
Why We Terminated Daily Stormer - SamWhited
https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
======
r721
>“This was my decision. This is not Cloudflare’s general policy now, going
forward,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Gizmodo. “I think we have to have
a conversation over what part of the infrastructure stack is right to police
content.”

(from internal email)

>Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision. It was different than what
I’d talked talked with our senior team about yesterday. I woke up this morning
in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. I called our legal
team and told them what we were going to do. I called our Trust & Safety team
and had them stop the service. It was a decision I could make because I’m the
CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company.

[http://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-
to-...](http://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-
site-1797915295)

~~~
tuna-piano
It's so bizarre. He tries to have it both ways. He says "no one should have
that power", but then says he did it literally earlier that day. He says
CloudFlare isn't changing their "content-neutral" policy... but clearly they
did change that policy.

I have many reasons to oppose nazis, including incredibly personal ones. That
said, I think crossing this content line for an infrastructure company is a
big deal, and I hope it's not repeated.

~~~
sqldba
What gets me is - I don't think Daily Stormer was even important, was it? I
mean it's not like this is a giant propaganda machine with millions of visits
a day run by Hitler. It seems to me to be pretty much a pissant little blog.

To be completely honest - when I went to look at what the fuss was about a few
days ago - I couldn't see any serious hate message because it read like
hilariously sarcastic teenage angst and black humour (no pun intended).

There was a recent article where they were laughing about a woman who was run
down by a car. I absolutely abhor that that woman was killed! It should
probably attract a life or death sentence after the facts are reviewed in
court.

But the CONTENT about it was so stupid it was funny like 4chan, reddit, or
encyclopaedia dramatica. I laughed. I wasn't laughing at her. What happened
was a tragic crime. But don't we often laugh at awful things to cope with
them?

I'm not a bad person. I myself don't and don't want others to spread hate or
racist messages let alone hurt people or encourage others to do it either.

But ummm when it comes to words I think you should be able to poke fun at what
you want. And now it seems you can't and things have been going that way for a
long time.

I get that it's distasteful but I also find a lot of other stuff distasteful.
Shrug.

Now I get on an intellectual level they weren't shut down just for being
distasteful and somewhere in there (I didn't read much so didn't find any)
there is actually hate content and that's why they were shut down.

But IIRC encyclopaedia dramatica was just distasteful stuff making fun of many
colours and cultures and was also shut down.

So it has a real chilling effect and that's not the internet I want. Want to
know what world is scarier than one with nazi's on the internet? It's one
where corporations and governments paid by corporations tell you what is and
isn't allowed to be said.

(Disclaimer: I've got nothing to say myself except we should all live together
and get along.)

~~~
dclowd9901
You sound pretty privileged to only be asking for all of us to get along when
so many people are asking not to be shot or subjugated by systems built to
work against them.

~~~
graphememes
You sound pretty privileged to be able to respond in such a way.

Sounds like you don't like what they are saying and instead of allowing it you
want to stop them. Shame shame.

Entitled to your privilege of doing so though.

------
colejohnson66
I get the whole "companies can choose not to host whatever they want"
argument, but in order to do _anything_ on the internet, you _have_ to
interact with companies.

If I want to run my own website, I need an IP address at the minimum, and ISPs
are free to cut off my internet service if they don't like what I'm hosting.
In a public setting, if people don't like what I'm saying, they can't force me
to be quiet (generally). But when hosting a website, there is the ability for
companies to silence you.

For example, if Google doesn't like a website, it can derank it. People who
agree with the site might cry censorship, while the others just say that a
company can block what it wants. Replace Google with an ISP, and all of a
sudden, it seems everyone says the ISP shouldn't be able to do that.

If the web is supposed to be the future of communication, but can prevent you
from voicing your opinions just because they're a "deplorable" or you don't
agree with them, how is that argument valid? Can someone explain that to me?

Tangent(?): Also, by not hosting Daily Stormer, you simply push them further
down. One of the big reasons Trump won was _because_ people felt like they
weren't allowed to voice their opinions easily. There were people, basically
closeted Trump supporters, who said they didn't like Trump, but secretly did.
Pushing people down because they're "deplorables" simply reinforces their
opinions.

~~~
tedivm
There will always be companies that care more about making a buck than
anything else. For years spammers and malware authors have been able to find
hosting without issue, and taking them down has been a serious pain in the
ass. All these nazis need to do is rent a server in russia (where they've
moved their name server) and they will be fine.

The idea that companies like Cloudflare should help support sites like this is
nonsensical. The slippery slope argument is an awful fallacy and ignores the
fact that we can't even get content most of the world agrees is bad (child
porn, active malware exploits, spammers) offline.

~~~
colllectorof
_> The idea that companies like Cloudflare should help support sites like this
is nonsensical._

It is your framing of the idea that's nonsensical. Infrastructure companies
should not need to police all their services. Heck, they _shouldn 't_ police
their services. That is what real police and courts are for.

As an analogy, should AT&T monitor calls and terminate service for customers
using racist slurs? Now, a lot of people would surely argue that such example
is false equivalency, but it follows from the same line of reasoning and would
have similar long-term consequences.

A modern, stable society needs stable infrastructure that does not bend and
shift based on current events or social media campaigns. Even if in some cases
it seems "fair". Because anyone with a bit of sense knows it will not be
"fair" in all cases. Heck, in the current environment of extreme political
polarization that much should be bloody obvious.

~~~
noir_lord
AT&T had common carrier status which indemnifies them against what subscribers
did but that came at the cost of a lot of government oversight on what _they_
could do in return.

Lots of private companies _wouldn 't_ want that (and AT&T butted heads over
it).

Personally I think Facebook is already over that line, when you have the
eyeballs of about 1/7th of the planet you are already a potential threat that
should have government level oversight, in a democracy, you control the
eyeballs you control the politicians.

~~~
anc84
And Cloudflare say they handle 10% of internet traffic. They are a behemoth
just like Facebook.

------
hashberry
> The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily
> Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.

For those interested in more info behind this statement[0]:

 _In a post, [The Daily Stormer] site’s architect, Andrew Auernheimer, said he
had personal relationships with people at Cloudflare, and they had assured him
the company would work to protect the site in a variety of ways — including by
not turning over data to European courts. Cloudflare has data centers in
European countries such as Germany, which have strict hate speech and privacy
laws.

Company officials offered differing responses when asked about Auernheimer’s
post. Kramer, Cloudflare’s general counsel, said he had no knowledge of
employee conversations with Auernheimer. Later, in an email, the company said
Auernheimer was a well-known hacker, and that as a result at least one senior
company official “has chatted with him on occasion and has spoken to him about
Cloudflare’s position on not censoring the internet.”

A former Cloudflare employee, Ryan Lackey, said in an interview that while he
doesn’t condone a lot of what Auernheimer does, he did on occasion give
technical advice as a friend and helped some of the Stormer’s issues get
resolved.

“I am hardcore libertarian/classical liberal about free speech — something
like Daily Stormer has every right to publish, and it is better for everyone
if all ideas are out on the internet to do battle in that sphere,” he said.

Vick at the ADL agrees that Anglin has a right to publish, but said people
have the right to hold to task the Internet companies that enable him._

[0] [https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-
serv...](https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-serve-up-
hate-on-the-web)

~~~
jacquesm
For those not following this closely: Aurenheimer == weev.

~~~
ng12
Wow. Sometimes it feels like the internet is a very small place.

~~~
backpropaganda
I might be too young to understand the significance. Could you tell us why
Aurenheimer being weev is interesting?

~~~
jacquesm
Weev is a well known troll that seems to have made trolling his life's
calling. He's despicable but his crimes are pretty low on the general scale of
lawlessness.

To see him involved in yet another controversy stirring the pot isn't all that
surprising, it's what he lives for. As far as I'm any judge of this the man is
mentally not 100%.

------
jacquesm
I'm not a fan of cloudflare, I think the net would be better without them.
That said I think this was the right call to make. Being the CEO of a company
carries with it the weight of having the ultimate responsibility for each and
every action of the company and to be an unwilling vehicle for the Neo Nazi
movement is something that no company should want to aspire to.

Where I have a problem is that ostensibly this did not happen because the CEO
grew a conscience and a backbone (how about those booter and malware sites
then?), but because the Neo Nazi's claimed that Cloudflare was secretly in
league with them. If that was the real reason then the whole thing sounds
hollow and more as an attempt at damage control than a case of a moral line
being crossed.

Anyway, from a strictly technical point of view Cloudflare is absolutely
optional so no harm done, without the cloak of Cloudflare to protect it the
Daily Stormer will have to go through life now as the Daily Naked Stormer.

~~~
davidreiss
> and to be an unwilling vehicle for the Neo Nazi movement is something that
> no company should want to aspire to.

Does that also apply to pornography? What about atheism? What about lgbt
content?

The concerted effort by the pro-censorship crowd to exploit nazis to promote
censorship is rather worrying.

~~~
jacquesm
The concerted effort to equate Neo Nazis to pornographers, atheists and lgbt
people is rather worrying as well.

If you can't see the difference between those groups then the problem is on
your end.

Hint: Neo Nazis wish to return to the good old days of 1939 or so where Jews
and people of color are either dead, outcast, deported, enslaved or stuck in
camps while white men rule the land as is their god given right.

So just in case it needs explaining: that's not the moral equivalent of
pornographers, atheists or lgbt related material and I'm surprised that that
needs spelling out.

~~~
dguaraglia
Yeah, this whole "Nazi flags == rainbow flag" or "this is a slippery slope"
thing the right-wing has been pushing is ludicrous. There's nothing
controversial in saying that _Nazi ideals are really fucked up_. Porn and LGBT
people don't kill other people, Nazis did and would do again if given the
chance.

~~~
jacquesm
> Nazis did and would do again if given the chance.

They were just given the chance and did it. And according to their chatter
they are gearing up for more.

------
bwb
Free speech does not mean a company _has_ to take part in spreading it :).

Free speech is about your right to speak without the government locking you
up, or censoring those who choose to broadcast/spread it. But nothing about
free speech says someone else has to listen or spread it for you, companies
included.

The line is drawn at calling for violence though, which is pretty fucking
tricky to navigate.

~~~
jquery
You're confusing free speech with the first amendment. Free speech is a
cultural value says that controversial speech shouldn't be censored, rather it
should be debated, condemned, or ignored.

The first amendment guarantees the government will uphold this value. You are
perfectly correct that private companies can throw the value of free speech in
the dumpster if the CEO wakes up in a bad mood.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Free speech is a cultural value says that controversial speech shouldn't be
> censored

No, free speech (and the related freedoms of press, religion, and association)
is a cultural value that says every member of society should be free to choose
which ideas they will promote and which people they will associate with,
applying their own values.

That _absolutely_ includes choosing which ideas from other people they will
participate in spreading, which, _yes_ , is censorship (but not _public_
censorship), but remains _absolutely central_ to the ideal of free speech.

Freedom of speech is not entitlement to have others cooperate in spreading
your speech.

~~~
jquery
Wow! What's up is down and down is up. I assume you are vehemently on the side
those wedding cake bakers who refused to make a gay wedding cake, then?

