On Wednesday content delivery network Cloudflare published a blog post explaining the circumstances under which abusive websites are eligible for service, just as a storm is brewing on that very topic.
Penned by CEO Matthew Prince and VP Alissa Starzak, global head of public policy, the post is titled "Cloudflare's abuse policies & approach." It tries to clarify why the company sometimes moderates abusive content and sometimes doesn't.
Cloudflare's policy tour doesn't address the post's timing, but it coincides with a campaign to convince the internet infrastructure biz to stop supporting Kiwi Farms, which those against the site describe as "a far-right hate forum where users create and participate in threads dedicated to the harassment of online figures, primarily featuring neuro-divergent and transgender individuals."
In 2019, following the mass shooting at a Christchurch mosque, New Zealand authorities had the country's ISPs block Kiwi Farms in response to site owner Joshua Moon's refusal to turn over data on posts related to the shooting.
More recently, Kiwi Farms has been linked to the harassment and doxing of trans streamer Clara Sorrenti, known as @keffals on Twitter and Twitch, who has been organizing with sympathetic members of the internet community to pressure Cloudflare to stop providing services to the forum.
Sorrenti not only had her personal information dug up and posted online, trolls sent armed police to her home in a swatting attack and had her arrested and detained for hours. When she sought refuge in a hotel, Kiwi Farms posters figured out where she was from a photo she shared, and let her know by sending pizza repeatedly to her room, forcing her to move from Airbnb to Airbnb rentals.
In years past, Cloudflare dropped other customers for hateful content, including neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer (2017) and notorious message board 8chan (2019). But the company continues to provide security – its reverse proxy service – that helps Kiwi Farms defend against denial of service attacks and keeps the web forum online.
To hear Prince and Starzak tell it, Cloudflare has different standards for different products. It has an Acceptable Hosting Policy for hosted content, but doesn't apply those rules to its security offerings.
"Hosting products are those products where Cloudflare is the ultimate host of the content," said Prince and Starzak. "This is different from products where we are merely providing security or temporary caching services and the content is hosted elsewhere."
Prince and Starzak argue that Cloudflare's security service can be compared to a government-regulated common carrier, even though internet services are regulated differently than communication services. Phone-based harassment is one-to-one and is punishable under the Federal Communications Act.
"Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in consultation with politicians, policy makers, and experts that turning off security services because we think what you publish is despicable is the wrong policy," their post says. "To be clear, just because we did it in a limited set of cases before doesn’t mean we were right when we did. Or that we will ever do it again."
Not impressed
In response to Cloudflare's canned statement, Nicholas Weaver, senior researcher of networking and security at UC Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute, dismissed the corporation's rationalization.
"Cloudflare's excuse for protecting Kiwi Farms is bullshit: Their 'Security' product is content-delivery with DOS protection and hiding the real host," Weaver said via Twitter. "Cloudflare's continued support for Kiwi Farms despite the obvious violations of Cloudflare's own ToS is a deliberate act."
He continued, "Cloudflare explicitly supports Kiwi Farms and their speech. It isn't being neutral here, it is advocating and supporting a forum that is dancing all over the Brandenburg line, actively inciting imminent lawless action."
Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic, offered a similar response to Cloudflare's post.
"Cloudflare wants dead trans people," Caraballo said via Twitter. "This is their legacy by working with Kiwi Farms. They are knowingly complicit in the cyberstalking, harassment, and threatening of trans people to the point of suicide. They offer the protections that enable this to happen."
Those arguing for human rights have often invoked the phrase "silence is complicity," or a variation on that theme, to encourage active opposition to injustice. In his advocacy last year for COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act US President Joe Biden urged people to speak out against hatred. "Silence is complicity," he said.
The Register asked Cloudflare to respond to Weaver's condemnation of the company's behavior, to explain how Kiwi Farms is not in violation of the company's Terms of Service, and to enumerate which injustices it will address and which it will ignore.
Cloudflare has not responded. ®
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literally everything i don't support is violence.
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You can never trust journoswine to tell the truth. He refused to hand over IP addresses of NZ users who viewed the video because police wanted them up against the wall.
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Yeah, the journaloid deliberately phrased that to imply that KF refused to hand over info on someone involved with the shooting, rather than the truth that Empress Ardern wanted to imprison people merely for watching the video.
Journ*lists deserve everything they get in third world countries.
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A journ*list will always tell you they've been wronged, but never tell you why
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Lügenpresse
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- Hunter S Thompson
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I used to think he was just an butthole taking credit for everybody else's work but now I feel like I might have been wrong.
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He has a confusing casual rep based on what you read of his, when. Complicated by the fact his brain was melting over the course of his life from amphetamines and psychedelics. And then "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" is probably the one book you should read to know anything about him, while "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is the one everyone mentions. This is probably good place to start:
https://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/hunter-s-thompson-the-kentucky-derby-is-decadent-and-depraved/
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I thank you for your effort but I don't give enough shits about that man to read all that.
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The goat
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Dam, as a kiwi that shit is kinda scary
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Um, that's a both sides you're doing, sweaty
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Cloudflare's reputation kinda rests on them remaining reliable in the face of various pressures, including rapidly changing US political fads. Prescient move on their end.
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DDoSing is also fricking illegal. Scriptkiddies can do it all day without getting vanned but nice try getting the backbone of the internet involved
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NOOO you cannot hecking visit a website
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https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030
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The law says its my turn to play
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Is it still a DDoS if i bomb their server farm?
Asking for a friend (me)
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It does take dedication and dies deny service.
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We got a constitutional law expert here!
Left-wing activist judges in the 1960s made incitement to violence legal as long as you're coy about it, but that doesn't really matter anyway. I'm pretty sure Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wouldn't have considered calling someone a fat ugly r-slur to be a "clear and present danger".
Are these people on that new meth?
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No they're just genuinely dumb. Everything they say is strictly emotional, which means exaggerated beyond belief. The goal is to remove any and all objective analysis of the claims they make - to make it so anything they say is a self evident truth, above any form of debate or criticism.
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Lol you can't be serious
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Actually one of pizza's more cogent comments IMO
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Never thought I’d see pizza become what he tried to destroy
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Trains are fast becoming the new puritans, the religious nutjobs in the 1990s-2010s
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They are the heirs to the evangelical fedora autism of the naughties. (the half that didn't
)
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Much like there are addictive personalities, there are holier-than-thou personalities.
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The Evangelical Atheist is immunized against all dangers: one may call him a Neckbeard, Incel, Grifter, it all runs off him like water off a raincoat. But call him an Evangelical and you will be astonished at how he recoils, how injured he is, how he suddenly shrinks back: “I’ve been found out.”
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Makes sense. The other day you were equating attempted swatting with swatting. Seems kinda dumb, but it adds up, chief.
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Bro you are an evil fascist white supremacist for equating Nazis with heckin wholesome
s
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It’s crazy how mask off universities are going with shit. Like the left-wing infiltration started in the 1960s but at least those commies had the sense of staying low and ‘merely’ indoctrinating students and talking among like minded peers. Nowadays, professors and heads of departments spew the most insane shit and still expect to retain credibility, publishing ability, and taxpayer funding.
If you remember the Hawley vs professor hearing a couple months ago, the most shocking thing was how the professor was smugly using “you’re transphobic” as a way to end the convo. Literal Redditor tier behavior from a person that somehow got the qualifications necessary to be a law professor at Berkeley. All colleges need to be burned down, not even just in Minecraft
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Oh for sure the media and some leftoids were trying to spin it as a victory but normie Redditors mostly ignored it for the safer ground of “Rethuglikkkans hate women!!!!”
Just watched the argument again and it’s even funnier than I remembered. The professor also uses the Reddit/Twitter argument of “you’re committing genocide against trans”. It’s become so common as a talking point I feel like people might not get what they’re actually saying is “
s kill themselves a lot and if you hurt their feelings another one might do it”. The professor finishes off her masterclass in debating by asking Hawley if “men can get pregnant”, and when he answers no, it’s back to “you’re transphobic!!!”
