Cloudflare is an infrastructure provider basically protecting more than 20% of the entire web from bad actors. When everything is going well, you don't even have to know it exists. It's one of the only defenses — sometimes the only defense — standing between websites and the people who want to take them down.

Protecting free speech on the internet around the world, across war zones and hundreds of different kinds of government, is no easy feat. That puts the company, and CEO Matthew Prince, right at the heart of some of Decoder's biggest challenges and themes. 

Links: 

A Cloudflare outage broke large swathes of the internet | The Verge

Why security company Cloudflare is protecting U.S. election sites for free | Fast Company

The Daily Stormer just lost the most important company defending it | The Verge (2017)

Cloudflare to revoke 8chan’s service, opening the fringe website up for DDoS attacks | The Verge (2019)

Cloudflare blocks Kiwi Farms due to an ‘immediate threat to human life’ | The Verge

Why Cloudflare Let an Extremist Stronghold Burn | Wired

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince interview on Ukraine cybersecurity | Semafor

3 ways the ‘splinternet’ is damaging society | MIT Sloan

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23885440

Credits:Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices