Assuming this is true, which, internet, so bear with me, I have to wonder if nobody in this meeting pressed them on the fact that, unlike the previous two times clownflare chose to drop a customer, this time they actually redirected the site to their gay statement, (a statement which was borderline defamatory) if this is going to be how clownflare is going to handle dropping clients, and should it happen to Moocow Inc. that they should expect an eloquence at their doorstep, so there better be a special "no faggot redirects" clause in that contract and forward contracts, should they happen.
Yes, I asked directly about that. There were a lot of moments where they visibly squirmed in their seats and had "deer-in-headlights" looks on their faces, and this was one of them. They tried to gaslight it by saying "we just return an error page if a customer is banned" and I started quoting the error page they put up for KF along with a bit of the blog post that error page linked to. All they would say in response was that it was a "special situation," and my coworker (a C-level) jumped in and asked "well how do
we avoid getting into a special situation like that?" It meandered from there. We did not get a single reliable or concrete answer on this subject at all, no matter what questions we asked or how we asked them.
And no worries about looking at this cynically. I'm just some cow on the internet who could easily just be blowing smoke. I'm not, but since I won't provide detail enough to identify me or the company in question, I completely understand if people don't find my account of the meeting credible.
I also have to wonder why and how clownflare could be so thoroughly retarded to make "vague promises" as opposed to talking of reworking the contract, because as far as I am concerned, when it comes to business, if it isn't on paper it never happened.
I was honestly astonished about that. We all were. The fact that they didn't even entertain the idea of defining any of this for us in writing was mind-blowing. Even without doing that, they absolutely should have done everything they could to shut down the topic entirely during this meeting and refer us to "legal" for the specifics with a "we can't comment on that" disclaimer. But they didn't. Even pointed questions like "well how do we avoid this happening to us?" drew blank stares and awkward pauses. Not once did anything like "terms of service" or "acceptable use policy" or even "contract" get brought up until one of my colleagues asked if this sort of thing is even covered in our existing agreement at all. They seemed genuinely unable (or unwilling) to answer.
It wouldn't surprise me if this specific situation hasn't ever actually come up for them in the past. I imagine 8chan and Stormfront -- both
actually "unsavory" sites who are accustomed to being unwelcome everywhere they went -- opted to just go quietly find hosting elsewhere to get back online quickly rather than raise a stink. CF figured they'd whine a bit then go on their way (it's always "easy" to justify banning Stormfront because muh racism) and clearly hoped KF would do the same. CF clearly wasn't prepared for KF's users to raise such a stink about it or for the troon brigade to take such a loud, conspicuous victory lap about it, including a media blitz to let the press join in on the gravedancing.
I'm not privy to the written contract we have with CF, but I suspect it doesn't actually cover this topic at all (that is, it's probably not explicitly stated who can do what exactly in the event of an "imminent risk to human life," who's responsible for what and what actions are expected, acceptable or prohibited under such circumstances ... not to mention actually
defining those conditions and terms). I don't know
why they'd omit such a thing (or why, if those were present, the people on the call couldn't recite it), but it felt like they did.
A lot of their answers strike me so that, while there's no definite "line" their drones have been told to give to customers yet, the company is still behind the decision, tough that may be the cynic in me.
That's certainly a possibility. What's so utterly depressing about the whole situation is that practically
every explanation people have come up with is actually plausible now thanks to rampant wokeness, enthusiastic corporate overreach, open celebration of censorship and a complete lack of testicles and spines among the technocrats.
It could have been a senator sending spooks to threaten Prince's family, or the FBI, SEC or FTC threatening to yank licenses, launch audits, bury them in paperwork, etc., or Visa/MC threatening to stop processing credit card payments, or their bank threatening to freeze all their assets, or DHS threatening to no-fly-list all their employees and executives, or just some noisy assholes within the company finally convincing Prince to pull the plug. I'd be surprised if someone could make a credible
technological threat against them (they're a DDoS protection and CDN company after all -- they're engineered from the ground up for massive redundancy and thicc pipes), but maybe that happened too.
All that shit would have sounded utterly paranoid just ten years ago. But we've seen practically all of this kind of shit happen already, so today it's all (at least a little bit) plausible.
