I agree with your broader points, but I didn't think they had taken a moral/philosophical stance on sex workers, I thought that they dropped those because of liability under FOSTA-SESTA?
Sex workers being legally riskier than KF is outrageous in its own right, of course.
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They were not required to take down those sites by those laws. They used it as a justification, but they were not required or asked to take them down. They prove that's not the case every day by hosting literal terrorist organization sites, sanctioned entites, Kiwi Farms, etc.
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I'm just saying that, to my knowledge, they haven't publicly cited immorality as the reason for taking down "adult" content. I was wondering if I'd missed somewhere they did say that explicitly.
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They definitely weren't legally required to take it down, so what other explanation is there for it?
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I wouldn't claim to be an expert, but FOSTA-SESTA creates a lot of potential liability for hosting sex workers content.
It is deeply messed up that there is higher risk in hosting that than hosting KF, but that is definitely my understanding of the law in the US right now.
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A few huge corporations presenting this as a justification for something they decided to do doesn't make it true. Plenty of other hosting companies didn't do this and never tried to champion themselves as free speech heroes like Cloudflare.
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Advocacy organizations and companies who want to host sex workers say it creates unsustainable costs and risks. I take the EFF's claims that SESTA forced companies to drop content as face value.
Cloudflare is not a good actor here. But I don't see this part as hypocritical.
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EFF did not say companies were forced to take down content. Even if it was illegal, and it isn't at all, these companies knowingly break laws all the time. They have a ton of money and legal resources. Is the legal threat of hosting Kiwi Farms zero? I really don't think it is.
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They said that the risks and costs associated with reviewing it would force companies to stop hosting it.
We clearly understand obligations under SESTA differently, and I could certainly be wrong. Either way, Cloudflare is being evil, chickenshit, and stupid here.
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That doesn't apply to companies with as much money as Cloudflare. It only applies to tiny companies and individuals without the money and legal resources they have available. Cloudflare was not at risk by hosting this content. It's only a justification for a small provider.
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Also, Cloudflare claims to not be hosting the content served through their caching reverse proxy. If they aren't lying, then they believe it didn't impact them because they weren't hosting it. So then, are they lying and don't actually think their claim to not be hosting works?