A Storm Without A Cloud

Following the tragic outbreak of violence at Charlottesville a week back, web security company Cloudflare removed White Supremacist website, The Daily Stormer, as a customer, leaving it open to cyber-attacks. This is significant because up till then, Cloudflare had, quite admirably in my estimation, steadfastly refused to impose a moral stand on The Daily Stormer's hate-filled content. Before that, other vendors like GoDaddy, Google, SquareSpace and Twitter had already moved to deny The Daily Stormer their services. As of now, the site has moved out of the mainstream internet and may be accessed only on the dark web. No, I'm not going to provide a link - if you must read their filth, do a web search.

I took a special interest in this case because of the situation between Shopify and Breitbart News Network earlier this year. Back then, I observed that tech was becoming increasingly partisan and that vendors are being forced to take sides in the escalating political war of ideals between the Liberals and Conservatives. And my stand then, was that technology should serve all voices within the boundaries of the law. That has not changed. Cloudflare's sentiments appeared to echo mine, until unceremoniously dropping The Daily Stormer.

What caused the change of heart? Now, this in itself is noteworthy. Unlike the likes of Google and Facebook, Cloudflare's objections were not on moral grounds, nor were they pandering to the Leftists. They found the content of The Daily Stormer as repugnant as many other people, me included. No, in the words of CEO Matthew Prince, he'd had enough of their crap.

This was my decision. Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion. My rationale for making this decision was simple: the people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes and I'd had enough.

While, he, like myself, believes that service providers should not morally police the Internet, The Daily Stormer finally pushed him too far. According to an explanatory blog post by Prince, The Daily Stormer had been proclaiming that Cloudflare were on their side and were "one of us". Already disgusted by them, Prince made a decision that even he acknowledged as arbitrary - he flexed those CEO muscles and pulled out.

Looted from Washington Post.

For some context, this is what went down in Charlottesville. White Supremacists marched to protest the taking down of Robert E. Lee's statue. There was a counter-protest by Leftists and violence broke out. No, I don't want to talk about who started it. That's not the point. The point is that one of the White Supremacists, James Alex Fields, Jr., drove his car into a group of Leftists, injuring 19 and killing a woman by the name of Heather Heyer. And if that wasn't bad enough, The Daily Stormer started posting insulting content about Heyer, and expressing satisfaction at her death.

Yep. That level of disgusting. Christ, man. Someone died. Show some goddamn decency.

Still, no matter how revolting I found their content, according to the law of the land, they still had a right to publish it. Hey, don't look at me. It sucks, so change that stupid law.

Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke noted back then, that morality is subjective and it wasn't the place of Shopify to impose their moral standard on any party. Matthew Prince seems to agree, and he noted that although he had the power to drop The Daily Stormer and actually exercised it, it was a problematic decision and he remains perturbed by it to this day.

And the dude makes a very compelling point.

Look, just because he could do it, didn't mean he should. He basically got pissed off and cut The Daily Stormer off. That would be like Sundar Pichai denying me service to my Google Blog just because I insulted his mother! It was unprofessional, and could come back to bite them. No, not in terms of The Daily Stormers seeking retribution - those little pukes have enough troubles of their own, and Cloudflare was hardly the first to axe them - in terms of maintaining tech neutrality. If he could drop The Daily Stormers because he found them objectionable, it's easy to turn it around and say that whoever he hasn't dropped must not be objectionable to him. And that is a slippery slope. It sets a dangerous precedent.

Get a load of this douchebag.

I mean, let's say for example I create a platform for people to listen to music. Even Justin Bieber's music. What if people used that to accuse me of being a Justin Bieber fan? A Justin Bieber fan, for crying out loud.

That being said...

I've developed a great deal of respect for Matthew Prince. He behaved unprofessionally (albeit in a very extreme situation), but he owned it. He could have justified it by taking the moral high ground, and he'd be in good company. But no, he didn't. He acknowledged that his actions compromised the principles upon which he had based Cloudflare, and left us with these words.

