Politics on the Internet – CloudFlare, governments and users
Original Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10192273
Relevant Article: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-opisis-cloudflare-refuses-block-service-pro-isis-websites-1495758
Related Discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9893989, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9742331
CloudFlare is a content delivery service that provides performance, security and analytics to websites – a middle-man between users and a service. One side effect of this model is that services are essentially hidden behind CloudFlare. For the most part, this is not a big deal, for either the users or the site owners. Where this becomes a bit of a controversy is with websites promoting illegal or terrorist activities. Three comments down in the linked discussion, there is a mention to CloudFlare hosting ISIS propoganda websites. Indeed through a bit of searching, we see that they have actively refused to take down these websites on an ethical basis. They also have not received legal orders to do so. Thus, they take an absolute stance on being a “content enabler” rather than a “content hoster” – that is, they have nothing to do with the content itself, only with the service they provide.
Looking back a bit further, in the related discussions, we see CloudFlare has also had its share of government altercations, in particular with the Grooveshark fiasco. Typically, when an entertainment industry wants a site to remove infringing content, it will issue a copyright notice to the website host (Youtube, for example). For websites behind CloudFlare however, the host is hidden, and so if the website itself does not provide a contact for notices, then the only target left is CloudFlare itself. A couple months ago, CloudFlare was ordered to takedown websites with any form of “grooveshark” in its name. Although they complied, they also argued against the power to issue “catch-all” takedowns (i.e. non-infringing sites with grooveshark in the name). This goes back to the idea that CloudFlare is only a “content enabler”, and should not have to police their clients.
What’s relevant and interesting about this topic is the general public stance (not just the comments) towards each of these scenarios. We can form a +/- relationship graph between the parties and see how structural balance/imbalance changes the relationship. To start, we match Cloudflare with a positive relationship with Grooveshark, meaning that they are willing to provide them service. The general public stance is positive towards both Grooveshark (who wouldn’t want free music streaming) and CloudFlare. In this triangle, we have (+, +, +) structural balance. Furthermore, we can add the entertainment industry into the mix, which has a negative relationship with both CloudFlare and Grooveshark. Here we still have a (-, -, +) structural balance.
Now adding ISIS to the graph, we are aware of a strong negative relationship between the public and ISIS. CloudFlare however, is still willing to provide its services to ISIS, which we might label as a positive relationship. Using the previous relationship for the public, there is now a (+, +, -) structural imbalance between the public, CloudFlare and ISIS. Now, there is quite a bit of controversy around CloudFlare, not just with terrorist organizations but also with denial-of-service services and credit card fraud. As we learned, this sort of relationship instability comes with unbalanced relationships.