Once a private communications provider becomes recognized as communications
infrastructure, they lose the right to police content that goes through their
infrastructure. For example, my ISP, even though it participates in
"spreading" my ideas, has no say in the matter. If you can argue that some
random wedding cake bakers are part of "critical wedding baking infrastructure
and must therefore be compelled to make a gay cake," you can argue, much more
easily, that Cloudflare has no business deciding what content it offers its
services to.

~~~
dragonwriter
> What's up is down and down is up. I assume you are vehemently on the side
> those wedding cake bakers who refused to make a gay wedding cake, then?

The issue of limited discrimination protections on specified axes for public
accommodations is a thorny one especially when it comes to expressive acts;
there's plenty of room for debate on what axes should be protected, but a
general non-discrimination rule for political ideology has never been
seriously suggested, and would arguably run afoul of the first amendment.

> If you can argue that some random wedding cake bakers are part of "critical
> wedding baking infrastructure and must therefore be compelled to make a gay
> cake,"

That's not the legal basis; a specific protection from sexual orientation
discrimination in public accommodations (in state law in the state in
question) is.

------
albertsun
This section is troubling.

 _> In a not-so-distant future, if we're not there already, it may be that if
you're going to put content on the Internet you'll need to use a company with
a giant network like Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or
Alibaba.

For context, Cloudflare currently handles around 10% of Internet requests.

Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of
companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online._

~~~
bwb
That is kinda a BS statement, there are hundreds of thousands of web hosts out
there in some form. I am not sure where he is getting such a BS statement.

~~~
makomk
From the linked post:

> The size and scale of the attacks that can now easily be launched online
> make it such that if you don't have a network like Cloudflare in front of
> your content, and you upset anyone, you will be knocked offline. In fact, in
> the case of the Daily Stormer, the initial requests we received to terminate
> their service came from hackers who literally said: "Get out of the way so
> we can DDoS this site off the Internet."

As far as I know, he's right. It's basically only Cloudflare, Google, and a
handful of other megacorps that can keep your content online if someone's
willing to pay a vigilante with a botnet to get rid of it.

~~~
9935c101ab17a66
I don't think that's true. Cloudflare is just the most visible option at the
moment, and probably (one of) the most cost effective.

------
spydum
I have read many of the threads here, and I think it boils down to this: do
businesses (NOT THE GOVERNMENT) have the right to choose what content and
customers they serve?

Further, does it matter if they are a hosting provider? A network provider? A
telephone provider? Can those providers cancel you if the company doesn't like
what you say or are?

This is tough: I honestly don't know if freedom of speech needs to be enforced
by private companies. I think of freedom of speech is the problem here:
companies have more influence over our conversations and the old protections
are simply not adapting well.

~~~
throwaway7312
This is just the latest in a string of examples like this.

The Christian bakers / gay wedding cakes is one example.

But people being booted off services like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and
Patreon are others.

We ought to have the right to exclude people from our own private spaces, our
own private clubs, and our own private businesses (freedom of association).

However, at what point (and at what scale) does our private club become so
large it is a _de facto_ public space?

There does not seem to be any real precedent for discussions like this. The
Internet has created an entirely new wrinkle in the debate around free speech
and public places.

~~~
gbarc888
The Christian bakers were sued and then forced to bake a wedding cake for a
gay couple because sexual orientation is a protected class. "Alt-right" or
whatever Daily Stormer is, is not a protected class. "Political party" is a
protected class, which puts Daily Stormer in a possibly fuzzy territory (I
have never read Daily Stormer so I don't know if they count as a political
publication).

~~~
Spivak
Fine, let's make political affiliation a protected class as well. There's no
reason to restrict it to registered parties. Nobody should be denied access
goods and services because of who they voted for and how they wish to govern
this country. Otherwise the majority could use denial of services to silence
and coerce their political opponents.

~~~
unityByFreedom
> Fine, let's make political affiliation a protected class as well

No thanks.

The alt-right would undo all the protected classes. Tolerance is a peace
treaty, not a suicide pact. Your rights do not supplant mine.

------
watersb
I am surprised by the criticism of CloudFlare in these comments.

I was a systems admin for a while; User privacy and security were very
important to me, despite my lack of technology or skills. FWIW.

CloudFlare did not necessarily follow "Due Process" because no such process
exists. They seem to think that's a problem worth addressing.

------
moe
This is what I call good marketing!

There's dozens of CDNs to choose from
([https://www.cdnplanet.com/](https://www.cdnplanet.com/)), with the best one
obviously being [https://fastly.com](https://fastly.com)

However, for most companies it's a wash which CDN to pick.

Unless you're serving media to a large audience the cost is usually in the low
triple digits. And unless you need to serve problematic regions (parts of
Asia, Africa), there is barely a difference in performance between most of the
contenders.

So what tips the scale for any one of the CDNs?

Well, after this move me and certainly others will definitely consider
Cloudflare more often than previously - out of sheer sympathy.

------
slg
For all the people who are warning of a slippery slope or a chilling effect,
where do we draw a line? This site along with others like it likely helped
spur a person on to murder a few days ago. This site along with other like it
celebrated that murder. This site along with other like are organizing
protests at that murder victim's funeral. How in good conscience can you be an
accomplice in spreading that message?

~~~
kazagistar
I mean, the networking infrastructure carried that message. The people who
manufactured the murder weapon assisted the murder goals.

The point is that we have a legal process to deal with murder. If we wanted to
suppress the message glorifying it and encouraging it, we should do that
directly, and take down the site through legal due process. Going after
infrastructure is the wrong solution when you should be confronting problems
directly. And if you don't want to confront it directly (ie, maybe the site is
protected by free speech laws that we don't want to revoke)... whats the point
of those free speech protecting laws if they just end up being subverted
through a different avenue, and one that does not have to follow the process
and regulation of the law at that?

~~~
slg
>If we wanted to suppress the message glorifying it and encouraging it, we
should do that directly, and take down the site through legal due process.

That sounds like a much bigger conflict with the 1st amendment than society
simply deciding to shun messages we want to suppress.

~~~
unityByFreedom
If it were taken down, yes.

What he's arguing, though, is to use courts because he knows courts would
never do that in the US.

------
Kazamai
I reported a website for human trafficking a year ago, which is still online
and protected by cloud flare. I referenced parts of the forum to their staff
where users mentioned enjoying raping women. Their response, "I don't see
anything wrong with this content".

~~~
Tloewald
So what this says is Cloudflare believes in providing service to anyone until
it causes bad publicity. It's certainly not a morally courageous stand, but
fits in perfectly with most tech giants.

------
emsy
Unless the site was directly breaking the law, I see this move as troubling.
It's almost always better not to drive these kind of people to the
underground, and I think most HN readers figure why this is. The problem I see
is that in the current political climate the general population won't
understand that or is unwilling to.

~~~
cbron
> It's almost always better not to drive these kind of people to the
> underground

Seems more like this would remove the echo chamber than drive them
underground, I would agree with your point if it was about public shaming. But
if FB goes offline I wouldn't consider anyone being "driven underground", more
like forced above ground.

~~~
emsy
The Daily Stormer is pretty radical, but afaik still operates within the law.
Taking their platform will put them out of sight and into areas where
respecting the law isn't necessary. The enemy you don't know is the enemy you
have to fear the most. Unfortunately I feel like most people today are more
comfortable with hiding and banning bad ideas than to confront them.

------
ckw

      Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So 
      was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then 
      you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views 
      you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.
    

Noam Chomsky

~~~
wanda
Non-sequitur. It's from Noam Chomsky so it's not surprising, he has a
predilection for fallacies.

Just because two "bad" people liked something in a certain way does not mean
that "good" people must therefore like it the converse way. Both Goebbels and
Stalin may also have liked butter and jam on their toast, but that doesn't
mean I should eat toast with just butter.

If that seems a little facetious, consider it this way: many leading figures
deemed "good" by history were also in favour of regulated free speech. That
doesn't make regulated free speech good, of course — though one might suppose
that it means that these "good" people were probably not as liberal as many
people seem to think.

In fact, during times of war, and of apprehension/anticipation of war, I'd say
that there were many things that went on, which would make many liberal people
take umbrage today. I would say all free speech was heavily regulated by most
nations up until the perhaps the '90s or even the '00s.

I do not think it is unwise to regulate free speech. It is not wise for a
civilisation, with laws, to allow people to flaunt their breaking of, or
desire to break, said laws, without some legal consequence.

Are we to have rapist support rallies next? Join the Rapist Party for the
legalisation of rape? No. The rape of anybody is a crime, just like murder. It
is not legally permitted to be perpetrated by anyone in most countries.

The same should apply to racism — and you might say that it should not be
illegal to make racist remarks, but actually, it should not be tolerated in
terms of free speech either, because it is objectively _wrong_ to believe a
race is superior to another race.

It's not a question about the meaning of life or the existence of supernatural
deities, so the answer is not something that lies beyond the bounds of our
language to discuss. It's a question of whether one race of people is superior
to another race of people, and this question is answerable scientifically:
there is no superior race.

Given that there is no superior race, just like there is no superior gender
i.e. women are not inferior to men, it should not be permissible for people to
advocate views contrary to this — not because it is a "dominant discourse" or
whatever Foucault might have said, but because it is a scientific fact.

Science is not a discursive means to enforce order, it's just the application
of logic to evidence. There are no meaningful genetic differences between
different races, and there are no bounds set to what a person can achieve
other than those set by political regimes and by the person's financial
situation/access to education.

Nothing should be able to call into question a scientifically-proven fact
other than other scientifically-proven facts i.e. new evidence. It should not
be legal to spread sophistry or incite dissent and disorder based on
sophistry.

So, racism should not be permissible simply because it carries no truth. If
racism had a basis in science, or indeed any truth to it whatsoever, it would
not require fanatical cults and violence to spread its message. It would just
be taught, as it is already taught that _homo sapiens_ outmatched the
_neanderthal_ (though this is actually speculative and remains to be
conclusively proven, but that's another debate).

There is no universal rule for handling free speech and it's not something
that should be considered in terms of setting precedents. Every case of
permissible free speech is distinct and the question must be asked each time:
is the message that being advocated logically plausible/scientifically
justified?

Remember, "rape is bad" is not something you can scientifically prove because
it's not a comparison between two people from different places, it's a moral
statement, albeit one that most agree with.

Thus, if you permit racist discourse against science, you will set a far more
dangerous precedent for the rapists, human traffickers, murderers and
paedophiles around the world who also feel that for too long their voices have
gone unheard.

I wonder if Chomsky would readily be the one to grant them the freedom to
speak openly about their preferences for murdering and raping people, from his
armchair.

~~~
ckw

      Just because two "bad" people liked something in a certain 
      way does not mean that "good" people must therefore like it 
      the converse way. Both Goebbels and Stalin may also have 
      liked butter and jam on their toast, but that doesn't mean I 
      should eat toast with just butter.
    

Chomsky is not claiming either of these people were bad, he's saying they were
uncontroversially opposed to free speech, so as to highlight the defining
characteristic of support: tolerance of views one finds odious. It doesn't
really seem like you disagree, you just are not for free speech:

    
    
      I do not think it is unwise to regulate free speech. It is 
      not wise for a civilisation, with laws, to allow people to 
      flaunt their breaking of, or desire to break, said laws, 
      without some legal consequence.
    

Which is fine. Just understand your position.

    
    
      I wonder if Chomsky would readily be the one to grant them 
      the freedom to speak openly about their preferences for 
      murdering and raping people, from his armchair.
    

I have zero doubt he would, and have no qualms saying that I do as well.

------
luke3butler
"Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed
on the Internet. No one should have that power."

I've been jumping back and forth over the fence on this topic, but this stance
is where I've ended up.

~~~
joelrunyon
I'm struggling to connect these two phrases:

"No one should have that power"

"I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn't be allowed on the
Internet"

Seems like a very tricky precedent to set that you can just not allow someone
on the internet.

The natural question from this is: how long until this type of power is used
against views you support?

~~~
krapp
>The natural question from this is: how long until this type of power is used
against views you support?

I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I support free speech, even when the speech
is hateful and malignant, because I honestly believe the best way to combat
vile ideas is out in the open where people can see them, hear them, discuss
them and repudiate them. Cultures can't innoculate themselves against ideas
without an intellectual herd immunity, and that is impossible without mass
exposure.

On the other hand, fuck Nazis.

I think I'm quite willing to let them come for the Nazis then start caring
when they come for the Socialists and Trade Unionists, etc. If that makes me a
hypocrite, so be it.

