I think to make a comment like that you also have to explain why they have that obligation, especially in light of the downsides of them having that responsibility/power being as large as they are.

Exactly. They should also explain why Cloudflare should have the right. Once they have the power to turn off websites, that power can be abused. Do you switch a site off because it broke a law? Which law? In which country? Iran? Or China? Did it upset someone? An Imam? A politician? A bearded wokebro? Your grandmother?

5 years ago I might have agreed that Cloudflare should intervene a lot more. Now I don't.

It's like bad software architecture. Imagine we already have a security module responsible for deciding what requests are properly authenticated and authorized. And we have a service module responsible for some of the processioning of requests. Now someone comes along saying they think the security module isn't doing a good enough job - and their proposed solution isn't to fix the security module, it's to let the service module do request authorization too. And not even by asking for input from the security module about what should be authorized, or having a shared definition of authorization rules that they both rely on, but by letting the service module decide on its own what it thinks should be authorized. You'd tell whoever proposed that, our system already has that responsibility living in a single place, and spreading it out to multiple places is how you turn your code base into an unmaintainable mess, thankyouverymuch.

>5 years ago I might have agreed that Cloudflare should intervene a lot more.

Can you expand on this a little more. What were your thoughts 5 years ago, what changed your mind?

It's their service, you host content on their terms already. Of course they have the right to remove content that does not comply with their terms.

Sorry, are you asking why Cloudflare has a right to terminate a business relationship?

The most immediate reason for that is of course that you grant them that right when you sign the customer agreement, the default one even containing:

> Additionally, we may at our sole discretion terminate your user account or suspend or terminate your access to the Service at any time, with or without notice for any reason or no reason at all.

Because there is documented illegal activity going on? If hotel staff were alerted to a murder within their hotel, they would respond by calling the police, not sitting on their hands because the murderer paid for the room.

Calling the police on discovery of a death is their duty, ejecting the alledged murderer is not. What you're talking about here may be akin to giving Cloudflare the power and the obligation to act as police force, judge, jury an executioner.

Besides, if a domain owner can switch to Fastly, Akami, Cloudfront or any other CDN, are we really solving this problem in the right place, or are we just giving Cloudflare extra responsibilities and powers that they shouldn't have?

Cloudflare isn't even telling the police any of this information. They took it from OP, said "OK, we will continue to profit off this client," and swept it under the rug. They don't have to be the judge jury and executioner here, they should however pass that information along to said legal system rather than continue to turn a profit off of the criminal behavior.

Sure. They provide a service, that service is being used as a vehicle to do harm.

> especially in light of the downsides of them having that responsibility/power being as large as they are.

No clue what you're referring to. They almost certainly already do this, they may just be doing it badly.

> Cloudflare has an ethical responsibility to moderate malicious content on their platform.

You just made that up and also failed to define what you deem "malicious content" at first place. What ethics framework are you even talking about?

Who gets to determine what is and isn't malicious?

The law that says phishing is illegal. Cloudflare continuing to host the phishing website at this point amounts to aiding and abetting.

..._alleged_ phishing site. Who says the OP isn't the actual phishing site? Just because he posted here, we know for sure that he is the good guy and the other party the bad guy?

It seems obvious that something phishy is going on, but that's for law enforcement to figure out. They can then instruct Cloudflare to take down the infringing site. It's not up to a random individual to tell Cloudflare to take down random sites, and it's not up to Cloudflare to decide on questions of law.

It's "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law", not "innocent until accused by a random dude on the internet".

This is such a stupid way to think about it ("but what even IS malware") and you're obviously completely ignorant as to how threats like phishing are handled.

You are right that cloudflare doesn't have to take down the site, but the fact that they aren't, you know, forwarding this information to law enforcement for them to decide, and instead opting to continue to collect profit from the phisher really looks like aiding and abetting from the outset.

That's really the job of the injured party, not Cloudflare.

If someone calls my office and tells me that one of our customers is doing something illegal, I will not, under any circumstance, forward that information to law enforcement. Why would I? All I have is an unproven accusation by someone I know absolutely nothing about! What, exactly, is stopping the person making the accusation from calling the police himself, instead of me? Why is he contacting me - is that because contacting the police would get him into legal hot water? If so, would it be wise for me to act as his unpaid proxy in this? No, of course not!

Again, we still don't even know if the person making the accusation is in fact the injured party, or guilty of the very fraud he is accusing the other website of! Why are you trusting him at all? You don't know either party, you don't know the websites, so what are you basing your preference on?

The law also says that its matter should be decided by a judge, and specifies how disputes should be handled. Cloudflare has not been appointed judge, nor is it a venue recognized by law for bringing disputes.

Then cloudflare should respond by forwarding this information to the authorities rather than sweeping it under the rug and continuing to collect money from the phishing website