She’s randomly laughing at several points, idk if it’s because Hawleys answers are soo funny to her or even she doesn’t believe what she’s saying/virtue signaling. Either way, reality is yet again stranger than fiction
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It's basically become the equivalent of the religious right. There is no bible or head figure but they have an ideology that they follow without question.
If someone does question it then they are either forced to reform (generally though shaming) or are excommunicated.
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Yeah as dumb as KiwiFarms is, Cloudflare is doing their job and I think it's probably a good thing they're being relatively neutral. Like I don't really care if KiwiFarms goes down (and they'll probably eventually get blown up anyway once people realize that it's pretty easy to find out where 1776 Hosting is located on the open internet), but I do like CloudFlare's relative neutrality.
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What’s 1776 Hosting?
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Joosh's self run ISP
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You are surely old enough to remember politicians rabble-rousing with ostensibly insane statements. This is the same thing.
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Everybody "wants dead trans people," according to these people's worldview. Just shows that they're demented and have completely lost touch with reality.
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God I wish these people kill themselves
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41% of them might.
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Jesus christ sometimes this website feels like groundhog day the way the same dozen jokes are repeated ad nausem
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wait another 2 weeks and it might change
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Bussy haha
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Not me
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dude 41% lmao
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*will
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Like pottery
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I genuinely believe America died when those two buildings fell over.
Like how can a country that literally has "absolute freedom of speech is guaranteed" as the law of the land be so fricking anti-freedom these days???? at least r-slurs like bongs don't pretend they aren't cattle and admit they're just a pack of slaves with no rights.
The faster America sinks into the ocean and takes half of the corporate world with it the better off the planet will be.
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Trump broke journos
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They started writing articles just saying "this guy is a lying r-slur sack of shit and no refutation is necessary or possible because he's not talking about the real world" because it was true. And then they immediately got addicted to it because it's so much easier than doing the work of a journ*list, so that became their template for every story.
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This is why you cant give journoids an inch
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It's especially depressing how American "liberals" transformed into Donald Rumsfeld's wet dream.
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i mean you expected rightoids to start stroking out when they heard about something called "Critical gay theory" or whatever it is they hate, but the leftoids are supposed to be smoking pot and making porn
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Uh sweaty Americans also have freedom of association, and if leveraging a handful of powerful corporations to decide who can or can't use modern communication technology is the only way to stop transphobia and you're not down with this then I'd like to have a word with your employer.
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Mormons in ye Wild West would probably exile you from their village if you'd be strolling around laughing at their beliefs. This isn't any different.
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That's mormophobia. You have to believe what other people believe or you're trying to genocide them
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America died when Bill gates jumped over that chair
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Translation: their product is providing protection against mobs issuing denial of service attacks
For people who enjoy "muh democracy" so much it seems like theyre rather fond of using nongovernmental processes to destroy their enemy, which is (rightfully) classified as terrorism
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I gotta become a corporate PR person so I can get paid to make journos seethe
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Is doxing a bad thing now or? I don't know much about kiwi farms but it seems they mostly just document people who are incredibly online and put themselves out there. The media burying the whole HRT to minors thing is crazy though like just total silence when it is a main part of the story.
Like maybe in the cloudflare meeting one guy was like look at all this p-do shit and endorsing of getting black market hormone drugs into the hands of 11 year old's and since they aren't journos in current year they were like yeah this is fricked up we should keep hosting them and not help to cover up a child predator's past.
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Only if it's done irresponsibly, eg. if it's "doxxing downwards" against an oppressed minority or done by someone without a blue Twitter checkmark.
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Keffals in particular is deliberately antagonizing them while making pretty much no effort to conceal her identity. It really doesn't take much to avoid becoming a target, and KF is just a focal point of the kind of thing that will happen to you if you act so foolishly on the internet in general. Even if KiwiFarms is gone it will not suddenly become safe to make as many enemies as possible while making yourself vulnerable to anyone who wants to find out who you are.