Of course, on the third hand, I have no real power over anyone else's speech,
and I'm just some rando on the internet, so it doesn't really matter what I
think.

~~~
dclowd9901
Right -- for some reason or another, there is A Bright Line around Nazis that
makes this a brain-dead decision. It might be that the name has become a by-
word for "evil," but as someone who is _very much_ a free speech advocate, I
have no sympathy for Naziism, or any kind of "speech" (however people try to
bend that word) that advocates the ill physical will toward others. It's that
simple. Any attempts to give a heady definition only result in convolution.

They're Nazis. They can fuck themselves.

------
hexadecimated
A sensible business decision by Cloudflare, and a fine moral stand to take.
There is nothing positive to be gained by servicing such neo-Nazi websites,
and Cloudflare is under no obligation to keep them as customers.

Similarly, the Daily Stormer is free to take their custom to a provider who
turns a blind eye to or supports their toxic ideology.

~~~
MichaelGG
Yet they don't block ISIS.

~~~
digitalzombie
I don't recall ISIS claiming that Cloudflare support their ideology.

------
tgarma1234
We can make burglary illegal without any additional explanation of why
burglary is "wrong". This is because it is part of understanding the concept
of burglary to know that it is wrong. It's the same sort of logic that applies
to Nazi propaganda: it is wrong simply because it is Nazi propaganda. We
understand what it is and what they are saying, so we do not need to go to
additional lengths to explain why it is wrong. It should be silenced for no
other reason than that it is Nazi propaganda. To promote Nazi propaganda is to
undermine the social contract itself about what constitutes free speech. It is
a mistake of Enlightenment political philosophy to say that every decision we
make about what constitutes right and wrong must derive ultimately from basic
principles by logical reasoning. In many cases merely understanding a concept
suffices to directly condemn an activity and Nazi propaganda is almost the
best example of how we can, without further conversation, simply say "NO"...
we are not going to help you promote this and we are not going to politely
explain to you why we do not agree with your views. All this talk about free
speech and Nazis is nonsense. I support Cloudflare's decision.

~~~
basch
Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not
fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To
courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and
fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no
danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the
incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before
there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through
discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of
education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. -
Louis Brandeis

------
wolco
Cloudflaire did a lot damage today by releasing that statement. It's one thing
to have a policy or guideline that would ban a site like this. To have the CEO
tell us he woke up in a bad mood and decided to kick this site off of the
internet sends the message cloudflaire's service isn't a stable place governed
by rules and policies. Cloudflaire CEO moods will dictate policy.

I always felt Cloudflaire was a hotpot service with nsa hooks.

~~~
bookmarkacc
He stays in the article The Daily Stormers claim tbat cloudflair was a
supporter of them because of their hosting.

------
alva
Cloudflare refuse to withdraw services to ISIS

~~~
6nf
So actual terrorists are acceptable, but not the website of those guys who
killed that one lady last week. Okay.

~~~
matt4077
Are you saying that intentionally driving your car into a group of peaceful
pedestrians and killing someone, for political reasons, isn't terrorism?

~~~
6nf
ok maybe it is terrorism. But why is ISIS allowed on cloud front?

~~~
matt4077
Arguably they shouldn't. But just because both X and Y should be done, it's
not wrong to do only X, or only Y.

I can also sorta understand how the groups in question create a strong(er)
emotional reaction. These are hate groups from "our" society. And in the same
way that the death of someone close saddens more than a stranger's, seeing a
swastika-bearing mob of people who could have gone to school with you may stir
more anger than the hate and atrocities committed by strangers–especially if
you don't understand their language, and have gotten used to it.

If we interpret Cloudflare's action as a symbol, it may also be more effective
when used in this case than with ISIS: coming from (in general terms) the same
society, such a signal of disapproval is more meaningful. People are social
animals, and they are hardwired to seek approval from their peers. No matter
how much someone tries to convince themselves that they don't care, it stings
when their neighbour stops inviting them to his parties.

The same isn't true for ISIS, to whom the people at Cloudflare would have
always been "the other side".

Plus, obviously, the fact that stormtrooper monthly apparently said that
Cloudflare were sympathisers. That statement made it impossible to continue
working for them.

------
bqe
Honest question for people who think this stifles freedom: do you also think
taking down ISIS recruitment videos is anti-free speech? Should we not do that
either?

Online radicalization is real. The challenge of how to deal with that and
offer considerable freedom on the Internet will be a challenge for our
society.

~~~
kelnos
A very good point. The anti-censorship narrative feels very similar to the
right's denial (or at least it's willful ignorance) that white domestic
terrorists are a thing in the US.

How is speech perpetrated by white supremacists to incite violence any
different from that of foreign terrorist organizations?

------
jlgaddis
This is a slippery slope, Cloudflare.

Once you take it upon yourself to begin moderating and regulating content, you
are now -- in my opinion -- obligated to do so consistently. Do you really
want that responsibility?

My opinion may be unpopular, however. I'm one of those folks that believe that
everyone, equally, deserves to be able to express their thoughts, beliefs, and
beliefs regardless of whether I agree with them.

(Yes, you absolutely need to remove the bullet point now.)

~~~
matt4077
> My opinion may be unpopular, however. I'm one of those folks that believe
> that everyone, equally, deserves to be able to express their thoughts,
> beliefs, and beliefs regardless of whether I agree with them.

Yes, you're one tough maverick for repeating something stated only about 20x
in just this thread.

But you're indeed quite brave to pretend not to have seen the 25 answers
pointing out that it's also this CEO (and everyone else's) right not to
participate in the spreading of hate speech and nazi propaganda.

Also:

"slippery slope" is not an argument, it's a fallacy. Observe: "now, they're
only imprisoning the murderers. It's only a matter of time until they'll throw
you in jail for walking funny"

> you are now -- in my opinion -- obligated to do so ...

Why? Does eating one apple pie obligate you to eat all the apple pie?

> ... unilaterally

As opposed to bilateral moderation?

~~~
jlgaddis
When I first clicked on the discussion link, there were two comments. I also
took a break to go to the restroom before I submitted my comment. I'm sorry
that I wasn't quick enough for you.

> _unilaterally_

Happy now?

Did you actually want to discuss/argue with my comment or just criticize the
way I worded it?

------
monksy
I like the article as that it still shows that they're committed to being
neutral, however, they will respond when you try to drag them down with you.
From the article, it sounds like the stormer bit the hand that fed them.

------
thaumaturgy
Matthew Prince is asking for a conversation to begin on establishing policy
for supporting free speech vs. policing a service. Service providers of all
kinds have been more-or-less flying by the seat of their pants on this issue,
making up policy according to their individual ideals, and a lot of arguments
so far have fallen along ideological lines.

As more and more people continue to participate in the internet, there are
going to be more issues like this, not fewer.

So let's maybe kick off that discussion a little bit? Someone that's
articulate might be able to build the foundation for a policy here that would
be attractive to lots of service providers.

Some things to consider:

-> Local law vs. ethical considerations. A lot of expressions and statements that are just fine by US standards are illegal or otherwise censored in other place. Google has struggled with this in China for years now. There's no reason to believe that the US will continue to be a beacon for free speech forever. Efforts to control, surveil, and censor speech are ongoing in the US, as Dreamhost recently pointed out. How should services handle this? Do you adhere to local laws or to what you believe is right?

-> Free speech vs. abuse. In this case, I don't mean abuse-by-meanness, but abuse by misuse of resources. From blatant spamming all the way down to just being the loud-mouthed jerk who posts too often in a forum, there's a whole spectrum of abuses here and most service providers happily block this content. What constitutes abuse? Should everything be supported, to the best of the service provider's ability, or is this a point where nearly everyone agrees that free speech should be limited?

-> Free speech vs. disruptive or disgusting speech. Communities gather assholes. Some of them are accidental or ill (HN has its own, which it has merrily perma-banned), some of them just want to stir shit up. Some of them give us something to think about, they just want to be really abrasive in the process. What are the limits here? What if we end up on the wrong side of some issue, what would our opinions about limited speech be then?

-> Nice vs. Free. These all kind of could be distilled down into a single debate: do we want a nice society, or a free society?

~~~
matt4077
-> slippery slope vs whataboutism vs sanity: can we, for just a moment, not pretend that we're unable to distinguish between self-professed nazis calling for the extermination of jews and blacks, and legitimate speech in opposition of the government?

Yes, if you're drawing a line there will be, by definition, cases close to it,
on both sides. But this isn't one of them. And it's not like this is some sort
of new problem that we haven't successfully navigated before. Courts have
always had to make binary decisions from continuous facts: pornography vs.
art, or just naming that single grain of sand that makes this stretch of coast
a beach per California regulation 343 etc.

"Free vs nice" is an insidious way to delegitimise the concerns of those
actually targeted by torch-wielding nazis. People aren't asking for a "nice"
country. They're asking for the freedom to peacefully walk around without the
fear of being splattered onto the pavement by the next terrorist's car attack.

------
christilut
I don't like this...

If I have a controversial opinion (hypothetical, unrelated to the current
subject matter) and it gets removed from CDN's and if I then put that opinion
in my self hosted blog and someone powerful decides to DDoS my little server
(and consequent hosting attempts)... Am I then not effectively censored on the
internet?

It's interesting in how many places (internet and real world) this is
happening lately... Interesting but mostly just scary.

I'm sure Cloudflare meant well but this action should have been thought
through more.

------
simonh
I think that private companies like Cloudflare that claim to uphold free
speech whatever the circumstances are fooling themselves. In this case it
wasn't the Nazi propaganda of TDS that tipped the balance, it was them
claiming that Cloudflare supported them. That made it very personal to
Cloudflare and it's management in a way Prince clearly had not anticipated
could happen.

The reality is that private companies and individuals, unless compelled by law
or regulation, have no obligation to facilitate the free speech of others.
None. They certainly don't have an obligation to facilitate speech that
falsely smears or defames them themselves. Trying to believe or claim that
they could do so in all circumstances was naive.

The principle of absolute moral neutrality is simply untenable. Choosing not
to choose is itself a choice. Given the existence of repulsive opinion and
content, choosing not to exclude it is simply a choice to publish it. It
doesn't in any way dodge moral responsibility. It's time companies like this
did the truly hard thing and set actual policies they believe in and can
follow as a matter of conscience.

------
chrissnell
This makes me really sad. I will admit that I did not always feel this way.
Several years ago, I spoke out against Cloudflare right here on HN for not
terminating ISIS's al-Hayat Media Center and Amaq news agencies' websites that
were serving up videos of the beheadings of foreign hostages. Cloudflare
claimed content neutrality as their justification and I was appalled by this
and actively recommend against them in my professional career as an
infrastructure leader. To me, it was simple: ISIS was killing innocent people
and Cloudflare was complicit in the weaponizing these killings into
propaganda.

I can't believe I'm saying this but here in 2017, I've had a change of heart.
It's not that I support ISIS, or Daily Stormer, or Nazis. Fuck all of those
guys. The problem here is that I feel that the post-Charlottesville Internet
is rapidly sliding into a very scary trend of _weaponizing speech_. Prior to
last weekend, the weaponization of speech was mostly confined to SJW-speak,
where people call others' speech "violence". No longer confined to Twitter
outbursts and op-eds, we are now seeing the weaponization of speech by service
providers.

It's easy to write off Daily Stormer as a bunch of inbred Nazi assholes
because, hey, that's obvious, but who's next? Who's the next group that gets
knocked off the Internet? Trump supporters? Civil War historians? Encryption
experts? You? Me? Who gets to decide? Social activists? The government? Some
other government? Matthew Prince?

Even if you're ready to drive a truck into Richard Spencer's house, you should
be outraged by Cloudflare's action today. This is quite possibly, as one of
his employees said, the end of the Internet--certainly the _free_ Internet.

