You know, when I first started doing this insanity nearly 13 years ago, I remember thinking to myself how lucky we all were to have the ability to share our ideas online. Yes, I was totally naive back then and didn’t really think about providers censoring and shutting down websites they disagreed with politically. In my sweet little innocent (stop laughing) mind, the Internet was this ‘information highway’ where I could find and share information.
Seems pretty simple, right?
Welp, in a world where our president goes on primetime television and threatens 75 million of us for not agreeing with his agenda, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see them going after certain sites and vilifying them as TERRORISTS.
Isn’t that exactly what Biden did?
We just blocked Kiwifarms. The threats on the site escalated enough in the last 48 hours that, in spite of proactively working with law enforcement, it became enough of an imminent emergency we could no longer wait for them to act. Details of our decision: https://t.co/xNnSXn65R6
— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) September 3, 2022
From their blog:
Kiwifarms has frequently been host to revolting content. Revolting content alone does not create an emergency situation that necessitates the action we are taking today. Beginning approximately two weeks ago, a pressure campaign started with the goal to deplatform Kiwifarms. That pressure campaign targeted Cloudflare as well as other providers utilized by the site.
Cloudflare provides security services to Kiwifarms, protecting them from DDoS and other cyberattacks. We have never been their hosting provider. As we outlined last Wednesday, we do not believe that terminating security services is appropriate, even to revolting content. In a law-respecting world, the answer to even illegal content is not to use other illegal means like DDoS attacks to silence it.
Even to ‘revolting content’.
What exactly is revolting content, folks? Who gets to decide what is and isn’t ‘revolting’? The way Biden spoke about it, anyone who doesn’t support abortion-on-demand up to and including 40 weeks is a threat to his democracy.
This scares me on so many levels, you guys. It’s why we push our VIP program so hard so that if this happens to us, if they try and shut us down for being ‘revolting’, we’ll still be able to keep going. I know, a lot of you don’t like seeing a paywall from us, but sadly it’s a necessity in today’s media world.
Cloudflare dropping Kiwi Farms is one of those “end of the internet as we know it” stories.
Now that the totalitarians’ tactics have been proven to work, they’ll go after other sites too.
You’re not safe. https://t.co/mLd5sAnwW2
— max (@MaxNordau) September 3, 2022
They’ll go after other sites too.
I think it will spur innovation, tbh
— PhotographicFloridian (@JackLinFLL) September 3, 2022
Probably. It’s not great that the entire internet relies on one company’s goodwill.
But it’s the end of the internet as we know it, for better or worse.
— max (@MaxNordau) September 3, 2022
That. ^
Give em an inch. And well, you will find out like so many others how that turns out. RIP Cloudflare
— FreedomGaming (@NewMagicalPC) September 3, 2022
All you need is enough people lying at the same time, and @Cloudflare will drop you.
— Somerando (@SomeRandoHuman) September 3, 2022
THAT’S what’s so scary, yup.
Cowards.
— Brian Knotts (@brianknotts) September 4, 2022
ah yes, how to have a PR disaster and then cave anyway xD
— Wild Security (@DelishPanda) September 3, 2022
Not a great look.
Like, at all.
