How Amazon's Monster Erotica Book Ban Shaped CloudFlare's Censorship Stance (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes with news that CloudFlare chief executive Matthew Prince recently spoke about how Amazon's ban on "monster erotica" helped shape his position on censorship. ZDNet reports: "I worry about Jeff Bezos' bizarre obsession with dinosaur sex," said Prince, towards the end of a long conversation in our New York newsroom. "I don't think I've ever heard a chief executive -- hell, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything like that before," I said. Prince was referring to how the bookseller and online retail giant banned so-called "monster erotica," a genre of fan-fiction revolving around fantasy-based fictional encounters with mythical or extinct creatures (including dinosaurs), which was for a time sold on its online bookstore. Amazon, according to reports, pulled hundreds of the self-published books it sold -- as well as some content that fetishized incest and rape -- despite "vague" guidelines by the retailer. "You can make a rational argument that if you're writing books fantasizing about having sex with animals or children, maybe that promotes a certain kind of behavior. But there's no risk of someone abusing a dinosaur," he said.

Comments

Yeah, CloudFlare is a specialist of censorship

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

CloudFlare stands in the way between you, and more and more of the internet, and they don't like TOR: try to browse with TOR, and many, many sites suddenly become "protected" by unsolvable captchas that get served every 3 pages - practically making those sites unavailable.

CloudFlare is essentially passing judgment on who is allowed to access the site they front and how. So they sure don't have any lessons to give on free speech...