~~~
ceejayoz
> This is quite possibly, as one of his employees said, the end of the
> Internet--certainly the free Internet.

If one person at a private corporation can single-handedly end the free
Internet, it was already over.

------
tyteen4a03
"the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters
of their ideology"

What does this have to do with the termination?

~~~
ceejayoz
Cloudflare's tired of being subject to that defamation?

------
redm
A previous blog addressed a similar issue, about ISIS, with a very clear
policy. It's worth the read.

From Mr. Prince:

"> What safeguards do you have in place to ensure that CloudFlare does not
support illegal terrorist activity?

This question assumes the answer. A website is speech. It is not a bomb. There
is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation
to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of
speech a site may contain." [1]

"Again, CloudFlare is not a hosting provider. If we were to terminate this, or
any other customer, the material wouldn't go away, it would just be a bit
slower and be more subject to attack. We do not believe that "investigating"
the speech that flows through our network is appropriate. In fact, we think
doing so would be creepy." [1]

[1] [https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free-
speech/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free-speech/)

~~~
jquery
Also from the article:

> Your CEO has in the past publicly defended providing services to websites
> hosting dangerous material. Would his position change if one of his own
> family was hurt or killed in an incident that could be reliably linked to
> the [controversial website]?

In a word: no. As a way of proving that point, rather than speculate on a
gruesome hypothetical, let's discuss a concrete example. About a year ago, a
young hacker broke into my email accounts, rummaged around, and caused a
significant amount of damage and embarrassment to me. At the time, the hacker
was a CloudFlare user. He even used his CloudFlare-powered site to publish
details of the attack. I was furious. It was a direct attack by one of our
users specifically targeting me. Despite that, we did not kick him off our
network nor should we have.

------
dhuramas
> Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed
> on the Internet. No one should have that power.

enuf said

~~~
dabbledash
Apparently he doesn't have that power, since they're still on the internet.

------
ransom1538
This is how life is for people in Porn.

Let's say you host porn. Let's also assume you wish to charge for porn. Many
banks, credit card merchants, etc DO NOT wish to deal with your company at
all. They wont take your transfers nor business. There are merchants that are
comfortable taking payments from you (CCBill) but they cost much more since
they have the expertise to deal with these types of chargebacks etc. I am not
sure how I see this is different. If you create a hate website - you might get
dropped from SendGrid. Tough. That is how it works.

~~~
syrrim
Cloudflare is in the business of protecting websites from DDOS attacks (and
various other things). They should of course try to estimate the cost of
protecting a given client, and forward that cost onto them. However, if that
client is willing to pay, their business centers around protecting them. I
highly doubt daily stormer is their worst client in terms of DDOS protection
or any other service.

------
CurtMonash
I say again -- he claims that the Daily Stormer claimed that Cloudflare NOT
cutting them off was some kind of endorsement.

If true, that makes them a very special case.

I generally oppose almost all cases of a company using their legal right of
censorship, at least when it's squarely aimed at censoring OPINIONS rather
than just censoring specific modes of expression (e.g. threats, curse words,
whatever). But he managed to find a legitimate-sounding loophole. He has no
obligation to support the Daily Stormer's false claim of endorsement via his
(in)actions.

------
typon
It always perplexes me when libertarians (the Silicon Valley kind) argue for
radical freedom but don't like it when a company chooses to exercise it.

Don't like it? Create a competitor to Cloudflare.

------
myrandomcomment
They are a business and they have the right to do this. 100% However they can
no longer say they are "content-neutral". Also because they have taken an
active step to censor they face the fact that in the future they could be sued
for NOT censoring other content as there is now precedent created by this
action. If you never censor then you have a clam of safe harbor. Emotionally
the CEO is correct. From business point of view this decision opens them up to
risk. Long term this was likely unwise.

~~~
matt4077
That doesn't even begin to make sense... Or at least you're 20 years too late
with that argument:

"The act was passed in part in reaction to the 1995 decision in Stratton
Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.,[3] which suggested that service
providers who assumed an editorial role with regard to customer content, thus
became publishers, and legally responsible for libel and other torts committed
by customers. This act was passed to specifically enhance service providers'
ability to delete or otherwise monitor content without themselves becoming
publishers"

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act)

~~~
myrandomcomment
You should read more of the Wikipedia under limits.

That law does not change the fact that one could argue "well they did censor
this so...". It is a risk. If you have a record that says "we censor nothing"
then you are much safer. I would agree that under the law you site it should
be clear cut, but that is not the way it has worked lately. It's a risk based
on a moral belief and I applaud the CEO for doing it. That does not
invalidated the risk.

~~~
matt4077
The law doesn't change what anyone can argue. It only changes what a court
will consider valid. The section on limitations says nothing about about the
topic we're discussing, whereas the law was explicitly written to overturn
this (since then invalid) belief that "any content moderation creates a burden
to moderate all content". Quote:

"The important difference between CompuServe and Prodigy for the Stratton
court was that Prodigy engaged in content screening and therefore exercised
editorial control. The holding in Stratton was overruled in federal
legislation when Congress passed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
in 1996. As a result, Internet service providers in the United States today
are generally protected from liability for user-generated content."

Anything else would obviously be unworkable. Facebook, for example, exerts
wide-ranging control over content (i.e. they delete quite a lot). If that were
to create liability for all user-generated content on Facebook, they would
have seized to exist long ago.

------
j_s
Surprised no one has linked this back-and-forth discussion at Blackhat 2013
between cybercrime investigative reporter Brian Krebs and CloudFlare CEO
Matthew Prince regarding CloudFlare's hosting of "booters"/DDOS marketing
sites. I will put a bit of the conversation here, but please do listen to it
in context.

[https://youtu.be/wW5vJyI_HcU?t=45m17s](https://youtu.be/wW5vJyI_HcU?t=45m17s)

(quoting CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince below, aka eastdakota on HN
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=eastdakota](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=eastdakota)
)

45:52 "Where would you draw the line?"

47:25 "It's really tricky when private organizations act as law enforcement"

47:33 "We try to follow what is due process"

47:56 smart-ass/sick burn re: Krebs's journalism

48:46 "We comply with any court order that we receive" (both takedowns and to
not take things down) "unless we feel that it's truly abusive in these cases
we [interrupted/unintelligible, maybe: would] ..."

49:00 "There have been some hacking-related sites that we have been asked to
take down"

source: HN user kefka
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14654680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14654680)

------
elcapitan
It's funny that people still believe that exclusion will _prevent_ other
people from radicalization, rather than doing the opposite.

People get shouted down on college campuses if they disagree with politically
correct views. So they go somewhere else to speak out their views, not being
interfered with anymore. So they radicalize.

People in companies have to fear penalties if they speak out against
developments they disagree with, so they don't speak out openly and form small
circles and consult forums of their own. So they radicalize.

People see themselves misrepresented as extremists by what they perceive as
the "mainstream media", so they turn to what they think is the opposite of
that, so they enter their own world of facts with Fox, Breitbart, etc. So they
radicalize.

Those people will vote for whoever they think represents the enemy of their
enemies, and even support foreign governments that they think represent the
opposite of their own establishment. They won't give a f about virtue-
signaling platform providers in their own country, they will turn to providers
elsewhere, whoever that may be (Russia etc).

The belief that further exclusion everywhere will make anything better is just
absolutely ridiculous.

------
jtchang
This is well done statement. He is acknowledging that he himself has no idea
what the right way to go about it is and at the same time running his company
the way he believes it should be run.

As much as I don't like cloudflare because it does create security issues (you
are afterall proxying traffic through them) I have to respect the CEO's
position on this. And it isn't easy.

------
totony
If you feel the need to make such a long post about it, perhaps it was a bad
decision?

Perhaps a statement that you did not support them in their ideals would have
suited both the situation and your minds.

I've always felt like Cloudflare was one of the better leading internet
companies, especially because of their neutrality towards their customers.

This is kind of a downer.

------
dclowd9901
> We're going to have a long debate internally about whether we need to remove
> the bullet about not terminating a customer due to political pressure.

I think you can safely say this has nothing to do with political pressure if
it's something you've asserted yourself. You can't say, "We've never taken
down a website due to internal moral pressure," but that's something I
actually consider when picking a business to do business with, so it stands to
reason a business should make decisions based on this. Not everyone feels this
way, and that's fine, but I prefer to do business with people I consider
principled in the way that I am.

Is this a dangerous notion? It doesn't seem so in practice, in that the only
people being banned are Nazis and child porn distributors; tough luck making
that slope slippery with those two players.

------
grey-area
While this was the right choice and long overdue IMO, it was the _wrong way to
do it_. They should update their TOS to remove the arbitrary clause about
terminating for any reason, and replace it with a concrete list of behaviour
which is against their terms, like perhaps hate speech, violent threats and
harassment. Cloudflare can decide where this line is, but there is a line and
it should be clear to everyone. Clients deserve to know what the criteria are
prior to signup, and Cloudflare deserves the right to choose which clients to
service.

Thankfully Cloudflare are not and should never be in the position where they
decide what stays on the internet, as they are just one provider, and do not
have a monopoly. This is why monopolies are undesirable, even though most
companies aspire to one.

~~~
jacquesm
> They should update their TOS to remove the arbitrary clause about
> terminating for any reason, and replace it with a concrete list of behaviour
> which is against their terms, like perhaps hate speech, violent threats and
> harassment.

Companies make those clauses arbitrary for a purpose: that's so they don't get
a bunch of amateur legal eagles who will attempt to argue forever about what
they can and can not get away with. By purposefully leaving a gray area the
company can draw the line by adjusting to fluid conditions when it suits them.

You can disagree with that but I totally understand why a company like
Cloudflare would want to reserve some room for maneuvering: it is impossible
to know what the future will throw at you.

------
timwilson1
I'm a long time lurker of HN. This is my first post. Decided to sign up to
write this.

After all I have read in the news regarding Daily Stormer, I thought it best
to go straight to the source, and find out whether what I had been reading was
accurate, or if their views had been entirely, or in part, misrepresented.

As a result of Cloudflare revoking their services to DS, the site is down. I
can't evaluate DS directly. To me, this is bad.

If everything that was said about DS is true, their own words would reveal
their colours. People could judge them accordingly.

The media regularly misrepresents individuals and groups. We shouldn't have to
take the media at their word. Whenever possible, we should be able to evaluate
the source. Now we can't, and we're worse off for it.

------
arca_vorago
All I have to say is the arguments being put forth by so many on this thread
are poorly formed, appeal to logical fallacies, in particular false
equivalence, and generally show a lack of understanding of American
enlightenment ideals and the Constitution. I'm not going to get down in this
mud by trying to refute all the bad points, but it makes me sad to see HN in
such a state. I think perhaps it's time for country of origin tagging so we
know where commenters are from... because these sentiments are somewhat
understandable in less free european countries, but are much less so if the
posters are American.

I hope this isn't a precursor to HN being sockpuppeted to death like Reddit...

------
alexandercrohde
For those making the "public company it's their right" argument, it's worth
considering what that logic might imply.

Does it mean food stores could deny selling you food, based on your
associations/affiliations? Airlines deny you travel? Cell phone companies,
deny you a phone?

I think the reason we're seeing backlash here is that the internet is largely
perceived as a utility now (I believe utility companies cannot deny service at
will).

Secondly, more than once is US history have those attempting to be virtuous
gone too far (e.g. McCarthyism). Surely it will happen again. When that day
comes, will it be better if we err to the side of too dismissive or too open-
minded?

~~~
billysielu
Generally agree. Potential distinction between content consumer and content
producer though. E.g. it might be a right to consume electricity, but is it a
right to produce it, say.. with solar panels?

------
bandrami
_shrug_

The fact that US hosting companies have the pretty much unquestioned choice to
decide whether or not to host websites of organizations supporting a faction
of armed rebellion against the US, to me says we're probably doing this right.

