Cloudflare also has an added appeal to sites such as the Daily Stormer. It turns over to the hate sites the personal information of people who criticize their content.
For instance, when a reader figures out that Cloudflare is the Internet company serving sites like the Daily Stormer, he or she sometimes write to the company to protest. Cloudflare, per its policy, then relays the name and email address of the person complaining to the hate site, often to the surprise and regret of the person complaining. This has led to campaigns of harassment against those writing in to protest the offensive material. People have been threatened and harassed. [...]
Andrew Anglin, the owner of the Daily Stormer, has been candid about how he feels about people reporting his site for its content. "We need to make it clear to all of these people that there are consequences for messing with us," Anglin wrote in one online post. "We are not a bunch of babies to be kicked around. We will take revenge. And we will do it now."
ProPublica asked Cloudflare's top lawyer about its policy of sharing information on those who complain about racist sites. The lawyer, Doug Kramer, Cloudflare's general counsel, defended the company's policies by saying it is "base constitutional law that people can face their accusers." Kramer suggested that some of the people attacking Cloudflare's customers had their own questionable motives.
"We would gleefully do business with ISIS if we were not prohibited from doing so":
Kramer, in an interview with ProPublica, reiterated that the company would not accept money from ISIS. But he said that was not for moral or ethical reasons. Rather, he said, Cloudflare did not have dealings with terrorist groups such as ISIS because there are significant and specific laws restricting it from doing so. [...]
Getting booted from service to service can make it hard to run a hate site, but Cloudflare gives the sites a solid footing. And, by the Daily Stormer's account, advice and assurances. In a post, the site's architect, Andrew Auernheimer, said he had personal relationships with people at Cloudflare, and they had assured him the company would work to protect the site in a variety of ways -- including by not turning over data to European courts. Cloudflare has data centers in European countries such as Germany, which have strict hate-speech and privacy laws.
Like I said last time:
Put yourself in this hypothetical. You own a company, called Floudclare. It is a private, for-profit corporation, not a public utility. Today, you have to pick one of the two checkboxes that read,
☐ Be in business with actual Nazis;
☑ Do not be in business with actual Nazis.In a world full of gray areas, that's pretty fucking charcoal.
As we say in Germany, if there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
