dw_maintenance | Potential downtime this weekend (2 Sept

Beginning this weekend (2 Sept - 5 Sept), users may experience short periods of site slowdowns or difficulty accessing the site. If you do have access issues, they shouldn't last long for you in particular, but the length of time where access issues are possible should last for about a week or so. We wanted to warn you in advance. You may not notice anything, or the site may be down, slow, or unreachable for you for brief periods. The exact length of downtime, and the total potential downtime window, will depend on your internet provider's settings.

This downtime is necessary to move our domain nameservice, our content delivery network (CDN) services, and our denial-of-service protection services away from Cloudflare, our current provider of those services. We've been discussing migrating away from Cloudflare recently due to their refusal to deny services to sites that endanger people's offline security and incite and target people for offline harassment and physical violence. That conversation became more urgent yesterday when, in a blog post about the campaign to encourage Cloudflare to behave more responsibly regarding the types of sites they enable to remain on the internet, Cloudflare's CEO revealed that they regret past enforcement actions where they closed the accounts of sites containing child sexual abuse material and sites that advocate for white supremacist terrorism.

We do not believe we can ethically continue to retain the services of a company that could write that blog post. As those of you who've been with us for a while know, our guiding principles involve supporting our users' expression to the maximum extent possible, and we reaffirm our commitment to protecting as much of your content that's unpopular but legal under US law as we can. However, we also believe it's more vital, not less, for a company with such free-speech maximalist views to have clear, concrete, and well-enforced policies regarding content that does cross their lines, including refusing to provide services to sites that actively incite and manufacture threats to people's physical safety, contain child sex abuse material, or advocate or instruct people how to conduct terrorism. That Cloudflare refuses to refuse services to those types of sites, and has expressed regret about the instances in the past where they have refused services to those types of sites, means we feel we can no longer ethically retain their services.

Things may be slightly bumpy for a bit as we make the transition and work to find the best replacements for the services we've been relying on Cloudflare to provide. We're very sorry for any slowdowns or downtime that may happen over the next week and a half or so, and we hope you'll bear with us as we make the move.

[EDIT: Because there are many of you and one of me, please check the comments before replying to see whether your issue has been addressed! Also, in accordance with the official DW community comment guidelines, please refrain from personal attacks, insults, slurs, generalizations about a group of people due to race/nationality/religion, and comments that are posted only to mock other commenters: all of those will be screened.]

[EDIT 7:12pm EDT: Because the temperature of many comments is frustratingly high, people don't seem to be reading previous replies before commenting as requested, and some people are just spoiling for a fight, I'm screening all comments to this entry by default while I can't be directly in front of the computer for the remainder of the day. We'll unscreen comments intermittently for the rest of the night as we have time, and I'll systematically unscreen all good-faith comments that don't contain personal attacks, insults, slurs, generalizations about a group of people due to race/nationality/religion, and comments that are posted only to mock other commenters when I return.]

[Edit 9/2 6:05pm EDT: having left comment screening on overnight, and seeing the percentage of abusive, bad-faith, or detached-from-reality comments, comment screening will remain on for this entry indefinitely. I'll keep an eye on it for another day or two and unscreen what needs to be unscreened, but probably not longer after that.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

Thank you for all you do.

Thank you for this update, and for your patience and level heads in these comments. 🙏

I hope the transition is smooth for you all!

Thank you so much for moving away from Cloudflare!! <3

Thank you. ♥ I hope the transition goes smoothly!

Thank you so much for the heads-up.

Thanks for the heads up, for having such a well-thought-out policy, and for all your patience in comments. This kind of thing is why I love this site.

Thank you.

👍

Kiwi Farms does not support swatting, and there is absolutely no proof that they were the ones behind what happened. They posted information about a person and this person sent a massive harassment campaign targeted against Cloudflare as a result. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with their content, it is one of the few places left on the internet where you can actually speak freely.

Cloudflare is like a telephone company. They do not moderate what goes on their platform, and they shouldn't have to. This isn't Twitter. I applaud Cloudflare's decision because I support free speech. It doesn't mean I have to agree with all of their speech, but I will defend to the death their right to speak it.

