder is a
much much more toxic and dangerous material than any theoretical manifesto.
It's not even in the same league. But Facebook is too big to be dropped as a
customer!

~~~
ElCapitanMarkla
Is Facebook a customer? I thought they had their own network?

~~~
cryptonector
Maybe not, but others could refuse to peer with them.

------
word-reader
This post repeatedly refers to 8chan as "lawless" and "unmoderated" but it is
neither. As a whole, it is a public website subject to US law, complete with
DMCA and search warrant contact forms. The sitewide rule is that all content
must comply with US law.

The media also keeps saying 8chan, 8chan, 8chan over and over, when it is
really just the one most popular board ("pol") that is being discussed. But
there are hundreds of boards on the site for different topics, which are
moderated separately and according to their own rules.

It seems like most of the outrageous incitement to violence people have posted
on 8chan would be illegal under Brandenburg v. Ohio (speech is illegal if it
will lead to imminent lawless action), given the mostly-valid assumption there
will be readers of the post who are both radicalized and armed. This seems
like the way to take down most of the violent content on 8chan if anyone would
think about it for more than 5 seconds.

This seems like a knee-jerk reaction to moral panic and bad PR, not a solution
to anything. Cloudflare would have been in a better position to actually
_change_ 8chan if they had kept them on and pressured them.

~~~
baddox
Isn’t the concern about the gradual radicalization that occurs in these online
communities, and not about specific posts that threaten violence or announce
impending mass shootings?

~~~
internet_user
Has it occurred to you that radicalization actually happens offline, perhaps
even in childhood, due to some kind of real life events, and nothing to do
with internet at all?

All of this rooted in meatspace. The so called "social defeat".

How often do you see successful people that have a fullfilling life go on
rampages?

~~~
geofft
Certainly the radicalization _may_ happen offline. But in the cases at hand,
it did not. There is a significant uptick in violence associated with online
radicalization, and no corresponding uptick in violence associated with
offline radicalization. You can say that the role of the internet is
overblown, but the evidence is there.

Besides, it's a sort of weird position to take on an a) online forum b) of
tech people that the internet does not have a significant role in facilitating
communication that would not otherwise happen.

~~~
internet_user
where is the data? you have something that proves causality of online
communication and radicalization?

You make it sound it's almost like terrorism didn't exist before the internet.

~~~
geofft
> _where is the data?_

All of these shooters have manifestos that describe how they came to believe
what they believed.

> _You make it sound it 's almost like terrorism didn't exist before the
> internet._

No, I don't. I specifically said "uptick." This line of argument makes as much
sense as showing up in a comment thread about the Capital One breach and
saying "You make it sound it's almost like privacy violations didn't exist
before the internet." Of course it did, but not at this scale, and we're
talking about scale.

------
whatshisface
Another way to view this would be, "Cloudflare ends support for mass shooting
early warning system."

~~~
cameronbrown
This. Having this content out in the open means we can monitor it. I totally
get why Cloudflare would not want to do business with 8Chan, but every step
towards pushing 8Chan and it's members underground is less visibility into the
kind of people who operate on the site.

~~~
Untit1ed
Less visibility for those not already on it looking to join in too though. If
it gets forced so far underground that law enforcement can't figure out a way
in I don't see how some disaffected youth somewhere could either.

~~~
whatshisface
It's not that it would go too underground for law enforcement to find it, it's
that it would be limited to terrorist cell networks _that mass shooters don 't
even post in._

------
baki
Cloudflare is censoring comments like hell. I don't trust their "private" DNS
service anymore. I will use Quad9. And what about the Las Vegas shooting? Ban
CNN, New York Times, MSNBC ...etc..etc.,,Twitter, and thousands of websites,
plenty of celebrities....? You people are totalitarian mtfckrs!

------
manigandham
This decision is yet another distraction. It's attempting to treat an
ephemeral symptom in a rapidly evolving landscape of digital identity and
communications. Things are only getting faster, easier, more connected, more
distributed, and more encrypted. There is no going back.

Until we collectively acknowledge that it's real humans behind these actions
and create modern ways to identify and prevent them, a DDoS/CDN company
turning off their service is about the most inconsequential change of all.
Making some internet comments go away solves nothing.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
>Until we collectively acknowledge that it's real humans behind these actions
and create modern ways to identify and prevent them

Surely this has no downsides at all. For example, you can rest easy because
YOUR ideas and YOUR opinions will never stray off the “approved” line.

... how is it people in tech can’t see past their own noses on things like
this?

~~~
keithnz
because the line of reasoning you are using has been repeated over and over
and over.... but it's not exactly working out well. Words have a lot of power,
and we already limit what people can say through libel laws. Much of the hate
speech going on is really just libel to a group of people. No one really wants
to police speech, but we already know untruths targeted at individuals can be
devstating and we have created laws in most countries around that. It hasn't
resulted in mass censorship of "YOUR ideas, and YOUR opinions" unless they are
untrue ideas about other people that you think you can put out into the public
space. America has this as their corporate slogan "Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness". Liberty cannot outweigh Life and pursuit of happiness.
You need to balance all 3 of those, in fact, without rules everyones liberties
are reduced.

We don't allow people to drive anyway they like on the roads, we have basic
set of rules that allow everyone a lot more freedom to go where they want,
violation of those rules tends to cause harm, and if it was total "freedom"
then it would be chaos. If we cannot work out what those are for speech( and
we already have some )so that everyone gets more effective freedoms, then more
harm will keep happening.

~~~
DATACOMMANDER
Under your interpretation, would I be allowed to say that it’s evident that
there are (nontrivial, sometimes cognitive) innate group differences between
the sexes, or between racial groups? If you’re convinced that such a statement
would simply be “libelous”, I can’t get on board with your idea. As far as I
can tell, the current state of affairs is this: the science suggests rather
strongly that there are indeed innate differences both between the sexes and
among various racial groups; despite this, any statement to that effect is
loudly denounced as “pseudoscience”. In other words, I believe that the
current popular consensus regarding innate group differences is factually
incorrect, but also believed in very strongly. So if that’s your angle, I
think that your idea has reached its “dystopia scenario”—truthful speech being
prohibited because it is falsely deemed libelous—right out of the gate.

~~~
keithnz
no, I don't think want to ban the truth as we know it via evidence.

I'm not precisely defining what the law is, in NZ we have hate speech laws.
Everyone still goes around with their own unique ideas, sometimes shitty
ideas..... like when they mistakenly conflate genetic sex and gender identity,
or talk about race as a scientific concept when really that's quite an
ambiguous term (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_\(human_categorization\))
). Its not even about the "truth" so much, I'm an atheist, but I believe in
religious freedom and peoples right to believe in things I believe to be
completely false. It's about making sure groups of people, especially
minorities are free to live their lives according to their beliefs (not
necessarily without criticism ).

NZ Law society did a pretty good summary recently

[https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/practice-resources/practice-
ar...](https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/practice-resources/practice-areas/human-
rights/freedom-of-speech-vs-hate-speech)

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
>I'm not precisely defining what the law is, in NZ we have hate speech laws.

Which is another way to say you do not have free speech.

------
nl
It's funny, these discussions go around and around in circles on HN.

Really, we should all just reference Popper's Paradox of Tolerance[1].

A just, tolerant society should tolerate anything other than intolerance. Yes,
this isn't as simple as "freedom of speech", but it makes a lot of sense.

Popper's words argue this as well as anyone:

 _Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead
to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to
those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society
against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed,
and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance,
that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as
long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by
public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the
right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out
that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but
begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to
rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments
by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name
of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant._

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

------
shapiro92
Very unpopular opinion. The internet should be free for everyone and no
provider should have the ability to cut off services. The problem is not the
platform but the people, hate the player not the game.

~~~
Spivak
You should be legally required to do business with any customer?

At some level does a person not have the right to say, "I don't like you and
won't take your money?"

Sure, the US and others have protected classes that limit the reasons you can
refuse to do business with someone but those are more to do with people in
those classes being unfairly burdened and facing difficulty living tier day-
to-day lives.

~~~
busymom0
> You should be legally required to do business with any customer?

No you shouldn't be. But this should also be treated fairly.

Communications Decency Act of 1996, Section 230 allowed platforms to not be
held liable for user generated content. But it did not allow publishers to
have the same freedom.

Notice the very important distinction between "platforms" vs "publishers".

A publisher like a newspaper can be sued for content they put out. A platform
cannot be sued for the same. When companies like CloudFlare start banning
people for political reasons, they are stepping into the "publishers" market
and should be stripped off of the protections from the CDA Section 230. We
should be allowed to sue them for content they carry.

Right now, they are enjoying the benefits of both - platform and publisher.

~~~
cambalache
Go open an ice-cream shop and refuse to serve Asian people because you dont
like them.

~~~
wvenable
You can refuse a serve _an_ Asian person. You just can't refuse to serve Asian
people in general.

~~~
cambalache
And you refuse him based on what? The Axiom of Choice? Because if you refuse
him for being Asian and you are consistent you have to refuse all Asians.
Because if you refuse 8chan because some killers used the service you will
have to refuse Facebook, Twitter, All major Hollywood Studios, the Catholic
Church, the GOP, the DP, the Saudi Arabia government and thousands of more
organizations which directly or indirectly had a role in many crimes.

~~~
wvenable
You don't seem to understand. You can refuse to do business with someone
because you don't like the color of their tie.

In many countries, there are specific protected classes and you can't refuse
their business just because they are a member of that class. Confusing these
concepts does not help the argument.

------
onyva
Twitter and Google (& YouTube) have systematically removed ISIS content and
redirected these people to messages/sites that are designed to disrupt and
deprogram their ideology. They’ve done this effectively for _years._ They
choose not to apply this approach to white supremacy.

[https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1158032847560675328](https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1158032847560675328)

~~~
zimpenfish
> They choose not to apply this approach to white supremacy.

