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00:00CloudFlare has added its name to the growing list of companies cracking down on hate groups. The Web security company decided to end its business with The Daily Stormer a no neo-Nazi Web site after both Go Daddy and Google severed ties. It was an unexpected move as CloudFlare has prided itself on its unwavering commitment to free speech even as it's been criticized for providing services to alleged terror groups . Joining us now to discuss CloudFlare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince you have said in the past a Web site is speech it is not a bomb. What's different this time. Well I think that The Daily Stormer was a really unique incident and to us it was the exception that proves that we really needed to rethink a lot of the rules not just with CloudFlare but with the tech industry in general in this case that data really came on our watch list our attention list and really got put on probation. A few months ago when they started we started to get reports that they were actually harassing people that were submitting abuse reports through our platform and then earlier this week they were bragging on their bulletin boards that the people of CloudFlare the senior management of CloudFlare were actually supporters of theirs. In reality we think that the content that was on the site is abhorrent and vile and that was really the final straw for us. But I think there's a really important piece here where we need to think about who it is as a technology company or or society in general that can regulate what content is online. I sit in a very privileged position running a company that sees about 10 percent of all internet requests and I could make a decision that they shouldn't be online anymore and I'm not sure that that's there. I'm the right person to be making that decision. Now to be clear I think we should take a moment to talk about what CloudFlare does because just because you pulled the plug doesn't take the site down which makes it more vulnerable to attack right. That's right. And so CloudFlare is provides a number of services we make sites faster we help them stay online we stop a big cyber attacks launched against them and again see a huge portion of the Internet. Most of our big customers our big Fortune 500 companies and otherwise. But we have small companies customers like The Daily Stormer that get attacked all the time. The reality of the Internet today is that it's become such a dangerous place that if you don't have a major network like CloudFlare sitting in front of your infrastructure and you do anything which is controversial online chances are that hackers are going to be able to knock you off . Now the reality of the Internet is also that the Daily Stormer is the only Nazi Web site online. There are other hate groups online and are those groups still up and running. Thanks to CloudFlare services in part so they're there. We still believe that the right policy is to be a content neutral network. So this is not a precedent. What has happened with the Daily Star this is a one time thing. That's correct. I think that this is we hope a way for us to say let's stop and think about what's the right place for Internet content to be regulated. You think about a company like Google. So Google terminated the Daily Stormer from using their registrar service but they didn't kick them off their ISP. They didn't push an update to Chrome that don't let you. That didn't let you access it. That didn't stop answering their DNS queries across their DNS service and they didn't pull the search results from that site. What that tells me is not that Google made a mistake in that but that where in the Internet stack something is being restricted or controlled matters and so the rules for someone like Facebook or Twitter or YouTube are inherently going to be different than a company that runs a network like cloudflare or Level 3. And I think we need to have that conversation about where is the right place for content to be regulated and who's going to make those decisions and how are they going to make decisions CloudFlare has been called terrorists little helper a company that helped serve up hate on the web even if the rules are different for you than it is for these content providers. How do you respond to those accusations . Well if you know that the nature of being neutral is that there's going to be someone who you upset all the time. We have a project called Project Galloway terrorism is different than you know. Sure upsetting someone else. Yeah. A variety of other. And so when we hear that there's an allegation that there's something that's terrorist content illegal content or otherwise we turn to the experts in terrorism and illegal content which is law enforcement legislators regulators and we say here is this content what would you like us to do. That to me feels like the principle of due process that they are actually politically enshrined organizations who can make these decisions as opposed to these decisions being made based on what the political whims of me or Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. So are you saying you think the Internet and these Internet companies should be regulated like utilities. I don't I don't think that that's the answer necessarily but what I do think is that we need to have a conversation between all of the different stakeholders and that means the technology companies. That means regulators that means content creators that means the content consumers that means civil society organizations because at this point it's the Wild West where people are making these decisions and the decisions aren't actually transparent. This has been framed a lot as a freedom of speech issue and I am the son of a journalist. I think freedom of speech is absolutely critical but I think it's important to acknowledge that it's a uniquely American concept and uniquely American idea. On the other hand due process is something that spans the globe and people really really really believe in. And part of due process requires that there is transparency that there there's accountability that you can understand what's going on and I don't think that that's necessarily what's going on with technology companies right now. You've warned this is dangerous territory. This is a slippery slope. What is the worst case scenario. Well again I think the worst case scenario is that you have a cabal of five to 10 tech executives who basically are choosing what content can and cannot be on the Internet based on either what are their own political and personal agendas are or even in a worst case what their economic incentives and agendas are. That again I think is something that even as someone who sits in that privileged position I'm worried about as an Internet consumer. And I think it's important again that there's that there's that understanding and accountability for when technology companies are making these decisions. Look these people Nazis would find each other if the internet didn't exist right. But you know some people have argued that technology has given these groups oxygen has allowed them to find each other more easily has allowed them to grow. You know given that these tech companies are now so powerful including your company which handles 10 percent of all internet requests do you think that by taking a moral stand even if it is a stand that these companies haven't taken before they can actually make a dent in the fight on terror like can cut tech companies make a difference with their policies and if so does it make that moral choice worth it. So I am skeptical that censoring content makes content go away. On the other hand I do think that taking content and saying this is something that we support and we believe in and we'll help promote that is really important. So what. Isn't that like the is like sort of it's a double edged sword right. We're holding things you like versus you know condemning things you pay. Again I think that if you people learn to hate. And so if we can teach them how that isn't a productive and and and part of a modern civil society then that makes a ton of sense. So what we do at CloudFlare is we we actually work with over 100 civil society organizations to identify either politically artistically important groups that might be under attack and they may not be under attack from hackers but they could be from governments for example LGBT groups in the Middle East human rights workers in China where they might be trying to be silenced and we say we'll lend our services in order to make sure that they stay online. I think that that's the role that technology companies can really play is in saying here is a way. Here's here's here's an alternative way of looking at the world which again is more progressive and aligns with the moral values of those. Are you still in this moment uncomfortable with the decision that you made about the Daily Stormer. Absolutely. I think again you know I I I woke up one morning and got sick of these jerks using our platform and I flipped a switch and they were no longer on the internet and I'm not sure that that's a power that any individual especially any individual that isn't politically it sort of has a political legitimacy to them that any individual should be making .

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Cloudflare CEO on Tech's Responsibility in Combating Hate

Matthew Prince, Cloudflare Inc.'s co-founder and chief executive officer, discusses the termination of The Daily Stormer's account and tech's crackdown on hate speech. He speaks with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

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