And to see you boldly go against free speech disgusts me. I know that this won't sway you and I know I will get a bunch of people calling me a Nazi or a Russian bot, hence the sock account. And it's quite sad that mere support of free speech now makes me a Nazi, but whatever.

I only wonder how long until you start banning people with the wrong political opinions now.

bro, kiwi farms tries to "milk" people for "lulz" and has a well-known history of stalking and doxxing people, as well as being blatantly hateful in many, many ways. The fact that you think KiwiFarms is a bastion of free-speech? Yeah, nah. This is not it, as the kids say.

(no subject)

denise - 2022-09-01 21:54 (UTC) - Expand

(deleted comment)

denise - 2022-09-02 03:07 (UTC) - Expand

terribletwos - 2022-09-01 23:01 (UTC) - Expand

Thank you; I've been consistently happy wit the way you guys run the site.

Excellent. As usual. Thanks for this very ethical move. It's very much appreciated.

I love this site. Thanks for all you do!

O, boy! Facebook type of censorship again? We are sick and tired of people who wants to decide for us whom and what to read. Stop it or you will lose big!!!

Nothing has changed about DW's content policies! We're switching providers because we no longer believe Cloudflare is capable of making the reasoned, careful balancing decisions that every provider has to make a hundred times a day in an ethically consistent and well-reasoned fashion.

Thank you SO MUCH for doing the right thing!

dusts off my non-rp journal just for this

Thanks for the heads up, Denise, and for the steadfast commitment to DW's guiding star. Too often people forget that keeping communities open and safe means actively pruning when weeds crop up. (See also: the 'nazi bar' thing, how if you let one nazi into your bar, you're gonna end up being a nazi bar before long.)

Also good grief, there's some headachey comments here. Hope y'all get some time to relax over the weekend, because I feel like it's gonna be needed.

Edited 2022-09-01 22:08 (UTC)

+1 to all this.

Thank you for sticking to your morals even when it's inconvenient, and a big hearty LOL to the people in this comments section who think it's "censorship" for an independent website to free itself from the shackles of a corporation that controls access to nearly all of the modern internet.

Thank you for caring enough to separate from this company.

If you decided you start censuring people based on what they say - this will be the end of my use of your service, not overnight, but I'll wrap it up as fast as I can. I used dw and was paying it because there is no censure. There are enough services that trying to tell people what they can or can't say. This doesn't mean I support everything others are saying, but I believe they should have ability to say even the worst things.

Dreamwidth isn't censoring anyone, nor are they changing their content policies. They're just disagreeing with the policy of someone hosting some of the site, and they're moving to a different service because of it.

soundwave106 - 2022-09-01 23:05 (UTC) - Expand

denise - 2022-09-01 23:09 (UTC) - Expand

Thank you for everything you've done!

Thank you for moving away from Cloudflare.

It's interesting to see comments portraying Dreamwidth as being pro-censorship and anti-free speech for parting ways with one company. It feels like a weird twist on brand loyalty, only it's to a service provider that they'll rarely interact with directly.

I'm going to try to avoid doing any of the things

denise asked us very nicely not to do, but I think at least some people aren't reading the post very carefully and are responding to the "mood" rather than the actual content.

denise - 2022-09-02 00:46 (UTC) - Expand

nenya_kanadka - 2022-09-02 02:07 (UTC) - Expand

denise - 2022-09-02 02:19 (UTC) - Expand

nenya_kanadka - 2022-09-02 03:06 (UTC) - Expand

denise - 2022-09-02 05:13 (UTC) - Expand

nenya_kanadka - 2022-09-02 10:57 (UTC) - Expand

sporky_rat - 2022-09-02 15:05 (UTC) - Expand

I have no complaints about this choice on your part.

None at all.

Carry on.

I forgot my non-RP account password sob so I guess we'll have to go with Roxas for this. Thank you for this action.

About time😇

Thank you very much!

Edited 2022-09-01 23:12 (UTC)

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