"[...] the measures taken against ISIS were so extreme that, if applied to
white supremacy, there would certainly be backlash, because algorithms would
obviously flag content that has been tweeted by prominent Republicans—or, at
the very least, their supporters."

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xgq5/why-wont-
twitter-t...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xgq5/why-wont-twitter-
treat-white-supremacy-like-isis-because-it-would-mean-banning-some-republican-
politicians-too)

~~~
yardie
Honestly, they should have done exactly that. Flag their content and ban them.
Then go to the capitol. And when some politician asks, "why was I banned?"
Tell them honestly, your statements were determined to be extremist by the
same algorithm that bans Al Qaeda and ISIS from posting. Then sit back and
watch the real fireworks go off.

Just because they have a political title does not mean we have to respect
anything that comes out of their mouth. Call a spade a spade and be done with
them.

~~~
adrianN
I don't think it is a good idea to replace political discourse with
algorithms. You can't just throw up your hands and blame the algorithm when
somebody complains to you.

~~~
dillonmckay
That is already happening, unfortunately.

------
coldtea
Why is this the concern of Cloudflare?

If it does something illegal, the law can close it down.

If it doesn't, it's should be absolutely no concern of Cloudlfare to police
it.

That's more dystopian than a wacko shooter posting their message there. They
could have posted it anywhere, or just posted it on their profile, send it to
the news, etc.

~~~
aiyodev
And now they have the responsibility of policing every website that uses their
service to avoid tacitly supporting controversial content.

------
eteos
Right, suddenly CF cares about 'law'.

Scam (lots of phishing and fake webshops), spam, piracy, illegal pornography,
it's all chilling on CF's network en masse. When they get notified about this,
do you think they terminate that client? No, they will just come up with some
dogmatic story [1] and ignore every call to action/cooperation.

"we are rebuilding the Internet, and we don't believe that we or anyone else
should have the right to tell people what content they can and cannot publish
online."

Yes, ladies and gentleman, he said it. In 2012 Mr Prince was trying to build a
proprietary internet. These days he would never say that again. I mean, it's
just laughable that you feel zero responsibility over your clients. Hence they
publicly deny this now of course.

CloudFlare: it would be great if you start actively participating in abuse
prevention, instead of behaving like an offshore/bulletproof provider behind
red 'n blue curtains.

[1] [https://blog.cloudflare.com/thoughts-on-
abuse/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/thoughts-on-abuse/)

~~~
judge2020
You're missing the point brought up in both blog posts: If CF removes these
sites, they literally won't go offline. They'll just stop using CF. The
content is still there.

CF forwards DMCA complaints to the website host so they can deal with the
illegal content. CF already uses Safe browsing (or perhaps another system) to
flag domains[0] that might be phishing/malware related. Illegal porn is
something the sites themselves have to remove since (as said above) removing
the site from CF only saves face for CF and doesn't change the content being
on the service[1].

0: [https://community.cloudflare.com/t/your-domain-has-been-
susp...](https://community.cloudflare.com/t/your-domain-has-been-suspected-of-
phishing-or-malware/60922?u=judge)

1: to add, CF doesn't allow video files to be directly proxied on their
network (when the main point of your site/service is serving these video
files), you either need to use CF stream or have your video files on a
separate non-proxied subdomain. If something illegal is stored on CF stream or
Workers KV, they can take it down via the abuse form since they're the host of
that content.

------
kodablah
> 8chan [...] have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has
> caused multiple tragic deaths

Quite the strong and matter-of-fact opinion, stated as accepted fact, about a
direct cause here.

------
zzzcpan
So much hypocrisy. When war mongering governments like US, Russia use
Cloudflare for war propaganda websites that enable their wars and killings of
lots and lots of people it doesn't bother Matthew Prince. Or when websites
behind Cloudflare promote and sell lethal weapons that are the actual reason
behind mass shootings even being possible, still doesn't bother him. But no, a
dissident free speech activist website is somehow necessary to censor and
blame for this, how convenient. Gotta love covert government censorship and
covert government-corporate partnership.

~~~
dwild
> When war mongering governments like US, Russia use Cloudflare for war
> propaganda websites that enable their wars and killings of lots and lots of
> people

Do you have a source for that?

~~~
zzzcpan
I do and many. Here's one example I remember off the top of my head of a
Russian war propaganda website hosted by Cloudflare
[https://rusvesna.su/](https://rusvesna.su/) and it's much worse than those
mass shootings glorifications. Cloudflare definitely received complaints, but
no action. Because why would they actually care about people dying if it
doesn't serve their political agenda?

------
yosamino
I am really sick of the high horse that this company thinks they are on
because of their pseudo-neutrality.

What should normally happen if you come across some criminal or reprensible
content, is that it's possible to figure out who owns the IP space,and if it's
not already a criminal organisation decide to aid the ISP in running a
reputable business and send them an abuse notice. This has the effect that
_bad_ actors need to move to _bad_ networks, which you can quarantine at your
own network boundary - I get to make a decision as private citizen on what is
allowed on my network.

That is a process that works.

Cloudflare obfuscates the real IP space, which means that the _best_ outcome I
can achieve from them is that they will _forward_ my abuse complaint to
possibly the mob, which is not a move I am willing to make.

In this way they are not just a DDOS protection service, they are business
protection for criminals. And because of their size and because they allow
them to hide behind their IPs it makes it impossible for me to make a private
decision about what to not allow on my networks.

If they are so happy about hosting the vomit that the internet has to offer,
why not assign an IP block to the easily identifiable garbage that exists.

------
Endy
Well, they're at least making their position clear here. They are not a
government or a public forum. As such, they can decide who and what they will
support on the internet. Can't argue with their decision on that point.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Does CF enjoy publisher protections for the content that moves through their
servers? Because if they do, and they “curate” opinions they don’t like,
that’s an issue.

------
Causality1
Cloudflare happily provides hosting for al-Shabab, Hamas, the Taliban, the
PLF, the PKK, al-Quds Brigades, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. They don't
give one good God-damn about hatred or murder; they care about negative media
attention affecting their bottom line. Not that they're not entitled to only
care about that, but pretending it's any other reason makes them liars and
hypocrites.

------
phyzome
My only concern here is that they're giving less than a day's notice, which is
really uncalled for, and shows a certain lack of professionalism.

(Their service terms
[https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/](https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/) allow
them to do this, but that doesn't make it a smart idea.)

------
mikedilger
This is a very complex situation and a lot of factors need to be considered.
Everyone seems keenly aware that 8chan was a place where hateful ideologies
could fester and spread, and nobody wants that. But it seems few people are
aware of the fact that cutting people off from society usually results in
feelings of social rejection that drive people deeper into isolation,
bitterness and hatred. Being socially rejected, or believing such, is fairly
strongly coorelated with mass murderer psychology.[1][2] This action could
actually have the opposite effect of what was intended.

There is also an effect similar to martyrdom where whenever some subgroup of
society is mistreated they gain in power. Many see being cut-off as over-the-
top and thus a mistreatment, irrespective of the fact that the group has a
clearly evil ideology. There is a risk this action will embolden their cause,
as a natural instinct to protect the mistreated and come to the defense of the
underdog kicks in. Read some of the other comments and you'll see what I mean.
This comment itself is admittedly partially motivated by my instinct to come
to the defense of the mistreated (granted the obviousness that the murdered
and their families are clearly the most mistreated).

Like I said, this is complicated. The simple ideological answers are simply
not good enough.

So the hard question is this: how do you prevent the spread of their ideology
without excising them from (online) society? I believe it is possible, but it
is going to take a more nuanced approach going forward. We could start by not
labelling people as racists or white supremacists. We should reserve these
labels for actions, words and ideologies, not people. Attack the ideas, not
the people. Deplatform (censor) the posts (if you control the platform), don't
ban the accounts. Throttle accounts of repeat abusers as necessary. And always
be willing to talk.

BTW I always feel queasy posting things like this to HN because I know some
people will utterly reject me and downvote me, but I feel this point is just
too important.

[1] Katherine Newman, [https://www.livescience.com/21787-predicting-mass-
shootings....](https://www.livescience.com/21787-predicting-mass-
shootings.html) [2] James Knoll,
[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/saving-
normal/201405...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/saving-
normal/201405/the-mind-the-mass-murderer)

------
thinkingkong
Its important that a company distances themselves from this type of behaviour
but even slightly spinning it as action against something is disingenuous at
best. So much more needs to happen to really address these problems and Im
fairly confident a cdn isnt the make or break for shootings in America.

------
ratsmack
Like I stated here[1], it seems a bit hypocritical for them to cancel service
to 8chan when some of the large sites have been complicit also.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20607635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20607635)

------
tgsovlerkhgsel
So Cloudflare went from hosting everything that's not illegal, to kicking
people out who claim that Cloudflare supports their ideology, to kicking
people out with less than a day's notice on a Sunday if a forum attracts user-
generated content that Cloudflare doesn't like - and the rules for content
that they don't tolerate may change on similarly short notice with no warning
before they decide to terminate your account (most likely based on "has enough
media outrage happened").

Also, they stated that they were "cooperating around monitoring potential hate
sites on our network", which makes me wonder what kind of monitoring we're
talking about here, and whether and where else they share traffic that they're
proxying.

Regardless of what you think about 8chan (I'm not familiar with the site but
there seems to be consensus that it's a cesspool), these points are
interesting to note.

