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GoDaddy Expels Neo-Nazi Site Over Article On Charlottesville Victim (bbc.co.uk)
Reader Big Hairy Ian writes: Web hosting company GoDaddy has given a US neo-Nazi site 24 hours to find another provider after it disparaged a woman who died in protests in Virginia. The Daily Stormer published a piece denigrating Heather Heyer, who was killed on Saturday after a car rammed into a crowd protesting at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. GoDaddy had faced calls to remove the white supremacist site as a result. The web host said the Daily Stormer had violated its terms of service. "We informed the Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service," GoDaddy said in a statement on Twitter. Previously, some web users had called on GoDaddy to remove the site -- including women's rights campaigner Amy Siskind. Violence broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia, after white supremacists organised a controversial far-right march called "Unite the Right".
As usual, private enterprises want to distance themselves from objectively horrible people because it may cost them money.
As usual, objectively horrible people suddenly decide that it is "censorship" if private enterprises decide that they do not want to be associated with said objectively horrible people, and completely forget about the whole "freedom of association" thing.
Because they're the ones running down their opponents with cars...
Agreed. GoDaddy is a private corporation. They're not bound by the 1st Ammendment.
However, GoDaddy is full of crap. They claim that the web site violated their TOS by inciting violence, but the only thing that this clown posted there was calling the victim fat, childless, and useless. He was obviously a jerk-off, but he was not calling for violence.
GoDaddy was simply cowed by the SJWs, that's all. They aren't the first, they won't be the last, and this is simply a useful information to know: GoDaddy can be pressured and harassed into shutting down an unpopular web site that they host. Someone who believes that their content maybe controversial and unpopular, and may be targeted by left-wing rent-a-mobs, should not host it on GoDaddy.
Unless they're literal Nazis.
I mean, come on. They're fucking Nazis for chrissake. If your business model relies on not alienating Nazis, then there may be bigger problems than your profit/loss statement.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Out gay man here. I have defended, and will continue to defend, people like Nazis, skinheads, the KKK, or any other organization to have a platform in the public square to spew whatever hate that they want. That is their right, and it should not be abridged. It doesn't matter if it's the KKK or the Phelps church protesting at soldier's funerals. They have the right to their opinions, and that right should never be taken away.
So how exactly am I, a proud leftist progressive, hating on the first amendment? How am I wanting to curtail the KKK from protesting? I cherish the freedom granted to every single person under the Constitution, and will defend that right to the death.
While I totally agree with this idea it has not always worked this way in practice, leading the right (esp the extreme right) to feel that it is "leftist" censorship. The case of the baker who refused to make a cake for a gay couple, was sued and lost shows that corporations don't always have the right to do business the way they want. As a libertarian I think GoDaddy should be able to refuse to host anyone they see fit and bakers should be able to refuse to bake cakes for whomever they don't want to. The inequity gives the appearance of favoritism for one side.
--- Tolerance is the axiomatic "virtue" of those without convictions ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/...
and then there's Youtube. I could go on an on and on.
I could give two fucks what it ment in 1921. TODAY, the Antifa are a facist violent group of fucktards that should be labeled for what they are, a terrorist organization.
Life is not for the lazy.
And let the equivocation begin! Oh, those poor downtrodden Neo-nazis and White Supremacists. All they want to do is expel every black person, Latino, and anyone else in their long laundry list of people they hate.
Storm Front has the right to say what it wants. It has absolutely no right to force anyone else to carry the message for them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...every bit of content they are part of serving.
This kind of short-term virtue signaling on the part of a corporation is going to have long-term consequences, when people use this precedent to make them responsible for every shitlord post ever made on anything they're connected to.
Next thing you know, they'll be coming after GoDaddy for comments on articles, and naughty memes.
The government is bound to allow free speech. A corporation doesn't have to put up with things they find objectionable. There are other options for those pushing hate and GoDaddy is certainly in the right here.
This is one of those very tough cases, to be honest. I believe that a website disparaging a counterproster at a nazi protest is utterly repulsive, and I didn't see the website so I don't know if they were encouraging others to do the same (the article [yes, I read it] is unclear on the exact content), but for the sake of argument let's assume the site simply discussed their twisted agenda and said lots of very mean and repulsive things, but did not make an explicit call to violence.
GoDaddy does not want to host the site. Fine. Will Twitter allow them to keep an account? I mean, they seem to turn a blind eye toward ISIS, but they too are a private company and don't have to enforce their ToS evenly. Let's assume Amazon does the same thing and disallows them to use AWS, and let's also assume Google blacklists the domain from ever showing up on a web search, because 'a corporation doesn't have to put up with things they find objectionable'.
Will their ISP disconnect their account if they set up their own web server and point their domain toward their own self-hosted web server if the ISP finds their message objectionable?
Freedom of Speech has had two interrelated issues in the information age. The first is that even free speech was far more limited when it was 'a dude on a soapbox' vs. 'another dude on a soapbox', or more specifically, printing presses and 'a dude on a horse', because the distribution model was still far more limited than what we have today. Would the first amendment have been phrased differently if it was viable to foresee this very situation at that time? I don't know.
The second issue is what I dub 'the corporate abstraction layer'. The government can't do X, but a corporation can, and the government can compel a corporation to do X, so X is done. The government gets to point to the corporation to prove they didn't do it, the corporation gets to point to the government compelling them to do it, and thus there are few repercussions to either. The government is bound to allow free speech, of which 'posting on the internet' has been included as per a number of court decisions. However, every means of exercising that right, at some point, passes through a corporation which is not required to adhere to the first amendment if they sufficiently disagree with the content.
We now find ourselves in this problematic situation. I loathe everything this group stands for and sincerely wish they would all stop. However, I do believe they have a right to place their message on the internet. GoDaddy is in a pretty bad spot right now, because they can either stand for free speech by siding with a group that is highly unpopular in the court of public opinion. For them to do so would likely result in a boycott, mass domain migration, and no shortage of bad press. For them, it would be the worst possible hill to die on, especially since it gives them a better public standing to ban them. On the other hand, they have set a precedent of banning 'sufficiently unpopular speech', which nobody cares about 'now'. 'First they came for the neonazis'...
Thus, we have found ourselves in a place where free speech is no longer a right, but a privilege granted by some combination of actuarial tables, NSLs, and the court of public opinion. As terrible and abhorrent as these protesters are, it is this very type of situation for which the first amendment must be clearly defined in the 21st century, and a platform be given equally for unpopular ideas as popular ones.
Thank you Slashdot, for allowing me to post my unpopular opinion.