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Cloudflare is the One Tech Company Still Sticking By Neo-Nazi Websites (qz.com)

Posted by msmash on from the all-alone dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: One company is sticking by The Daily Stormer and other far-right websites: the cloud security and performance service Cloudflare. Cloudflare acts as a shield between websites and the outside world, protecting them from hackers and preserving the anonymity of the sites' owners. But Cloudflare is not a hosting service: It does not store website content on its servers. And that fact, as far as the company is concerned, exempts it from judgment over who its clients are -- even if those clients are literally Nazis. In a statement Cloudflare sent to Quartz and other publications yesterday, the company refused to explicitly say it will continue to do business with sites like The Daily Stormer, but pointed out that the content would exist regardless of what Cloudflare does or doesn't do. "Cloudflare is aware of the concerns that have been raised over some sites that have used our network. We find the content on some of these sites repugnant. While our policy is to not comment on any user specifically, we are cooperating with law enforcement in any investigation. Cloudflare is not the host of any website. Cloudflare is a network that provides performance and security services to more than 10% of all Internet requests. Cloudflare terminating any user would not remove their content from the Internet, it would simply make a site slower and more vulnerable to attack."
UPDATE: The Daily Stormer now says Cloudflare has decided to drop their site after all.

38 of 549 comments (clear)

  1. Cool that someone still stands for freedom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Cool that someone still stands for freedom of speech.

    Most people were brainwashed to think that freedom of speech means "freedom to say anything - as long this are the 'good things'".

    1. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by ldgeorge85 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Just because you have the right to say it, doesn't mean people have to actually give you the time, place, or attention. Sure, you can believe and say anything you want. Doesn't meant I can't just ignore you and think you are an idiot, and also have the right to saw as much.

    2. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by mysidia · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Just because you have the right to say it, doesn't mean people have to actually give you the time, place, or attention.

      That's true, but saying it on your own website SHOULD be equivalent to saying it on the doorstep of your house.

      No intermediary required for you to to get your internet access should be judging you, because FREE and OPEN communication is the primary value of the internet.

    3. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Thoughts and words are not violence, except in Soviet Russia and (gasp) Nazi Germany.

    4. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hear! Hear! They don't call it the "Tyranny of the Majority" for nothing. If what GoDaddy did is how free speech works, then it's likely that the Civil Rights movements would have been dead in its tracks until a majority cared enough to make it visible. That's with everything. This "1984" view of correctness is scary and how it comes from the left as being "say good things or we beat the crap out of you," is even more scary.

      Do you really want Nazis working underground? Well, suppressing free speech is how to get Nazis working underground.

    5. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Equating words to violence is the epitome of political retardation. If you are willing to stand by your beliefs, I'll call you a racial slur whose kind deserves to be killed off and then punch you in the genitals and ask you which one of those two actions felt more like "an assault on a human being." How far will you go to back your hypothesis? I bet not far from the safety of your keyboard.

    6. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by sycodon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Anyone who defends Free Speech these days is called a Nazi and Racist and their words are called "violent".

      Make no mistake, your protestations are not about human decency, they are about a creeping authoritarianism from the left that would allow only approved speech. Guess who the people approving it would be...ya...

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    7. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by gravewax · · Score: 5, Insightful

      yep but no one, not me, you, cloudflare or anyone else has to provide them with the loudspeaker, sell them the server or provide them bandwidth, internet protection etc to spread that opinion. Freedom of speech doesn't put an obligation on anyone else to facilitate that and in fact freedom of speech allows others to explicitly refuse you the platform, if they control it, to speak from.

    8. Re: Cool that someone still stands for freedom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, reminds me of Voltaire's famous quote:

        "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to never say it again, I'm going to attack all the web hosts so no one can hear you".

    9. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly...
      If you silence someone and make their speech forbidden, then it will attract people *because* its forbidden.
      Hiding information from people is never a solution to anything.
      Nazis should be free to express their views, as should everyone else.
      If people are reasonably educated then they should be able to draw their own conclusions based on the information available to them.

      It's also good to hear all viewpoints before you decide where you stand on an issue. Just because someone's views are commonly held as extreme doesn't mean they don't deserve a fair hearing. Once you've learned about their views then you can make an informed decision as to wether their opinion is bullshit, and if so why.

      Saying you are against nazis because "omfg nazis!" is almost as stupid as promoting the common nazi ideals. If you're going to speak against something, you should at least have researched that topic thoroughly first so you understand exactly what you're speaking against.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    10. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by sycodon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It will also provide people justifications for trying to suppress YOUR speech in the future.

      These people are all idiots.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    11. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by r1348 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Freedom of speech implies that you're allowed a voice. In the Internet era, that means web hosts.
      Removing already existing content over ideological dissent is called censorship, no matter how you put it.