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In his E-Mails with Byuu, Null stated that even if KF went down forever tomorrow, the countless archived links, pages, and images it hosts are still viewable outside of the site, KF is also not the only Lolcow-centric site detailing and archiving the publicly available sagas of internet weirdos, there still is the LolcowFarm imageboard, and some KF splinter forums like OnionFarms (ran by Kengle, former CWC white knight), LolcowOrg, that Metokur forum, and RDrama
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His
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transmisia
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There's a rekieta law stream from day before yesterday where one of keffals friends (Duncan MacLeod) directly says he believes the parents should have no say in their child's medical decision to transition. And that the government should make this choice for them. I ap providing the source, but its a long butt stream
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I loved how he went off on that obnoxious and r-slurred bong at the end
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Probably irrelevant mentioning the HRT to minors thing because it’ll just be spun as a drastic measure in the face of ever increasing hate crimes (insert statistic here) and legislation in red states.
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The wisdom of Harvard professors in 2022.
I remember when leftoids mocked "you're either with us, or you're with the terrorists" thinking.
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Reminds me of when Hawley and that Berkeley professor were arguing a couple months back. What really stood out to me was how smugly and proud of herself the professor was when she said “you’re being transphobic” like that was supposed to be the ultimate conversation ended or something . Literal Redditor moment
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Linky please
Edit: god help me i just lost braincells
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Gotta love how the hit pieces neglect to mention any of CloudFlare's real reasoning in favour of accusing them of being Nazis. I really can't understand why Redditors eat up anything these journos put out. They're a joke.
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People believe what they want to believe.
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Don't care, Kiwicucks are unfunny, this advocates for Free Speech, now lug your 735 pound mass into a vat of Potassium Hydroxide for the good of the species.
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Not to mention that there’s no evidence that Kiwifarms had anything to do with any attack, as the website is not a required element for that to happen. They didn’t organize anything on the site, and the site wasn’t used to conduct any activity.
If anyone knows anything different, chime in. I’m not going to research it that much. lol
The bedsheets stuff was mocked by Kiwifarms because they say they didn’t do it.
Kiwifarms could disappear tonight and it wouldn’t hinder stuff like that from happening.
There’s a lot of talk about “doxxing” but the autists at the farms just compile publicly available information. There’s nothing illegal about what they’re doing. Someone archiving old tweets isn’t illegal—don’t they say that’s accountability?
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It is possible that it could cross the line into harassment or stalking, and kiwifarmers regularly does this shit undoubtedly. But if all someone does is post information that was already public in a more public forum, that will probably be covered as free speech and press.
Also, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act indicates that site owners are not liable for what their users do. So even if the user did cross the line in obtaining PRIVATE information (They literally leak credit card info), it would be that user, not the site on which they posted it, held liable for doing so.
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QUACKING IN THE 90’s
IT’S A NEW WAY OF LIFE TO ME
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money vs woke
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BIPOC!
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Ddos attacks are literal crimes. What folks are advocating re cloudflare is they remove their protection so they can commit crimes more effectively.
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Why is the fire department protecting fascists >:[
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You are a liar and a free speech hater. Eugenics != genocide
Snapshots:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
via Twitter:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
he said:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
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Would a forced login feature like rdrama's prevent DDOS attacks?
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Not completely, no.
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People could still download the login page and any resources that are needed for it still. Moreover, they could still ping any other page in the site and force the server to process their request
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I didnt think
s could be this stupid. Cloudflare isn't hosting Kiwifarms servers it just shields them from DDOSing. So their code of conduct or whatever doesnt apply here. The groomers just want to DDOS Kiwifarms so no one can see all the shit they've done.
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Your comment has been automatically identified as hate speech with the following parameters:
Reddit Inc would have spent 3.948 USD to moderate 58625 comments.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of /h/AgainstHateHoles if you have any questions or concerns. trans lives matter
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Why the frick do they always react to these people? The fricking CEO?! Just let the
s echo chamber until it dies out
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Hmm so all you had to do was not be an attention whore for a night and you would have been left alone. How are you going to say your scared while posting pictures? Social media is legit cancer.
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Reportmax opportunity
https://www.undelete.pullpush.io/r/CloudFlare/comments/x2dhaq/_/imk4qr5/#comment-info
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Of fricking course there's some uppity academic ready to scream for the trans genocide
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The Register used to be a really great tech news site but all the old hands got pushed out and replaced by woke midwits.
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citation fricking needed
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Cloudflare supports pedcophiles
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