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Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by mjr00 on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @11:17AM (#32663232)
Guess what? They do. FTA:

> Our decision to disable access to content in hosting products fundamentally results in that content being taken offline, at least until it is republished elsewhere. Hosting products are subject to our Acceptable Hosting Policy. Under that policy, for these products, we may remove or disable access to content that we believe: [...] Is otherwise illegal, harmful, or violates the rights of others, including content that discloses sensitive personal information, incites or exploits violence against people or animals, or seeks to defraud the public.

Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by nightpool on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @11:57AM (#32663997)
The article says that providing CDN and DDOS protection services for KiwiFarms doesn't constitute hosting. The GP commenter clearly disagrees. I'll be honest: it really does seem like a distinction without a difference to me. If Cloudflare stopped doing business with Kiwifarms, it wouldn't be online. Kiwifarms is doing a great deal of harm to the world by being online. At the end of the day, Cloudflare has a moral responsibility to—at the very least—stop contributing their security and networking resources to the cause of "Keep Kiwifarms online".
Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by mjr00 on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @12:24PM (#32664488)
Thank you, this is a more interesting argument than the people reacting emotionally without reading the article.

Assuming we all agree that KF is reprehensible, the question is where is the line of moral obligation to stop supporting them. In the most reductive case, you could argue that anyone selling food or water to white supremacists is supporting white supremacy. Or that firefighters who put out a fire at a white supremacist's house are supporting white supremacy. But I don't think people generally consider that to be providing support, whereas they would consider, say, hosting a conference and paying white supremacists to speak at it as supporting white supremacists. So where is the exact line where it becomes "support"? It's ambiguous.

Cloudflare is in an unenviable position of being exactly on the line where moral obligation rests, further complicated by providing different products around hosting and DDOS mitigation. IMO, there is a clear distinction between hosting content and providing DDOS mitigation services, as the article suggests. And just as you wouldn't want your electric company unilaterally deciding that you were a white supremacist and cutting your power, I agree with CF's stance that they shouldn't be making extrajudicial decisions about which customers to use their DDOS protection.

Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by flkiwi on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @02:45PM (#32666589)
> In the most reductive case, you could argue that anyone selling food or water to white supremacists is supporting white supremacy.

This, incidentally, is why the term "racism" (and similar supremacist terms) must be understood to refer to embedded social structures that may include honest, and often honorable, people unwittingly perpetuating them and not just being mean to the target. So, the question you are in effect raising is how Cloudflare can be ANTI-transphobic and not simply trans-supporting, and whether it has a moral or other obligation to do so. To me, it's a very easy answer with an extremely difficult execution.

Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by MichaelCollins on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @05:34PM (#32668658)
> This, incidentally, is why the term "racism" (and similar supremacist terms) must be understood to refer to embedded social structures that may include honest, and often honorable, people unwittingly perpetuating them and not just being mean to the target.

When you speak of honorable people unwittingly perpetuating racism, do you really mean grocery stores that don't perform ideological purity tests on their customers?

Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by bioemerl on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @12:34PM (#32664682)
I think you might be prone to overestimate the net harm of kiwi farms and you understate the harm of centralized groups like cloudflare making decisions like this.

The harm of kiwi farms is centralized and immediate and obvious, the harm of centralized control is insidious, long-term, and surprises you without warning once you establish the precident years later.

Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by pseudalopex on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @12:07PM (#32664214)
> If Cloudflare stopped doing business with Kiwifarms, it wouldn't be online.

Someone said The Daily Stormer and 8Chan are online today.[1] But this would mean Cloudflare can stop doing business with Kiwi Farms without limiting speech.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32662368

Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by howdyfolks on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @12:59PM (#32665057)
It is so interesting that you draw that conclusion. I draw the opposite: that whether Cloudflare withdraws services or not is going to make no meaningful difference to whether KF remains online
Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by pseudalopex on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @01:08PM (#32665215)
> It is so interesting that you draw that conclusion. I draw the opposite: that whether Cloudflare withdraws services or not is going to make no meaningful difference to whether KF remains online

How is it the opposite?

Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by Borgz on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @11:42AM (#32663708)
This policy seems to only apply to content that they host. It appears that they don't intend to apply this policy to websites that they are only providing DDoS mitigation to, such as KiwiFarms.

Whether Cloudflare is hosting the content or mitigating DDoS attacks against it, they bear some responsibility for the content being accessible. I see no good reason for them to have different policies between their hosting and DDoS mitigation services if they actually care about not propagating the content they refuse to host.

Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by mjr00 on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @11:44AM (#32663738)
> I think one easy thing they could do, is stop hosting for forums dedicated to doxxing and harassing people

> This policy seems to only apply to content that they host.

Yes, which is exactly what the parent commenter was saying.

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Re:Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach by mjr00 on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @11:58AM (#32664042)
Words have meaning. If you want to understand the difference between hosting and providing security services, here's a good article: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...