~~~
robertcope
Definitely a bit of a shock to me. I really like Cloudflare. But I'm not sure
I really like this move.

~~~
yesco
Personally, I'm both shocked and disappointed over the support people in this
thread are giving to Cloudflare over this. This is both ridiculous and
unprofessional.

------
INTPenis
Same old story. Silence them instead of listening to them, speaking to them,
learning from them.

You can learn from a baby. Silencing people leads nowhere.

~~~
ausbah
What could one possibly have to learn from these right wing extremism (and
many other such groups)? The ideas, beliefs, and everything else they promote
has been consistently been established as nothing but baseless drivel. Some
ideas shouldn't be endlessly debated, they should be pushed out of the
discussion and prevented from having their toxic ideas spread.

------
fortran77
I'm not a fan of 8chan, but if the person posted his manifesto to Hacker News,
would hacker news have been shut down?

------
sarcasmatwork
Coudflare CEO retracts what he said he would not do again:

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/cloudflares-
ceo-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/cloudflares-ceo-has-a-
plan-to-never-censor-hate-speech-again/)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/technology/8chan-
cloudfla...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/technology/8chan-cloudflare-
el-paso.html)

------
dmix
> the suspected terrorist gunman appears to have been inspired by the forum
> website known as 8chan

Is this because he posted his manifesto on 8chan or other sources point to
8chan as the source of his extremism?

------
peterhadlaw
"I promise I wont' do it again" \- Guy who does it again.

------
cmurf
FBI's Phoenix field office in May of this year, published a memo that asserts
and discusses "anti-government, identity base, and fringe political conspiracy
theories very likely motivate some domestic extremists to commit criminal or
violent activity"

And in its appendix it lists QAnon as one such fringe political conspiracy
theories.

[https://www.scribd.com/document/420379775/FBI-Conspiracy-
The...](https://www.scribd.com/document/420379775/FBI-Conspiracy-Theory-
Redacted#fullscreen&from_embed)

(page 8)

So what's Twitter going to do when people tweet or retweet anti-government,
identity based, fringe conspiracy theories or theorists, given the FBI
considers at the very least that such things are very likely to motivate
domestic terrorism? And are only heads of state going to be allowed to do
that?

Q and movement followers, having moved to 8chan because 4chan was compromised,
surely will consider the FBI memo, Cloudfare's decision, just move evidence of
"deep state" fighting back. In the outlook section of the FBI report, it
expects these conspiracy theories to spread, and foster more violence, leading
up to the 2020 election.

There are other groups listed in the FBI report. 8chan isn't one of them. But
the FBI field office in Nevada issued a search warrant for 8chan in Reno
regarding the Poway Synagogue shooting.

------
lsllc
Given:

[https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2019/08/04/the-
el-p...](https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2019/08/04/the-el-paso-
shooting-and-the-gamification-of-terror/)

I believe Cloudflare's action is necessary to try to stem the tide here.
Sometimes ... just sometimes the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the
many.

------
cfv
Easy way out literally noone in the US wants or will support:

Get a legal definition of well regulated militia, get it to not map to the
national guard or some homebred terrorist group via some ritual like the
pledge or whatever, and police the crap out of the gun sales to groups outside
this definition.

By the Constitution's own legitimacy it's the government's choice to forego
this control under those terms, and it musts be the government's choice to
tighten this control up.

Why is it legal for me to own an elephant gun but illegal to strap it to a
drone? For this exact reason: Definitions were established, and strapping guns
to drones was deemed a dick move.

Same here, define legitimate civillian militias and take all the guns off the
hands of every other random guy.

Couple years after that _maybe_ we could start having the discussion of why
you need armed death squads on your home turf but hey at least the ease of
access for the general public is out, and with it a large part of the reason
why the US os the only place where this happens day in and day out.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
>Why is it legal for me to own an elephant gun but illegal to strap it to a
drone?

It's not federally illegal to attach firearms to drones, so long as you do so
within FAA guidelines for flying self-built vehicles low to the ground on your
own property.

------
nickpsecurity
" they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness _has caused
multiple tragic deaths_."

What insane nonsense. Whatever motivates mass murderers caused the deaths, not
where they posted. They get rewarded with tons of attention from all forms of
media, too. Just kill a minimum number of people to get the popularity in the
corporate and social media they otherwise wouldn't ever earn. They revel in
it. 8chan disappearing doesn't change that.

I've always favored all the mass media agreeing to not even mention the
killers names, achievements, etc in favor of just belittling or dismissing
them. Focus on everyone else in the tragedy instead. Make sure the abusers or
killers get nothing out of it. Meanwhile, they'll get plenty across the media
with Cloudfare getting some good PR not supporting one of the sites a few
wrote on. My prediction: more people will do mass killings since this wasn't a
causal factor or even help stop them.

~~~
internet_user
That's an unstable equilibrium.

Good luck thought policing thousands upon thousands of journalists, each of
them has an incentive to defect and get more eye balls that competition, and
make more money and name for themselves.

Never going to happen, until we have full blown censorship and you only read
double-plus good happy time stories.

Is that what you really want?

~~~
nickpsecurity
"Good luck thought policing thousands upon thousands of journalists"

Except you're ignoring the fact that the corporate media already does that. It
seems to work well enough, too. It helps that "journalists" are mostly a thing
of the past with today's reporters often just doing the minimum to check
things when they're not just repeating whatever the current fad is. That's
extremely popular, too. Most stories are whatever people in target demographic
are either what people want to say yes to or hate on. We're already there.

~~~
internet_user
Except they seem to be fanning the fire instead of supressing.

It's all about eyeballs.

------
anonu
Very well written and cogent post. But as they point out, the internet is
designed to be open and free. And this type of hateful content will still have
a platform. There's sadly nothing that can be done about that. You can always
suppress and control speech, but the people who want to hear it will also
always find a way to seek it out.

~~~
devmunchies
Why should we censor hateful speech? Do you mean violent speech? Whenever I
come across hateful speech I usually chuckle, roll my eyes, and move on.

~~~
i_am_nomad
Which is the response that is arguably the most mature and best for society.
Unfortunately, not everyone reacts that way.

------
abtinf
> Cloudflare is not a government... [we do not have] the political legitimacy
> to make determinations on what content is good and bad... Questions around
> content are real societal issues that need politically legitimate solutions.
> We will continue to engage with lawmakers around the world as they set the
> boundaries of what is acceptable in their countries through due process of
> law. And we will comply with those boundaries when and where they are set.

This is a horrifying and immoral position to take. _Governments_ are the
entities that have no legitimacy to restrict speech or "make determinations on
what content is good and bad". Man requires free speech because the freedom to
think is essential to man's existence. The role of government is to protect
man's rights so that he may think, evaluate ideas, and live a productive life.

~~~
sailfast
I don’t disagree in principle, but historically speaking that has not
typically been the role of governments.

------
guhcampos
I'm a strong defendant of Internet freedom, but before attacking Cloudflare on
this one, let's please read this one-paragraph Wikipedia article:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

------
Cakez0r
Why can't law enforcement take a more active role in policing this site rather
than leaving it to corporations? It's a known catalyst of terrorism at this
point, so they know exactly where to look and surely have the resources to
investigate suspicious posters.

Disappointingly, the last time an incident like this happened, an FBI agent
accidentally revealed himself to be actively fuelling the fire by
participating in a smear campaign against Russia
([https://ceinquiry.wordpress.com/2019/06/17/fbi-8chan/](https://ceinquiry.wordpress.com/2019/06/17/fbi-8chan/)).
Looks like law enforcement are watching, but are just making problems worse?
Baffling.

------
FemmeAndroid
This is great news.

There will be lots of people who are frustrated by this. They may say that
Cloudflare shouldn't remove content unless they are legally required. Or that
a CDN like Cloudflare is a platform layer, deep in the stack, and that it
shouldn't be making decisions based on content. That they are a essentially a
utility, and that they should provide the the same service to everyone.

But at the end of the day, companies are run by people. And those people
_should_ consider the positive and negative concequences of the services they
provide. It is the moral thing to do. It is the right thing to do. It is the
courageous thing to do.

That doesn't mean they must block every potentially bad actor. And they don't
need to block based explicitly on content. Here, the line was drawn at
"platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are
lawless by design." But when situations arise that cause decision makers at an
organization to re-consider providing their services to their customers, they
should take that opportunity to re-evaluate. They should ask, "Do we want to
be hosting this?"

In this case, they said "No."

Maybe some other customers will leave, afraid of being kicked off next. They
should take that into account. If you think your service is sufficiently like
8Chan, you should probably leave Cloudflare. Or if you think Cloudflare's
decision was arbitrary and that worries you, you should leave.

But maybe others will be happy that their CDN doesn't need to be associated
with hosting 8Chan's content. I know I feel that way.

Maybe the goodwill you receive will lead to more financial success. But you'll
probably never know. In all likelihood, so long as your customers aren't
leaving in droves after you kick someone off your platform, you'll never know
if the decision was the right financial decision.

