{"id":8776,"date":"2017-08-16T14:45:56","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T22:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/08\/16\/news-2549\/"},"modified":"2017-08-16T14:45:56","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T22:45:56","slug":"news-2549","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/08\/16\/news-2549\/","title":{"rendered":"Following Other Tech Companies, Cloudflare Has Dropped the Daily Stormer as a Customer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/video-images.vice.com\/articles\/5994a56738289269f605397d\/lede\/1502913896375-shutterstock_542916793.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Credit to Author: Louise Matsakis| Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 21:57:41 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the last mainstream tech companies to offer its services to neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer has now dropped it as a customer. <\/p>\n<p>Security firm Cloudflare, which formerly provided the site with protection against DDoS attacks and performance optimization, cancelled its paid subscription Wednesday, according to CEO Matthew Prince, who spoke to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2017\/8\/16\/16157710\/cloudflare-daily-stormer-drop-russia-hate-white-nationalism\" target=\"_blank\">The Verge<\/a>. Cloudflare did not return multiple requests for comment from Motherboard.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This was my decision, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s CloudFlare&#8217;s policy and I think it&#8217;s an extremely dangerous decision in a lot of ways,&#8221; Prince told the Verge. &#8220;I think that we as the internet need to have a conversation about where the right place for content restriction is&#8230;but there was no way we could have that conversation until we resolved this particular issue.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Daily Stormer&#8217;s CTO Andrew Auernheimer told Motherboard that he heard the company decided to drop the site after receiving a barrage of email complaints.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They will drop you if someone sends a lot of email,&#8221; Auernheimer, also known by his moniker Weev, said in an email. &#8220;So much for an anti-ddos company.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The move comes after domain provider GoDaddy, email provider Zoho, Google, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/the-daily-stormer-shafted-by-wang\" target=\"_blank\">other<\/a> web domain companies dropped the neo-Nazi site earlier this week for publishing an article mocking <a href=\"https:\/\/news.vice.com\/story\/heather-heyer-charlottesville-car-attack\">Heather Heyer<\/a>, who was killed at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/08\/11\/us\/white-nationalists-rally-charlottesville-virginia.html\" target=\"_blank\">white-nationalist<\/a> march in Charlottesville, Virginia Saturday. <\/p>\n<p>The Daily Stormer then <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/evvxvz\/white-supremacist-website-daily-stormer-goes-offline\">moved<\/a> to the dark web, where it <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/vbbdx9\/someone-appears-to-be-ddosing-the-dark-web-version-of-the-daily-stormer\">faced<\/a> a DDoS attack. It&#8217;s now moved back to the surface web under a .ru domain, making it officially a Russian website (though it appears to still be maintaining its dark web presence). <\/p>\n<p>Prior to Wednesday, Cloudflare remained the most prominent tech company retaining the Daily Stormer as a customer, even amid <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/how-cloudflare-helps-serve-up-hate-on-the-web\" target=\"_blank\">renewed<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/1053689\/cloudflare-is-the-one-tech-company-still-sticking-by-neo-nazi-websites-like-daily-stormer\/\" target=\"_blank\">criticism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Cloudflare has opted to remain neutral about what kind of content its customers post in the past. &#8220;A website is speech. It is not a bomb. There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain,&#8221; CEO Matthew Prince <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.cloudflare.com\/cloudflare-and-free-speech\/\" target=\"_blank\">wrote<\/a> in a 2013 blogpost. &#8220;Fundamentally, we are consistent in the fact that our political beliefs will not color who we allow to be fast and safe on the web,&#8221; he continued.<\/p>\n<p>The security firm&#8217;s decision to ditch the Daily Stormer appears to have rattled other Cloudflare customers known for attracting white supremacists\u2014like Twitter-like platform Gab.ai. Andrew Anglin, the Daily Stormer&#8217;s founder, sung the praises of Gab.ai on the platform Tuesday. &#8220;Gab is the last home of free speech on the internet,&#8221; he wrote.<\/p>\n<p>On its official Twitter account, the site, favored by members of the alt-right, told Cloudflare&#8217;s CEO Matthew Prince that it supports freedom of speech and respects the law, ostensibly in a public attempt to ensure it continues to benefit from Cloudflare&#8217;s services.<\/p>\n<div style=\"max-width: 550px;\" data-iframely-id=\"I9LHqnD\" class=\"article__embed article__embed--iframely\">\n<div style=\"left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;\" data-iframely-smart-iframe=\"true\"><iframe  src= width=\"100%\" height=\"420\" frameborder=\"0\" ><\/iframe> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The decision to drop the Daily Stormer by Cloudflare comes at an especially tumultuous time for the site. Also on Wednesday, comedian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/author\/dean-obeidallah\" target=\"_blank\">Dean Obeidallah<\/a> brought a <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/qvvkj3\/the-daily-stormer-is-getting-sued-for-fabricating-a-comedians-tweets\">lawsuit<\/a> in federal court against the site for for publishing an article in June falsely alleging that Obeidallah was behind the Manchester bombing, which killed 23 people in May. <\/p>\n<p>Twitter also cracked down on the Daily Stormer Wednesday and deleted several accounts associated with it, according to posts made by Auernheimer on Gab.io.<\/p>\n<p>A number of other companies like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2017\/8\/14\/16147126\/facebook-delete-viral-post-charlottesville-daily-stormer\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/zmmxje\/pro-trump-discord-server-centipede-central-says-its-being-monitored\">Discord<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2017\/8\/15\/16151226\/gofundme-james-fields-alt-right-crowdfunding-campaign-ban\" target=\"_blank\">GoFundMe<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/theoutline.com\/post\/2121\/squarespace-is-dropping-richard-spencer-s-think-tank-and-other-alt-right-websites\" target=\"_blank\">Squarespace<\/a> have also taken aggressive steps to ban white nationalist content this week.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/3kkdjb\/following-other-tech-companies-cloudflare-has-dropped-the-daily-stormer-as-a-customer\" target=\"bwo\" >https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/video-images.vice.com\/articles\/5994a56738289269f605397d\/lede\/1502913896375-shutterstock_542916793.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Credit to Author: Louise Matsakis| Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 21:57:41 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The move comes after the security firm previously defended its decision to retain the neo-Nazi site for months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10643,13328,10378],"tags":[11995],"class_list":["post-8776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-independent","category-motherboard","category-security","tag-content-moderation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}