CloudFlare CEO says his Daily Stormer takedown was “arbitrary” and “dangerous”

In the company blog post[0] one can read: <i>&quot;The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.&quot;</i><p>If this is true, then I agree with the takedown, because the Daily Stormer crossed the content neutral line first. But in this interview, the CEO says something totally different. This is what annoys me, because this is breaking the trust I have in CloudFlare.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.cloudflare.com&#x2F;why-we-terminated-daily-stormer&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.cloudflare.com&#x2F;why-we-terminated-daily-stormer&#x2F;</a>

There&#x27;s a chilling effect to this. If checks and balances at cloudflare are so nonexistent that the CEO having a bad mood results in the company violating its own policy - well, you set the precedent no matter how much you&#x27;re claiming that you didn&#x27;t. Precedent is determined by your past actions, not by what you claim.<p>Blogging what appears to be post hoc rationalizations doesn&#x27;t make this any better.

&gt; &quot;It&#x27;s important that what we did today not set a precedent,&quot; Prince added. &quot;The right answer is for us to be consistently content neutral.&quot;<p>Huh? What changed then – why even do it? Cloudflare&#x27;s action today could set a dangerous precedent. Prince now seems to be arguing for a committee of some sort to arbitrate who gets taken down. To me, that&#x27;s not much better.<p>IMO the internet should be free. Let filtering be conducted at the edge and driven by users.

Whatever happened to:<p>&quot;the Internet detects censorship as damage, and routes around it&quot; and<p>&quot;the answer to speech you don&#x27;t agree with is more speech&quot;?<p>I guess, like &quot;don&#x27;t be evil&quot;, those concepts have ended up on the trash heap...

This invalidates all of their previous statements. A very bad PR move. I think we all knew it was at their whim, based on some of the other sites they continue to host. Just more greed masqurading as virtue. That seems to be the speed of progress these days.

Has anyone even heard of this website before all of this? What&#x27;s the point of all this free publicity for them? Streisand effect is real.

This is the first week in my life I&#x27;ve been genuinely afraid for the First Amendment. Charlottesville is the one event that pushed government content neutrality outside the Overton window. Up until now, most people (or at least the loudest) treated groups like the EFF and ACLU as kind of like garbage collectors: they do an unpleasant job, defending people who say wicked things, in order to protect the rest of us from government persecution when someone we don&#x27;t like has the reins. This is the first time I&#x27;ve seen this view being described as literal Nazi sympathizing. It&#x27;s the first time when hate speech laws are considered so necessary that we&#x27;re willing to give that power to the Trump administration of all people.

I am clearly in the minority in my opinion here, but I&#x27;m happy for this. CloudFlare is a private business and as such have a right to refuse service to anyone.<p>&quot;It&#x27;s important that what we did today not set a precedent,&quot; Prince added. &quot;The right answer is for us to be consistently content neutral.&quot;

&gt; one that gives publishers a right to due process and doesn&#x27;t put power over those decisions in the hands of a few CEOs like Prince.<p>Fox and CNN have the final say in the content they host, they don&#x27;t give publishers due process. I don&#x27;t see how google is any different, other than scope.

I really hope this isn&#x27;t the beginning of the end

This entire ordeal has had many other hidden consequences, for me personally for example I&#x27;ve made the decision to never ever voice my political opinion ever again, whether offline or online. It is simply too dangerous, I do not consider my political opinions to be anywhere near as important as my livelihood or internet access. Take that as an overreaction if you want, but that&#x27;s a real consequence that I&#x27;ve drawn for my life. I cannot risk accidentially running afoul somebody&#x27;s idea of &#x27;unacceptable opinion to hold&#x27;.

There is no &quot;neutral&quot; when people are questioning other people&#x27;s right of self determination, existence and value as a human being.<p>To quote Elie Wiesel: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”