Patterico's Pontifications

8/5/2019

Cloudflare Revokes 8Chan’s Service

Filed under: General — Dana @ 1:10 pm



[guest post by Dana]

As of midnight last night, Cloudflare cut off 8Chan:

Early Monday, 8chan, the anonymous message board where the man accused of carrying out the El Paso massacre posted his manifesto, went offline.

The man most responsible for the outage wasn’t Jim Watkins, 8chan’s owner, or his son Ronald, the message board’s administrator.

Instead, the decision to take 8chan offline, at least temporarily, fell largely to Matthew Prince, the chief executive of the little-known San Francisco company Cloudflare.

Cloudflare provides tools that protect websites from cyberattacks and allows sites to load content more quickly. It is a critical tool for sites like 8chan where extremists gather. Without the kind of protection that Cloudflare offers, 8chan can be barraged by automated, hard-to-prevent attacks from its critics, making it nearly impossible to stay online.

…Cloudflare’s service protects a large chunk of the internet, and for years, the decade-old company avoided making decisions about which sites deserved protection and which did not.

In 2017, Prince terminated services to the neo-Nazi hate site, The Daily Stormer. At that time, the decision to depart from the company’s content neutral position didn’t come easily :

“This was my decision. This is not Cloudflare’s general policy now, going forward,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Gizmodo. “I think we have to have a conversation over what part of the infrastructure stack is right to police content.”

Prince explained in an internal email to staffers that he doesn’t think CEOs of internet companies should be in the position of policing content on their networks—he told Gizmodo he thinks that’s a job that should ultimately be left up to law enforcement if the content violates the law—but felt pushed to act because the operators of the Daily Stormer are “assholes.”

“I realized there was no way we were going to have that conversation with people calling us Nazis,” Prince said. “The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe. That was the tipping point for me.”

The root concerns about making such a decision with regard to 8Chan, comes down to this:

On one hand, 8chan was clearly reprehensible, and depriving it of the protection Cloudflare provides would rid him of a troublesome customer and a huge headache. On the other hand, banning 8chan could set a bad precedent, and it could make it harder for law enforcement authorities to monitor violent extremists. Cloudflare, like other tech companies with a window onto dark internet activity, can share information about crimes with investigators.

The decision cut off 8Chan raised questions from Cloudflare employees:

Among Cloudflare employees, there was disagreement. Some thought that banning 8chan was a clear-cut moral imperative; others thought it could create a slippery slope to censorship. Douglas Kramer, Cloudflare’s general counsel, spent much of Sunday afternoon telling news outlets that Cloudflare would not ban 8chan because of its content, saying “We’re largely a neutral utility service.”

Hours later, Mr. Prince called me back. He had decided to cut off 8chan. He characterized the site as a “lawless” platform that had willfully ignored warnings about violent extremism. Its tolerance for hate, he said, made 8chan different than other sites where extremists gather, like Facebook or Twitter.

“They’ve been not only actively ignoring complaints they receive, but sometimes weaponizing those complaints against people who are complaining about them,” Mr. Prince said. “That lawlessness feels like a real distinction from the Facebooks of the world.”

[…]

Ultimately, Mr. Prince said he decided that 8chan was too centrally organized around hate, and more willing to ignore laws against violent incitement in order to avoid moderating its platform. The realization, along with the multiple mass murders that the authorities have connected to 8chan, tipped the scale in favor of a ban.

Matthew Prince’s blog entry details his decision for terminating service for 8Chan, and is well worth the read – no matter if you think this will just drive white nationalists underground, or whether you feel that anything and everything should be done to stop this poison from spreading, even if means possible censorship.

Note: 8Chan sought services elsewhere after Cloudflare dropped them. However, it hasn’t worked out well:

After Cloudflare dropped its protection of the site yesterday, 8chan adopted the services of Bitmitigate, but soon lost that too as the company providing Bitmitigate with services dropped them.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

25 Responses to “Cloudflare Revokes 8Chan’s Service”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (fdf131)

  2. What this shows, as I indicated, is that it is easy to condemn evil. But in the real world, actually dealing with it without (a) having perverse negative consequences and (b) restricting the rights of the innocent, is a lot harder.

