by If the name Cody Wilson rings a bell, it should. Cody is the person who developed a 3-D printed firearm and then put the plans on the Internet. His company, Defense Distributed, is now in a court battle with the State Department over another of his 3-D printing plans which they have, for now, forced off the Internet. I met Cody at the 2016 Gun Rights Policy Conference when the Polite Society Podcast interviewed him. Cody is what I call a hard-core libertarian. However, what Cody is not is an alt-right, white supremacist, racist, fill-in-the-blank.
According to Wikipedia, Cloudfare is a ” content delivery network, Internet security services and distributed domain name server services, sitting between the visitor and the Cloudflare user’s hosting provider, acting as a reverse proxy for websites.” They supposedly hold free speech is sacred and that includes what is posted on a website. That said, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince kicked off the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer from his service after Charlottesville on August 16th. He attributed his change of mind about free speech for all to waking up grumpy that morning.
Back to Cody Wilson. On Friday, Cloudfare abruptly terminated service to his GhostGunner.net site which sold 80% AR lowers and the machine tools to complete finishing these lowers. This began a war of words on Twitter between Cody Wilson and Matthew Prince. Cloudfare is insisting that GhostGunner.net had left on their own and that it had nothing to do with Wilson’s tongue in cheek “Hatreon” alternative to Patreon. Wilson is saying Prince is a liar.
Who is right and who is wrong I am not sure. However, it does seem awfully suspicious that service was terminated so soon after that of the Daily Stormer. I don’t know if it was retribution for Hatreon which has no “hate speech” restrictions or not.
As of this morning, GhostGunner.net and Hatreon.net are back up on the Internet. I am not tech-savvy enough to know where these sites are being hosted or who is providing all the Internet services. All I know is that Cody Wilson is a hard-core free speech activist and I’m glad to see he is back on the Internet.
I bought and read Cody's book, "Come and Take It", and while I think he comes across as a prick in a lot of places, I stand by him and what he's doing 100%. Making an 80% AR isn't hate speech, it's technical instruction for how to fulfill a constitutionally protected right. DD is helping people learn employable skills. If anything, Matthew Prince is the one who should be kicked off the Internet.
Neither GhostGunner.net or Hatreon.net are using Cloudflare right now.
Cloudflare's actions are perhaps the most consequential of the current Internet purge by the Alt Left because the very few major Content Delivery Networks (CDN) like them provide protection from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks are easy to arrange because of all the poorly secured machines and Internet of Things devices out there, they can be hijacked to bring down not just a web site, but the entire operations of all but the largest hosting providers. Those providers then have boot the targeted web site or loose all their other customers and their company. This is how the Daily Stormer was permanently taken off the air, with other sites sure to follow.