You'll probably never know if it was a net positive or negative on your
balance sheet. But you might sleep better at night. And maybe sites that
enable the propagate hate will find it a little bit harder to survive. And I
think that's great.

~~~
madamelic
>That doesn't mean they must block every potentially bad actor.

Unfortunately obligatory "I don't support 8chan".

I dislike this idea that people can stomp their feet and demand CloudFlare
kick off "bad actors".

Who is to say the bad actor of tomorrow won't be the "good actor" of today.
CloudFlare and other internet utilities should remain apolitical tools that
leave law enforcement to law enforcement (even that is a slippery slope, but
I'd much prefer an open internet that isn't open to individual whims of what
is right and wrong)

~~~
FemmeAndroid
It's for each privately controlled platform to decide.

If you want tools that are open for everyone, create a public utility that
must comply with the first amendment.

~~~
madamelic
>It's for each privately controlled platform to decide.

Fair enough. People are lame and should just admit what they actually are (not
apolitical) rather than hyping themselves up as such.

Humans suck, hah.

------
dbg31415
I'd rather companies did this, than governments.

Like how some companies won't service porn-related ventures.

It's fine if a company doesn't want to make their money doing this, but it
shouldn't just be, "Oh something bad happened... time to react..." They should
take philosophic stances, "I don't want to help with un-moderated user
content. Show me your moderation policy and plan, and then we can do
business..."

What bugs me is that the Cloudflare CEO flip-flopped on this like 8 times.
They have no coherent policy, other than, "Don't give us bad press before our
IPO." Shitty.

------
namelosw
In China, there would be no 8Chan at all because if any post is related to
massive shooting (probably not shooting because it's not that achievable in
China, you get the idea), the post will be arrested and the website will be
taken down immediately, and the website owner will be seriously questioned.

But I guess that's not what you want.

On one hand, this seems to be a praiseworthy deed, and they took all the
credit. On the other hand, it shows corporations are wielding too much power,
which probably they can wielding it to other factions they don't like.

------
King-Aaron
A lot of not-so-subtle support for 8chan leaking into this thread.

Cloudfare aren't a government. They aren't a democracy. I don't know why some
people seem to think they should act any differently.

If you own a notice board in the real world, and someone put something
horrible on it, you would take it down. This is no different.

~~~
ReptileMan
They are utility though. Have you thought about that people support
neutrality/common carrier style behavior with 8chan existing being the
acceptable price to pay and not 8 chan itself?

~~~
481092
They host and indirectly disseminate media, just like a news network. Do you
expect Fox or CNN to host views they don't find acceptable? If we're going to
accept that biased media is legal (news networks) then biased media is legal
(Cloudflare), although you'd have a harder time making a case of bias against
Cloudflare in comparison to the former.

~~~
berryfarm
Fox and CNN are indeed liable for what they display because they are
publishers. They control the content.

That's kind of the point.

Cloudflare and social media co's naturally want to be protected as a platform.
If they start controlling the content in an ad hoc it's a lot harder for them
to claim that.

------
raxxorrax
Really bad on you cloudflare. I did't visit the chans since what feels like a
lifetime and probably don't approve of the content at hand (getting worse
since 200x...), but that isn't the topic here. Are you dropping Facebook as a
customer if you find objectionable content? Probably not.

And while I believe you wouldn't do that randomly to other customers, I won't
recommend your sevice again. It is just not your decision to make and pretty
much the exact opposite that I require from a service like yours.

------
55555
Why do they keep mentioning the shooting in Dayton, Ohio? At this point in
time, the Dayton shooting seems to be a completely unrelated incident with no
ties to politics.

------
kaolti
Quick question for everyone who's on board with this.

Do we actually KNOW that banning "hate speech" results in less hateful actions
in the short and long term as well?

I'll wait.

~~~
lightbyte
Actually yes, it has been shown effective:

[http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-
hate.pdf](http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf)

>We find that the ban worked for Reddit. More accounts than expected
discontinued using the site; those that stayed drastically decreased their
hate speech usage—by at least 80%. Though many subreddits saw an influx of
r/fatpeoplehate andr/CoonTown “migrants,” those subreddits saw no significant
changes in hate speech usage. In other words,other subreddits did not inherit
the problem. We conclude by reflecting on the apparent success of the
ban,discussing implications for online moderation, Reddit and internet
communities more broadly

~~~
kaolti
You think the platform from which hate is banned is a wide enough context to
judge success?

I guess if you ban hate speech on reddit you will be successful on reddit. Do
we think people who are banned take up religion and become good samaritans?

------
freedomben
Looks like "the competitor" mentioned in the article is "BitMitigate":
[https://bitmitigate.com](https://bitmitigate.com) [1]

[1]: [https://www.geekwire.com/2017/seattles-bitmitigate-now-
prote...](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/seattles-bitmitigate-now-protecting-
pro-nazi-site-daily-stormer-web-attacks/)

------
sschueller
However Walmart will keep selling weapons and ammo.

------
Jyaif
What's happening is that 8chan is indirectly costing Cloudflare money by
hurting their brand and their employees' morale. Rather than refusing sketchy
clients, companies should factor these costs in their pricing. Conversely,
universally loved entities (e.g. Greenpeace) should be be offered lower
prices.

This would create an incentive for companies to be better.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
8Chan announces downtime on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/1158207781427695616](https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/1158207781427695616)
And 8Chan is back online: [https://8ch.net/](https://8ch.net/)

------
FDSGSG
So uh, why is everyone focusing on cloudflare?

If you really want to take down 8chan, why not reach out to their colo
provider? [https://www.digitalrealty.com/data-centers/san-
francisco/200...](https://www.digitalrealty.com/data-centers/san-
francisco/200-paul-ave-san-francisco-ca)

------
theshadowknows
Sorry but a company saying they won’t put up with your bullshit is not in any
way censorship. If a company hates puppies and they stop hosting sites with
puppies that’s also not censorship. Go learn how to build your own service and
put your bullshit there. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
8chan exorcised their freedom of speech, and now there are albeit small
consequences. That’s how the system is supposed to work.

People inevitably trot out counter examples that they believe will “own” my
“libtard” views like the whole bakery thing. Should the bakery have had to
make the cake for the gay customers? Nope. Their a business and can refuse
service for whatever reason. Turns out there were some legal things involved.
Guess what. Consequences.

We have a tenuous and often brittle social contract. The social contract
decides what is and what isn’t ok. And once you break the contract there are
often consequences. That’s not censorship. That’s existing in a society.
Companies and people that don’t like those consequences are free to exit this
society and begin their own at any time. But guess what. There’s consequences
to that, too. The only real question is if they can be adults about it and
accept those consequences. And in most cases they can’t.

~~~
singularity2001
Once a service becomes a commodity it should be treated as public service an
be subjected to free speech laws. There are even interesting cases in the US
promoting this ruling:

Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), was a case decided by the United States
Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be
used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk,
even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court
based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth
Amendment.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama)

"Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his
advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do
his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of
those who use it."

"sooner than later they will change their definition of morality and we all
gonna pay with our freedom"

------
_bxg1
And what about the websites that Cloudflare's Project Galileo protects
_against_ certain governments' Rule of Law? Presumably they aren't shutting
that project down, which means they're still making arbitrary judgement calls
about _which_ Rules of Law are legitimate and which aren't.

------
xxxpupugo
This is a reasonable move for cloudflare. I can see how keep hosting this
website will bring it trouble in the future.

------
commandlinefan
Remember when we used to believe that "the internet interprets censorship as
damage and routes around it?"

------
oikos
You can't ban language because some use it to lie. The censorship idea has
eerie cumulative logic built in. Today we ban a site, tomorrow a race. I'd
also like to point out that in the context of declining economies the
structures that have ensured democratic processes are inevitably declining
with it.

------
batat
A lot of the plot, but my guess the main reason is upcoming Cloudflare IPO[1].
Сan't blame them for for doing that.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/cloudflare-plans-to-ipo-
in-s...](https://www.businessinsider.com/cloudflare-plans-to-ipo-in-
september-2019-7)

------
dumbDumbs
I have opinions on this topic, but they are unconventional and so almost no
one is going to align with or find resonance in the ideas I'd express.

Anyway, when it comes to online communities, almost no one does it right, and
so not only is the consensus wrong, but so are all known examples.

------
niknetniko
And yet: [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cloudflare-cybersecurity-
terr...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cloudflare-cybersecurity-terrorist-
groups_n_5c127778e4b0835fe3277f2f)

------
jijji
it seems like a marketing message about cloudflare... I'm sure most people
don't know what "cloudflare" is, how it relates to a message board like
"8chan", and most people don't even know what 8chan is, and some people
probably know more about 8chan than cloudflare. It would be like Firestone
issuing a report saying they are not going to be selling tires to the guy that
drove the car to commit the violence, because if they didnt sell him the
tires, he wouldnt be able to drive to the mall to commit the violence... when
in reality, this is just a marketing message for Firestone about selling
tires.

------
quietthrow
How come Twitter is not is trouble for enabling (or being A loudspeaker for)
people that riles up other people, fuels their fire and so on.

Trying to understand this from a ethics and philosophical perspective.
Appreciate your comments.

~~~
tedivm
People are constantly calling out Twitter and Jack Dorsey for the horrible
aspects of the platform.

------
ilaksh
A big issue is that we are seeing enthusiasm for censorship. So I hope that
people will do some research into the history and current use of censorship.

The other difficult problem is that people think that their country is an
exception to all other countries and history with regards to censorship and
everything else.

One other issue: corporations that have as much or more centralized power as
governments. In line with the rest of my comment, one reason this is
problematic is because it is much easier for governments to assert control
over individual companies. And those policies (sometimes good or sometimes
very bad) affect masses of people.

It really seems to me that we are moving towards a more homogeneous global
political system that honestly appears to be modeled after the Chinese one and
will probably be controlled from there.

------
Fjolsvith
For effective gun control, there needs to be effective border control.

------
mehrdadn
Why is CloudFlare having to deal with this rather than their ISP?

~~~
seanieb
Also the argument that Cloudflare is just a network provider is bunk. It works
on people who think server less computing doesn't use servers. CF uses servers
that store files, for minutes hours, days weeks at a time and serves them
directly to the browser. The same as any web server.

------
nikolay
I am disappointed by Cloudflare. They are involving themselves in politics
like any other company. Let authorities do their job, don't jump in and get
involved. Please!

------
cpr
Nearly every mass killer in the last 10 years has posted an angry rant on
Facebook or Twitter.

A couple _may_ have posted on 8chan.

Guess which platform is being criticized for allowing hate?

------
lurchpop
Isn’t this all predicated on a manifesto that surfaced before the dust even
settled? Also saw reports the manifesto was a hoax. Everyone needs to slow the
hell down.

~~~
spaginal
Essentially. Mass shootings have turned into a political spectacle at this
point. It is it’s own version of a left versus right blood sport now, where
everyone is quick to keep a score.

The media and entertainment industries specifically, since they own the eyes
and ears of America, want to desperately pin every shooting on white
conservatives. Any iota of evidence, verified or not, will get blasted into
the aether as a boastful victory dance. Then they blast it 24/7 and glamorize
it, and we get more copycats looking for desperate attention being further
fueled by it.

Case in point, look how the media handled the shooter that was a Bernie
supporter. Violence, compelled by a difference set of hateful ideas and
language, but it was given a day or two and buried. No knee jerk reactions, no
24/7 parade of glorification and filth, just buried.

It’s rather perverse and grotesque.

------
thinkingemote
I'd like to see eastdakotas many comments on HN saying "this will never happen
again" next to whatever he will be saying to justify this one.

------
sidcool
Check the Disqus comments on the article. You will quickly realize the problem
is way more than what it appears to be. Some of it is here as well...

------
jaimex2
I think it would be fitting if 8chan moved to radwareddoscloud.com which is
the NRA's cloud protection service.

------
rollinDyno
Why does Cloudflare feel the need to take action here? Only a minority believe
that 8chan is the culprit in creating these gunmen, and fewer people have
called for Cloudflare specifically to shutdown 8chan.

By staying idle the conversation would've moved onto gun control, but now
they're going to make this round of shootings all about online community
policy which IMHO is a futile scapegoat.

~~~
Lazare
See here:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/04/three-m...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/04/three-
mass-shootings-this-year-began-with-hateful-screed-chan-its-founder-calls-it-
terrorist-refuge-plain-sight/)

There is an article in the Washington Post about how they're not taking
action, and quotes from activists about how they need to take action. Their
general counsel had to answer questions from a journalist (on a weekend!)
about whether they were taking action. That constitutes _significant_
pressure.

Further, as the article helpfully mentions, they took action before. After you
take action once, a failure to take action a second time stops being a
principled "we never take action", and starts being, at least partially, a
defence of the target. If you drop the Daily Stormer but not 8chan, you're
saying, implicitly, that 8chan is not as bad as the Daily Stormer.

This may or may not be true, but it's absolutely not a discussion a company
wants to have in the national media in the context of the aftermath of a mass
shooting.

> By staying idle

Arguably that was never an option. Today, it's _absolutely_ not an option.

~~~
rollinDyno
I see, they've put themselves in a tough position indeed. I'm still sorry the
conversation have gone this way.

------
ronanyeah
For the sake of posterity I would like to point out that 8chan is also the
website that Qanon posts on.

------
ai_ja_nai
Total garbage statements: being a huge ISP doesn't mean using that power to
moderate the Internet

------
kaolti
Hey! You're not allowed to say those magic words! - Brilliant, I completely
changed my mind now.

------
Fjolsvith
1428 comments and no one points out that the QAnon movement used 8chan for
communications.

------
pdkl95
> we are terminating 8chan as a customer

Probably a good idea, if only to send the message that there is a limit to how
much garbage you can allow people to dump on your site before the neighbors
decide to do whatever it takes stop the terrible smell.

> The Rule of Law requires policies be transparent and consistent.

That's great! Most tech companies seem to prefer the Rule of Men where they
try to fix problems behind the scenes with obscured methods and inconsistent
(and often arbitrary) policies.

> Cloudflare is not a government.

While technically true, as your control of infrastructure approaches monopoly,
you tend to acquire more and more government-like traits. At a functional
level, "is a government" is not a Boolean value.

> that does not give us the political legitimacy to make determinations on
> what content is good and bad

That's true, but your success in the market ("a result of that, a huge portion
of the Internet now sits behind our network") gives you a lot of _power_ to
make that kind of determination. If that power isn't managed carefully (e.g.
with a consistent and transparent Rule of Law), it is easy to accidentally use
that power in dangerous or irresponsible ways. The fact that you're even
talking about a Rule of Law means you're already acting far more responsibly
than most big tech companies.

> We will ... engage with lawmakers ... as _they_ set the boundaries of what
> is acceptable ... through _[their]_ due process of law. And we will comply
> with those boundaries when and where they are set.

(I'm interpreting "[their] due process of law" as referring to the lawmaker's
process, not something implemented internal to Cloudflare. If this is
incorrect, ignore this section)

Engaging with lawmakers (and other relevant organizations) is incredibly
important. I would expect any company that wants to act lawfully to comply
with legislated regulations. It is also important to realize that governments
are often slow. You cannot simply abdicate responsibility to the government
when you _de facto_ have significant power over and involvement with a
problem.

> We ... have an obligation to help propose solutions

Yes, proposing solutions is part of that obligation. If you really are
concerned with creating Rule of Law, then you also have to act in ways
consistent with that goal. If you're going beyond the limits of an
uninvolved/neutral "common carrier" and terminating a customer for reasons
unrelated to the technical services you provide, you need to make sure you
_have_ and _follow_ your own "due process", while the lawmaker's solution is
still pending and/or incomplete.

> What's hard is defining the policy that we can enforce transparently and
> consistently going forward.

I agree that this is very hard. It's also an obligation you accepted when you
decided to take responsibility (and profits) for a large piece of
infrastructure that many people now rely on. This is where transparency can
help a _lot_ ; it's a lot easier to ask for forgiveness for a mistake if you
have a reputation of openly explaining your reasoning.

------
HNthrow22
Worth noting cloudflare leadership has been fighting this war for years and
this is just a small battle.

Can you tell us when @Cloudflare will be holding its next "How to Protect Nazi
Extremists" workshop? You guys seem to be the experts. 10:25 AM - 14 Aug 2017

The recent string of violence has forced their hand here.

[https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/1124091916520497153](https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/1124091916520497153)

[https://twitter.com/klarajk/status/1122625367490146304](https://twitter.com/klarajk/status/1122625367490146304)

[https://twitter.com/Riverseeker/status/1122612031234945024](https://twitter.com/Riverseeker/status/1122612031234945024)

[https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1123592717341200384](https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1123592717341200384)

[https://twitter.com/NathanBLawrence/status/10562868097418199...](https://twitter.com/NathanBLawrence/status/10562868097418199..).

[https://twitter.com/NJDemocrat/status/897147112273608705](https://twitter.com/NJDemocrat/status/897147112273608705)

[https://twitter.com/InvestMib/status/1123308004873515015](https://twitter.com/InvestMib/status/1123308004873515015)

[https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1124415034610860033](https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1124415034610860033)

------
vernie
Tech people seem to get the most worked up when someone shushes them.

------
Diti
Seeing a service censoring a morally-bad community makes me feel sad. How is
the executive power (police, intelligence) supposed to monitor extremists if
they become forced to move to encrypted, censorship-resistant chats outside of
the internet?

------
lone-commenter
I think this paragraph is worth the article:

 _We continue to feel incredibly uncomfortable about playing the role of
content arbiter and do not plan to exercise it often. Some have wrongly
speculated this is due to some conception of the United States ' First
Amendment. That is incorrect. First, we are a private company and not bound by
the First Amendment. Second, the vast majority of our customers, and more than
50% of our revenue, comes from outside the United States where the First
Amendment and similarly libertarian freedom of speech protections do not
apply. The only relevance of the First Amendment in this case and others is
that it allows us to choose who we do and do not do business with; it does not
obligate us to do business with everyone._

------
abootstrapper
It's ridiculous that this is remotely controversial. "Freedom of speech?" How
about the freedom to not obligatorily aid the organizing of white supremacist
hate groups? Slippery slope's ass.

------
huffmsa
So rather than quietly update their language to allow for better analysis and
detection of malignant content by 3rd parties, they're pushing the problem
into the darker corners of the internet.

Not a great plan.

------
keymone
Good riddance. Everybody who willingly or not provides platform for hate
speech is an accomplice. I hope to see the day they will be punished same as
the guy that pulled the trigger.

------
saargrin
why not disconnect facebook too,they've been a platform for quite a number of
these

------
tus88
OK, but where does it stop now?

------
jrochkind1
> The unresolved question is how should the law deal with platforms that
> ignore or actively thwart the Rule of Law? That's closer to the situation we
> have seen with the Daily Stormer and 8chan. They are lawless platforms.

This doesn't make a lot of sense. They are suggesting that it's the fact that
8chan is _unmoderated_ that is a problem, and they'll similarly refuse service
to any unmoderated discussion platform?

I actually totally approve of them refusing 8chan as a customer.

I don't think this is really the reason, or a good reason. Articulating the
real/good reason is hard. I'm not sure I can do it either.

But when they say "The Rule of Law requires policies be transparent and
consistent" \-- that obligation is actually incumbent upon THEM, cloudflare.
What is their own transparent and consistent policy that led to this? The
_implication_ is that... any unmoderated discussion forum would be banned, but
they don't go out and say it, which isn't quite "transparent".

And I don't think they really mean that (so it's not "consistent" either). An
unmoderated discussion forum that _wasn 't_ being used to egg on mass murder,
they probably wouldn't ban. I think the possible "consistent" approach here
would be simply admitting that they dont' want as customers sites whose owners
seem to have no problem with them being used to egg on mass murder.

As they said in another statement quoted by media, a site that has "repeatedly
proven itself to be a cesspool of hate." This is more honest, and really no
less vague, than dancing around talking about "actively thwarting the Rule of
Law" (I really don't know what that means; I'm not sure you can really
"actively thwart the rule of law" without being in the government). And I
personally agree it is a fine reason to refuse someone as a customer, that
they've repeatedly proven themselves to be a cesspool of hate.

They are correct that the first ammendment in fact gives them the right to
refuse as customers entities whose actions they find abhorent and whose
business they don't wish to aid. The principle of "transparent and consistent"
requires them to try harder than they are to explain what their standards are
in an honest way. (It can be a process, I'm not totally sure what they should
be either, even though I totally support refusing 8chan as a customer).

I think calling an unmoderated discussion forum "actively thwarting the Rule
of Law" (in all caps nonetheless!), then calling for government discipline of
such, is something you gotta back up with more reasoning than they did here,
and is not in fact necessary for them to justify denying service to 8chan.
They're trying to get out of actually explaining their reasoning/motivation
(what is required for THEM to be "consistent and transparent") by hand-waving
about all-capitals Rule of Law.

------
adultSwim
This should not have taken years, and many deaths.

Don't host fascists. Don't do business with nazis.

~~~
LocalH
Don't also use the words "fascist" and "Nazi" to shut down those who aren't
really either, but who you disagree with strongly.

------
jamisteven
Yea, that ought to do it.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
Now 8ch.net is down.

------
codedokode
American logic: let's ban websites, not army-grade weapon.

------
Taylor_OD
Feels like trying to treat symptoms rather than the illness...

------
denkmoon
That'll fix'er.

------
roshanravan
so much for being pro-NetNeutrality

------
romanovcode
Nice PR

------
_lessthan0
That site supported a Nazi in his efforts to highten his terrorist attack.

------
bouncycastle
It's like the paper mill refusing to sell paper!

------
cybersnowflake
I love how everybody is having a cow over a website where the rhetoric isn't
really all that much worse than a 'mainstream' site like twitter. For example
in twitter you can find guys who call for children to be fed into wood
chippers because they wear Maga hats and hundreds/thousands of people
including corporate accounts like Burger King cheering assaulting people. And
they almost all receive absolutely no punishment. And not a single one of all
the sensitive bearded men pouring their hearts out in righteous fury at 8chan
here seem to care. And I'm pretty sure a ton of killers use twitter.

When I was a child I used to think the ideals of freedom of expression were
ingrained in this society. But apparently all it takes is the MSM running a
few hitpieces and the 'intellectuals' are all 'lol 1st Amendment technically
applying to government means it is not only permitted but great that all
censorship is now offloaded to megacorporate oligarchies! fuck free speech!'

~~~
dijit
I'm not an 8chan user, in fact, I am not a fan of the _chans_.

I'm also not a fan of Twitter, and for similar underlying reasons.

On the _chans_ it feels like everything is a joke of a joke, you're not 100%
able to tell if someone is saying something intentionally stupid/rude to
elicit a response. Coupled with the anonymous nature of the platform, and you
can assume that it's one or two people trolling a thread and put it out of
your mind. Because of that, you end up with the contra of mainstream opinion.
And, yeah, it might have the ability to galvanise and individual (both for and
against the rhetoric, because many people reject, powerfully, that kind of
rhetoric and become champions of the other side).

I find the exact opposite is true of twitter. Instead of assuming it's one or
two people who are trolling with the extreme of a mainstream opinion, it's
-obviously- a mob, many people with verified badges are quick to jump on
people for "wrongthink" and are exceedingly happy to extol their virtues and
denounce the non-virtuous. Often they get so reinforced by their following
that they become cancerous to the cause and have the same effect as the
4channers and 8channers (causing people to be galvanised for, and against
their cause).

I see twitter and 4/8chan as two sides of the same coin, causing division in
society.

~~~
have_faith
Not everything on the chans is a joke which is why they like to pretend that
it is. It's basic obfuscation. Very often, a long running joke will pick up
genuine ardent supporters and the original joke becomes lost or forgotten.
It's a peculiar process to watch.

The chans relationship with social media like Twitter is like Agent Smith is
to Neo, a balancing of the equation. Twitter for instance has become so
emotionally charged and blood hungry that any opposition to the rhetoric has
become equally as charged. It's very dangerous when full-time contrarians
become martyrs.

Like yourself, I just try and keep my distance from it all and observe from a
distance.

------
thatoneuser
"It does nothing to address why portions of the population feel so
disenchanted they turn to hate."

To me this seems like the broader context that's necessary to actually
decrease hate and hate related attacks. These are real people online posting
things that really express their feelings about society. A ton of trolling
too, of course. But these people aren't just going to go away or get healthy.

Maybe censorship is a good measure to reduce attacks, as it's harder for these
individuals to organize and promote each other to act. But then again maybe
this response is just the obvious thing corporate entities have to do to wipe
their hands of it while we further decentralize hate and make it harder to
monitor.

I don't know. I don't have the data and I'm certainly not advocating anything
nor saying somethings bad. To me the conversation just doesn't intuitively
lead me to believe that were attacking the right problem.

------
pecom1991
Rice Purity Test is one of its time enduring survey that incorporates
inquiries on different parts of life, for example, medications, indecencies,
and violations.

[https://eduflex.info/rice-purity-test/](https://eduflex.info/rice-purity-
test/)

------
blacklight86
What kind of free speech are we exactly advocating here? The freedom to spread
cheap hate, fake news and bigotry against minorities? I'm sorry but moderating
such offenses isn't a limitation to free speech. For the same reason why, if
you start shouting nig __or monkey to black people in a shopping mall, the
police is likely to intervene and take you away - and I don 't think that any
sane person would argue that they're violating your freedom of speech. Popper
taught us that we can't be tolerant towards intolerants, if we really want to
protect our tolerant rule of law.

You can still have freedom of speech while implementing moderation to make
sure that hate speech, bigotry and fake news don't spread - because if those
things spread then they leak into the real world as death. 8chan has been shut
down not only because it hosted hate communities, but because it refused to
apply any moderation there.

However, the problem is not 8chan alone. It's good to shut down websites where
hate speech proliferates without constraints, but a couple of days or weeks
later new *chan websites are likely to pop up to replace them, or maybe they'd
make a Telegram group. The root problem is Americans. And I'm honestly not
sure of how to fix the problem with a whole population that has become so
irrational, polarized, ignorant and sensitive to hate speech.

~~~
rlonn
I'm sorry, but how can anyone say "what kind" of free speech...? Don't you see
that labeling or discriminating between "free speech of type A, allowed" and
"free speech of type B, disallowed" defeats the whole notion of "free"?
Somehow people tend to think that their own discrimination isn't, while others
is.

~~~
AlphaGeekZulu
There is a clear (and working) distinction between free speech of type A and
of type B in other countries. In Germany, just as an example, you are free to
express your OPINION (type A), but not to express false facts (type B). If you
express false facts, knowingly, and those false facts have damaging effects
you are fully liable for compensation.

Simple example: if a person wrongly claims, that some local artisan's business
is insolvent, and the artisan can prove that a potential customer withdrew an
order for that reason, the person who spread the fake news has to pay for the
artisan's loss. Entirely.

Talking someone into commiting a crime is never treated as free speech,
either.

So, this is the legal construct in Germany:

\- you are free to have any opinion you like ("Meinungsfreiheit") and

\- you are free to express those opinions to the public ("Redefreiheit")

Free speech, here, is limited to opinion. There is no such thing as "i am free
to lie, blame, insult, taunt, threaten, defame, verbally harass, berate,
incite etc..." with the excuse of free speech.

In Germany, if you say: "The president of the United States suffers from
narcissistic personality disorder", AND you cannot prove this as a fact, and
the POTUS goes after you for that statement, you will have to compensate for
the damages of that claim (this will become very expensive, if the POTUS can
prove that he lost reelections because of that statement). If you say: "To my
conviction (in my opinion/I believe), the president of the United States
suffers from narcissistic personality disorder", this would be completely
legal in Germany.

And yes, the distinction matters!

~~~
fvdessen
But that is not how it works universally in Europe. In France for example, you
can be condemned for stating objective facts under hate speech laws. For
example one journalist was condemned for saying that minorities were over-
represented in jail, because they were over-represented in crime. The judge
stated that although that was factually true, it would also have a
discriminatory impact on the minorities, & the journalist was thus condemned.

~~~
AlphaGeekZulu
I did not talk for Europe, just Germany. And I do not approve the suppression
of facts. Sorry for France.

(Would be interesting to know the details of that lawcase. I investigated some
of those incidents in Germany and in most cases they turned out to be quite
different from the initial aggregations that I read in public).

~~~
cm2187
I believe what the parent comment refers to is the condemnation of Eric
Zemmour in 2011. The details are a bit different though substantially in the
same spirit. Zemmour argued on TV that (a) the majority of drug dealers are
either black or arab and therefore that (b) racial profiling by the police was
justified. The court rejected the accusation of racial defamation for claiming
(a) but argued that since (b) was discriminatory under French law, condoning
racial profiling publicly was advocating for discrimination and he was
sentenced for that. One of first results on google if you want to dig more:

[https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/eric-zemmour-condamne-pour-
pr...](https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/eric-zemmour-condamne-pour-provocation-
a-la-discrimination-raciale-18-02-2011-1296980_23.php)

~~~
AlphaGeekZulu
(I do not speak french, so I am referring only to your post)

The logical relation between (a) and (b) is the important detail here.

If the majority of drug dealers are either black or arab, this does not
logically conclude, that the majority of blacks and arabs are drug dealers!

The only logical reasoning for racial profiling would be, if there was a
significantly higher probability to catch a drug dealer if you randomly pick
someone from that group.

The math:

Let's assume a population consisting of 20 percent group A and 80 percent
group B. 0,1 percent of the population is drug dealers. 60 percent of the drug
dealers belong to group A, 40 percent belong to group B. Group A therefore
makes the majority of drug dealers.

With the majority of drug dealers in group A and only 20 percent share of the
population, there is a six times higher probability that a random pick of
group A will be a positive hit. In absolute numbers: the chance to make a
positive random hit in group A is 0,3 percent, in group B it is 0,05 percent.

But: the likelihood to make a negative hit in group A is 99,7 percent (99,95
percent in group B), so even with a six times higher probability for a
positive hit, the overall change for a positive hit - on a random basis - in
both groups is still extremely small.

The small chance to catch a drug dealer on a random pick out of a population
(not regarding race) does not qualify for an effective police procedure – to
begin with. The small difference in probability of 0,25 percent between the
groups does not qualify for racial profiling either. Any other visible
attribute of a person that correlates with drug dealing with a higher value
than 0,25 percent (clothing, cars, peer groups, haircut, jewelry, behaviour,
slang, provenance and and and) is a better qualifier for random picks than
racial profiling.

So, back to the case:

\- France has good reasons, to forbid racial profiling under its law. It IS
discriminatory, because you cannot define 99,7 percent of a group by 0,3
percent of that group.

\- (b) does not conlude from (a), as it does not significantly rise the
success rate, but at the same time feeds prejudices and harasses innocent
people.

\- Insisting on (b) clearly shows the will to ignore data and a will to feed
prejudices and having innocent people harassed, so government decides to stop
this behaviour.

Did they really sentence him for (b), or was he rather obliged not to repeat
that statement?

~~~
cm2187
I agree with your math, but I disagree with your conclusions. The difference
may look small but it compounds very quickly. If you make 1000 controls of
individuals from population B, the likelihood that you never make a bust is
61%. If you make 1000 controls of population A, the likelihood you never make
a bust is only 5%. If you are a policeman, clearly you are going to opt for
population A if you want to make a bust.

In this case he was sentenced to a suspended fine of €1,000 and to damages of
€9,000 to various pressure groups.

I agree with your position on the moral implications of racial profiling and I
am not advocating it. But whether one supports racial profiling or not, merely
discussing the merits should not constitute an offense, I think this is
clearly violating free speech. And if we cannot disagree publicly with
existing laws, why do we even bother having a parliament to change those laws?

~~~
AlphaGeekZulu
[...]If you are a policeman, clearly you are going to opt for population A if
you want to make a bust.[...]

Whether I have to make 1000 controls for a 39 percent chance to catch one
dealer, or 1000 controls for a 95 percent chance to catch one dealer – both
are incredibly ineffective. This is exactly the problem.

If I am only capable of random controls with low chances, I have to control
very, very many people to make a hit (and each control of an innocent person
is something, that should be avoided if possible, because it is a form of
harassment). Now by going from one low probability to a somewhat less lower
probability by ignoring the group of the lower probability and putting all the
burden of unjustified control to the other group you create a huge sense of
frustration, stress, injustice and anger. For good reason! You make a 60:40
relation to a 100:0 relation with this approach. The problem is not with the
dealers, but with the false positives. 600 innocent people of group A have to
be harassed for one true positive, but 0 innocent people of group B get
harassed and 0 people of group B get busted, because they are not even
controlled anymore (as hits are less likely). And now, by making hits only in
group A, the ratio of convicted drug dealers gets pushed even more into the
direction of group A, allegedly confirming the efficiency of racial profiling.
It is utterly wrong. Morally and mathematically. It is a pseudologic abuse of
science to discriminate a group of people. And the desire for discrimination
arises from hate. That is, why racial profiling is forbidden in modern
democracies and it is not a matter of free speech, in my eyes.

If you wish for a more efficient handling of your police with drug dealers,
you really do not want them to perform random controls (whether racially
biased or not)!

~~~
cm2187
Correct, but in reality, the police doesn't go do some random control in the
streets of some randomly selected rural area. They will target locations where
they are likely to find drug dealers, target behaviors that are likely to be
drug dealers, etc. So the numbers aren't those from your theoretical example.

Though in reality, I mostly hear about racial profiling in France in the
context of looking for illegal immigrants where the odds are even more skewed
against a population than your example.

The moral argument is orthogonal from the efficiency argument, and I totally
agree with the frustration generated by misguided checks (and am reminded of
those every time I take a plane).

------
patientplatypus
This is terrible.

The chan boards are some of the last bastions of actual _free_ expression.

Here, if you post something that someone doesn't like, your comment is
downvoted into oblivion.

Case in point, I posted "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" and within 2 seconds
it reached 0 votes. If you post anything anti-capitalist on this board (I'm
pro-socialist) then there are paid trolls who will literally down vote you
until your comments and submissions disappear. Hackernews is owned by
propagandists literally by design - it has a moderation system that is created
to be gamed. Post enough popular click bait content and you get the points
necessary to down vote others. I'm sure that there are entire offices purpose
built and operated around policing Hackernews for political purposes.

The /pol/ board on 8ch is a disgusting cesspool. Yes, and? Cloudflare is a de-
facto monopoly (monopsony?) and they have the ability to control information.
Whoever controls the free flow of information controls the world. What happens
when a fascist decides to control Cloudflare? What do you do then? And if you
think that is unlikely, well Rupert Murdoch exists.

This should be unlawful by regulation. A free press and free speech means that
people should have the right to express opinions that you disagree with. And
monopolies prevent that.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

~~~
moate
Hi there. Registered socialist here. the `chans all suck. Not just any
specific /`/ either. They're all hot garbage. They have been for years.

I post and respond to tons of pro-union, anti-capitalist, socialist stuff on
here. Sometimes I get grayed because I'm being a dick and not playing by the
rules. Other times I'm rolling in that klout with stacks on stacks of upvotes.
I'm sure any communication system with enough users has people who use it
professionally for financial gain. That's just the nature of life? If there's
money to be lost by something happening, there's in effect money to be gained
by preventing it from happening. C'est la vie.

Platforms are always going to have owners. Owners mean an agenda. "The
Internet" as we now know it usually consists of layers and layers of
platforms, so that means lots of (sometimes conflicting) agendas. You want
free speech: it only exists when you control your platform. Anything else is
just a rented hall.

------
illuminati1911
"Hate online is a real issue. Here are some organizations that have active
work to help address it:

\- Anti-Defamation League

...

..."

Wikipedia:

"The ADL has faced criticism for its support for Israel, charges of
defamation, spying allegations, its former stance on the Armenian Genocide,
and possible conflation of opposition to Israel with antisemitism."

Thanks a lot Cloudflare. First you are complaining about hate and online
discussion and then you share shit like this. It seems there is nothing but
lies ja propaganda these days. Either far-right or far-left or some other far-
shit.

------
jimbob45
Bullying people is the worst way to get them to agree with you.

~~~
saagarjha
Who's being bullied here, and what are they being forced to agree with?

------
gok
Good. Next step: CAs should revoke and stop issuing certificates for these
sites.

------
lgleason
I do not support 8-chan, but by doing this and what they did with the daily
stormer they are no longer a neutral platform. A neutral platform is like a
utility, barring illegal activity, users have a right to use the service as
long as they pay for it. Once it is curated, it is not. This is why efforts
are afoot to have companies that do this to not get section 230 protections
for content hosted on the platform.

The last thing I want is a large, un-elected, tech company moralizing about
content hosted on it. Frankly, they are not good at it. If what 8-chan is
doing is illegal this can be addressed through the legal system. Also, as
needed, laws to address this can go through democratic processes that have
checks and balances instead of this. Yes it may be slower, but due process is
important.

At some point left un-checked they can and will target other content they
disagree with, IE: labeling other fairly main stream right wing stuff as "hate
speech". That is ultimately bad for everybody.

------
cgag
Wow, protection from ddos attacks and from unsavory opinions? What more could
one ask for?

------
Pigo
Now if we can only get Antifa resources shutdown, since the Dayton shooter has
been using them and was an active member

-no one

------
tedajax
I'm always prepared for but ultimately annoyed by HN's take on stuff like
this.

I legitimately get angrier reading this shitty site more than just about
anything else.

I wish whatever dopamine hit I got from reading this place would go away.

