I feel the "not providing hosting services" argument doesn't really hold water. If the content is only accessible over the internet when I connect to Cloudflare, it sure feels like they are providing hosting. Sure, they only provide a proxy ... which is a copy of the content on their servers, which is hosting.
Obviously Cloudflare wouldn't be willing to provide the name of the company doing the actual hosting for very good reasons. However, this makes it impossible to make the hosting provider aware of what they are hosting. I don't think a lot of hosting providers want to willingly host neonazi sites, however when set up behind Cloudflare, it is quite likely they have no idea they are hosting neonazi sites to begin with.
If CF was "just" DDoS protection, it does seem quite reasonable that CF should not be obligated to do any moderation. However, the service they provide comes with quite a bit more: instant production-grade global web hosting (caching) infrastructure and ability to hide your backend infrastructure from the general public.
>If CF was "just" DDoS protection, it does seem quite reasonable that CF should not be obligated to do any moderation. However, the service they provide comes with quite a bit more: instant production-grade global web hosting (caching) infrastructure and ability to hide your backend infrastructure from the general public.
You're contradicting yourself here. Those services you described in the second sentence are what is necessary for DDoS protection. Likewise, when cops arrest me for throwing a paint ballon at Richard Spencer, it's not because they're acting as his personal security detail. It's because I broke the law.
>However, this makes it impossible to make the hosting provider aware of what they are hosting.
Again, this is simply harassment prevention. If the hosting provider wants to know what is on their service, they can just look. It's not like Cloudflare is providing an encrypted service to keep hosts from knowing what is on their servers. It's just preventing people from harassing the host about it. Law enforcement can walk right through Cloudflare if they want, it's vigilantes who are stymied.
>If the content is only accessible over the internet when I connect to Cloudflare
Obviously Cloudflare wouldn't be willing to provide the name of the company doing the actual hosting for very good reasons. However, this makes it impossible to make the hosting provider aware of what they are hosting. I don't think a lot of hosting providers want to willingly host neonazi sites, however when set up behind Cloudflare, it is quite likely they have no idea they are hosting neonazi sites to begin with.
If CF was "just" DDoS protection, it does seem quite reasonable that CF should not be obligated to do any moderation. However, the service they provide comes with quite a bit more: instant production-grade global web hosting (caching) infrastructure and ability to hide your backend infrastructure from the general public.