    Bored Lawyer (998177)

  3. I agree, Bored Lawyer, especially when speech rights are involved.

    Dana (fdf131)

  4. “or whether you feel that anything and everything should be done to stop this poison from spreading, even if means possible censorship.”

    I think the Nazi’s had the same attitude. Sure we like Democracy, but we need to stop that Commie Poison from spreading.

    rcocean (1a839e)

  5. Any efforts will certainly involve a trade-off, for better or worse.

    Dana (fdf131)

  6. Who needs fascism when you got powerful Left-wing computer geeks.

    rcocean (1a839e)

  7. Is this not unlike Facebook/Twitter/et al and the deplatforming of “stuff they don’t like”?

    Colliente (05736f)

  8. No, its like someone at Clouldflare disliking Patterico Pontifications or National Review Online and shutting them down.

    rcocean (1a839e)

  9. The service cloudflare provides is protection against denial of service attacks. Should the government require that they provide this service to anyone?

    Davethulhu (94520c)

  10. Is this not unlike Facebook/Twitter/et al and the deplatforming of “stuff they don’t like”?

    Exactly as is their complete right. Cloudflare is a private company, and they’re free to fire their customers as they wish. There is no accommodation protection for the racist class under US law.

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (6e7a1c)

  11. The worst thing that those forums hosted on thse websites do is they convince the people who frequent them that there are a lot more people who think like them than there are.

    So he can write:

    Statistically, millions of migrants have returned to their home countries to reunite with the family they lost contact with when they moved to America…

    This is an encouraging sign that the Hispanic population is willing to return to their home countries if given the right incentive. An incentive that myself and many other patriotic Americans will provide.

    This will remove the threat of the Hispanic voting bloc which will make up for the loss of millions of baby boomers….

    I don’t know whether it’s worth commenting on this idea that migrants have lost touch with their families (!!?)

    He seems to know nothing of mail and telephone service, Skype, Internet, Facebook, and remittences.

    Then he has a “voting bloc” replace what is an economic factor. (immigants create more customers for corporations he seems to think, and that’s bad.)

    Sammy Finkelman (d542b2)

  12. Does anyone really still believe it’s not censorship when it’s a private company doing it? That’s a very narrow and convenient definition.

    Obviously, Cloudflare employee’s and Mr. Prince don’t really believe it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have spent so much time before the decision saying they were content-neutral and then wouldn’t spend so much time now debating where the slippery-slope starts.

    And for the “should they be forced to provide service crew”; there seems to be a lot of inconsistency on this. No, they shouldn’t be forced to provide service. But let’s not pretend they still support free speech either.

    frosty (f27e97)

  13. They’re running a business. To make money. They agonized about turning away a paying customer. In the end, they decided he wasn’t worth it.

    nk (dbc370)

  14. Bacteria is always with us. And no matter how well we clean, they inevitably find niche to grow a colony.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  15. Obviously, Cloudflare employee’s and Mr. Prince don’t really believe it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have spent so much time before the decision saying they were content-neutral and then wouldn’t spend so much time now debating where the slippery-slope starts.

    And since this is the United States, and the Constitution exists, they are free to change their mind. They’ve decided that they don’t want 8chan on their lawn, and are exercising their rights to kick them off their platform. It’s Cloudflare’s slope, it’s not slippery. If people choose to leave Cloudflare because of this decision, they are also free to leave. Racists aren’t required to use Cloudflare, and Cloudflare isn’t required to service racists.

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (6e7a1c)

  16. I’d feel better if Cloudfare also dropped those terrorist organizations on the US State Department list, but I’ll take Daily Stormer and 8chan for now.

    Paul Montagu (35419a)

  17. No, its like someone at Clouldflare disliking Patterico Pontifications or National Review Online and shutting them down.

    There’ve been a lot of false equivalencies like that going around, especially at InstaPundit.

