I still think this is a business that Cloudflare shouldn't be involved in. There are very legitimate reasons for parents to filter Internet content. But Cloudflare is in a unique position here, they have a brand as a company that cares about free speech, and specifically because of who they are, they really shouldn't be making determinations about what is and isn't inappropriate content for kids.

When 1.1.1.1 for Families launched, it blocked access to GLADD's site because Cloudflare didn't do a good enough job testing any of this stuff and they just pulled in filters from other parental companies, some of which turned out to be anti-gay. Cloudflare apologized, pushed a couple of fixes, but never actually took a step back and asked how this happened. In the meantime, 1.1.1.1 for Families launched without blocking access to sites like Stormfront. Cloudlfare didn't think it was appropriate for them to make a determination over whether that site was safe for kids.

I think that our society is just generally a lot less thoughtful about filtering adult content than it is about filtering other forms of content like political speech, and we don't think about adult content filters as having a downside, or being real censorship. So when 1.1.1.1 for Families was released, I came up with a challenge: https://danshumway.com/blog/sex-censorship-is-censorship/

I do think there are scenarios where it's completely appropriate to block content for children, and I do think families should always able to make these kinds of determinations. People and communities have a fundamental Right to Filter (https://anewdigitalmanifesto.com/#right-to-filter). However, adult content isn't the only content that falls into the category of being harmful to children. It is utter hypocrisy for Cloudflare to launch a service that blocks adult content but not hate speech; both forms of content are legitimate for parents to want off of their networks.

My challenge is, if Cloudflare is frightened of the implications of being the company that decides what is and isn't hate speech, then why isn't it also frightened of being the company that decides what is and isn't adult material? Why do we view accidental censorship of LGBTQ+ informational materials as less of an existential free speech risk than accidental censorship of political ideas or extremist groups? Cloudflare still, over a year later, doesn't really have clear documentation I can find anywhere about what specific criteria they use to make filtering decisions on 1.1.1.3 beyond that they "aim to imitate" Google Safe Search. Would people tolerate that kind of fuzziness if they were filtering hate speech or political extremism?

There is a reasonable debate people can have about whether or not it's appropriate for Cloudflare to be the company that carves out sections of the Internet that are inappropriate, even as an opt-in filter. I think both sides of that debate can make some good points, and reasonable people could go in either direction. But for me, the biggest question isn't really whether Cloudflare is the right company to build and maintain Internet filters. For me, the biggest question is about which subjects Cloudflare views as OK to moderate, and which communities Cloudflare is OK offloading the externalities of their moderation onto.

Because frankly, in free speech communities we do have a lot of hypocrisy about this. There's no argument to be made that extremist hate sites aren't just as dangerous to kids as pornography is. We should try to have more consistency about stuff like this. Are we OK with content moderation or not?