[OzzyB]

If I wanted to create an alternative to YouTube with a conservative bent what are the chances Cloudflare will wake up one morning and shut me down?

What if the content is just generally in "bad taste" and not overtly Neo-Nazi, will CF feel the need to play "Content Cop" or are they willing to abide by their role as utility?

[lsmarigo]

I know you guys took major issue with the Cloudlfare takedown of DailyStormer but try to look at the big picture. Mankind has never had a tool as powerful as the internet. The advent of the printing press played a key role in the lead up to the Salem Witch Trials. How big a role the internet played in the mess we find ourselves in today as a country, that's up to future historians to argue, but make no mistake the impact is massive and unlike anything we've ever seen. The spread of hate and bigotry on the internet left unchecked has now lead to real loss of life which is what prompted CloudFlare/Reddit/Facebook to push these new policies. How, in the face of actual murders can you contend that these companies are wrong to take down these websites?

Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech?

Tech companies didn't choose to be the society police, yet here we are.

[powertower]

> Mankind has never had a tool as powerful as the internet. The advent of the printing press played a key role in the lead up to the Salem Witch Trials.

Name one person harmed by the site?

If you have ever seen a page of DailyStormer, you'd either laugh or go away.

No one has ever killed anyone after reading a few paragraphs on that site.

Putting in the argument of "Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech" is not an honest way of describing censorship of content that is silly at its worst and dumb at its best.

[josteink]

But clearly when a huge crowd of Antifas are overwhelming and attacking a relative small crowd of stupid nazis, with bats, and one guy try to make it out of there before his car is smashed to bits (with the obvious tragic accident waiting to happen)...

Clearly it’s the nazis who are out of control and we need to take down their websites. Freedom of speech be damned!

Seriously. This was a harmless, stupid, non-violent demo for nazis to out themselves in, before the antifa turned up and got people killed.

Are their websites being taken down? No? How come?

Disclaimer: think nazis are about as stupid as it gets.

Edit: not exactly expecting upvotes for this post, but this thread clearly needs some balance.

These are the guys who rushed a non-violent demo. These are the people you are defending: https://mobile.twitter.com/PoliticalShort/status/90191505521...

[yahna]

> Edit: not exactly expecting upvotes for this post, but this thread clearly needs some balance.

It doesn't. Seriously, you're making excuses for a murderous white supremacist asshole.

[pen2l]

Good points, I want to add:

We just witnessed something very significant, when Russia interfered. They had an express goal and they carried it out with technologies we know.

A medium that is absolutely free of censorship is not in your best interest, because it can and will be used to compromise you.

The solutions are difficult, but what is clear (especially to folks who have had to moderate even a small channel or forum) is that a policy of no-censorship never scales in the real world, the question is how you do it, where to draw the line, etc..

[a_t48]

I'm facing this situation right now. I've peeked in the discord channel of the ones who want to post edgy memes on our forums and they see themselves as martyrs for getting banned or quitting the forums.

[movedx]

It sounds like you're just dealing with teens who want to be edgy.

[pls2halp]

That’s what The Daily Stormer was. Stormfront is still up.

[manigandham]

> Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech?

Yes, this decision has already been made. Freedom (of speech and more) is fought for and won through struggle and sacrifice. We have already lost much human life to defend these rights and continue to do so.

Bad actions will be dealt with the appropriate consequences, as they always have, but that does not mean we should start limiting rights. This is the foundation of the justice system and society itself.

[throwaway324083]

That's the problem though. Cloudflare did not terminate DailyStormer because of the content. Cloudflare hosts over 40 ISIS related websites, which they continue to do and have not terminated.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/anti-terrorist-hacker-group-re...

[grzm]

> There's clearly some undefined standard here, known only in the head of Cloudflare's CEO.

Cloudflare was quite clear on the criteria they used.

> The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

You can disagree with that criteria, and you can question whether this is the true criteria Cloudflare used. For the later, you need to provide evidence in opposition to this case.

[abtinf]

Yes, they were extremely clear on the criteria they used: the CEOs emotional state.

“Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision.“

https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...

[grzm]

As I mentioned above (in another subthread), thanks for the link!

[throwaway324083]

ok, fair enough. but the parent to my post said this was about the content.. it's clearly not the content, even that tidbit is clear it's not about the content.