~~~
gbarc888
The whole Civil Rights Movement came about as a result of a faction of armed
rebellion against the US in the 1960s! I suppose you think it was a mistake to
let them have the right to be heard back then?

------
gasull
The self-proclaimed mission of the alt-right: "Creating a Subculture Which
Becomes the Dominant Culture"

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170721194819/www.dailystormer....](https://web.archive.org/web/20170721194819/www.dailystormer.com/alt-
right-mission-creating-a-subculture-which-becomes-the-dominant-culture/)

I wonder if censoring the Alt-Right only reinforces them as subculture via
Streisand effect.

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

------
nielsabel
These might give an interesting perspective:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-
of-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-
black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html)
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-
be...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-befriends-
kkk-documentary-accidental-courtesy_us_585c250de4b0de3a08f495fc)

------
thinkMOAR
Dear CloudFlare, Hi mr prince i know you read this.

Could you please apply the same policy to malicious sites that are you are
proxying which you never bother to take down because of 'insert poor reasons
here'? I think thats worse then to see or read an opinion i don't agree with,
regardless of how explicit that opinion is or how badly i disagree. People
should be able to say what they want where they want and not only when the
largest part of the population/media agrees.

The limit lies at VIOLENCE. There never is a reason to enforce or show your
opinion through means of violence. Ever.

------
dcow
What about the case where Microsoft Frontpage's EULA forbid creation of
websites that shed a negative light on Microsoft? Wasn't the verdict that such
a clause is not enforceable?

~~~
gbarc888
link?

~~~
dcow
My memory failed me. There was no case, simply speculation. I remember
discussing it WRT some other EULA case.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=9jgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=9jgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=frontpage+eula&source=bl&ots=5b0Q0psBfm&sig=MCIEZxjCDJi8gklRE30hLba-
aW8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX8fCTw97VAhXF5YMKHfN7CAcQ6AEIODAF#v=onepage&q=frontpage%20eula&f=false)

------
shawn-butler
I find it amusing that many of the same people who bemoan the loss of "net
neutrality" are in this very thread applauding arbitrary censorship of content
by a large company.

------
xorcist
Malware distributors, DDoS purveyors, sellers of stolen credit cards, all
those welcome as customers. However nazis isn't.

Good to know they had a line somewhere. I was just surprised to see it.

------
jdavis703
> Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our
> network at our sole discretion. The tipping point for us making this
> decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were
> secretly supporters of their ideology.

So CloudFlare draws the line of freedom of speech when they feel attacked by
words, but it's OK if the content they defend is used to attack and slander
others?

~~~
nickbauman
It could be argued that the mere presence of a Nazi flag _as expression_ is
incitement. Not ordinary speech. Naziism is nothing if not clear about
violence to people about things that they cannot change about themselves. Skin
color. Lineage. It's not like "if you don't do this we have no problem with
you" (the Antifa fall into this category. Nazis fall into the former).

~~~
Torgo
Well, the Supreme Court and the law of the land disagrees with you.

~~~
throwawayjava
Well, German law disagrees with _you_. (And cloudflare operates
internationally.)

------
MrsPeaches
Can someone explain to me how the protection of free speech sits within the
view of "the market will sort it out"? This seems like a very interesting case
to take as an example.

In general this forum is pretty pro market but when a certain idea comes under
attack from the market, people start talking about public goods. It seems like
there are some contradictions here that feel under explored.

------
moomin
One thing a lot of speechers don't seem to get around here: taking down The
Daily Stormer is speech. Also, keeping them up is speech. If you want to
regulate CloudFlare so that it has to carry The Daily Stormer, take it up with
your congressman. But don't pretend you're neutral in the fight between those
who value the constitution and those who would trample over it.

------
kbuchanan
Would not a formal PR response, like, "No, we are not in league with neo-
nazis," have been more effective and less contradictory?

------
jstalin
So cloudflare terminates the account of some pathetic racists, but happily
continues to host Ripoff Report, a company whose basic business model is to
defame people online and then extort them for money. You know, a site that
actively ruins people lives, employment, etc. But a silly racist message board
is what moves the CEO to take action.

~~~
davesque
To describe the daily stormer as a silly message board is to ignore the
broader context. It seems likely that what the CEO acted out against was the
death of Heather Heyer at the hands of the kinds of people who visit the daily
stormer (and are radicalized by it), the tacit endorsement of those people by
Trump, and the specter of the US slowly transforming into something like Nazi
Germany. None of those things are "silly" or "little."

------
njarboe
Interesting that Matthew Prince did not think to list the owner of the device
that is connected to the internet as a possible option of who could or should
censor what one sees on the internet. This to me is the best option and not
even put on the table. The old internet was amazing. Where is the new internet
forming today?

------
dman
In a strange way this reminds me of the Reddit controversy where the CEO was
caught modifying comments. I have never trusted Reddit after that, in a way I
am thankful to the Reddit CEO for shaking me out of my complacency.

I have similar thoughts about this. I do not want technology companies
deciding what content is reachable.

------
drtillberg
"Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great,
not by reason of their importance... but because of some accident of immediate
overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the
judgment." \--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Northern Secs. case. (1904).

------
saimiam
If you have not read the post and came straight to the comments, you should
read the post. I found it well written, thoughtful, and cognizant of its
potential role in dictating what the future of the internet could look like.

------
wushupork
If you had a restaurant, and you don't feel comfortable having Nazis/neoNazis
at your place of business, would you serve them or would you feel like it's
your right to choose not to do business with them.

------
exabrial
I'm glad to see CloudFlare do this, I think it's going to hard to defend
themselves against attacks from the MPAA, RIAA, and other troll organizations
now :/ I guess no good deed will go unpunished

------
logfromblammo
This is definitely sparking the Streisand Effect now. I had never heard of
this site before, and having their domain dumped by three major tech companies
in a row has plastered it all over my news bubble.

------
pmarreck
If beating up a kid on a playground is free speech, then that is where my
tolerance of free speech ends and I will go and stop the production of pain
from a simply ethical harm-minimization standpoint

------
gbarc888
What about the question of, WHY is Cloudflare responsible for 10% of internet
requests? Who are there competitors, and at what point should these service
providers be subjected to antitrust laws?

------
adventured
So far we've partially lost our freedom of movement (take a look at the
borders, the airports, etc).

We've heavily lost our freedoms around privacy.

Speech is the big prize for the authoritarians. Do not give it to them.

------
runesoerensen
Also discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15029852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15029852)

------
pawelkomarnicki
All dangerous propaganda should be stopped, but mark this day as the start of
a new era, the "Echo-chamber-Internet", censored by whoever shouts the
loudest.

------
mk89
I would never shut down such websites. Not due to Freedom of speech, but
because now they will hide better. Most of these people login with their
Facebook accounts to post hateful comments etc. I mean, seriously, all it
takes for any law enforcement is to keep these people under control and that's
it and sue them if it's the case. On the other hand, now we risk to create
more and more parallel societies and secret groups. I understand that a
private company can decide to terminate any user's account just "because they
can". Completely fine with that.

They could have played this card better I think.

~~~
twobyfour
Hide better?

These aren't child pornographers trying to stay under the radar of the law.
These are Nazis advocating for the murder of people who don't look like them,
and trying to make their views mainstream.

Making them harder to for the vast majority of people to find is a major part
of exactly how you shut a violent fascist movement down. And if you don't
think a movement like this should be shut down, you're part of the problem.

~~~
mk89
> Making them harder to for the vast majority of people to find is a major
> part of exactly how you shut a violent fascist movement down.

Did you ever read about how Mussolini or Hitler gained their power? Do you
really think that the governments back then didn't do anything to prevent what
they were trying to start? That they didn't try to shut them down, etc.?

We are talking about a severe social problem that unfortunately ends up mostly
with bulls __* - white supremacy and all this cr __. Why? Because nobody wants
to listen to these people - what are the issues they have? I would say that
most of the time, these people don 't have a high income. Maybe they are
unemployed, etc., maybe they don't feel secure/safe - do you actually know why
they do these things? Some may be mentally ill, but hell, I don't want to
believe that all of them are!

How many times does this have to happen again and again...? When will we ever
learn? Rising walls and shutting people up are not good ways to build
something - but only to destroy.

~~~
twobyfour
Listening to the issues they have? Sure. But they can talk about those issues
in plenty of other forums.

The forum that's specifically about hatred doesn't add anything to the dialog.

What we want in order to avoid a repeat of Hitler's rise is for people looking
for a place to vent and talk about real economic problems to find places to do
so _constructively_ , not places that say that the answer is "burn the n-----
s!".

~~~
mk89
Did you know the issues they had before they did what they did?

------
mythrwy
People that frequent TDS will probably believe this to be result of a secret
globalist cabal further cementing their resolve that something must be done to
save the white race.

Sometimes its better if things have an outlet that's relatively benign and
already mentally unstable people don't have cause for even more agitation.
Plus it's easier to keep an eye on things and perhaps guide them a little.
Confirming (in their eyes at least) what is already suspected doesn't help the
situation. Let them have their site and their speech. Because you can't really
stop it anyway and trying makes it worse.

------
norea-armozel
I'm not sure this is a good idea since Cloudflare came out initially in favor
of maintaining their account. Mind you, I don't like Nazis and frankly I don't
care that they lost their account but it's bad for a business to change its
mind so quickly. Honestly, I say let the fascists have their crappy site, just
don't help them monetize it. Let's see if they can keep up with their
"recruitment" when it's clear the only class of people they can garner support
from are the kind that spout nonsense like Alex Jones or worse.

------
dsfyu404ed
I can't wait for the day that society figures out that individuals, small
groups of people and big groups of people need different rules when it comes
to what is and isn't free speech.

A small bakery not putting a confederate flag or a rainbow or a swastiaka on a
cake or conversely being compelled by law to do so if requested is different
than Google or Cloudflare kicking out a customer for their speech or being
legally compelled not to.

I think Cloudlfare was in the right. The Daily Stormer was pretty stupid to
say that Cloudflare supported or agreed with them and got kicked out.

------
salimmadjd
Principles are tested in hard times.

In half of Europe Nazis were replaced by Stalinists...hope we're not on the
same path.

Legally 1st amendment is protection against the government, but principally it
should be applied to any entity with national or global power.

Racist, Nazis or anyone can say what they want (minus explicit call for
violence), and the opposing side has the equal right to prove them wrong.
That's the beauty and intent of the 1st Amendment. How people are cheering
this decision, seems rather shortsighted to me.

~~~
unityByFreedom
> principally it should be applied to any entity with national or global power

It's ridiculous to call Cloudflare this. There are tons of alternative CDNs.
They have as much "power" as your local bookstore.

------
cft
Cloudflare's major business is hosting paid DDoS providers "booters" [1] .
Scary to delegate such powers to a person who "literally, I woke up in a bad
mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet"

1\.
[https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2016-July/087295.h...](https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2016-July/087295.html)

~~~
ryanlol
>Cloudflare's major business is hosting paid DDoS providers "booters"

No it isn't, this is complete nonsense. There's not very many booters and
besides a few exceptions they don't have paid CF plans.

~~~
cft
"paid" as in you have to pay per DDoS to the booter. CF business is not in
getting money directly from the booters, but in acquiring many paid CF
subscriptions from the sites that the booters can attack. Some of these
booters can generate 100+Gbps UDP attacks.

~~~
ryanlol
>acquiring many paid CF subscriptions from the sites that the booters can
attack

Still doesn't make sense. CF alone doesn't effectively defend against DDoS
attacks without somewhat complicated setup, CF is completely worthless when
your backend is getting attacked.

I think you're seriously overestimating the amount of people pushed to use CF
because of these booters.

Besides, do you feel that the situation would be any different if the booters
weren't allowed on CF? CF is by no means important to their operations.

------
tlogan
This is reasonable decision. If you say something bad about my company then
"no soup for you" [1].

