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 (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.
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."
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.
Who should decide that? Cloudflare? you?
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.
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.
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"
That's not for you to decide, you're not the manager of the internet.
But they're not free from criticism of their decisions.
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.
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.
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.
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.