From a Mashable article published at the time, quoting the CEO in his own words:
In an interview, Prince expressed doubt about his decision to remove The Daily Stormer from Cloudflare, and conveyed concern over companies like his own, and their ability to pull a lever, and knock a website offline.
If you go back to [the] early days of Cloudflare, we’ve wrestled with: ‘What is our role in term of controlling what content flows through our network?’ And we believed that the right principle was to remain content neutral.
I think he’s exactly correct. This is what Net Neutrality is about. Service providers on the Internet should be treated like a utility. It’s easy to conflate this issue with that of ‘tolerating the intolerant,’ but I don’t think that’s correct at all. It’s also an argument that many parts of the Internet infrastructure have had. Cloudflare is a big part of the infrastructure underpinning the Internet at large, but it’s only a part. There are many others that need to come together to support a simple website. What about RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) like ARIN, who are responsible for allocating IP addresses? If you’re going to be upset with Cloudflare for struggling about whether or not to be neutral, why should they get off the hook? I think it’s probably because most people don’t understand how the Internet works, and so they remain ignorant of what goes into simply ‘hooking up’ a website to the Internet, allowing these other critically necessary components to fly under the radar of the public attention.
The debate about various Internet infrastructure entities remaining neutral has long raged.
By and large, the communities that build and maintain these kinds of underpinnings have come down on the side of remaining neutral. It’s a vastly complex situation, with no easy answers, and a LOT of ‘hidden’ variables and concerns.
So in my understanding, Regional Internet Registries are in general not commercial entities, directly making money from the services they provide. The problem I have with Cloudflare is that it’s directly making money off of the “neutrality” they say they provide. If white nationalists are paying you to protect them, that’s an entirely different thing from a non-commercial organization treating objectionable people the same way they would treat anyone else.
Care to share any source on the first part? Not doubting, I’m just genuinely curious because this is the first time I’ve read that.
From a Mashable article published at the time, quoting the CEO in his own words:
I think he’s exactly correct. This is what Net Neutrality is about. Service providers on the Internet should be treated like a utility. It’s easy to conflate this issue with that of ‘tolerating the intolerant,’ but I don’t think that’s correct at all. It’s also an argument that many parts of the Internet infrastructure have had. Cloudflare is a big part of the infrastructure underpinning the Internet at large, but it’s only a part. There are many others that need to come together to support a simple website. What about RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) like ARIN, who are responsible for allocating IP addresses? If you’re going to be upset with Cloudflare for struggling about whether or not to be neutral, why should they get off the hook? I think it’s probably because most people don’t understand how the Internet works, and so they remain ignorant of what goes into simply ‘hooking up’ a website to the Internet, allowing these other critically necessary components to fly under the radar of the public attention.
The debate about various Internet infrastructure entities remaining neutral has long raged. By and large, the communities that build and maintain these kinds of underpinnings have come down on the side of remaining neutral. It’s a vastly complex situation, with no easy answers, and a LOT of ‘hidden’ variables and concerns.
So in my understanding, Regional Internet Registries are in general not commercial entities, directly making money from the services they provide. The problem I have with Cloudflare is that it’s directly making money off of the “neutrality” they say they provide. If white nationalists are paying you to protect them, that’s an entirely different thing from a non-commercial organization treating objectionable people the same way they would treat anyone else.