    12. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by shilly · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Some choices:
      1. Nazis working underground
      2. Nazis working in the open
      3. Nazis trying to work in the open but finding it exceptionally difficult because people don't want to associate with them or take their money

      I'll have a 3 please!

    13. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your "3" is just your "1", but makes your group an obvious victim of discrimination, and therefore worthy of sympathy. Great plan.

    14. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by sycodon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So...quash Free Speech to protect Free Speech.

      Orwell Called, he says you can write the Sequel.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    15. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by fightinfilipino · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

      Talking about nazism and racism, even promoting such views is free speech. It's not an assault on anyone, it's only words. If someone is promoting such views then at least you know where they stand and can decide wether to have dealings with them or not. Which is better than them holding such views in secret. Would you want to do business with someone who secretly hates you and thinks you have no right to live? I certainly wouldn't. I would choose to take my business elsewhere if i knew someone to be a nazi or hold any other such extremist views.

      Anti-nazi speech should similarly be protected, and people should be just as free to tell nazis (and any other groups) exactly what they think of them.

      Speech should be protected, draw the line at actual physical violence.

      come back at me the next time you've had someone call you a "chink" and tell you to "go back home" when you already are.

      better yet, come back at me when you can explain why Heather Heyer had to *die*

    16. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      People keep complaining about being called Nazis, not even listening carefully enough to notice that it's not directed at them. It's directed at the guy with the swastika standing next to them.

      It's a warning that the mainstream right is being infiltrated and subsumed by the far right. Trump, the guy at the very top, took 60 hours to give a half assed condemnation of those guys. That should worry you.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    17. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by goose-incarnated · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your previous post is you complaining that people call everyone they disagree with Nazis. Here you are calling everyone you disagree with an idiot.

      Yeah, but idiots are still allowed a platform.

      When you support the silencing of dissent, don't be surprised when your dissent is silenced.

      What goes around, comes around.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
    18. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No one 'has to' sell services to people

      That has yet to be decided. Sometimes the State will compell you to provide services or goods to others, even if you don't like it. I assume all those who denounced the "gay wedding cake baker" will of course denounce the websites dropping this Nazi group, too.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    19. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by VFA · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Are you fucking kidding?! People taking the repugnant content down are private companies who do not wish to enable such vile, disgusting views. Government is not allowed to arrest people for stating their vile views, but private parties can judge and sensor whomever they want. Just look at Fox news, for gods' sake! What you are seeing is a political push back on wide scale against white supremacy and neo-nazi groups. I for one, am very glad to see that. I am glad the country I live in and a citizen of is not tolerant of that shit. I am glad because it brings the chance of what my Jewish family went through in Europe in the 40's down. I wish nazis were stopped in Germany in the 30's. I am only hoping and praying that that ugly piece of humanity that made itself visible in Charlottesvile is in tiny minority and their voices get squashed every time they get even a little above the noise level. Freedom of speech is great, but if I were the media and internet service provider I would be cutting these bastards down as fast as I possibly could. I remember the stories of my family being exterminated in Ukraine, I remember my friends' families stories. There was not a family that wasn't effected by nazis in Ukraine. This must not repeat! We must remember and stand up against this shit as soon as it rears its ugly head! Besides, your freedom of speech is a myth anyway. Just go up to the White House and say something resembling an Islamic call to god. See how long you last. That there is government subduing you. Here is a private sector saying: Hell NO to nazis. Take that as a weather vane of this country's values. If it's against your grain, leave. Please!

    20. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by jwhyche · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Take that as a weather vane of this country's values. If it's against your grain, leave. Please!

      We are taking as a "weather vane" of our countries values. An those values clearly state that you have a right to say, gather peacefully, or hold values no matter how repugnant hey are.

      Freedom of speech applies to everyone in this country, every one. Just because you don't like their speech doesn't mean they can't say it. You just don't have to listen to it, like most of us chose not to do.

      An if it's against your grain, leave. Please!

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
    21. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by jwhyche · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Heather Heyer didn't have to die. She was murdered by individual with disgusting views. That individual is in custody, he will be charged with his crime, and he will be punished for it. At the trial his political views will be taken into account. What more would you want?

      As you being called a a 'chink' and told to 'go back home.' Try being called a 'cracker' and told to go back to Europe, or being told the world is better off if you where dead. There are people with little minds in this world. You will not stamp out racism, bigotry, and hatred by simply sweeping it under a rug.

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
    22. Re: Cool that someone still stands for freedom by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And therein shows the hypocrisy as Kennedy espoused. The First Amendment was specifically written about political speech and freedom of association, and it's been twisted to demand freedom of everything but those - you can only say what the State dictates, and you must associate with people the State decides.

      Now who's the fascist?

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    23. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by MightyMartian · · Score: 1, Insightful

      And that freedom to walk away from speech one does not like also applies to companies like Google and GoDaddy. They too enjoy the freedom to not associate or help spread hateful speech.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    24. Re:Cool that someone still stands for freedom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, I've heard the phrase "no bad tactics, only bad targets" bandied around as "tactics" become ever more extreme.