It seems like there is no free speech on internet: because free speech is
controlled by corporations and the loudest people on social media. So there
will be no ISIS websites, no Daily Stormer websites, etc.

That is how it is.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svSGKJFSl-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svSGKJFSl-8)

------
GrumpyNl
If people were educated better, there would be no need to close sites like
that down.

------
billysielu
This topic seems to bring out the worst in people. HN is usually better than
this.

------
Shinchy
Makes total sense, not sure why they would even need to write all of this up.

------
omegbule
Ignorance is bliss I guess, maybe the white nationalist shouldn't have a web
presence for these SJWs to notice them else they would go on rampant like
these gangs in LA/chicago.

------
jshap70
can we get some proper discussion about this or some stronger moderation in
here please? this thread is awful on all accounts

------
xena
What about their .ru domain though?

------
dibstern
I'm Jewish, and a huge portion of my family was killed in the holocaust. Two
great aunts were operated on by Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz. I hate and fear neo-
nazis and people who ascribe to similar hateful, violent ideologies. I was
shocked and scared by what I saw happened in Charlottesville. A small part of
me even briefly fantasised about a modern day Inglorious Bastards.

But I know freedom of speech needs protection, because today, it is easier
than ever to be given a label and associated with the worst of humanity, and
for people to think that you're a racist/sexist/etc., even when you are very
far from it. We all _just_ saw this happen to James Damore, a pro-diversity
guy, who suggested ways to make his workplace more attractive to a larger
proportion of women, and cited only science that has been backed up by a
significant number of studies. The tyrannical Left felt some of his comments
go against their narrative, the narrative that oppression is the cause of
everything unless proven otherwise. A intellectually lazy and innacurate
narrative, obviously. The world is never so simple, and the evidence doesn't
support such a view. If we give up freedom of speech and punish people like
James Damore, we will have lost the freedom that supports our society, and
allows us to have political discourse.

Do you know what separates us from Russia, China, and the rest? The freedom of
speech. Democracy is only truly held by a country when political discourse is
allowed. Obviously.

The Left is guilty of demonisation of their opponents and alienation of their
allies, and is, from what I've seen, the only group wanting to stop freedom of
speech, and impose tyranny on all others. People need to wake up to its
threat. It is much less obvious than the hideous Neo-Nazis, far more
insidious.

The fact that I fear being called 'right-wing' for what I have just said is
absurd. Friends of mine are members of both Left and Right-wing political
parties in my country, and I refuse to be associated with either, because
parties and wings create division and move us further apart, and distract us
from the same values that we do share. And of course because I disagree with
both wings. They are both driven by fear instead of reason. Nothing clouds
one's judgement more than strong negative emotion. The crocodile brain. The
worst part of ourselves.

My limit? The explicit threat or encouragement of violence. This is never
acceptible. This is where we can and should be coming down on the neo-nazis,
white supremacists, socialists, antifa, and the rest of them. They are violent
people, so this isn't hard.

Encouraging neo-nazism, given the holocaust, might be considered encouraging
violence. This makes some sense to me. So perhaps, where there is
incontrovertible evidence of encouraging Nazi belief, or belief systems that
are explicitly and historically supportive of violence, we can consider the
implicit threat of violence an explicit one. Can anyone poke holes in this? Or
any of what I've said? Unlikely anyone will read this absurdly long comment,
but I still want to post it.

~~~
krapp
I believe you have the right to express your views freely and I agree with you
that violence on any end of the spectrum is unacceptable. Groups like Antifa
and BLM have legitimate grievances which their violent actions completely
undermine in my eyes. The narrative of the "middle class rural uprising" we've
been presented with as the reason for Trump's election has, at its core,
exposed perfectly understandable issues regarding middle American economic and
political disenfranchisement, which have unfortunately been taken up as a
banner by white supremacists, and twisted into a justification of their
ideals.

However, I have to object to what I see as an attempt to portray yourself as a
politically unbiased observer:

>Friends of mine are members of both Left and Right-wing political parties in
my country, and I refuse to be associated with either, because parties and
wings create division and move us further apart, and distract us from the same
values that we do share.

Prior to this, you assert that "the Left" is "the only group wanting to stop
freedom of speech, and impose tyranny on all others." Earlier, you refer to
the "tyrannical Left" and mention that you consider James Damore to have been
a victim of censorship, and their "(obviously) intellectually lazy and
inaccurate narrative."

You may reject political parties but you appear to disagree with one
ideological wing far less than the other. Such language only serves to poison
the well, and encourage exactly the distraction and emotionally charged
polarity you claim to oppose.

------
temp-dude-87844
The linked post is PR, or more accurately, damage control; and I say this with
no malice towards Cloudflare. Simply, it's in their Terms of Service [1] that
they can terminate accounts for any reason, which is exactly what they did.

Unfortunately for them, this puts them squarely in the same category as, say,
Google [2][3][4], whose near-ubiquitous presence in people's digital lives
intersects with their black-box suspension behavior and near-memetic lack of
customer support, to unpleasant effects. And no ill will towards Google
either; they are just one of several examples who exist at the sweet spot of
significant market share, widespread presence at various layers of
information-networking, and a largely disconnected customer support
experience.

Cloudflare is trying to set themselves apart from a company (and competitors)
that evoke that association by blogging about the gravity of their decision,
but at this stage their writings aren't backed by demonstrable due process,
like they aspire to work towards. Instead, they truthfully admit that it's
troubling that any number of private corporations up and down the stack can
boot people and information off the net, and then segue off to a self-
reflective, but inconclusive closing.

No new ground is blazed by this post. After all, those hosting content that
they know has fallen afoul of contemporary sensibilities are still concerned,
the people troubled by private corporations' control of the net stack have
another example to add to their list, and the people who are most disturbed by
the nature of the content banned in this instance are pleased this situation
played out the way it did.

Some will invoke the slippery slope argument, and perhaps rightfully so. I'd
argue from a pragmatic standpoint that mainstream views shift over time, so
it's natural that some topics will become taboo, some views will become to be
seen obsolete and even abhorrent, as history has shown. And absent government
regulation (in all relevant jurisdictions), corporations will try to act in
their own self-interest, trying to balance reassuring their own customer-base
with satisfying wider public value-sets, while seeking to shed customers who
may cause them a disproportionate amount of cost: monetary, reputational, or
otherwise. Government regulation protects certain classes of people through
various mechanisms, like those with disabilities, or certain, but not all
intrinsic characteristics that have been commonly used in the past to
discriminate. We, as societies, then overlay subjective judicial systems to
try to reason whether corporations' behavior towards certain individuals was
legal or illegal.

It's wasted effort to try to gauge, as outsiders, whether Cloudflare will
enact a transparent process if any process they enact operates solely on the
honor system. If it's checked by the legal system, then that's a different
story. We're too early for that story.

[1] [https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/](https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/),
section 5 [2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972554)
[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757)
[4]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3839568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3839568)

------
sjreese
Freedom of Speech - The right to express any opinions without censorship or
restraint

------
NDlurker
This is insane

------
Dove
Free speech is not important because it is a pleasant experience to be able to
speak your mind. It is important because it is the only hope we have of
society making moral and intellectual progress. Every time a new idea comes
along, it starts out unpopular and faces resistance from the establishment. If
we decide what is right by arguing, unpopular but correct ideas can win. If we
resort to blows, they are much less likely to.

The government must permit free speech because we cannot improve a system we
cannot criticize. But this is not a sufficient condition to give new and
radical ideas a chance. Citizens must believe in the principle, too. Just like
all the anti-discrimination restrictions on government offer little protection
to the marginalized when any business can do it, a guarantee that the
government will not throw you in jail for your speech means little when no one
will host your website, no one will print your book, no one will hire you, and
campaigns of bullying and harassment are fair game.

It is easy to feel that might makes right when you are on the side of the
majority, but looking back in history, it is not always obvious what is right.
For example, we often imagine that the historical opposition to interracial
marriage proceeded from base hatred, but this wasn't so. The science of the
time showed clearly and repeatedly that the races had vastly differing
intelligences and that intelligence was heritable. We know now that this
research was flawed, but at the time, it was well established scientific
opinion. The concern was that by mixing the races, we would drop the
intelligence of humanity down to the mean, and deprive ourselves of great
thinkers, and bring about the doom of humanity in an idiocracy. It was argued
that those who supported interracial marriage were blinded by compassion and
would cause the downfall of civilization.

This was a very popular, very intellectually credible view, held by good and
responsible upstanding citizens who were willing to work hard and fight hard
to protect civilization.

Sure, they were able to pass laws based on their views. That's right and
proper. But should they have been allowed to suppress dissent? Should the
scientific community have rejected research that would lead to the doom of
human civilization? Should people be fired for supporting it? Demonstraters
identified, shamed, and harrassed? Print shops refuse to print their
literature?

The world is a weird place. Speech which we consider dangerous abnd abhorrent
usually is. But sometimes? Sometimes it's right, either in part or in whole.
Sometimes what you think is right, based on what you think you know, turns out
to be wrong.

The reason it is critical to let Nazis speak, the reason it is critical to
oppose arguments with arguments alone and never with any measure of force, is
that this is the only system under which views which are true and right have a
chance of winning.

Whatever you want the rule to be, however you want to treat the Nazis,
remember that not that long ago, _their_ ideas were the ones that were
obviously popular and right, that all the well-informed and powerful and good
people subscribed to.

The price of free speech is that there are always crazies. People starting
cults of ignorance and hate, drawing the desperate and the damaged into them
and threatening the very foundations of society. These ideas need to be
fought, but it is crucial that they be fought WITH. WORDS. If we resort to
collaborative blows, we will miss it when the crazies are right about
something important.

------
ringaroundthetx
I hope a civil lawsuit advances this conversation much faster than the
Cloudflare CEO can. Yes, speech and expression has consequences. The
reactionary service provider likely faces consequences too.

A court could easily side with the "abhorrent neo-nazis" if DDOSing raises
their bills and Cloudflare's adhoc policy was the culprit, no matter what
arbitration clause was written in their contract, and put the damages on
Cloudflare.

~~~
matt4077
yeah, no. Because among those great freedoms is the freedom of contract. Just
as you can, in the absence of an agreed-upon fixed term, cancel your
subscription to "Armchair Paralegal Monthly" any day you want, CF is free to
fire any of their customers.

------
Akujin
We take down Al Qaeda terrorist websites all the time because they can be used
to radicalize people. Nazis are no different. They are calling for the
systematic violent overthrow of the US government and for the extermination of
many millions of so called undesirables. This is a terrorist threat. I take
this threat very seriously as do many people in the Jewish, Hispanic, and
African American community.

There are literally thousands of hosts out there in and outside the United
States. The idea that Cloudflare is a public space requiring the protection of
the first amendment from a company's policies is laughable. The idea that I'm
seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already
infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups.

~~~
illuminati1911
The last sentence is the main reason why the world is so fucked up today.
"Unless you agree with my radical leftist agenda you are a
nazi/racist/<some_imaginary_word>"-mentality and the complete unreasonability
of the left is the reason why normal people are fed up with all this crap and
are voting for Trump, Brexit etc.

No matter how evil some group is (may they be pedophiles, satan worshippers,
nazis, whatever...) silencing them and assaulting them is a crime and is
against freedom of expession. The problem with making these exceptions like
"Let's have freedom of speech but not for these and these
people...yadayadayada" is we can never be sure where to draw the line.

(Neo-)Nazis are sure dumb as hell but as long as they have peaceful protest
and they don't harm anybody physically (unlike their counter-protesters) it
doesn't matter. And don't even start with the car-thing. An individual psycho
does not compare to organized widely accepted violence.

If we were to ban nazis and far-right organizations because they are racist
and apparently a "threat" then what about anarchists? They also are extremely
violent and want to overthrow the government. (and in the US officially
categorized as terrorist threat) What about BLM which is openly racist and
violent (July 2016 anti-white/police sniper attack, riots, assaults, highway
blockings etc.) If we start going down this slippery slope will have shitloads
of organizations and ideas to ban.

