Cloudflare Axes Daily Stormer, But Acknowledges Slippery Slope

In the wake of Charlottesville, Silicon Valley continues to crack down on white nationalist websites and social media accounts, only one CEO acknowledges that his conclusion to axe The Daily Stormer was a complicated mix of anger and emotion that could spell trouble if applied to other sites and services.

SecurityWatch Cyberspace security firm Cloudflare on Wednesday terminated its business relationship with The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that has been relegated to the dark spider web in recent days after GoDaddy and Google both refused to host the site. In an email to staff obtained by Gizmodo, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said he "woke upwards this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick [Daily Stormer] off the Net."

"I called our legal squad and told them what we were going to do," Prince connected. "I called our Trust & Safety team and had them finish the service. Information technology was a conclusion I could make because I'm the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company."

Still, the decision was "unsafe," he said. "Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn't exist immune on the Net. No one should have that power."

In a Thursday blog post, Prince argued that Cloudflare's terms of service give information technology the right to terminate users. "The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology," he wrote.

According to Prince, Cloudflare has had discussions about supporting "vile" content like The Daily Stormer "for years," but the initial takedown requests came from hackers.

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"In the example of the Daily Stormer, the initial requests we received to terminate their service came from hackers who literally said: 'Get out of the way so we can DDoS this site off the Net,'" he wrote. "But having the mechanism of content command exist vigilante hackers launching DDoS attacks subverts whatsoever rational concept of justice."

Prince argued that the word should be around due process rather than freedom of speech.

"I, personally, believe in strong Liberty of Speech protections, but I also acknowledge that it is a very American thought that is non shared globally," he wrote. "On the other manus, the concept of Due Process is close to universal. At its most basic, Due Process ways that you should be able to know the rules a organization will follow if you participate in that organization. Due Process requires that decisions be public and non arbitrary."

Ultimately, Prince said he doesn't have the answers. "What I do promise is [this incident] will let usa all to talk over what the framework for all [internet] organizations...should exist when it comes to content restrictions."

Regardless, The Daily Stormer and other white nationalist websites are having a hard time staying online. Subsequently being chosen out on Twitter, DailyOcean, which hosted The Daily Stormer's donation site, said it was terminating the account.

Our team investigated and adamant this site violates our TOS by inciting violence or hate crimes. We've terminated their account.
— DigitalOcean (@digitalocean) Baronial sixteen, 2022

Twitter has also suspended several Daily Stormer accounts, USA Today reports, though the Southern Poverty Law Center took the micro-blogging service to chore for not doing plenty. Twitter aggressively goes after Isis and other terrorist accounts, SLPC told USA Today, but has not washed the same for neo-Nazi accounts. "Charlottesville has definitely lit a fire under some people," the organization said.

Twitter, for case, banned white nationalist and #UnitetheRight organizer Richard Spencer in November, simply reinstated him several weeks later.

Meanwhile, Spotify has removed music from white supremacist bands after Digital Music News called them out; Deezer has reportedly done the same. Just as Digital Music News reports, the SLPC offset noted the existence of such music in 2022.

Website builder SquareSpace, meanwhile, told The Verge that it volition "remove a group of sites from our platform" within 48 hours. It did not elaborate, just Spencer's "retrieve tank" is apparently amidst the sites being removed. On Twitter, Spencer re-tweeted someone calling for "alt-correct" versions of Cloudflare, Squarespace, DNS hosts, and PayPal, which has besides croaky down on white nationalist accounts.

Virtually Chloe Albanesius

Chloe Albanesius

Chloe has led PCMag's news coverage for more than than 10 years, editing and writing stories about the innovations that have shaped the final decade and the companies behind them. She also oversees the site's how-to coverage. Earlier joining PCMag.com, Chloe was a reporter roofing tech policy on Capitol Hill for The National Journal's Technology Daily and financial Information technology for Incisive Media in NYC. She'south held internships at NBC's Encounter the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American University in Washington, D.C.