[grzm]

If you're going to weigh in on a contentious issue, particularly if you're going to correct someone, please take the time to do so with some evidence, regardless of what any other poster has commented. You can't control other's comments, but you certainly can control your own. That includes refraining from further muddying the issue.

[SaltyBackendGuy]

> "Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech?"

Just because one has freedom of speech does not mean one is free of consequence. So actual murderers should be punished. People believe what they choose to believe, and if it's not the DailyStormer it's some other hate mongering source (that's not exclusive to the internet).

[yahna]

> Is loss of human life an acceptable cost for free speech?

lots of people would say yes.

[rmc]

There's a difference between Stormfront, a neo-nazi site, and "a conservative bent"

[cm2187]

There is an increasing (and worrying) trend among liberals to call racist or misogynist anyone who doesn't demonstrate enthusiasm for the cause of the day. Concerns about being censored when accused of racism isn't exactly irrational paranoia.

A recent example of what appears to be a moderate, democrat voting professor experiencing it:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4546704/Professor-ca...

[rmc]

That's the Daily Mail, a newspaper that supported Hitler during the 1930s, and today is not accepted as a source in Wikipedia due to "the Daily Mail’s reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication"¹. So you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical.

Secondly there is nothing in that article about neo-Nazism, so I don't know why you brought it up? I'm talking about neo-Nazi sites, not general racism/etc.

--- ¹ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia...

[cm2187]

If reading the daily mail offends you, there was a long column in the FT last week end about this phenomenon [1] but you will find references in various newspapers [2] [3] (and dozens others if you google it).

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/902581a0-99ff-11e7-b83c-9588e5148...

[2]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/education/edlife/internet...

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/student-protestors-and-t...

[rmc]

> If reading the daily mail offends you

It doesn't offend me. It's just not a reliable source.

And those links don't address my second point. There is no reference to neo-Nazism. I'm suggesting neo-Nazi website be taken offline/

[yahna]

> There is an increasing (and worrying) trend

No there isn't. That's like saying there is an increased trend among conservatives in general towards being Nazis.

There is an increase in the activity of the lunatic fringes on both sides. Ranging from hardcore tea party people to "OMG white people are the worst" morons all the way to antifa and neo-nazis.

[rmc]

> That's like saying there is an increased trend among conservatives in general towards being Nazis.

Someone compared the election manifesto from the British National Party (who are basically neo-Nazi) for the 2005 UK election, and the 2017 manifesto from the Conservative party, the main centre-right party in the UK.

And there were an awful lot of similarities which the Conservatives wouldn't have put in before.

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2017/04/23/compared-tories-polic...

[cm2187]

There is an irony in you posting two answers within minutes, one likening a british political party to neo-nazis, and the other highlighting that you make a distinction between neo-nazis and other forms of racism.

[rmc]

The British National Party used to be called the British Union of Fascists. Nick Griffin was leader for 15 years, until 2014, and is a holocaust denier. Until 2010, they had an official "whites only" membership policy. It's illegal for police, fire frighters, and prison officers in the UK to be a BNP member. The Church of England forbids it's priests from being members. It's not much of a stretch.

If you're not British you might think "oh they are just another political party", that's not true at all.

[briholt]

Define it. Then define it in such a way that everyone advocating this censorship will agree too. Then pledge that when people start pushing for additional censorship you'll vehemently push back.

[rmc]

You can start off with the definition in German law:

publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism .. publicly or in a meeting disturbs the public peace in a manner that violates the dignity of the victims by approving of, glorifying, or justifying National Socialist rule of arbitrary force

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#...

[briholt]

So obviously people like Sam Harris, Maajid Nawaz, Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray, and George W. Bush don't qualify. So just reply with some links where you've been defending their right to speak as loudly as you've insisted Nazi censorship won't impair it. Because surely no decent person you would insist on clear lines of censorship and then quietly disappear as violent rioters use that reasoning to slander and silence people.

Edit: I'll take that downvote as a sign of "I casually claim censorship can be limited while doing nothing to stop its expansion."

[MikusR]

It depends on the mood of their CEO.

[azinman2]

I think this is rediculius. If they took down child porn, would you also have an issue with this? What about a phishing site hosting malware and capturing passwords for the Russian mafia? It seems clear to me you can’t be 100% agnostic to your content.

There is a huge gap between “conservative bent” and those trying to actively incite violence in the name of Hitler. And that they’ve only removed ONE such site across all their hosted properties is hardly an indication that their CEO is randomly moody. A single data point is not a trend.