~~~
Akujin
The first sentence is the main reason we are so fucked. There's literally
nothing radical or leftist in what I said. Nazism is literally responsible for
hundreds of millions of deaths world wide. Fact.

You know how I know you're actually a shill?

> And don't even start with the car-thing. An individual psycho does not
> compare to organized widely accepted violence.

Whataboutism in literally the next paragraph:

> What about BLM which is openly racist and violent (July 2016 anti-
> white/police sniper attack, riots, assaults, highway blockings etc.)

99.99% of all people who have ever been to a BLM protest are peaceful.
Blocking cars is called Civil Disobedience. It is literally what the Nazis are
doing when they demonstrate in a liberal town in which they don't even live.
It's just as annoying when they close down the center of a town for Nazis as
it is when BLM blocks a street in Baltimore.

You are literally equating Nazis to people who want universal healthcare,
equal pay for equal work, and to not get shot at by police for the color of
their skin.

We're only talking about Nazis. Not the right wing. The Nazis claim they are
"alt-right" or whatever but someone who is advocating for lower taxes and a
decrease in government spending and for abortion to be illegal isn't the
enemy. Nazis are the enemy. Stop conflating Nazis with the legitimate right
wing of the nation.

~~~
Perseids
I am not qualified to analyze the rest of the comments, but the last/first
sentences strikes dear to me. In succession they were:

> > > The idea that Cloudflare is a public space requiring the protection of
> the first amendment from a company's policies is laughable. The idea that
> I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already
> infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups.

> > The last sentence is the main reason why the world is so fucked up today.
> "Unless you agree with my radical leftist agenda you are a
> nazi/racist/<some_imaginary_word>"-mentality and the complete
> unreasonability of the left is the reason why normal people are fed up with
> all this crap and are voting for Trump, Brexit etc.

> The [previous citation] is the main reason we are so fucked. There's
> literally nothing radical or leftist in what I said. Nazism is literally
> responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths world wide. Fact.

The radical part of your first assertion, Akujin, is that it is hard to
interpret your statement as anything else than "person A saying that
Cloudflare is a public space requiring the protection of the first amendment
from a company's policies _implies_ that A is a Nazi sympathizer". These kind
of statements are highly polarizing, hurtful and anger-inducing, because they
deny A to have any rationally positive reason for their statement and instead
generalize A to belong to an undesirable group. Notice how arguments
structured in this way will never convince anyone that is not already of your
opinion and will increase the outrage of those readers that are already of
your opinion. I would call this radicalizing.

Mildly relevant video from CGP Grey "This Video Will Make You Angry":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

~~~
k__
I Akujin is right. Often I have the feeling we moved from the left-right
spectrum to a triangle, where the "middle" from before has become its own
extreme, that is touting the "free speech for Nazis" over and over again most
because they fear of taking any sides.

~~~
Pigo
I haven't heard any touting from the middle in support of any agenda. But the
free marketplace of ideas doesn't work if there are exceptions. Dumb ideas
should be loud and clear so everyone has the opportunity to hear how dumb they
are. If you think an idea is so dangerous that just being heard will convert
people, then I think you should be concerned about how you feel about that
idea.

I really think BLM supporters, for example, fear this white-supremacy
propaganda because it's so similar to their own tactics and agenda. Their goal
is to sweep across the country by taking hold of the narrative, so they think
this garbage has the potential to sweep the country too. But the average
person is at work and paying bills, trying to live a peaceful life, and sees
all this stupidity for what it is.

~~~
k__
I don't think the tolerance of intolerance is the way.

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHaIFwbV0AEDV8u.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHaIFwbV0AEDV8u.jpg:large)

~~~
Pigo
That's a nice infographic and all, but we're not talking about that level of
tolerance. Tolerance of a website that has some words and pictures on it, or
tolerating someone saying something you disagree with on a college campus, is
a lot different than tolerance of Germany invading Poland. We have laws
against violence, harassment, and even defaming in some areas that cover when
these things go past just talk. At that point everyone is onboard with
enforcement because it's gone too far.

------
PeanutCurry
I'm obviously being a bit facetious when I say this, but are there really few
things worse than nazis? I'm not expert on the subject of neo-nazis or the
nazi movement, so maybe this seems more complex because of my position of
ignorance. But none of the statistics seem to imply that nazis are more than
simply intellectually repulsive and socially disgusting. That's not to say
that nazi affiliated groups never commit crime or kill people. But by the
numbers they seem like a very small blip on the crime radar compared to groups
like the Sinaloa, MS-13, ISIS, Boko Haram, or the Lord's Resistance Army.

I realize the significance of what the nazis accomplished in the past. But
there are actual talks about further restricting freedom of speech in America
being put forth by some groups because of the attention that's being given to
white supremacists and nazis right now with seemingly little attention being
given to identifying and quantifying the reach and influence these groups
actually have in the modern context.

~~~
njarboe
Scott Alexander has a good article relating to this issue and Trump[1].

[1][http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-
wo...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/)

~~~
hsod
"I stick to my thesis from October 2015. There is no evidence that Donald
Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year
old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate
of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made
up."

I'm a big fan of SSC, but this thesis is not holding up very well

~~~
Bartweiss
I'm not sure if it holds up poorly, or if it just cuts both ways.

I mean, Nixon's FBI tried to blackmail civil rights leaders and drive them to
suicide. Strom Thurmond was in the Senate until 2002. The Klan endorsed
Reagan, regardless of what he said in reply.

I agree that Trump has been frighteningly slow to condemn white supremacy, and
that it holds more sway now than it did a decade ago. But on any time window
longer than perhaps 15 years, I think it's fair to ask whether Trump is
consequentially worse than his peers. Less diplomatic and more overt, to be
sure, but is he actually driving more racial violence than Nixon did? I don't
think so. The bar has been set horrifyingly low for a long time.

There seems to be a large excluded middle. Arguments that Trump's actions are
not racist in consequence look downright absurd, but the claim that they could
only be caused by Klan-level racism and are entirely dissimilar to similar
modern politicians seems more like rehabilitating other racists than
condemning Trump.

~~~
hsod
Fifteen years is a long time. IMO the piece holds up very poorly once you
acknowledge that Trump has been consequentially more racist than GOP
candidates from the last fifteen years.

(I'm referring to "racism in consequence", I think speculating about his
subjective inner state is pointless)

------
pyroinferno
I find it weird that everyone jumps at Nazis when they do something bad, but
when it's police being killed at BLM protests or people getting hit in the
head with bike locks and shot at at Antifa protests, no one bats an eye. Why
is it okay to leave out Black Nationalists and Communists/Anarchists and
solely focus on Nazis? All these groups have blood on their hands.

------
EJTH
Cloudflare happily mirrors ISIS forums. The double standards, all because one
person was killed by what looked like an inexperienced driver scared shitless
by antifa goons.

------
HNNoLikey
Is anyone just taking the time to simply ask, WTF is going on?

At the emotional frequency everyone is operating on, do you really think
you'll win? No one will win because everyone will lose. Let me explain why.

I think it's time everyone admitted their biases and that their biases if not
TAMED will only serve to antagonize their political opponents.

 _Before I go on, here are my biases...

I'm a black libertarian(with a strong affinity for classical liberalism) and a
supporter of Trump's presidency so words like 'uncle tom' have been thrown at
me. I wasn't always a libertarian. Initially a liberal, I didn't pay much
attention to politics but when I begun to think about the role that politics
has in my life (at zero option), I realized that I was naturally inclined
towards conservatism i.e. fiscal responsibility & frugality, tighter
immigration control, less government intervention, anti-eminent-domain, pro-
personal freedom and liberty, anti-common-core, and then some. I'm huge fan of
Peter Thiel and Hans-Hermann Hoppe - I read them a lot. I no longer feel the
need to watch CNN because their ability to hide their skew towards liberalism
is all but gone_

You should note that there's no where that I mentioned violence as a chosen
means to get my voice heard. I don't support it but I fear that's where the
world is headed in order to resolve this political conflict that's in the
ether right now.

What we have today is a left that is too far gone - who mostly don't realize
it - and a right that's intentionally too far gone also.

Just as much as there is a far-right, you best believe that Trump is right and
there is a far-left (it is telling that today on the web, you'll find two
clones of Wikipedia all skewed towards either leftism or rightism because
neither trust Wikipedia - see Conservapedia & RationalWiki).

As much as Trump has been touted by some as a symptom (I agree), I think that
Obama's presidency was also a symptom. Putting his(Obama) race aside, we had
an American president who once said that [sic] between capitalists and
communists or socialists, and especially in the Americas, that’s been a big
debate...You should just decide what works.

This shows that the world had once again reached a point where systems like
communism which were disproven - when America won the cold war, the soviet
collapsed, the Berlin wall came down and Fukuyama wrote the words 'End of
History' \- could now be viewed in a relativistic manner. As though it didn't
matter what the world had gone through historically. This was one of those
fatal flaws because, if you forget history, you're undoubtedly bound to repeat
it.

I also subscribe to some Burkean views which espouse that, change in a society
should be introduced gradually. Gradual change while all the while testing to
see if there's truth in your claims. This is not what we're used to in the
tech scene; we prefer disruption but disruption comes at a cost. You cannot
have a Bernie without a Trump. You cannot have an Alt-Right without an Antifa.

We must all tone down our views. We must all tame our desires for instant
political gratification. Revolutionary change comes at a painful cost. Let's
all embrace gradual change. If we don't, right or left, the Daily Stormer will
win whether you like it or not because there will be a race war as per their
slogan. When this happens, it will all turn into rubble and only a few will be
left to pick up the pieces.

The questions we should be asking is what can I cede (politically) in exchange
for you ceding something of equal magnitude until some balance is restored. We
aren't headed in the right direction otherwise.

~~~
billysielu
Totally agree. If we focus on our differences we'll end up divided.

------
genon
Absolutely correct.

He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he
personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using
Cloudflare.

The excuse he uses for terminating TDS is an absolute crock; if TDS genuinely
did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince
could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim.

It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling
to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious
or bigoted reason they like.

Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a
business serving the public then.

~~~
nardi
Gender, race, age, sexual orientation, etc. are “protected classes” that you
can’t discriminate on. Being a Nazi is not a protected class. If you have a
business, you can feel free to discriminate against Nazis. And you probably
should.

~~~
Consultant32452
If you operate on public infrastructure, like being granted public right of
ways to lay fiber, I think you lose the right to discriminate. This feels good
because Nazis are assholes but it sets a very dangerous precedent. This is why
the ACLU has a long history of defending Nazis and their ilk. Because one day
it will be you on the other side. _We_ should all discriminate against Nazis
by denouncing them, ignoring them, etc. Public infrastructure should not.

~~~
Larrikin
What happened last time the Nazis were ignored?

~~~
Consultant32452
You mean when the redshirts rioted and killed 24 people which pushed the
public towards the brownshirts and ultra-nationalism? Was that when we're
imagining the Nazis were ignored?

~~~
anarazel
There's this event called the second world war.

~~~
novembermike
He's referring to the fact that a major catalyst for the Nazis gaining power
was German communists engaging in what was practically open warfare with them.

~~~
honestoHeminway
They sold themselves as law and order - in contrast to the civil war there
militant wing fought with the communists in the street.

Thats the real danger here. A hysteric left and some right outliers creating
the basis for continuously improving anti-terror laws. Oh.. too late.

------
sakabasataka
Hate speech != free speech

------
Zahreddine
Just because someone does horrible shit in the name of the Nazi party does not
mean the Nazi party itself is at fault.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for ideological trolling, religious flamewar
(below), and personal attack (ditto).

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15035271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15035271)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
conductor
Speaking of banning, can you please tell me why are my submissions
shadowbanned? Thank you.

------
thinkfurther
> Did not go well.

And you're telling _me_ this, why?

> We should be careful to a) not call everything Nazi

Oh I see, that's why. Well, you should be careful to c) not confuse me with
anyone else.

