[roenxi]

This article is not very articulate on the point, but goes to the real touchy point with the Kiwifarms decision. Based on what I know it seems Cloudflare made a good decision, but:

1. The internet is vast.

2. Figuring out what someone is doing on the internet even if you did somehow have full transparency over the data they send/receive is hard.

3. Any policy of intervention is going to leave behind a stream of poorly prioritised actions that are highly questionable.

4. Just because we see something doesn't mean it is there. It is usual for the first impressions to be wrong. Often even after researching an issue thoroughly.

I don't think there is a free speech issue here, but I do question whether Cloudflare has the motivation or capability to actually execute a policy of policing the internet fairly. All the pressure is going to be to police the internet for specific political goals.

[8note]

It's a great argument against the scale that cloudformation has, and regulation would help.

If you can't figure out that one of your clients is doing this bad things, you shouldn't have so many clients

[robryk]

> It's a great argument against the scale that cloudformation has, and regulation would help.

Agreed. It's very annoying that such services like ddos protection have an ever-growing scaling advantage (because the sizes of ddos attacks grow).

> If you can't figure out that one of your clients is doing this bad things, you shouldn't have so many clients

What kinds of entities would you extend this to? I would guess you wouldn't day the same thing about hardware stores (which sell dangerous tools).

[staticassertion]

(2) doesn't seem important. This problem is easy - take down kiwifarms. No one is asking for Cloudflare to take down 100% of every single site that may or may not be classified as "bad" - they're asking for this one site to be taken down. Maybe even some others, too. There's a huge grey area of "bad", but there are also plenty of sites that very clearly fall to one side or the other. Solving "grey" is hard, solving kiwifarms is not.

[roenxi]

> No one is asking for Cloudflare to take down 100% of every single site that may or may not be classified as "bad" - they're asking for this one site to be taken down

Who are they?

Why are Cloudflare listening to this "they" instead of all the alternate "they" who object to alternate sites? There is someone group organised to go after every "bad" site and a lot more besides. How do you even know that they've correctly identified Kiwikarms as a problematic site? Are you a Kiwifarms regular to be so sure about what how it works?

Cloudflare have already banned the Daily Stormer and I can find people who are willing to call ~30% of any country neo-nazis with a straight face, so it isn't clear what they boundary is here. They certainly don't agree with your boundaries for what is "very clear", unless you happen to be posting on behalf of the Cloudflare CEO.

[staticassertion]

> Who are they?

People. Me. Others. I don't have a list.

> Why are Cloudflare listening to this "they" instead of all the alternate "they" who object to alternate sites?

They're presumably listening to both? I don't understand the question.

> There is someone group organised to go after every "bad" site and a lot more besides. How do you even know that they've correctly identified Kiwikarms as a problematic site?

Because there's a long history of documented problems.

> Are you a Kiwifarms regular to be so sure about what how it works?

I don't understand why that would be relevant. Again, long documented history.

> Cloudflare have already banned the Daily Stormer

Right, the Daily Stormer was a self-described site for neo-nazis.

> I can find people who are willing to call ~30% of any country neo-nazis

Irrelevant.

> They certainly don't agree with your boundaries for what is "very clear", unless you happen to be posting on behalf of the Cloudflare CEO.

The first half of this sentence doesn't go with the second half.

[roenxi]

>> Who are they? > People. Me. Others. I don't have a list.

>> I can find people who are willing to call ~30% of any country neo-nazis > Irrelevant.

I mean, the vibe I'm picking up here is they are the ones who decide, but not them?

Who are these they?

> I don't understand why that would be relevant. Again, long documented history.

There is a long documented history of the US being the Great Satan, or technically Shaytân-e Bozorg, based on a long history of documented problems. I'm not sure how to communicate with "them", but how do we make the call on whether "they" agree or disagree with that epithet? Pretty open and shut case I suppose, the US has done some pretty evil things as a group. Do "they" have a preference for booting the US or Iran off the internet, or are they sanguine about this and only worried about micro-scale harassment rather than macro-scale problems?

Things are done that are substantially worse than what Cloudflare has just acted on. And I suspect "they" will agree on a lot of it. And be wrong on a lot of it, because "they" are famously unreliable sources of information. Why aren't they going to act on all that stuff? It would be irresponsible to ignore it.

I don't think your stance is fundamentally workable, and suspect it hasn't made a serious attempt at engaging with the sheer diversity of human experience and perspective out there. Particularly when it comes to in-groups redefining words to shut people in other in-groups.

[staticassertion]

You're focusing a lot on "they", and I don't really get why. You can instead focus on the argument being made and at that point it'll be a lot easier to engage. If you're trying to say that we shouldn't make decisions based on the feelings of vague interest groups, ok, but I wasn't making the argument that we should.