[lbotos]

GP was using that phrasing because of the post the CEO used to justify the actions:

" I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet."

https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...

The point of the matter is services can host questionable content and remove it to comply with the law or services can based on their terms of service remove content "as they see fit."

The question remains, when will a service come for your content? I'm not advocating for hate speech or any illegal activities, I just think cloudflare strapped on their skis and are now on their way down the classic slippery slope.

[azinman2]

But they admitted that was a scary thing and prompted discussion about said slippery slope. Seems quite responsible to me.

[throwaway324083]

Cloudflare has no issue providing service to phishing sites: https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/10/07/phishers-using...

They have no issue providing service to ISIS: https://www.theepochtimes.com/anti-terrorist-hacker-group-re...

The CEO literally said it was because he felt like terminating DailyStormer. Why is it suddenly wrong to repeat his own words?

Instead you make it sound like this is about the content, something cloudflare clearly doesn't have an issue with.

[grzm]

> The CEO literally said it was because he felt like terminating DailyStormer.

Do you have a quote where the CEO says this? Your statement gives the impression that this was nothing more than a whim. As I pointed out below, according to their own statement on the matter, that's not the case:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15350723

[abtinf]

I find it bizarre that you repeatedly link to the sanitized corporate blog. The CEO has explicitly stated it was pure whim: “Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision.”

https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...

[grzm]

Thank you for providing a link to support what the other poster commented.

I've provided the link I have for two reasons:

* it's a link I know about that's relevant to the discussion

* it is from Cloudflare themselves, so the chance of it being a misquote (accidental or otherwise) is less likely. I don't have a knee-jerk instinct to reject official statements as issued in bad faith without other evidence.

I repeatedly linked likely for the same reason you have: I saw something I thought was misrepresentative or misinformed more than once.

I'm thankful for the link because I can use that to alter my understanding of the event. There's a quote that's sometimes attributed to Keynes "When the facts change, I change my mind."[0] That's something I endeavor to do.

[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/

I'll also admit to a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the use of a throwaway account in a contentious discussion. I can understand the use of throwaways to protect identity, but in that case the standard should be higher: they should really be bringing something substantial to the discussion, not just repeating talking points.

Thanks again for the link. That's useful.

[Karunamon]

And that they’ve only removed ONE such site across all their hosted properties is hardly an indication that their CEO is randomly moody.

If you read the blog[1] regarding that incident, it provides a lot more evidence than the datapoint of the removal. It also completely undermines Cloudflare's claims of being content-neutral. Given that content neutrality is a binary state...

[1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

Also hosted by cloudflare: ISIS sites, which are a lot more of a clear and present danger to real people than a bunch of racists. That means the standard has gone from content neutrality - to content neutrality so long as you don't imply things the CEO doesn't like. I.e. not neutral.

From the blog:

>And, after today, make no mistake, it will be a little bit harder for us to argue against a government somewhere pressuring us into taking down a site they don't like.

Anything I can say about this will be ridiculously snarky, but this is the hill you chose to sacrifice your principles on, Matthew? Really?

[azinman2]

I was going off my memory of stormfront situation. Apologies if I incorrectly cited number of data points. I still am not concerned about the GP’s issue given the CEO expressed remorse and created a debate. It’s hard to imagine neo-nazis doing such a thing themselves should they create a cloud front competitor.

I agree they should remove ISIS sites. It’s marginally harder given you could argue it’s about religion/politics, but I’m happy to lump them in with neo-nazis inciting violence.

It’d be nice if you could create some perfect set of clear rules that you could cleanly apply to 100% of sites. Unfortunately the world is squishy and gray, which is why we have judges despite countless laws written in legalese that build on top of each other’s precedent. I don’t expect judging content to be the same. I appreciate the CEO thinking they should just defer to when gov forces them to shut something down. I also appreciate the perspective of removing extremist sites — you got one life to live so why not make a difference creating barriers to _EXTREME_ hate/violence around the world.

[mikeryan]

If you think that there’s a risk of Clouflare pulling your site down I’d choose not to use their service?

Seems an easy choice.

[katastic]

If you bothered to Google before posting, you'd see more than a single data point.

Voat was targeting with a letter writing campaign saying they were a child porn host when they weren't. All the liberals said "if you don't like Reddit, make your own." So someone did. And then liberals DDoS'd it into the ground and had any ISP that dared host them, filled with DMCA and child porn notifications.

