Cloudflare Free Speech Stance

The cluster centers on debates about Cloudflare's commitment to free speech and neutrality as a CDN provider, including their history of serving or deplatforming controversial sites like 8chan, Daily Stormer, and neo-Nazi pages.

📉 Falling 0.3x Politics & Society
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#798
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Keywords

US techcrunch.com DailyStormer GossiTheDog HN twitter.com cloudflare.com CloudFare FaceBook YouTube cloudflare ddos speech free speech sites service protected neutral customer business

Sample Comments

pjscott Sep 25, 2016 View on HN

CloudFlare is saying all the right things in this relevant blog post:https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free-speech/I'm fairly optimistic that they mean it -- and that if they don't, playing censor would be way more trouble for them than it could ever be worth.

tempuser24 Sep 26, 2018 View on HN

I'm not sure I follow, but Cloudflare has a history of being a strong defender of free speech. They even defended Neo-Nazis.https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/

kickopotomus Aug 5, 2019 View on HN

Nobody has a right to a CDN or a right to DDOS protection. Cloudflare is a private company offering a service in exchange for money. They may deny service to whomever they wish (with exceptions for certain protected classes). Political leanings and ideologies do not constitute a protected class. Neither Cloudflare, nor Google, nor FaceBook, nor Reddit, nor HN for that matter have any legal or moral obligation to grant a platform to anyone. A private platform reserves all rights to the content on

eridius Nov 13, 2018 View on HN

Cloudflare explicitly takes a hands-off approach. They said they'll provide their basic services to anyone and everyone as long as it's not violating the law (which basically means they won't protect child pornography sites), and they explicitly don't police the content of the sites. AIUI their rationale is that it's so easy to DDoS sites these days that everyone deserves to have access to basic DDoS protection no matter who they are or what they believe.

markovbot Sep 23, 2019 View on HN

CloudFlare isn't in the business of enforcing laws, they enforce whatever arbitrary decision they make.

triangleman Apr 1, 2020 View on HN

You have got to be kidding.https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/

donkarma Aug 24, 2022 View on HN

despite cloudflare claiming to be neutral it has deplatformed in the past and can do so again

hairofadog Oct 24, 2022 View on HN

It sounds like your beef is with Cloudflare though, no? As the argument is that harassing people online is free speech that Cloudflare could have ignored, sued to stop, or complained to law enforcement about, had they chosen?

whitepaint Oct 5, 2021 View on HN

What about Cloudflare? Should it be illegal?

jonny_eh Jul 22, 2020 View on HN

Cloudflare has a right to free speech too.