For many years since it’s founding in 2009, Cloudflare stood firm as a bastion of Internet freedom, refusing to police the content of the sites that use its services.
The protection provided by Cloudflare has benefited innumerable legitimate sites, but also some despicably scummy ones. This poses an intractable dilemma for Cloudflare – support freedom for all, even evil scumbags; or take on the role of all powerful Internet Overlord, deciding who gets to have free speech and who gets silenced.
For years Cloudflare chose to allow unconditional freedom. The slope first became slippery in 2019 when Cloudflare terminated its services to the viciously hateful sites Daily Stormer and 8chan. Now a Cloudflare lawyer openly acknowledges that it “works with a number of international groups to support their investigations by providing information about Cloudflare customers”. These include indescribably horrific sites, run and patronized by indescribably horrible people, including some that advocate the sexual abuse of children.
I do not envy the extremely difficult position Cloudflare is in. But make no mistake, Internet freedom has been lessened. Cloudflare has chosen the slippery slope of Internet Overlord.