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter have all worked against anyone who dares question the status quo. Not "nazis", normal people. But surely the creator of Dilbert is a threat to the nation and worthy of retribution, right?

I guess you guys are only for regulation and fairness when it suits your cause...

[dang]

Would you please read the site guidelines and follow them? "I guess you guys are only for" is a clear violation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[acdha]

“Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter have all worked against anyone who dares question the status quo.”

You should get your news from somewhere better than Breitbart. That’s not only transparently untrue – try spending 30 seconds watching the stream without seeing someone question the status quo – but comically so given the number of people complaining with cause that those services aren’t shutting down abusive users. I mean, Facebook and Twitter notoriously say that death and rape threats don’t violate their community standards until it gets widespread attention, and you think your unsourced assertion that simply asking questions gets anyone banned?

[Meekro]

I, too, worry about the bigger trend of knocking legal sites offline because someone disapproves of them, but the discussion here is about Cloudflare's trustworthiness. So I'd like to point out that Voat is currently relying on Cloudflare to stay online.

[azinman2]

“All the liberals,” “you guys are X,” intentionally loaded sarcastic Qs without an honest context... I feel like I’m reading Fox News here.

Bucketing half the population together is intellectually dishonest and does nothing to solve any problems or convince others of your points. Labeling them the enemy only creates further divisions for division sake. All it does is give fodder to those wanting confirmation bias on a given side.

[yahna]

It's pretty much paraphrasing what the CEO said about why they stopped providing services to the daily stormer.

Cloudflare can't be trusted anymore. If they want to say they have actual standards and rules that operate on (and shut down nazi sites based on those rules) that's fine.

[sergiotapia]

It depends on whether or not the CEO is feeling poopy that day.

[eastdakota]

Zero.

[protomyth]

What is my guarantee on that? Cloudflare has done it once, and I really don't know what political views would set the CEO off again. I hate what the stormidiots spout, but I'm pretty sure I don't trust Cloudflare anymore as neutral ground.

[NaliSauce]

Especially the post-hoc rationalizing they did in that blog post - that was just insulting. I just couldn't help but get the impression that whoever wrote it thinks that the readers are either ignorant or stupid. It's probably just that whoever had written it wasn't experienced in cleaning up a mess and never intended it to be that way though.

I would have hoped that their answer to impulsive decisions would be 'checks and balances' to prevent it from happening again.

[ryanworl]

I’m not sure if you noticed, but you’re already replying to the CEO of Cloudflare.

[squeaky-clean]

Does that comment constitute a binding contract? If not, it doesn't matter who said it, it doesn't actually add anything to the discussion. Of course the CEO is going to say they won't take down your site, but how can I be sure?

[hueving]

Yes, guy accused of emotional decision making replying that he won't do it again isn't going to carry a lot of weight when there is no binding guarantee.

[protomyth]

realized that after the fact....

The rhetoric of today and with people framing their opponents as the vilest people on earth, I just have a tough time with anything but absolutes on infrastructure decisions.

Of course, proper legal authority within their proper jurisdiction must be respected. I might disagree with a couple of court decisions, but a business needs to deal properly with those and I would never fault a business for that.

[occultist_throw]

Eastdakota is Cloudflare's CEO, btw.

Admittedly the stance for/against Tor discrimination is a wide one.... That's an issue with users, not content.

But the only case where I believed he nuked a site was against Daily Stormer. They call for violence and eradication of all non-whites, specializing on Jewish and African hatred.

He wont even kick off booters, which even he admits are fraud artists even when they do pay. That's because their frontend and backends are different. Technically this service is legal, and only illegal if used as a weapon (intent). Therefore, Eastdakota wont act. [Hopefully I best paraphrased his views...]

So yeah, I would consider your site to be safe, unless you call for extermination of $race and actions to back that up.

[protomyth]

> So yeah, I would consider your site to be safe, unless you call for extermination of $race and actions to back that up.

I more worried about someone telling Cloudflare I'm doing that or some other vile thing when I am not. It seems to be the standard way to get YouTube and Twitter to kick people off.

[tomschlick]

What about on the monetization side of things?

I know many YT firearms channels that have been basically blacklisted from monetization in recent months because YT classifies anything they do as "unsuitable for ads". It has forced a lot to double publish to https://www.full30.com/ to monetize their work.

