They've decided they want to be seen as a utility. You undermine your DDOS protection business if you drop controversial customers. They are exact type of customer who need DDOS protection the most.

> They are exact type of customer who need DDOS protection the most.

They (KiwiFarms, Daily Stormer) would be better not on the internet.

> They've decided they want to be seen as a utility.

This isn't how law works - just as you can't say "we don't have a banking license but we'd like to be seen as a bank and provide banking services" you can't say "we're not a utility but we'd like to be seen as one". Note that being a utility also comes with a host of other legal restrictions.

> They are exact type of customer who need DDOS protection the most.

> > They (KiwiFarms, Daily Stormer) would be better not on the internet.

DDOS protection only exists because some people are willing to illegally target websites they believe would be better not on the internet. It's the entire point. Folding to publish pressure for one customer weakens their case for protecting others.

Dropping nazis from your service generally doesn't weaken the case for your service. For example, when Cloudflare did this in the past, it didn't harm their business.

> Dropping nazis from your service generally doesn't weaken the case for your service

From the article:

"In 2017, we terminated the neo-Nazi troll site The Daily Stormer. And in 2019, we terminated the conspiracy theory forum 8chan.

In a deeply troubling response, after both terminations we saw a dramatic increase in authoritarian regimes attempting to have us terminate security services for human rights organizations — often citing the language from our own justification back to us."

Nothing about that contradicts my statement. Cloudflare's business has been doing great ever since 2017.

We've already established that they are perfectly capable of ignoring people.

The only people they listen to or care about are domestic nazis. Those nasty regimes should just register accounts on KiwiFarms and then CloudFlare will bend over forwards to help them.

Much as cloudflare is choosing to ignore victims of harassment, cloudflare could simply choose to ignore the authoritarian regimes. It is not required to follow a particular definition of "fairness".

> They (KiwiFarms, Daily Stormer) would be better not on the internet.

Who should decide that? Cloudflare? you?

Cloudflare. It's in the TOS. They're not a utility, so yes, they get to decide.

Ok then: they have decided, and they decided not to take KF down.

Their TOS gives them the lateral autonomy to decide what breaks the TOS, whether or not something violates their TOS, and how harsh of a punishment to enact.

> Ok then: they have decided, and they decided not to take KF down.

Right, so what exactly is your point here? "Who gets to decide?" -- They do -- "Ok, that's what they decided".

We're all aware of who decided and what they decided. Decisions come with consequences, among them being criticized for your decision making.

Right. They get to decide to host these sites, and other people get to decide to organize legal economic actions against them, like boycotting. This seems like a normal and healthy part of a free market, no?

The sky is blue, yes.

I think paypal would disagree.

And in other areas: uber, airbnb, various voip services have all said "we don't actually have the proper licenses for our industry but we want to fulfill the same role"

>They (KiwiFarms, Daily Stormer) would be better not on the internet.

That's not for you to decide, you're not the manager of the internet.

Who decides then? Who is the manager of the Internet? Cloudflare?

In this case, Cloudflare. They have the right to decide who gets to use their service or not. It's an amazing freedom because they're not a utility.

But they're not free from criticism of their decisions.

Nobody is the manager of the Internet, that's the whole fucking point of the Internet.

Your right to censor and regulate traffic ends exactly where your machines do not reach. Cloudflare own the machines in question, so they decide what stays on and what doesn't. They are the managers of the part of the Internet where their machines reach (Duh), but none else.

It's funny that I have to explain this because it's usually the other way around, some tech giant will usually ban someone for something incredibly arbitrary and nakedly unfair, and the folks crying about Cloudflare's decisions here are usually the first to start cheering and explaining to the rest of us how they're a private company and have the right to do anything they want. Well, Cloudflare is a private company too, folks, and they decided that free speech is awesome and worth it, and you gotta respect their decisions and stop raging impotently about things you can't control.

> They've decided they want to be seen as a utility.

Cool! They should restructure their corporation then. But they're not, because their greedy CEO is trying to have his cake and eat it too.

Ironically, Kiwi Farms brigades against lolcows, and the campaign to drop Kiwi Farms, are both examples of human flesh DDOS attacks.

Utilities are heavily regulated and mandated. If they're asking for the cake, they should have it whole.

The entire reason they are mostly focusing on getting DDoS protection services to drop KF, is it's seen as the most promising approach to kick the website offline. Most other things you need to be on the Internet are either already utilities, or are reasonably possible to maintain yourself or find one provider among thousands. DDoS protection is not like that, you need an unreasonable amount of equipment and money to do it.

If CloudFlare folds, either the website will get knocked to DDoS, or it will find another of the few remaining DDoS protection services, which will be also invariably pressured to drop them, and as smaller players they will have an even greater incentive to fold to avoid a PR disaster. Repeat until they run out of DDoS protection services willing to protect them.

But, as far as I can tell both the owner of KF and its associated companies are located in the US and what they do is technically legal (they've not been convicted as far as I know). So, if they are unable to get on the Internet, that'd make a fantastic argument for regulation of DDoS protection services, which I guess is what CloudFlare is trying to avoid here.

What cake?? They're taking on the responsibilities voluntarily, with no benefits.

What responsibilities they are taking? So far, they try very hard not to follow their own AUP. That’s the opposite of being responsible.

The responsibility of providing service like a utility.

Or we could call it a burden? Let's say burden instead, so the meaning is clearer.

It's definitely not cake. They're actively moving away from the cake.

> So far, they try very hard not to follow their own AUP.

Different services have different AUP. I don't see the issue.