~~~
thinkfurther
For those who downvote me: so you're actually believing I call "anyone I don't
like" a Nazi? How _fucking_ pathetic is that? And no I don't care about the
votes, I just want you to stop and realize how incredibly dumb that is. This
is a kindergarten level of discourse on a subject that ranks amongst the most
important that even exist.

edit:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer)

That's where names like "Daily Stormer" and "Stormfront" come from. Educate
yourself at least a tiny shred.

~~~
lasfter
To be fair to the GP, I've, for example, seen/heard my friends and
acquaintances call people Nazis for condemning vigilante violence (e.g.
"punching Nazis"), the Berkeley riots, and Antifa protests.

I think the sentiment GP is trying to communicate is that many seem to throw
the label out there without any further investigation as to whether its
justified.

As for the downvotes, it might be because your comment came across very
hostile.

Also, I agree that it's easy to see that the Daily Stormer is neo-Nazi type
stuff.

~~~
thinkfurther
> I think the sentiment GP is trying to communicate is that many seem to throw
> the label out there without any further investigation as to whether its
> justified.

That's great, but totally irrelevant here, in response to me, in this context.
When I call a dog a dog, I don't care that sometimes, somewhere, other people
call a vase a dog. And it's incredibly rich in the context of "free speech"
and whatnot: what use is my right to free speech, when people then also have
the "right" to just replace what I say with some other anecdote in their mind?
What use is being allowed to ask a question when people then just talk to each
other about anything but the question? The protection of free speech arose in
contexts where people suppressed speech because they otherwise would have to
face it. If people don't face it anyway, there's no need to suppress any of
it. And congratulations, too.

------
thinkfurther
Yeah, and you'll take it _all_ down with your foolishness.

~~~
toomuchtodo
People have hated for thousands of years, and we've made it this far. Have
some optimism.

Mandating tolerance is about as likely to work as using a sieve to bail water
out of a boat.

~~~
jacalata
People have silenced dissidents for thousands of years too, why aren't you
willing to be optimistic about that?

~~~
toomuchtodo
I am. Dissenting speech will continue long after Cloudflare is acquired/out of
business/etc.

I'm only here to draw light to hypocrisy.

------
toomuchtodo
> We might agree on a few points but trying to clarify that the murder wasn't
> a terrorist attack, that it was just "unplanned murder with a vehicle",
> makes me want to re-examine my opinions on the points where we agree.

Are we going to call every road rage incident (1200/year in the US) a
terrorist attack now? Please.

I'd encourage you to evaluate your agreement with each of my points on an
individual basis; each idea either stands or falls on its own.

~~~
dang
Would you please stop? This subthread has gone way over the
uncivil/unsubstantive line and you've been fuelling this in other places as
well.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032418)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I apologize. I wasn't aware I was being uncivil, nor was I attempting to troll
or fuel an argument unproductively. I've signed out of my HN account.

------
rangibaby
slippery slope

~~~
kelnos
I really dislike the perfunctory "slippery slope" type argument. It's never an
argument not to do something; it's merely a warning to make sure that you
don't use an action as a stepping stone to taking more extreme actions.

Saying that banning certain things is a slippery slope, and using that excuse
to never ban things, means that it's ok to allow truly horrendous things to
happen, just because of fear of overreach.

When we say we have freedom of speech, but then in the next sentence remind
people that you can't yell "fire!" in a crowded space, we recognize that
restricting some speech can be a slippery slope, but we do so anyway because
not doing so would be much worse.

~~~
sk5t
Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater is not generally recognized as political
speech. At what point is it acceptable to ban unpopular political speech,
provided that speech is not a direct incitement to riot/violence?

~~~
thanatropism
Jesus.

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

"Shouting fire in a crowded theory" was actually put forth as a (succesful)
argument for censorship of political speech.

~~~
sk5t
Not really--"falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater" was given as an
example of inciteful (apolitical) speech clearly within the government's
purview to restrain, with the Court going on to opine that (political) speech
harmful to the national interest could also be restrained, even if true. A
pretty bad decision and partially overturned since...

~~~
thanatropism
Yet people keep using it as an example of a non-political restriction on free
speech..

~~~
Dylan16807
It's still a good example, even if it's attached to a terrible argument.

------
lightedman
In return, CloudFlare's service provider immunity should be terminated.
They've demonstrated that they do effectively control what happens with their
networks and should not enjoy qualification for immunity.

~~~
matt4077
What's the mechanism for this claim? Are you suggesting there was, previously,
any uncertainty regarding Cloudflare's ability to (a) know which domains are
hosted with them or (b) to look at those websites?

Because it seems as if they have always had the ability to "control what
happens with their networks".

~~~
lightedman
Same mechanism for any internet service provider - immunity is granted under
the auspice that you are not exerting control over the flow of information as
a supposedly neutral provider. The second you don't do that, you're not
neutral and you're aiding and abetting. This is how IXL Memphis got a big bite
in their butt in the late late 90s.

------
lightedman
CloudFlare could've just sued DS out of existence if the claim they are making
is true, for libel/slander/defamation of character. Instead, they lose out on
free money, lose out on delivering a bigger black eye to ethnicists, and
possibly lose their service provider immunity.

Should've resisted the urge to punch a Nazi and acted like a real American
instead. We don't fight, we sue.

------
pottersbasilisk
Interesting read. The consequences of this will be important.

I always thought the balkanization of the internet would occur because of
world governments not because of tech leaders personal feelings or corporate
influence.

I expect tech leaders to be dragged in front of the senate real soon.

------
doubleshame
It is very important to distinguish something like Facebook blocking an
account / Medium taking down a blog from a domain registrar refusing to
cooperate.

You are free to create a room where only some ideologies are allowed, but it's
dangerous to play the same game with the _ability to create the rooms_.

First the domain registrars, then networks say that they don't want to peer,
and then we end up with a fragmented internet, cutting off all communication.

It is not wise to pretend that an opinion that you do not want just simply
does not exist. The extremist in the room who everybody pretends is not there,
is eventually going to do more radical things to be noticed. In the echo
chamber of extremism, there is now no moderating thought; and the world loses
empathy to understand these unpopular perspectives that still exist.

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant"

"Isolation only promotes extremism"

~~~
matt4077
> "Sunlight is the best disinfectant"

It's not, actually. Fire is much better, and even alcohol is preferable.
That's why there's very little open-air surgery.

> It is not wise to pretend that an opinion that you do not want just simply
> does not exist.

Reality doesn't support this idea. Every single country except the US has more
stringent limits on what's acceptable speech. Yet among democratic countries,
only the US has para-military right-wing terror groups in almost every state,
and no country comes close to the dozens of deaths every year.

~~~
doubleshame
Sure, fire is good when you're dealing with them roaches, but kill them as you
will, does nothing for the ideas, which sunlight is good for.

Yes, the US actually does have excellent lines on what's acceptable speech. In
my not-professional judgement, it's speech that is the proximate cause of
violence and incites it, and the daily stormer is outside of that. If you're
talking about the US, you'd let the courts decide, and not corporations.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If you're talking about the US, you'd let the courts decide, and not
> corporations.

In the US, you let corporations decide how to exercise their right of free
expression just as much as anyone else.

Freedom of speech means you are permitted to seek collaborators to help you
spread your speech, not that others are obligated to disregard their own views
to help promote yours. That kind of entitlement would _violate_ the free
speech rights of the forced collaborators.

------
SirLJ
Boycott those hypocrites

------
hueving
So supporting ISIS is fine, but this is where he draws the line?

------
johnrichardson
Adolf Hitler: ~9 million deaths

Joseph Stalin: Estimates range from 3 million - 60 million deaths.

Mao Zedong: Estimates range from 49 million - 78 million deaths.

All evil men. Why aren't the latter two nearly as reviled as Hitler or
'Nazis'?

~~~
SCdF
You mean, why aren't they idolised as much? Or used as a racist symbol to
rally around as much?

The reviling comes as a reaction to the idolisation, and the use of that
figure as a racist symbol to rally around.

Otherwise, you revile them while you do history in high school, and then move
on with your life.

------
revelation
That's a long ass philosophical article, but they buried the lede: they
terminated them because _the CEO woke up feeling like doing it_.

Today isn't the day the internet dies, today is the day Cloudflare dies.

------
jquery
It seems pretty obvious that all this hand-wringing over a little known site
called The Daily Stormer has raised its profile worldwide far beyond their
wildest dreams. This is likely causing the opposite effect of what activists
want.

~~~
breadbox
If you honestly think that the rest of the world is only now hearing about the
Daily Stormer, then you must have a very plush rock that you've been living
under. I assure you that many, many others have not had that particular
luxury.

~~~
MollyR
I don't think that's fair. Some of us work very hard for a living or have
kids. I just learned about the Daily Stormer, this weekend.

EDIT: on second thought, I wonder if this is what Daily Stormer wanted all
along. They have raised their profile enormously now.

~~~
breadbox
My wording was excessively, and for that I apologize. However, my point was
more that not everyone has the same freedom to be unaware of Daily Stormer. In
much the same way that childless people have the luxury to be unaware of which
schools in their neighborhood are good ones, populations regularly targeted by
Daily Stormer have been aware of their rising influence for years.

------
gthtjtkt
I didn't know Daily Stormer existed until today.

Now, I have a little less respect for the companies who terminated their
services, and a little more curiosity about Daily Stormer.

Congrats, you did nothing but give them free publicity while damaging your own
reputation.

------
MrZongle2
It's easy to defend the speech of those which you agree or, at the very least,
don't vehemently disagree with.

With increased calls for Internet access to be a human right and for Internet
providers to be treated as common carriers, the arbitrary punishment of
lawful-yet-distasteful speech should be considered almost as repellent as the
Daily Stormer.

Yet here we are. And down the slope we continue to go.

------
exabrial
Also on sort of related note, this is why I disparage the "cake baking" and
"wedding flowers" lawsuits... While I don't care what two adults do in the
bedroom, I do care that a private business could be forced to render services.
What if Mike Pence becomes president and uses the precedent set by these
lawsuits to justify the passage of his version of Christianity into law? I
think these issues are better left unturned; in this case, CloudFlare was able
to take the right action and terminate their account without having to think
about a lot of legal precedent.

~~~
c3534l
Do you think I should have a sign on my business door that says "no blacks
allowed," too? Also the cake incident also involved the owners posting the
names and phone numbers of the gay couple on facebook and asked people to
harass them.

~~~
exabrial
No, of course not! I think the line is pretty clear there, a person can't
choose to be black or white, but a marriage is an "opt in" event, two people
are freely choosing to be married.

There have been a lot of these sorts of incidents; I didn't hear about the
DOXing incident, that's quite sad, and of course, inexcusable, for any reason.

However, there was an incident
[[http://bit.ly/1MxG5S8](http://bit.ly/1MxG5S8)] where a lady was good friends
with a man and was a regular customer for years. She did not want her
company's name associated with his wedding (sounds oddly similar to the OP),
so she politely declined.

This all being said, I'm very curious how you reconcile the two situations,
I'm interested to hear your viewpoint.

~~~
kevinh
You're conflating an act, getting married, with a state of being, being gay.
You could use the same justification of marriage being an "opt in" event to
justify refusing to serve an interracial couple or literally any protected
class.

Similarly, eating at a restaurant is an "opt in" event. Should you be able to
discriminate at will in that circumstance?

~~~
ue_
I am by no means an advocate of Mill's liberalism, but according to that
philosophy espoused everywhere else _but_ the case of a business refusing
access to black customers seems to me inconsistent.