[eastdakota]

While we intend to provide ways for our customers to insert advertising or partner with third party advertisers, I don't think we'll be providing an ad network ourselves anytime soon. As a result, end users will have much more control over exactly how their content is monetized.

Using your example, a firearms video stream could stream videos through Cloudflare Stream and sell ads themselves or partner with an ad network that was willing to sell them to an audience that cared about firearms. I totally agree that the one-size-fits-all solution of Facebook or YouTube reverts to the lowest common denominator and, in doing so, will inherently not be right for every publisher.

[kbenson]

Presumably, the algorithm change was to make advertisers more happy. Advertisers don't want to advertise on some content, as much as the creators might like them to. The advertiser response to some people that get demonetized complaining is "we wouldn't have advertised in the first place if we knew, so count yourself lucky you got the money you did".

The reality is of course somewhere in the middle, and there's some content which some advertisers would not want to be associated with, while others might actually want to target, and the current algorithm may not be serving these needs well. Hopefully it's just a matter of a better system being needed that might come later.

Interestingly, which topic was covered recently in Mozilla's IRL podcast[1].

1: https://irlpodcast.org/episode7/

[discreditable]

YT has also been demonetizing videos on one of my favorite veterinary channels for being too graphic. It's a shame because they use the funds to provide care to abandoned animals. They always warn when videos contain surgery footage, even though it's relatively tame imho.

[tomschlick]

You're talking about VetRanch I assume? Yeah they are demonetizing Matt's DemolitionRanch and a number of other similar channels.

Whatever algorithm YT changed a few months ago is really putting a hurt on content creators for little gain. If certain advertisers don't want to be on channels with certain keywords they should be able to configure that, but wholesale demonetization is really stupid.

[discreditable]

> You're talking about VetRanch I assume?

Yes, that's it!

[idbeblacklisted]

It’s going to take a lot more than that to convince skeptics and free speech advocates. Especially to anyone with a conservative or controversial position, those who probably have the largest incentive to move videos off of YouTube. Do you think Breitbart would trust you? What about the RNC? An eroge developer? What if 8chan wanted to add video uploads?

Trust is easy to lose and hard to gain.

[edmccard]

>with a conservative bent ... what are the chances Cloudflare will wake up one morning and shut me down

>are they willing to abide by their role as utility?

I can remember when the conservative position was to support freedom of association, and to oppose regulating private businesses as utilities.

[dragonwriter]

> I can remember when the conservative position was to support freedom of association, and to oppose regulating private businesses as utilities.

I can remember that as recently as this year, in the debate over net neutrality.

[goony]

Just use something like https://pullgrid.com/ where you can host it from your dropbox or google drive and distributed through webtorrent. Or use https://vid.me/ or https://bitchute.com/

[hbosch]

Content in "bad taste" doesn't kill people. Organized Neo-nazis do.

[josteink]

The nazi demo where people got killed would have been a non-violent event where stupid nazis outed themselves peacefully if the antifa hadn’t showed up, outnumbered them, and attacked the nazis, armed with bats and other weapons.

The nazis are shit too, no doubt, but it’s hard not to blame the antifa for the ultimate outcome.

Also worth remembering: the nazis were using their legal right to free speech in a legal demonstration. The antifas were illegally and violently obstructing it.

Don’t be too quick to pick sides.

[hueving]

So does any organized hate group and it's not hard to link any content "in bad taste" to the message of some sort of hate group.

[rcthompson]

Are we really worried about being able to tell the difference between bad taste and advocating for genocide? I'm not convinced there's a gray area between those two.

[a_t48]

Racism doesn't have to be overt.

[jamespo]

Ah yes Daily Stormer, just a website with a "conservative bent"

[briholt]

This was exactly my first thought too. "I'd better not make any videos that the CEO will dislike or he'll shutdown my site on a whim and then brag about it."

[yahna]

Well start by not saying they support your cause.

[alexhornbake]

The right to be a customer of cloudflare (edit: cloudfront typo) is not really a "free internet" either. Personally, I value the right to not do business with nazis over the right to have hate speech backed by a CDN. No one is stopping you from starting your conservative YouTube on your own servers.

[te_chris]

God for the amount of going around accusing others of being slaves and cucks and whatever you would think you'd all be a bit, y'know, stronger and complain a lot less