The company said it has been in contact with law enforcement about Saturday's mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, where the suspect is believed to have posted a manifesto on 8chan minutes before the attack. People accused of a synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh and shootings at two mosques in New Zealand also reportedly announced their plans on 8chan.
Cloudflare provides cybersecurity and other services to websites that help them to stay online. In 2017, Cloudflare pulled its services from The Daily Stormer, a Neo-Nazi website.
Douglas Kramer, Cloudflare general counsel and a former lawyer in President Obama's White House, told CNN Business on Sunday that the company does not believe it should have the power to unilaterally decide what can and cannot stay on the internet, pointing out that even if Cloudflare stopped working with 8chan it could be possible for the site to still stay online.
The company isn't legally required to provide its services to any website, regardless of content.
Kramer said Cloudflare complies with requests from law enforcement agencies and from courts relating to websites that are involved in child pornography and other illegal activity.
He said Cloudflare would comply with a request relating to 8chan if such a request were made, but the company would "want to see something from law enforcement or a regulator agency or a court that says, 'We have made this decision after going through due process.'"
Kramer said while there are laws, regulations and processes in place for pulling online support services from websites like those used for child pornography, lawmakers and regulators have been less active in creating processes for sites like 8chan.
After the company stopped working with The Daily Stormer in 2017, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince questioned his own decision.
"You win a lot of points for firing Nazis from using your service," Prince told CNN at the time. "But it sets a dangerous precedent when a company that most of your viewers have never heard of is effectively deciding what can and cannot be on the internet."
"Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online," Prince wrote in a blog post at the time.
Cloudflare even posted a list of criticisms about its decision to its website.
Cloudflare sees itself as fundamentally different to services like Facebook, Kramer told CNN, because it is not involved in surfacing or moderating content.
"We really don't have anything to do with content," Kramer told CNN, "we see bit bits moving around the internet and we are one of the groups that make sure those bits move safely and securely."
"Facebook sits up at the surface of the internet, forming communities, moderating those communities, figuring out what people want to see next," he said.
"We recognize the tragedy of the two incidents that happened yesterday," Kramer said, adding that Cloudflare was continuing to monitor the situation.
In an interview with the New York Times published Sunday, founder of 8chan Fredrick Brennan called for the site — which he left a year ago — to be taken down.
"Shut the site down," Brennan told the Times. "It's not doing the world any good. It's a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there. And you know what? It's a negative to them, too. They just don't realize it."
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