SAN FRANCISCO – In a decision prompted by the recently-passed “Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” (FOSTA), Cloudflare has terminated services the content deliver network had been providing to Switter, the social media site designed to offer a sex worker-friendly alternative to Twitter and other mainstream social media platforms.
According to Assembly Four, the group which developed Switter, they received an email from Cloudflare’s legal department informing them of the termination.
“Cloudflare has been made aware that your site is in violation of our published Terms of Service,” the email stated. “Pursuant to our published policy, Cloudflare will terminate service to your website. Cloudflare will terminate your service for switter{.}at by disabling our authoritative DNS.”
Cloudflare’s general counsel, Doug Kramer, has since confirmed to Motherboard that terminating service to Switter was “related to our attempts to understand FOSTA,” referring to the statute as “a very bad law and a very dangerous precedent.”
“We have been traditionally very open about what we do and our roles as an internet infrastructure company, and the steps we take to both comply with the law and our legal obligations – but also provide security and protection, let the internet flourish and support our goals of building a better internet,” Kramer added, also noting that the company lobbied against the legislation when it was being debated by Congress.
In its post announcing the termination, Assembly Four said it had chosen Cloudflare because they anticipated a different kind of response to the new law on the part of the CDN provider.
“Given Cloudflare’s previous stances of privacy and freedom, as well as fighting alongside the EFF, we had hoped they would take a stand against FOSTA/SESTA,” Assembly Four stated. “Combined with their Websockets support (which Mastodon heavily relies on for real-time updates), as well as their free plan (CDNs are traditionally quite expensive), we selected Cloudflare to be our CDN.”
Lola Hunt, one of Switter’s co-founders, told Motherboard that in the brief time since its launch, Switter “for many people, has become their main point of contact for communication between them and other workers as well as them and clients.”
“Many people [were] looking for a platform which won’t boot them off for how they make a living,” Hunt added.
While it seems clear Cloudflare took no pleasure in canceling its services to Switter, Kramer indicated Cloudflare has no choice but to approach compliance with caution, as the company works to figure out the extent to which it may be held accountable to the actions and information provided by clients whose sites may run afoul of FOSTA.
“We don’t deny at all that we have an obligation to comply with the law,” Kramer said. “We tried in this circumstance to get a law that would make sense for infrastructure companies. Congress didn’t do the hard work of understanding how the internet works and how this law should be crafted to pursue its goals without unintended consequences. We talked to them about this. A lot of groups did. And it was hard work that they decided not (to) do.”
