Legally, a "direct link" is irrelevant, you can rarely find a "direct link" between two of anything. What matters legally is whether 8chan was a "proximate cause" in creating the mass shootings. Whether one thing is the "proximate cause" of another is often pretty difficult to discern.
However, as a helpful guide towards determining proximate cause, lawyers ask whether one thing was the "but for" cause of another, i.e., would the mass shootings occur "but for" 8Chan? Put another way, if 8Chan did not exist, would these shootings occur?
Unfortunately, we do not have an alternative reality to play out events without 8Chan, so we cannot know for certain, but we can use evidence (e.g., 8Chan chats, how the shooter interacted with 8Chan and others on the service, etc) to try to simulate that alternative reality. All of this analysis also needs to consider related issues like freedom of speech on public forums and any commercial interests.
I'm not saying 8Chan is guilty or innocent, just that the existence (or lack thereof) of a "direct link" is pretty meaningless.
These include the Christchurch shootings, the Poway synagogue shooting and the El Paso Walmart shootin.
The Christchurch shooter shared his Facebook stream to 8chan before the shooting started, and it was spread from there.
The Poway shooter blamed/thanked 8chan for his views.
You are expanding a lot of effort defending 8chan here. Perhaps consider that it might not be worth defending.
I lived in a socialist country and you did not. Perhaps consider that you might not know where these current trends are pointing to.
Ultimately, such matters should be prosecuted by courts. It is inappropriate for organisations like cloudflare to leverage their position within essential network infrastructure to start editorialising what passes through their network.
No, I think it's entirely appropriate.
"Don't troll" and methods for dealing with trolls has been a thing all sites have done since the internet was invented. I don't see any difference here at all.
Cloudflare blocking people that abuse the network is legitimate (e.g. spam, denial-of-service), just like it is legitimate for forum admins to block people that abuse the forum (trolling, explicit posts).
But cloudflare, or any other network infrastructure provider, shouldn't be determining permissible content for websites because they are not hosts/administrators for that content.
It is like a postal service reading your letters and then saying "we don't like what is being said, so you can't send letters anymore." They can and should stop people sending dangerous materials by post, but they should not be determining permissible content of letters.
It is like a postal service reading your letters and then saying "we don't like what is being said, so you can't send letters anymore." They can and should stop people sending dangerous materials by post, but they should not be determining permissible content of letters.
No it's not. It's like FedEx declining to deliver for a company which continues to cause it problems, or refusing to service Amazon[1]. Or like Visa refusing to service businesses which have lots of charge-backs.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/business/fedex-amazon-exp...
I expect that a different site with the same contract and payment terms, subject to the same attacks would have continued to be protected. maybe I'm wrong but it looked like a political decision, not a business decision.
What is this "direct link" you speak of? Did the shooters plan/recruit/organize their attacks on 8chan?