The issue of who can and cannot be online has often been associated with Freedom of Speech. We think the more important principle is Due Process. I, personally, believe in strong Freedom of Speech protections, but I also acknowledge that it is a very American idea that is not shared globally. On the other hand, the concept of Due Process is close to universal. At its most basic, Due Process means that you should be able to know the rules a system will follow if you participate in that system.

Due Process requires that decisions be public and not arbitrary. It's why we've always said that our policy is to follow the guidance of the law in the jurisdictions in which we operate. Law enforcement, legislators, and courts have the political legitimacy and predictability to make decisions on what content should be restricted. Companies should not.

Due Process. What a concept.

Censorship! You're impinging on their First Amendment rights, the Rightists protest.

What's the big deal, come the predictable cries from the Leftists. The White Supremacists are Nazi pieces of shit who don't deserve a platform to air their hateful views. We have the moral high ground!

Boy, a lot of people sure are obsessed about moral high ground these days. Go figure. The Left and Right are missing the point entirely, but that's OK. They're laypeople, and missing the point is practically an obligation.

You see, this isn't about what The Daily Stormer does or doesn't deserve. From a tech point of view, the moment one party exercises their legal right to deny technical service, this has larger implications on the rest of the Internet. It's rather more clear-cut when the violation is of a legal nature, but when it isn't, and the service provider has to make a judgement call, things get tricky. You generally want to be consistent, and the only way to do that is not to let your personal biases affect your judgement. Yes, morality is a form of bias. What a shock, huh?

Following that, the best way to not let personal biases affect your judgement, is to have a greater authority make the call. A standard due process that lets the offender know - this is not personal. These are the rules, motherfucker. You pull that shit, we're done!

When Cloudflare dropped The Daily Stormer, The Daily Stormer was left defenceless against cyber attacks from online hacktivist groups such as Anonymous, and to this date has trouble staying up. You may consider it justice, but when said justice is dispensed via illegal means and you think that's OK, you've probably been watching way too much TV. No tech worker in his right mind would endorse such a thing. We ply our living within the framework of the law. We've got a code of conduct and shit!

Being a professional.

A lawyer is professionally bound to defend his client to the best of his ability (and again, within the framework of the law) even if his client is the sleaziest lowlife on God's green earth. A surgeon is required to do his utmost to save his patient's life, even if that patient just gunned down his entire family. The Hippocratic Oath. Heard of it? Tech service providers operate in a similar capacity - while technically they have the power to dump whomever they please for whatever reason they specify, all of them try to refrain from passing any sort of judgement on the weird shit people do on the Internet. And that's really all we want to do - work on the tech, and leave the policing to the authorities.

I mean, do you really want an Internet where you can be denied service just because the geek in charge didn't like your face? Or, if you do without the protection of Cloudflare, have your website be vulnerable to any hackers who don't like your content? If we're not careful, that's where we're headed. Anarchy.

These are extreme circumstances!

I agree. Extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. Sure. You'll find no sympathy from me with regards to the neo-Nazis. Those witless bastards can rot in hell. If it were up to me, they wouldn't even have fingers to use keyboards with, much less the Internet. (The Leftists may cheer at this, until I remind them that my antipathy extends itself to Antifa and other extremist groups who use violence and illegal means to get shit done.) But thankfully, it's not up to me. Because I'm a severely flawed human being with limited perspective. Just like, whether they choose to admit it or not, everyone else.

What Matthew Prince is really saying, and I don't think that's at all an unreasonable concern, is where do we draw the line? And who draws it? Where are the checks and balances? Arguably, the entire mess in Charlottesville stemmed from people not knowing when to stop. Being unable, or unwilling, to regulate themselves.

Our Internet's as free and open as it's ever going to be. Don't take it for granted.

I bet The Daily Stormers did Nazi this coming, eh?
T___T