Potential downtime this weekend (2 Sept - 5 Sept)

[denise]

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.]

Comments

[mark]

+100.

[denise]

♥

[pearwaldorf]

These people suck and I'm glad you're transitioning away from them. If money is the only thing they'll listen to, I hope the message comes through loud and clear from you guys and others.

Thank you for all you do

[tameiki]

This is why I continue to believe in Dreamwidth, it's because you and Mark do so much to make sure this is the place where people can feel safe and included. I'm not good with words but wanted you to know how much you and your work behind the scenes are very much appreciated.

[yuuago]

The heads up is appreciated.

Thanks for all you do.

[vit_r]

Happy censorship. When will you start to silence your users?

[shadowspar]

Thanks so much for taking this on as expediently as possible. I know y'all have a lot of other stuff going on right now, and I appreciate it. <3

[sarajayechan]

Oh boy, yet another "well if we put our foot down and ban dangerous content that's oppressive censorship and we want to be nice and support free speech" type. Sorry, Cloudflare, but banning content that actively harms human beings isn't censorship, it's basic safety and human rights.

I was (regrettably) involved with a fandom community on LJ that was like that, where they let all kinds of bullying go on because they "didn't want to be oppressive."

You're doing a good thing, and it's worth any downtime.

[the_jubjub_bird]

I hope you wouldn't adopt the practices of Facebook and Twitter who deny free speech to their users?

[feistro]

You guys are one of the few sites on the net I trust to actually stick to their principles. Thanks for all you do! ♥

[the_jubjub_bird]

Words cannot harm me, sticks and stones could.

[hokuton_punch]

Thank you for the heads-up! And for the rest. ♥

[nou]

Thank you for doing this.

[forests_of_fire]

Thank you so much for this. It fucking appalls me that Cloudflare is okay with supporting CSAM and white supremacy. Just because they received requests to cease services for human rights organizations doesn't mean that they should host things like CSAM and white supremacy. There is no "good side" to those things.

The fact you're finding a new service host this fast makes me so relieved.

[denise]

These questions are difficult questions, and there aren't easy answers -- when Mark and I started DW, the vast (vast) majority of our pre-announcement "hashing out whether we're on the same page with the details, not just the superficials" effort went to talking through questions of content policy and how to balance our "we want to protect as much speech as possible" and "we want to be a place where people feel safe to be themselves" goals, because half the time those two goals are in perfect agreement and the other half of the time they're diametrically opposed. Cloudflare isn't exactly wrong in saying that the brunt of policy enforcement efforts can have serious repercussions for marginalized people, because content posted by marginalized people is more likely to make people uncomfortable and therefore more likely to be reported. But the answer to those difficult questions cannot be to abdicate responsibility entirely, and we don't feel that we can continue doing business with a company that doesn't recognize that a commitment to protecting as much speech as possible means you are more ethically responsible, not less responsible, for drawing and enforcing clear, consistent, and concrete lines about what speech you choose not to provide services to.

[sarajayechan]

You're missing the point.

This isn't about free speech, it's about protecting users from actively harmful content like human trafficking and doxxing. As in, things that happen to real human beings and should not be happening to real human beings.

Re: Thank you for all you do

[denise]

We do our best! These are difficult questions and there are no easy answers to them, but we don't feel that we can continue to do business with a company that doesn't even try.

[badly_knitted]

A little bumpiness in nothing. Behind you all the way, thanks for standing up for decent ethical values!

[paserbyp]

Moving from Cloudflare to where? Any insurance that new one will be better?

[paserbyp]

Agreed.

[feistro]

Maybe not you, but words can harm, especially if they come in the form of doxxing and trolling to the point of driving people to suicide.

This isn't a "free speech" issue. It's about sites that actively encourage harm to real people with their rhetoric.

[sheron]

Free speech means they don't go to jail for saying it. It doesn't mean that we have to listen.

Here, for you in xkcd format: https://xkcd.com/1357/

[ride_4ever]

Thank you, Denise and Mark, for everything you do to make DW a place of safety and kindness.

[grazie]

Thank you so much. I am so relieved to see you take these actions so quickly.

tl;dr incoming

[sarajayechan]

content posted by marginalized people is more likely to make people uncomfortable and therefore more likely to be reported.

Like how LGBT content and nudity and mental health issues made some conservative types on LJ uncomfortable, so LJ started banning it. Cloudflare does being up a valid point about that - for example, people who want to talk about things like trafficking and racism and whatnot as a "this happened to me/people I know/people like me and it's horrifying" and might get reported/silenced because they bring those things up, period. Or people who write 100% fiction about these things for whatever reasons they have and aren't obligated to discuss. That's not good.

But there's a big difference between discussing real issues and hosting sites that actively support them. Same with the old "depiction is not endorsement" rule. Cloudflare seems to think the same way puritans do but in the opposite manner: "if we block out sites that allow actual white supremacy and child trafficking we might as well censor fictional works or discussions about it."

Hope that makes sense. Sometimes I worry I sound all over the place.