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Cloudflare Dropped 8chan After a Third Mass Shooting Attributed to the Site

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Cloudflare LogoAfter the third mass shooting this year coinciding with a hateful screed on 8chan, Cloudflare  dropped support for 8chan. The site has been known for doxxing women, harassing female software and game developers, as well as female streamers, and spreading far-right hate speech. Along with hateful rhetoric from politicians, it creates a platform for would-be terrorists. At 8chan, they’re further radicalized, and often share their manifestos there prior to killing people. While those who run 8chan consider this a tragedy, they will not work to stop the glorification of these tragedies or the hate speech that leads to them.

A mass shooter, in a manifesto shared to 8chan, said that he had been visiting 8chan for “a year and a half, yet what I’ve learned here is priceless. It’s been an honor,” before murdering people. His peers on 8chan celebrated him. The site frequently keeps track of the number of people killed, calling it a “high score.”

Cloudflare finally stepped up to remove hosting support and Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) protection from 8chan. But will it stop the violence? Will it slow radicalization? And what does this mean for policing speech on the internet?

Who is Cloudflare?

Cloudflare is a content delivery network (CDN) service that offers protection and hosting for websites. They host and distribute content, while also defending their clients’ sites against DDOS attacks. DDOS attacks are coordinated efforts to bring down a website by sending many requests to the webpage from different computers. The website, struggling to keep up with the traffic, usually crashes. Cloudflare prevents this.

Many websites use Cloudflare. We’ve covered them here before for their privacy and speed enhancing DNS service: 1.1.1.1. Cloudflare is a reputable business. However, they’ve also hosted “lawless” sites, as the CEO, Matthew Prince, calls them, like 8chan.

What Did Cloudflare Do?

Cloudflare dropped support for 8chan, bringing the website down temporarily as the site’s owners rushed to find new DDOS protection and CDN hosting. Though rushed, 8chan’s owners were able to keep the service online.

“We reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible, but we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design. 8chan has crossed that line.”

– Matthew Prince, Cloudflare CEO

This isn’t the first time Cloudflare has pulled its support for a website. They also pulled support from Daily Stormer, a Neo-Nazi website, after Google and GoDaddy had done the same. This was after a Neo-Nazi terrorist murdered Heather Heyer in an attack during the Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Why Cloudflare Hesitated

“I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet. No one should have that power.”

– Matthew Prince, Cloudflare CEO

Cloudflare is part of the backbone of the internet. They believe it should be up to the sites they service to moderate content. However, they claim that 8chan has crossed a line by providing no moderation. Cloudflare watched 8chan closely, but wanted to give them the opportunity to self moderate.You might be angry at Cloudflare for waiting, but they have solid reasoning for reacing so slowly.

If you think about it, the construction company making roads shouldn’t be responsible for setting the speed limit on them. However, to continue the metaphor, if a particular county refuses to set speed limits, and that construction company is being blamed for accidents that are killing people on and around those streets, they may stop putting roads in that municipality.

That’s what happened here. Cloudflare is a backend service, part of the infrastructure of the internet. They didn’t want to be a moderator. However, Cloudflare responded to the market because 8chan’s “lawlessness” forced their hands. It was not a decision they took lightly.

Who Else is Stepping Up?

8chan’s domain was through Tucows, who says they had “no immediate plans” to revoke 8chan’s domain name. However, it seems as though 8chan may have preemptively moved their domain from Tucows to the alt-right friendly Epik. Epik also hosts Gab, the far-right social media platform used mostly by people who Twitter banned from their service over their hate speech guidelines. However, even Epik has been cautious about supporting 8chan. Far right ideals are one thing, but encouraging people to carry out those far right ideals through violence could be too extreme, even for Epik.

8chan also moved their CDN and DDOS protection to BitMitigate, a site that claims to have “a proven commitment to liberty.” From that, it sounds like they’d host any site. In fact, they already host the Daily Stormer.

Does This Hurt Law Enforcement?

