[stevenicr]

clouflare stopped being like that long ago. they publicly posted that they will take down stuff they makes the ceo worry, and they will inspect what your users are reading/sharing - and notify agencies with powers and guns when they find stuff from now/then on.

- no longer a dumb pipe, no longer neutral, actually active in directing law enforcement to take you down and possibly take people out.

[stevenicr]

I just have to wonder if people downvote this thinking it's not possibly true, or they just don't like what is said.

Link to relative info is posted on another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27884821) - but for those who have not read it, here is an excerpt from a 2019 cloudflare post/statement:

"...what we have done to try and solve the Internet’s deeper problem is engage with law enforcement and civil society organizations to try and find solutions. Among other things, that resulted in us cooperating around monitoring potential hate sites on our network and notifying law enforcement when there was content that contained..."

So I stand by the statement, I can't see any other way to read it.

[livinginfear]

Why is this being downvoted? It's demonstrably true.

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

[Volt]

Is Cloudflare a "pipe"? I don't think so.

[stevenicr]

reason for "no longer a dumb pipe," - is that I believe that was the 'defense' aka reason being used for a while to push back against different groups that were accusing and then trying to public shame cloudflare; for protecting alt-right(?) I know there were a few PR pieces pushed in the UK or Euro press about some things - maybe hookers or something.. anyway for a while cloudflare was all like, we are just a really big pipe that pushes data and can absorb ddos.. we don't get into content moderation or opposite-net-neautrality.. there were complaints that some groups 'on the right side of history (or whatever)' - were trying to take down the stormer site I think it was and that their co-ordinated takedown attempts were failing as cloudflare was protecting the send/receive, being a pipe, not a judge.. This is what I believe ATT was using as a defense some time ago; they don't stop drug dealers from making calls they just provide the 'pipe' There was also some groups complaining about cloudflare making it hard to find servers - to find jurisdiction, again uk /euro I think - I have those articles saved on one of my systems.. and may be linked to a HN comment long ago - where I said chipping away at this pipe thine will lead to a bifurcated internet - where we will have internet place X internet place Y - and companies like cloudflare may have to turn into a dozen different companies to keep up with the changing 'this speech is not okay' rules for various places..

funny how fast things can change.

I believe many of cloudflare's early customers especially felt protected and safe because of the stances - and I bet most don't know about the 180..

I also think most average web people would think if you set 'whatever' for your DNS - that the dns routing is basically a dumb pipe - it's not spying on you and sending copies of your data to gun agencies.

Just as I think most people would not expect their cell phone company or internet provider to spy on data and send snippets of your communications to agents. I would not expect my web server co to deep packet inspect all comms looking for bad things. (not without a warrant and being directed to look at a specific line, now a whole data center / cell co, etc.)

I think it was a terrible choice to make for cloudflare, but I know not an easy one either way.

So 'pipe' is a term that has been used in this way for a while now in similar fashion I thought - and it's not meant literally like a copper water line.

Also in some ways cloudflare has been a pipe - a pipe for flowing data that would be choked by ddos attack if were to try to send/receive across the net in most other ways kinda of.