------
s_Hogg
Seems to me like a lot of the arguments against why this shouldn't happen or
isn't effective basically amount to some sort of whatabouttery. Well done
Cloudflare, I hope their next host takes the same attitude or can be induced
to.

~~~
smithproxy
Don't be fooled. It's not a virtuous move. It's a business decision.

If they wanted to be virtuous, they'd start working with groups to solve the
problem--counteracting radicalization.

~~~
s_Hogg
I'm aware of that but nonetheless believe it's a step in the right direction
and that they should be congratulated. I don't think this means anyone should
give them an easier time as a result.

Countering radicalisation involves the use of both carrot and stick where
services like Cloudflare and others are involved.

~~~
smithproxy
> it's a step in the right direction

How? It does nothing to solve the problem. It simply kicks the can down the
road.

~~~
s_Hogg
I agree that the racists on 8chan who are in favour of mass shootings are
still racists on 8chan in favour of mass shootings. That needs to stop, and
this alone doesn't achieve it. But society drawing boundaries about their
behaviour is an obviously good step in my view. Companies can be part of that.

I don't get how it's desirable that this shouldn't be called out. Even if
cloudflare is clearly looking at its bank balance when doing so.

~~~
smithproxy
If I understand correctly, you're making the argument that CloudFlare's move
should be seen as part of a (hopefully) larger cultural move against racism
and mass shootings. I am not sure how or even if their move would fit into
that, but I can at least see that as plausible.

> I don't get how it's desirable that this shouldn't be called out.

That's not being suggested. It's possible to address the issue without
outright cutting off 8chan. This approach is common of more extreme
perspectives and does more to breed animosity than solve the problem. There
are better ways to approach it, and cutting someone or a group off should be
on the end list of possibilities.

> Even if cloudflare is clearly looking at its bank balance when doing so.

It's entirely possible they have two goals in mind, and that would be fine. I
simply think it's unlikely because of how they've reacted in this case and the
one with Daily Stormer.

I also detect a subtle hint of consequentialism here, but that could be my own
reading into your post. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) I simply can't get on
border with the idea that the ends justifies the means. While the ends
shouldn't be ignore, I don't think it should be seen as the sole arbitrator
what determines ethical behavior.

~~~
s_Hogg
> If I understand correctly

That's more or less it. Silence can be as telling as its absence in cases like
these, I think.

> That's not being suggested.

Fair enough, apologies for creating the impression if that happened. How
should we address this problem without cutting off things like 8chan, though?
I think that once people start advocating against the right of others to exist
it's time for society to act. It makes sense that we should focus on the
individuals actually contributing to these boards and de-radicalise them where
possible. So doing, that reduces demand for things like 8chan. But that
doesn't mean that 8chan itself isn't inherently problematic.

To be clear, this is not to say that message boards are all inherently
problematic and we need to think before acting. Insofar as you urge caution on
this in general, I agree. 8Chan has gone out of its way to eliminate any grey
area on this subject, though. The behaviour of its administrators towards law
enforcement in the aftermath of the Christchurch attack isn't even that
unusual for them.

> I simply think it's unlikely

Totally, lol. I think that's a fair conclusion to draw. I just don't want it
to overshadow what I think is a positive action.

> consequentialism

All I'm saying is that if violent radicalism is the enemy of a coherent
society that respects everyone's right to exist (which these guys pretty
clearly say), society should be prepared to do something to protect itself.
And that means shutting down the services that recruit new gunmen, because
they're a part of this. The ends don't justify the means, the actions of 8chan
participants do.

Edit: Thanks so much for taking the time to write all that, by the way. One of
the main reasons I come to this place is for people willing to walk through
their arguments like this.

~~~
smithproxy
> How should we address this problem without cutting off things like 8chan,
> though?

We need to address root causes rather than symptoms.

Radicalization is often the result of in-group/out-group thinking[0]. What
causes a person to develop a strong affinity for a particular group? What
causes them to feel attack by those outside of the group? When we can answer
these questions and others like it, we can start to cut off the problem at the
source rather than playing a game of whack-a-mole. (And I fear that game of
whack-a-mole because I fear that it may cause great harm to our long-term
freedoms.)

I think a good start is fixing our political discourse. It's not radical ideas
that are the problem. It's how we interact. It's how we address one another.
It's not limited to "the left" or "the right." It's everywhere. We attack
groups and people rather than addressing ideas.

In fact, I am first on the list of people who need to change. I started this
whole thread by taking an unfair swipe at CloudFlare.

When we change our political discourse, those who value their identity with a
particular group will feel less attacked and be less prone to radicalization.

This can be applied to CloudFlare/8chan in how CloudFlare went about it.
CloudFlare dumping 8chan so quickly, arbitrarily, and without appeal will
likely be seen as an attack on the in-group. This could be mitigated by
reaching out to the 8chan leadership first. While CloudFlare might have cut
them off in the end, at least there'd be a track record of making an effort to
bridge their differences. And I think that would help reduce the impact this
action would have.

0\. "Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways Toward Terrorism."
Source:
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/095465508020733...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546550802073367)

------
burnedouthacker
Silicon Valley and the left in this country should take it a little easier and
slow down the censorship.

------
sergiotapia
Really disgusted by how the internet is shaping up. Monopolies all over the
place and deplatforming free speech websites left and right.

This ain't the internet I was promised when I was 11.

------
cheeky78
8chan didn't cause the incident. The shooter did. If we find out that the
shooter played a specific video game that a previous shooter played..should it
be banned as well?

I'm old enough to remember all of the court cases that involved distressed
parents blaming hard rock/metal bands for influencing their children's
suicides.

These sorts of incidents are starting to remind me of the religious right's
censorship crusade in the 90s...this time it's coming from the left.

Banning these sites will only push them underground. They aren't going away.
The end result will be absolutely no way of knowing when and where a shooting
may occur.

------
shiado
As bad as the content on 8chan is, it is deeply distressing how Cloudflare has
attached itself to the internet as what amounts to a mafia organization
collecting protection money. Almost all the non-deep web tools to abuse sites
are behind Cloudflare. They really are playing both sides to create a
necessary business. I have other theories about them being the most efficient
NSA collection site to exist due to TLS MITM and their horrifically insecure
'flexible SSL' but those theories remain unsubstantiated until the next
Snowden.

------
ReptileMan
He should fire his PR. Terrible writing and hard to read. And probably 4-5
times longer than needed.

Also it is bad idea to get political. And I feel that a lot of those companies
are gonna get punished in the next few years.

And he didn't managed to even make his case. He accused 8 chan of lawlessness
while never actually stating which law they broke.

Just say they are too much trouble and be done with it, without sounding fake.

------
jquery
I'm pretty sure more Twitter and Facebook users have become mass killers than
8ch users.

The first comment to the guy on 8ch who posted the manifesto was "hello FBI".
Not a 8ch user but they don't appear to support shootings. I'm more familiar
with 4chan shenanigans and they _definitely_ don't support it, with any threat
of real-life violence being met with something along the lines of "[alphabet
agency] fuck off". Not saying they don't have crazies but every "social media"
(and 8ch is social media, just an old fashioned version of it) site has
crazies.

~~~
madamelic
>I'm more familiar with 4chan shenanigans and they definitely don't support it

The origin story of 8chan from what I understand is that it is all of the
people who had too extreme of views for 4chan... which created an echo chamber
to further radicalize and ferment.

~~~
jquery
Sort of, not exactly how I remember it. 8ch appeared because 4chan’s boards
are dedicated to certain topics and some subjects fell through the gaps
between boards. I remember 8ch getting popular when incessant gamergate spam
was banned from /v/. 8ch also has a “popular” leftypol board which is the left
wing counterpart to 4chan’s pol (there’s no good place on 4chan to discuss
Bernie Sanders, for example, without getting mobbed). Raids were also banned
from 4chan and some other things which brought unwanted attention to the site,
I think those people also went to 8ch. A final group of people left to 8ch
when Moot (the person who used to run 4chan) scrambled /pol/ for a week (?),
making the topic board unusable for regulars. Any other growth of 8ch is
beyond my knowledge of the site.

------
droithomme
The Christchurch madman livestreamed his vile murders using Facebook. Isn't it
long past time we removed that hate site, a nest of debauchery, from the
internet as well? Of course there will be evil persons that will disagree and
support the existence of hate sites, but it is not necessary for sane
individuals to listen to anything they say.

------
n1231231231234
"Some" will condemn this ban by appealing to freedom of speech. But freedom of
speech is not absolute. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, as per the Guardian:

"I am an unswerving advocate of freedom of expression, which is guaranteed
under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR), but it is not absolute. Article 20 of the same covenant says: ‘Any
advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement
to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law."[0]

As so often, different values are in tension with each other. And different
societies draw the line at different places, somewhat favouring one or the
other value. I hope we can agree that 8-chan, due to the lack of sensible
moderation, is way past that line by all standards.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2015/apr/24/k...](https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2015/apr/24/katie-hopkins-cockroach-migrants-denounced-united-
nations-human-rights-commissioner)

Edit: to clarify, this is not meant to be a strawman. By "some", I don't mean
some here or alike, but those in 8-chan , TD, etc., who have brought forward
this argument in the past.

~~~
cgag
That swerve doesn't apply to the US's actual unswerving protection of freedom
of expression, it was ratified with the following reservation (the first among
others):

> (1) That Article 20 does not authorize or require legislation or other
> action by the United States that would restrict the right of free speech and
> association protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States.