The decision to remove support for 8chan could actually backfire. Cloudflare, Tucows, and other service providers may have been willing to work with U.S. police. This would allow them to track down terrorists before they attack, or I.D. those who commit attacks or organize them. Now, 8chan has moved to services that are more friendly towards extremism. Will they play nice with law enforcement? 8chan typically does, but, due to its anonymity, may not be able to give law enforcement much. It’s therefore up to their service providers to track down users. If they don’t or can’t, will Cloudflare be at fault? Not directly, but they will have made law enforcement’s job more difficult.

Cloudflare and other service providers who take issue with the content on the sites they host or support are in a lose-lose situation. It’s easy to say, “Hurray, 8chan is down!” But if it’s back online and more opaque than before, is it really a win? Could attacking extremism actually backfire?

Could This Set Harmful Precedent?

Actually, yes. Cloudflare acted as though they had a moral imperative to remove 8chan. The knee-jerk action is to agree. However, this means we could hold Cloudflare responsible for the content on the platforms they support. This would be similar to the way Twitter and Facebook need to keep ISIS and child pornography off their sites. It’s a slippery slope fallacy to say that we’re headed in that direction, however, this does open service providers up to the same criticism we levy at social networks. Lawmakers could take note.

Cloudflare engineers can sleep easy tonight knowing they no longer host a website that helps glorify mass shootings. However, they may worry that they’ve taken full neutrality out of service providers. First through consumer expectations, and, potentially, through lawmakers enforcing those expectations.

“It’s dangerous for infrastructure companies to be making what are editorial decisions. The deeper you get into the technology stack, the harder it becomes to make those decisions.”

– Matthew Prince, Cloudflare CEO

Cloudflare had to drop 8chan because they didn’t want their brand to be associated with it. In the end, it comes down to a business decision. They don’t want to scare away other clients. After public outcry, Cloudflare couldn’t hide from the bad publicity behind the layers of the tech stack. But could this mean we’ll now hold such providers responsible in the future? Possibly.

Is Free Speech at Risk?

No. This was not a free speech issue, and not just because Cloudflare is not a government entity. Endangering public safety is not protected speech. Encouraging and promoting terrorism is not protected speech. This is far worse than shouting fire in a theater. This is getting a group of arsonists together to set a theater on fire. It’s more extreme than hate speech. Should Twitter ban ISIS? Yes. Should Facebook block child pornography and report uploaders to police? Yes. Should we monitor and take down our own home-grown terrorist networks? Absolutely.

Moderating content isn’t in 8chan’s nature, but it could be the only thing to save them from losing all but their most extreme members and potentially losing hosting altogether. As a result of this moderation-free atmosphere, it’s about more than shock humor, shitposting, and memes it began as. It’s a place where people are radicalized, spread hate, harassment campaigns are planned, and mass shootings take shape. For 8chan, those lives lost are a cost of what they consider free speech. The middle ground would be to censor the promotion of violence on 8chan, but the site won’t budge.

No, free speech hasn’t been threatened, at least not in the U.S. Australia and New Zealand block both 4chan and 8chan, which some may argue is an affront to free speech, and U.S. lawmakers seem to agree. Furthermore, if any hate-friendly hosting services want to step up, they’re free to do so. In no way was free speech threatened here. Violent extremism, however, is finally getting the treatment it deserves.

“I have little doubt we’ll see the same happen with 8chan. While removing 8chan from our network takes heat off of us, it does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online.”

– Matthew Prince, Cloudflare CEO

For now, 8chan is alive and well and likely better off for Cloudflare’s decision. However, subsequent shootings, doxxing, and harassment campaigns could cost them their new hosting and domain name services in the future. This may be a temporary win for the darkest reach on the internet, but without some moderation, it may also be the first sign of the sites downfall. If U.S. lawmakers decide it is a terrorist network, they could take it down indefinitely.

8chan removed the shooter’s posts, but does not remove posts glorifying shootings. They also remove copyrighted content to avoid U.S. laws, the only moderation on the site currently. 8chan has, despite its image, complied with all FBI and police requests. While 8chan has not broken current U.S. laws, they could push the need for new ones, effectively running counter to their objective. Will 8chan evolve, embracing some moderation to stem violence and harassment, or face the risk of losing a place for alternative viewpoints altogether?

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