Your decision today. You took ownership before for the arbitrary decisions to remove DS and 8Chan, take ownership now and do not try to backpedal. You are Cloudflare's leader.
>That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat.
You failed to take ownership of this issue either way. Your response suggests you can't understand the responsibility that you continue to have and are trying to shirk it. My suggestion is, find someone who is willing to be compensated to have this responsibility if it burdens you so. That's part of a leader's job.
My guess is that the people who pressured CF to take down kiwifarms knew about this, and knew that they had bowed to public pressure before and removed sites.
There was a lot of compromising and embarrassing information on KF about the activist who started this campaign (a streamer called Keffals). It looks like the whole feud actually started when Keffals wanted to take down this site to remove the embarrassing information, solicit donations, and gain some activist street cred. Users of KF did not respond well to the initial calls to take it down, and things escalated from there.
>My guess is that the people who pressured CF to take down kiwifarms knew about this, and knew that they had bowed to public pressure before and removed sites.
It doesn't really change the situation. CF isn't a public utility, there are no sorts of 'due process' that they need to follow on cases like this, especially in extraordinary circumstances. Advertisers pull campaigns all the time due to public perception changing.
My critique isn't on Mr. Prince deciding to keep KF up or not, it's specifically on his trying to walk away from the responsibility of making a choice either way. If he does not like the unwanted attention received from having to make these difficult choices nobody is forcing him to be in that position where he's expected to.
Similarly, if KF's owner doesn't want to get banned from using companies services they can work on their moderation and public perception.
I agree with you, and I think that refusing to establish a firm line is what opened them up to this campaign.
If they had said, "we believe everyone should be respected, and any time a site coordinates harassment, we will remove it from our service," I would have had a lot more respect for them. If they had said, "we host content from Nazis and Communists, and we are not proud of it, but this is an infrastructure service and everyone is welcome," I would have had a lot more respect for them.
> I agree with you, and I think that refusing to establish a firm line is what opened them up to this campaign.
Additionally Mr. Prince had options at his disposal after the first time this happened. Cloudflare's a large valuable company. He could have retained a 'Director of Enforcement' after that event and told the world "their word is final on enforcement actions, I am removing myself from the moderation pipeline to focus on growing the business". Then if one of their decisions backfired, dismiss them. There's plenty of talented people willing to accept a large compensation package for that risk.
>If they had said, "we believe everyone should be respected, and any time a site coordinates harassment, we will remove it from our service," I would have had a lot more respect for them. If they had said, "we host content from Nazis and Communists, and we are not proud of it, but this is an infrastructure service and everyone is welcome," I would have had a lot more respect for them.
Probably also something to consider: this is a public company. The latter option is maybe not tenable for a large public corporation subject to the whims of shareholders. By that I mean times and beliefs change over time and a public company has to adjust to that in order to continue to attract investors. Private companies can work with whomever they feel and if it's their niche to work with 'high risk' clients, nobody is stopping them.
I can't even view the US Constitution [1] when my IP is on DigitalOcean (most of the time). Kiwifarms was perfectly accessible from the same connection last night. It's ironic talking about 'due process' when I can't even browse the highest law in the land due to this company.
They seemingly can if they just stop posting every waking moment of their life on the internet so it can be scooped up and analyzed by kiwifarm trolls.
Why should an individual doing nothing wrong HAVE to change their own behavior simply to stop being harassed? That’s not a solution, that’s going into hiding.
Also, considering people doxxed her address and kept showing up / swatting her, I doubt that would even be a short term solution at all, other than emboldening the harassers.
They positioned themselves as a low level internet infra provider, they are not technically "giving platform". The closest thing they are doing to giving them a platform is protecting them from DDoS.
Your decision today. You took ownership before for the arbitrary decisions to remove DS and 8Chan, take ownership now and do not try to backpedal. You are Cloudflare's leader.
>That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat.
You failed to take ownership of this issue either way. Your response suggests you can't understand the responsibility that you continue to have and are trying to shirk it. My suggestion is, find someone who is willing to be compensated to have this responsibility if it burdens you so. That's part of a leader's job.