And yet, Cloudflare didn't take them down proactively like they did with The Daily Stormer and now 8chan. Under what standards are sites like 8chan worse than the Taliban?

Looks like the standard is there hasn’t been enough bad press about their material support of those terrorist orgs yet. They clearly wait for the public outrage before acting.

According to some CEO interview they hold on as long as possible until forced otherwise.

This is relevant as the censorship here (whether justified or not, right or wrong it is censorship) is not done by CF, but by a faceless internet mob that is attacking both CF and 8chan.

CF has all the right to terminate its relationships with anyone. social media mobs should not force companies to exercise that right.

> According to some CEO interview they hold on as long as possible until forced otherwise.

I think an appropriate qualifier here might be that they used to hold on as long as possible. I don't think that's universally true anymore.

> This is relevant as the censorship here (whether justified or not, right or wrong it is censorship) is not done by CF, but by a faceless internet mob that is attacking both CF and 8chan.

In the same sense that a mob outside the courthouse ensured a guilty verdict, perhaps. But it's still the jurors who actually acted.

> In the same sense that a mob outside the courthouse ensured a guilty verdict, perhaps. But it's still the jurors who actually acted.

I am not sure what you mean here... but I would find in both cases very problematic that a mob could wield such power. A mob is not a democratic representation.

I meant that the mob may have made demands, but the only power the mob has is that which it is given. Just like the verdict reached by those jurors, Cloudflare chose their own path.

Mob power come mostly from two sources. First, the one you point out, people/companies yielding and affirming the efficacy of their method. Second from other public figure joining in the pressure.

The reason the mob has power is in the end that they do not get criticized by those they respect.

Proactively?

Without being forced by a court to do so.

Probably it's closer to home- those sites fuel domestic terrorism, whereas the Taliban do not. Also public pressure and public attention. They're probably incredibly hesitant to take anything down, but if something becomes front page news then they have to deal with it. Also I don't know what's proactive about any of this, if anything it's way too little too late. The sites you mention provide absolutely zero value to anything resembling civilization- they're gathering places for sociopaths and psychotic morons. I'm not even close to being remotely upset that they may have been treated more harshly than actual ISIS or Taliban sites or whatever. There is a level of pathetic beneath which it all just kind of blends together and it doesn't make sense to attempt to rank them. Yeah, ISIS is shittier than the people who like Daily Stormer, but they're both so shitty that it's not really possible to rank their shittiness relative to each other. It's like the difference between jumping off a 50 story building vs. a 100 story building- there is a distinction, but it doesn't really matter.

I don't think 8chan was exactly a good site, but I'd still put it in the category of "internet-neutral". There's some horrible stuff there (which is all you really hear about), a lot of neutral stuff and a little bit of good.

IMO the reason Cloudflare took down TDS and 8chan but not the Taliban or Hamas is simply outgroup vs fargroup. [0] The operators, users and targets of 8chan or TDS are all familiarly western but different enough to hate, while islamic terror organizations are so different it's hard to relate to them - sort of like that joke about how the more similar two religious denominations are, the more likely it is that they hate the other. [1]

0: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

1: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religio...

I agree with you. Those sites were closer to home and less alien to Americans, and thus might get more scrutiny and judgement. That's got to be a factor. But I've got to think avoiding bad publicity and negative headlines is the #1 factor behind any inconsistencies in their reaction. The news cycle can be a powerful force for companies concerned about how they're perceived by their investors.

> But I've got to think avoiding bad publicity and negative headlines is the #1 factor behind any inconsistencies in their reaction.

I don't see this working out well for them when it comes to total negative news. Would we have seen nearly as many requests to Cloudflare asking for 8chan to be cut off if they had not already done so for The Daily Stormer?

It's hard to say. It's never going to be a win/win for them, and unfairly cutting someone off would be terrible publicity for them. I'd imagine they're totally inconsistent about these things and don't spend hardly any time policing their customers (nor should they). I have a feeling these things tend to be on a case-by-case basis, mostly fueled by investor concerns, but I guess that just doesn't bother me like it does some people. I don't see them as having any responsibility at all to be guardians of free speech or anything, maybe that's the distinction.

On a more practical level, most internet infrastructure firms based in the US or Europe probably don't have that many people on staff who are fluent in Arabic, Pashto and other languages that would allow the quick identification of terrorists, as opposed to normal people who sometimes discuss terrorism as spectators of the news.

True, but these weren't terrorist propaganda sites, they were the official websites of Hamas & Co, and they do have an english version for anyone not familiar with Hamas. Zoho apparently is providing Email to them.

It being their official sites gives those value / legitimacy and makes them even more okay to not kick them off. Kind of like there should be hardly anything the US president can do to get kicked off twitter.

The US president isn't classified as a terrorist (organization) though, while Hamas is. CF's argument was that they weren't providing material support, otherwise they'd be breaking the law.