In August 2017, Cloudflare terminated service to the despicable website Daily Stormer. CF had never previously terminated service to any website based on objectionable content, and had stated repeatedly that it would never do so. Two years later, in August 2019, CF terminated service to the equally despicable website 8chan.
At the time of the 8chan ban, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince presciently worried about the slippery slope effect: “After today, make no mistake, it will be a little bit harder for us to argue against a government somewhere pressuring us into taking down a site they don’t like.”
And now its happening. An Italian court has upheld its ruling that CF must block access to three music-pirating websites. The Court of Milan based its ruling in part on the fact that Cloudflare already blocks content from other nefarious websites.
It would be impossible for a decent, reasonable person to argue that Daily Stormer and 8chan are anything but despicable sites run by and for despicable people. But as a right-wing free-speech advocate, I gotta wonder and worry just how progressively (pun intended) more slippery this slope will get. Will CF be pressured to censor the truth in favor of false U.S. government propaganda – as Facebook and YouTube do routinely, as did Twitter before being liberated by Elon Must?