      Not once do I ever hear someone say "what if someone else gets to pick the targets?"

      What you do hear is people saying, "But what if we applied that tactic to X instead of Y?". The SJW's then respond by saying that it's a false equivalence to compare X to Y. They'll say that because Y is not equivalent to X, it's acceptable to use the tactic against Y, but not against X.

      Of course, any ideology could play the same game--claiming that their own favorite tactics are acceptable against their own favorite enemies. But the SJW's are winning the battle against opposing ideologies because they outnumber their opponents, and because the SJW's support their cause zealously. Have you ever seen how many posts AmiMoJo makes? For example, in this thread AmiMoJo made ten different posts supporting the SJW cause. Personally, I don't have the time or the energy to make that many posts, but that's the reason why the SJW's win: they're fanatical zealots.

      Really, in the end, it all comes down to social conventions. You can't really argue logically against a convention. You can point out that the conventions being proposed by the SJW's violate longstanding conventions in American culture (such as the principle of freedom of speech), but the SJW's don't care. They're dedicated to forcing their own conventions on everybody.

  2. Somebody has to by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Free speech means nothing if it's not applied to everyone, including the most odious. For there is always something you would like that someone else would consider obscene and block.

    Let it all through. Let people choose and find their own way.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Somebody has to by rogoshen1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      yar.. if there's one thing worse than this kind of repugnant bullshit, it's censorship.

    2. Re:Somebody has to by WrongMonkey · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A core tenant of Nazis is violence against certain people. Therefore, promotion of Nazi ideas is inherently incitement to violence, which is not protected by speech.

    3. Re:Somebody has to by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, unless the speech can be judged as intending to immediately incite people to violence, it probably is protected.

      People (myself included, in the past) love to quote Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes statement "[T]he most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic". Thing is, that ruling was subsequently significantly narrowed some years afterward... it's all about whether your intent is to get people to become violent right now.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  3. Re:Follow the money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Or maybe they have very strict guidelines on ethics and don't bend them just because they "don't like somebody". It could be they believe in not interfering with free speech, no matter how repugnant. A consistent view point in this world of hypocrites is a breath a fresh air.

  4. Re:Follow the money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    On the contrary, they are the only ones with ethics.

    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

    When you prevent people from speaking, you led everyone down a slipperly slope of fascism.

  5. The Shame by aoism · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Man, Damore was right that the west coast Techies are all about shame. even if its constitutionally protected speech. I for one applaud CloudFlare while simultaneously giving the Nazis the finger.

    1. Re:The Shame by goose-incarnated · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even Damore has come out against the Alt-right.

      You sound surprised. You do understand that it's possible to be both against the alt-right, and against the hard-left?

      After all, the nazis and antifa have more in common than they differ. However, only one of them is any serious threat, and it's not the one that everyone regards as a joke.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  6. Offensive speech is the type that needs protection by I+kan+Spl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The First Amendment really was designed to protect a debate at the fringes. You don't need the courts to protect speech that everybody agrees with, because that speech will be tolerated. You need a First Amendment to protect speech that people regard as intolerable or outrageous or offensive - because that is when the majority will wield its power to censor or suppress, and we have a First Amendment to prevent the government from doing that."
    - ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro

    It's true that companies are not limited by the First Amendment, but it's refreshing when one acts as if they were.

    --
    My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
  7. Free Speech isn't optional by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the company refused to explicitly say it will continue to do business with sites like The Daily Stormer, but pointed out that the content would exist regardless of what Cloudflare does or doesn't do.

    While I and probably most of us find the content disgusting and repulsive, I for one am glad Cloudflare is standing up for free speech even they disagree with. This takes real balls. And it's a good thing. Free speech isn't optional. Only listening is optional.

  8. Re:Follow the money by fightinfilipino · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If Antifa and BLM had just stayed home and not gone to Charlotte, then KKK and Nazis would have had their rally, looked like fools, and then gone home.

    Everyone would see what fools they are. The press would make a single mention o the rally and that would be it. No one would care what they said or think.

    But nooo. They had to go in and start some shit. Now, they are the opposite side of the coin. Anyone who wanted to justify the KKK and Nazis just had to point to Antifa and BLM.

    Good job guys.

    yes, let's just let the KKK and Nazis go unchallenged that'll show them.

  9. Good by TheAngryCat · · Score: 1, Insightful

    At least someone is standing by Free Speech. Go to Hell Snowflakes.

  10. Cloudflare has supported us all - a long time now by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Last I looked thepiratebay.org only had one ISP https://www.robtex.com/dns-loo... one of many that we have a right to.

    A post rather than a reply - an attempt at a shot out to cloudflare and a thank you for your service.