They've also removed sex worker websites (including a forum that was just sex workers talking to each other), but for some reason no one complains about it.
I believe you'll find that this was driven by SESTA/FOSTA, rather than being a discretionary choice by Cloudflare, and if you hang out in the right circles, it gets complained about a lot. (EFF, ACLU, Wikimedia, and many more opposed it.)
I think it's unconstitutional and the worst thing to happen to the internet in many years, as well as one of the worst things to happen to civil liberties (which is a pretty high bar!). Unfortunately, it passed senate 97 votes to 2, which suggests legislative fixes will not be coming soon.
Re:Terminating Service for 8Chan
by roywiggins on Sunday August 04, 2019 @10:47PM
(#20610749)
Congress recently added sex work as an exception to CDA 230 protections, and every provider scrambled to nuke everything remotely related.
That’s always the way. Censorship/moderation isn’t given a second thought when it’s just sex-related.
Interesting, never heard about that. Are there are other things too?
Re:Terminating Service for 8Chan
by blackflame7000 on Monday August 05, 2019 @02:07PM
(#20616581)
> "no female clients" policy
For the record, gender isn't a protected class in a place of public accommodation and it's why clubs in Las Vegas can charge Men more than Women.
> I thought there was some sort of legal distinction if they were totally agnostic to what travels over their wires. Is that not the case?
Not as far as I'm aware, no. The closest thing I can think of is if they were discriminating based on people's membership in a protected class, eg, if they announced a strict "no female clients" policy. This is clearly vastly different.
From a PR point of view, yes, every time they kick someone off for being bad, the more their failing to kick someone off will be seen as an implicit endorsement. But again, that ship has sailed.