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Imgur.com: Why We Dumped GoDaddy
Velcroman1 writes "On the eve of what has been dubbed "Dump Go Daddy Day," imgur.com — the massive image hosting site responsible for an astonishing 28 terabytes of bandwidth and nearly 200 million page views per day — has already changed its registry entries, foreshadowing the potential negative effect of a boycott set to begin Thursday morning. GoDaddy.com originally supported the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) but quickly recanted its position when the call for a boycott circulated. 'The outcry kind of forced our hand,' imgur founder and owner Alan Schaaf said. 'I'm against the SOPA act and imgur as a company is against it. We just feel it is terrible that GoDaddy.com would support this legislation.'"
Que seneveratis metes.
Or some such thing. My schools motto was that. What you sow, So shall you reap. One of those wonderful things that I recall as a kid I didn't think too much of. These days, can't be closer to home. GoDaddy, you fucked up. You got caught with your fingers in the cookie jar. All the advertisements on Australian TV won't help you enough. You have angered the internet. To you, we are anonymous. But we are not. We have domain names. We have money that you need. We have integrity. We have choices. You chose SOPA.
We choose someone else.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Better spinelessly stop supporting evil than courageously continuing to support it, though. Boycott worked exactly as intended, that's great news.
Quite possibly, yes
This is the problem with assigning anthropomorphic characteristics to companies; in the context of people, I would rather that someone have the strength of conviction to make and stick with the choice that they believe is right, rather than flip back and forth to fit the prevailing opinion (subject to the original decision having been made with all the facts).
With companies though, it's really not possible for them to ignore things like this because of the likely impact on their business, so while GoDaddy are just shamelessly pretending to drop support for SOPA to vainly try and appease The Internet, they don't really have a choice. Of course, they could have made the right choice in the first place, but they're dicks, so that wasn't going to happen.
Either way, their initial support for SOPA and helping to write it to get themselves immunity from its provisions mean that regardless of their recent actions, there's no way I'd ever give them my business now.
Boycott worked exactly as intended....
It's astounding how long a meme can keep going. Go Daddy has not changed it's view; it has not changed it's actions; it has just removed a couple of press releases about those actions and started to support SOPA behind the scenes. If Go Daddy had changed their viewpoint, and actually was opposed to SOPA now, then we should stop the boycott and concentrate on others who are worse. However, this is not a decision we need to make. Even as I post today Go Daddy's "general counsel and corporate secretary" has a blog posting up which clearly states her opinion in support of SOPA and is undersigned in her official role.
If Christine is acting against company policy then Go Daddy needs to be disciplining her now. Lets be clear; not because of what she believes, but because she has a representative role for the company, is directly opposing and contradicting company policy and is doing so using the name of Go Daddy to get publicity for that role. Also because she was involved in drafting SOPA and should take responsibility for the mess that it is which is a clear and visible failure to work in Go Daddy's customers interests.
If Go Daddy is still employing her without disciplinary action, and that blog posting is still up then Go Daddy is effectively supporting SOPA and should continue to be boycotted.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Your comment is probably the most willfully ignorant of this entire topic. You don't think that any of them reallyc are about supporting SOPA or not and that it was probably just some random "hey do we support SOPA?" comment that lead to someone saying "sure, whatever" and then posting that on their website?
Then please explain GoDaddy's role in actively adding their names to the list of SOPA supporters.
Please explain GoDaddy's role in actually CRAFTING PART OF SOPA ITSELF.
Please explain GoDaddy's role in additionally crafting part of SOPA itself such that GoDaddy is exempt from it.
For the next year (or so), this will be my counter-example when I debate politics with people who argue that a centrally regulated economy is better than the free market -- as in, "I will happily agree with you, if first you explain this one annoying fact please."
OK, I'll try: domain registrars do not operate in a free market. They are regulated by ICANN. If they were in a truly free market, GoDaddy could (and almost certainly would) simply refuse to transfer any domains away from themselves.
When you hear talk of a free market working and really look at it, you almost always find that the market isn't TRULY free; it needs regulation, and if that regulation weren't there it would be a disaster.
I agree that domain registration is a relatively free market and this is an example of where a relatively free market works well. However it's not truly free; there's your explanation. In fact I suspect you'd be hard pressed to find any market that needs literally no regulation, to protect people's safety, or prohibit companies from screwing customers over.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
They *said* they changed their position.
They *didn't* *actually* change it. And they won’t change it.
There's a difference.
They didn't even SAY they changed it. They said "we'll go look at it again" or some such nonsense. Weasel words.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
In this particular case, I do agree that GoDaddy has no merit in their change of mind - because they are acting consistently bad with their customers, and don't really seem to have changed their mind at all.
But it seems to me as if in our society we preferred that people stick to their decisions, rather than change their mind if there's overwhelming evidence that they've been wrong. Does it make sense?
Recognizing mistakes and dealing properly with them is IMHO a very rare and positive trait, which should always be encouraged. Think of how much better things would be if this was more widely encouraged.
diegoT
If they were in a truly free market, GoDaddy could (and almost certainly would) simply refuse to transfer any domains away from themselves.
You seem to have fallen into the common mistake of thinking a free market is the same as anarchy.
Free market is composed of "free" and "market". Market assumes a certain set of rules, among them the right to property. If you have a domain hosted at GoDaddy the domain is yours.
GoDaddy refusing to accept transfer of domains would be like a commercial garage refusing to let people take their cars out. That would be theft, not freedom. What a free market means is that buyer and seller are free to negotiate among themselves the price and conditions of a sale. It does not mean someone is free to steal from someone else.
As a web developer, I've worked on a couple of projects hosted at GoDaddy, and I can't stand anything about them - control panel overly confusing, unhelpful help section, horrible tech support, even their marketing (how can anyone take a web hosting company seriously that uses some hot chick to sell their business?). Every chance they get they throw some marketing pitch at you to get you to add on to your services.
They've had plenty of bad press over the year, too: The GoDaddy Saga Continues, GoDaddy Loses over 21000 Domains in One Day, GoDaddy Reverses Course on SOPA, GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers.
Every new client I get I recommend they not use GoDaddy - if they insist, I tell them to find another developer...
The cake is a lie.