Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told CNBC on Friday his web service company ended its relationship with a neo-Nazi propaganda site once it became “a massive distraction.”
On Wednesday, Cloudflare abruptly canceled the account of the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer after the site claimed that Cloudflare held “secret support” for its beliefs.
The Daily Stormer also got the boot from Alphabet‘s Google and GoDaddy this week after one of its posts mocked the woman killed in a deadly attack at a white nationalist rally in Virginia.
Prince said Friday that the company became aware three months ago that The Daily Stormer was harassing people who were submitting complaints about its content. “That caused the site to become on our radar screen for us to effectively put them on probation,” Prince said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday.
“Over the course of the next few months, there was just a series of other events that caused them to be a massive distraction to us and our team,” he said. “I made the determination on Wednesday morning that life was too short to deal with jerks like this.”
Prince has said previously he terminated the website because he was in a “bad mood” and admitted it could be dangerous for the future of free speech on the internet.
On Friday, Prince said people should shift the conversation away from the First Amendment and free speech to instead about “due process.”
“I’m the son of a journalist and I’m an incredibly strong believer in the First Amendment,” he said.
GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving told CNBC on Tuesday that the domain name provider cut ties with The Daily Stormer because the neo-Nazi site crossed the line from exercising freedom of speech with the post about Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old who died last Saturday when a car plowed into her group of counterprotesters who were demonstrating against the white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Cloudflare CEO: We cut service to a neo-Nazi site after it became 'a massive distraction'