They have me in a weird spot, because I fundamentally don’t really like the sheer volume of information they are MITMing at all times, and don’t really like the idea of letting them do so for my small site.
But their decisions with respect to security threats pretty consistently seem well measured and as minimally invasive as they can be (eg they have intervened and rewritten content as a result of a supply chain attack, but were very transparent that it was desperate measures, that they didn’t really want to do it, and only did it by default for the free users that were most likely not to know enough to enable it themselves). They’ve also pushed back against stuff like piracy shield trying to turn them into outright surveillance for private companies.
It’s a good thing that they’re not taking freedom of speech lightly, isn’t it? That can become unpleasant at times. This is difficult for an ISP that in principle wants to maintain net neutrality.
Hate speech is not protected by freedom of speech. You can’t yell fire in a theater, you can’t plot someone’s death on the internet. And corporations don’t have to follow freedom of speech. They only refuse to step in because they either agree with what’s being said or don’t want to lose money.
Their business model and size obligates them to walk carefully - they want users and clients to forget or not know they even exist and have such a leverage over them - that really helps them selling their products. I think they have top of the shelf specialists, hardware, etc and that naturally upholds their frightening monopoly. Piracy shield goes against them masquarading as invisible non-actors and puts a lot of unpaid responsibility on them.
They have me in a weird spot, because I fundamentally don’t really like the sheer volume of information they are MITMing at all times, and don’t really like the idea of letting them do so for my small site.
But their decisions with respect to security threats pretty consistently seem well measured and as minimally invasive as they can be (eg they have intervened and rewritten content as a result of a supply chain attack, but were very transparent that it was desperate measures, that they didn’t really want to do it, and only did it by default for the free users that were most likely not to know enough to enable it themselves). They’ve also pushed back against stuff like piracy shield trying to turn them into outright surveillance for private companies.
They lost me when they refused to do anything about Kiwi Farms. Protecting privacy is one thing, facilitating hate crimes is another.
What do you mean?
https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked/
They only did that after A LOT of backlash. Their initial stance was to do nothing. This article sums it up really well:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/6/23339889/cloudflare-kiwi-farms-content-moderation-ddos
It’s a good thing that they’re not taking freedom of speech lightly, isn’t it? That can become unpleasant at times. This is difficult for an ISP that in principle wants to maintain net neutrality.
Hate speech is not protected by freedom of speech. You can’t yell fire in a theater, you can’t plot someone’s death on the internet. And corporations don’t have to follow freedom of speech. They only refuse to step in because they either agree with what’s being said or don’t want to lose money.
Their business model and size obligates them to walk carefully - they want users and clients to forget or not know they even exist and have such a leverage over them - that really helps them selling their products. I think they have top of the shelf specialists, hardware, etc and that naturally upholds their frightening monopoly. Piracy shield goes against them masquarading as invisible non-actors and puts a lot of unpaid responsibility on them.