I am keenly aware of Betteridge’s law of headlines but I submit to you for the balance of this post we suspend the notion and have a discussion around a topic that I think we can all appreciate.

Yesterday ClouldFlare (A company whos service I use on this site and very much enjoy) took a bold and scary step to no longer support the DailyStormer a vile pro-nazi website whos sole reason for existing it seems is to spew hate onto the internet. In an email to the staffers, the CEO of CF Matthew Prince explained that his decision was “arbitrary” and of his sole discretion. What caught my attention and led me to write this post was and exchange he spoke of in the aforementioned email:

“[Cloudflare employee’s name redacted] asked after I told him what we were going to do: “Is this the day the Internet dies?” He was half joking, but I actually think it’s an important question. It’s important that what we did today not set a precedent. The right answer is for us to be consistently content neutral. But we need to have a conversation about who and how the content online is controlled. We couldn’t have that conversation while the Daily Stormer site was using us. Now, hopefully, we can.”

My immediate feeling in the wake of reading that DS was no longer under the protection of CF was one of happiness and excitement but that was partially replaced with fear and concern at the prospect that this could potentially happen to anyone who found themselves on the wrong side of a discussion. With this action how can I (or anyone for that matter) know that a perceived opinion or view can potentially land us in internet limbo? Obviously the DS is a bastion of hate and discontent and there is nothing redeemable about them, and this is an extreme example, and to Mr. Prince’s credit he addressed this in an earlier part of the email:

“Having made that decision we now need to talk about why it is so dangerous. I’ll be posting something on our blog later today. Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power.”

But my concern is that the path has been started down this may not be the last time this happens, if the internet is to remain democratized then the suggestion put forth by Mr. Prince should be taken seriously by no just him, but all major internet infrastructure company. MY hope that August 17th 2017 will not be remembered as “day the Internet died”

I have linked to both the internal CF email here and the blog posting on CF site here.

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