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Cloudflare Stops Supporting Neo-Nazi Site The Daily Stormer (arstechnica.com)
Timothy B. Lee reports via Ars Technica: All week, the infamous hate site Daily Stormer has been battling to stay online in the face of a concerted social media campaign to shut it down. The site lost its "dailystormer.com" domain on Monday after first GoDaddy and then Google Domains blacklisted it from their domain registration services. The site re-appeared online on Wednesday morning at a new domain name, dailystormer.ru. But within hours, the site had gone offline again after it was dropped by Cloudflare, an intermediary that defends customers against denial-of-service attacks. Daily Stormer's Andrew Anglin reported Cloudflare's decision to drop the site in a post on the social media site Gab. His post was first spotted by journalist Matthew Sheffield.
Has Cloudflare released a statement on this? Because...this is at odds with their previous behavior, and I want to know if it's just a one-off 'if you beat us hard enough, we'll do things' or if they've actually changed their mind. Because I'd kind of like them to stop helping DDOS providers.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Someones never been on the daily stormer, or browsed comments on far-right websites. Did you know that an internet archive exists?
I'm reserving judgement on this one since Stormfront is a bunch of whackos, but I don't like the general precedent being set here. Haven't looked, but I bet Antifa and BLM websites sit behind Cloudflare also. Where is the outrage for those folks? Last I checked it's been a while since any neo-nazis organized riots and burned down noticeable portions of big cities.
A business should be allowed to decide if it wants to take money from someone or not. That being said, why should a bakery be forced to bake a cake they don't want to bake? It seems to me that different rules are being applied to different groups. This mostly all started with the ADA here in the US - businesses being forced to make accommodations to a certain group of people. If a business wants to not take money from a group of people, that should be allowed.
Overall, marginalizing a group does tend to galvanize them. May slow down recruiting or something, but makes them stronger and more resilient to the detractors. Make sure everyone can see them and their message if you want to denounce them. No good answer, but methinks this is the wrong way to fight them.
Except the only thing that these people are actually doing is saying shit you don't like.
Are you sure it's the *only* thing? A gal I know got spit on by a stranger in a coffee shop in Denver today, because she was Jewish. Now maybe *that* guy isn't like these other guys with the same ideology, and as long as they're only talking about things, and it's just this guy who's working his way up through assault, there's a line there. But it's hard to believe anyone who self-identifies as a Nazi isn't hoping to have a chance to do at least that much.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Do you have an historical example of this working? I mean, there may well be some, but none come to mind.
If you shine a light on some bugs and they scurry under a rock, you can then blow up the rock and problem solved. You don't beat the bugs by inviting them into your house.
Nazis are cockroaches. When you promote genocide by idolizing genocide that already happened you forfeit your right to be part of civil society.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually, and especially with CloudFlare, I don't think anyone has much of a leg to stand on to take them on. First amendment is a thing that limits the government, not business - they are free to do business (or not) with whoever they choose.
Whether it's a good idea or not, is a separate thing.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
The difference is that the vast majority of the people who refused to award the Clintons with the power they demanded (including millions of people who voted twice for Obama) are quick and happy to register their disgust with that tiny number of idiots that make up the neo-Nazi types. But the people who desperately wanted to make Hillary's coronation happen won't even talk out loud about the violent thugs that spend months organizing to smash and burn things on their behalf.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Businesses have no responsibility to provide services to such a group and it isn't oppression or censorship to refuse them service, in fact it would be oppression and censorship to force them to support them.
This is exactly right. However, infrastructure business have a responsibility to uphold free speech. They have shown extremely poor judgement by caving to pressure to suppress. Sorry, that is not going to work. And in fact, if history is a lesson, trying to stamp this out in this fashion is insane. These kinds of groups just become more hateful, radical, violent and provocative. If they can't speak, then they will act.
Let them have their wretched little website to spew hatred at each other. At least then we know who and where they are. Society is playing with fire here, repeating past mistakes.
Let me make a sort of messy analogy. Just pretend for a minute highways and streets were privately owned. This would be the equivalent of saying these people can't drive on your streets, period. And not only that, they're not even allowed to have an address on a street. Does that really sound like something we want to say we did to someone else? And pretend it's somehow a "good thing"? Really?
This is incredible. Their CEO admits he knew he was wrong, but he kicked them off anyway, and double pinky swear he won't do it again.
What a clusterfuck.
So Cloudflare won't stand up for speech, but they'll stand up for black hat criminal operations? WTF?
The problem with taking a stance is that now you have to justify why you take action sometimes and not other times. I totally get why Cloudflare would back down here and that's their call.
But if they're going to start policing content, then why the hell are they shutting down the routing of objectionable content, but not clearly criminal content? Along with TOR, they're the haven of choice for Black Hats and other criminal groups. Brian Krebs and others have been trying to get them to stop for years, to no avail. And the people they are protecting are causing actual (criminal) damages to other groups.
If Cloudflare wants to be a true neutral party, I can respect that. Similarly, if they want to have a say over the traffic they route, I can respect that as well. But if they're going to take the latter route, then I think they need to be held more accountable for all the scumbag criminals that they provide protection for.
So - Cloudflare is NOT a commercial business? Or - since they are - they must provide their services to individuals with different political leanings (which is what the original intent of the First Amendment was - protection of poltical speech)?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
So those college kids proudly waving around the flag of the people who tortured you, chanting the slogans of the people who tortured you, and espousing the ideology of the people who tortured you, doesn't bother you? They're not "real Nazis" despite adopting all the symbols of the real Nazis and standing for what real Nazis stood for? Why, because this generation of them haven't tortured you yet?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
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