    Paul Montagu (35419a)

  18. National Socialists are still socialists even if they do claim “Mein Gott Trump, nein! Nein, nein, nein, nicht uns!” They think they’re entitled to other people’s internet platforms and services just because they want them, the f***ing Nazi Trump-humpers!

    nk (dbc370)

  19. Does anyone really still believe it’s not censorship when it’s a private company doing it?

    Of course it is censorship. Private parties are allowed to decide how their property is going to be used — and “censor” things they don’t like.

    I decide which candidate for local dog catcher gets to put a campaign sign on my lawn. Cause it’s my lawn — if I want to support Smith, or Jones, or nobody, for dog catcher, that is MY prerogative.

    It is the GOVERNMENT that is precluded from censorship. Because the govt. represents everyone, and because the govt. has a monopoly on power that I, as a private party, do not.

    Why is that so hard to understand?

    Bored Lawyer (423ce8)

  20. No, its like someone at Clouldflare disliking Patterico Pontifications or National Review Online and shutting them down.

    Is this for real?

    Dana (fdf131)

  21. These cesspools may be reprehensible, but it is always the fringe where the censorship starts. Then it moves inward. I despise InfoWars and Gateway Pundit, but if they were deplatformed then who would be next?

    As for the way this is done, it puts the absolute and knowing lie into the “just build your own site” argument.

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  22. “Is this for real?”

    Analogies aren’t reality.

    rcocean (1a839e)

  23. As for the way this is done, it puts the absolute and knowing lie into the “just build your own site” argument.

    I was never very comfortable with that argument, because it assumes that they have a right to a website to all. Why should they? Most people don’t. They’re not in common use. We can’t have the tail wagging the dog.

    nk (dbc370)

  24. Yes! https://www.npr.org/2019/08/06/748615956/appeals-court-revives-sarah-palins-defamation-lawsuit-against-the-new-york-times

    Sorry for the OT, but I couldn’t resist putting it on the front page.

    nk (dbc370)

  25. https://www.wired.com/story/the-weird-dark-history-8chan

    For his part, Brennan was delighted to see that the site he created had been knocked off line. He hopes it’s permanent. “If this is not the end, maybe there will be another shooting and that will be the end,” Brennan told me in an interview Tuesday morning. “I just hope that they give up and throw in the towel. It is time.” He continued, “The only people that are really going to suffer are mass shooters that wanted to post on 8chan because they knew people would archive their stuff. So they will have to find another way. Boo hoo.”

    …His misgivings began long before the horrific events in El Paso last weekend. In the days following the New Zealand shooting, Brennan began fielding numerous requests from the media looking for insight into 8chan and its users. Instead of the full-throated defense of the site tinged with a hostility toward the media that he’d served up in the past, Brennan began offering more introspective comments. He questioned the direction the website had taken and claimed the administrators were too slow to remove violent threats.

    Most startlingly, he said he didn’t care if the site, once his defining accomplishment and identity, was shut down. “Since the time I resigned, I sometimes wonder whether creating 8chan was a good thing. I sometimes wonder about the things that I said in the past while I was being its admin,” he told me in April, less than a month after the New Zealand attacks. “Sometimes I think I should have been harder on violent threats. I think maybe I should have worked much harder to improve the moderation systems.”

    …He now compares 8chan to a cult, but it was one that he nurtured and remained at the center of until his departure in 2016.

    …At the same time, Brennan says many people were unaware that Watkins owned the site, a situation he believes Jim Watkins encouraged. “Most of the world genuinely believes that I was the owner of 8chan and that I could shut it down whenever I wanted,” he says.

    This tells some of the history of 4chan and other thingd.

    There were all sosts of bad things going on: doxxing, and things related to sex crimes.

    By the way. It wss Ronald Watkins (son of Jim Watkins) who contacte Brennan so he was always behind it. And his company was N.T. Technology. Brennan was just agood programmer. He has a genetic disease (brittle bone disease) and wrote something that was published in The Daily Stormer he was kind of insensitive to things like that.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)


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