Cloudflare—Cloudflare terminated Daily Stormer as customer after Charlottesville rally
In August 2017, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince personally decided to terminate services for neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer following the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Prince acknowledged the decision was arbitrary, writing internally 'I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the internet.' This was the first time Cloudflare had ever terminated a customer for content.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content Moderation | +toward | primary | +1.00 |
| Infrastructure Accountability | +toward | secondary | +0.50 |
| Overall incident score = | +0.745 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.66)
Evidence (2 signals)
EFF commented on Cloudflare's Daily Stormer termination raising infrastructure neutrality concerns
The EFF published analysis of Cloudflare's decision to terminate The Daily Stormer, noting the precedent it set for infrastructure companies making content moderation decisions. The EFF acknowledged the difficulty of the situation while warning about infrastructure-level censorship.
Cloudflare CEO blog post explaining Daily Stormer termination decision
CEO Matthew Prince published a detailed blog post explaining Cloudflare's decision to terminate The Daily Stormer, acknowledging the decision was arbitrary and expressing concern about infrastructure companies becoming content police.