Cloudflareup (Updated) 0

Cloudfare pulls its services from the Neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer, even as the Cloudfare CEO expresses qualms about his power to do so. A snippet:

“The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe,” (Cloudflare CEO Matthew–ed.) Prince said. “That was the tipping point for me.”

Still, Prince said he was not comfortable with the way he exercised his power, describing his choice to withdraw services from the Daily Stormer as arbitrary.

“It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major internet infrastructure company,” he said. “Having made that decision we now need to talk about why it is so dangerous. No one should have that power.”

Follow the link for more details and for the rest of Prince’s quite thoughtful musings on his own action.

This action makes The Daily Stormer vulnerable to DDoS attacks, which can knock it off the internet. (There is nothing particularly sophisticated about DDoS attacks; they work by overwhelming a site with so many hits that the site eventually becomes unable to respond. In other words, they knock on so many doors so rapidly that the website can’t answer them all and runs away to hide under the bed.)

Addendum, the Next Morning:

In a larger article about the pushback against America’s Neo-Nazis, TPM reports that The Daily Stormer has moved to the Dark Web because it can’t find a hosting provider.

Addendum, Later That Day:

There are other reports that The Daily Stormer now has a dot-ru (for Russia) domain. I have been unable to verify this, and I’m damned sure not exploring the Dark Web.

(I suspect that many of its acolytes won’t be able to find the Dark Web, let alone navigate it.)