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Tech Groups Step Away From Gab Network After Shooting (ft.com)

Tech companies including PayPal and Stripe have suspended their services from Gab, a social network catering primarily to US conservatives that had been used by the man accused of killing 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue. From a report: The moves are likely to reopen the debate about the limits of free speech online and the potential for social networks to radicalise users. Gab was launched two years ago by tech entrepreneur Andrew Torba, who became frustrated with what he perceived as a bias against conservative views on California-based social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. His site soon attracted controversial rightwing figures, including Richard Spencer and Alex Jones, who had been suspended or banned from other social networks. Robert Bowers, who has been charged over the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday, was among Gab's hundreds of thousands of users, the company confirmed on Saturday. Mr Bowers, whose profile on Gab featured images of guns and white supremacist iconography, made anti-Semitic posts and threats on the site just hours before the shooting. Since Saturday's shooting, Gab has been accused of not doing enough to prevent free expression from tipping over into hate speech on its site.

Online payments companies PayPal and Stripe, as well as hosting provider Joyent, all said they would stop Gab from using their services, [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled, alternative source] citing violations of their terms of services, which do not allow hate speech. Gab slammed the moves as "direct collusion between big tech giants" against it. This weekend is not the first time that Gab has been sharply criticised for the content it hosts.Last year, after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Google removed Gab from Google Play, its mobile app store, claiming it violated its policy on hate speech.

75 of 631 comments (clear)

  1. https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png by hduff · · Score: 4, Insightful
    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
    1. Re: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png by makerfixer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's important to note that a lot of this has to do with payment processors who are under intense pressure from their regulators to police themselves far more than required under law. So the government does not have a neutral opinion in this. Operation Chokepoint and it's constant expansion for instance.

    2. Re: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Funny, because I was going to chime in to comment about the whole Visa/Amazon/etc dropping the ability to support Wikileaks which definitely came from a push from government legislators. I was against it then, and I am against it now with this. This also extends to the treatment of sex workers and swingers through websites on the claims of traffic. "Self-policing" of others is mostly something I don't want to see with business. The sort of crap I want to see is companies self-policing their own behavior and being punished when they choose to harm people, often illegal, for their own benefit--and I don't mean fines amounting to less the actual damages.

    3. Re: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png by tinkerton · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Agreed. I had noticed people feeling censored on Twitter and considering the move to Gab. This is an excuse to demonetize Gab. I don't know Gab (not a social media user) but it's likely that it's not just far right wing people who move there.

      I think there's a major censorship operation going on but this is not simple to prove because one person's false positives are another person't real targets. There is so much crap on the web that anyone targeting 'serious' dissident content only has to bundle sufficient crap into each censoring operation to stay under the radar.
      Real freedom of speech protects against this so you don't even have to know which of the two scenarios apply.

    4. Re:https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png by epyT-R · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, unless of course you're hating on the right people, then suddenly the deplatform attempt becomes 'oppression.'

    5. Re: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2, Informative

      Operation Chokepoint and it's constant expansion for instance.

      You might have a point if not for the fact that Operation Choke Point was ended in August 2017 and had absolutely nothing to do with any kind of speech and everything to do with fraud.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    6. Re:https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your image is shit. That isn't free speech, that's speech controlled by a person/people who's sensibilities are offended.

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      Om, nomnomnom...
    7. Re:https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png by ArylAkamov · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It really doesn't say a thing.
      "just make your own platform"
      Okay
      "lol we don't have to host you, just get your own servers"
      Okay, I'll buy my own servers
      "lol we don't have to process your payments, just like, make your own multi billion dollar payment processor"
      Yeah, that's totally fucking reasonable.
      I'm waiting for the regulation hammer to come down on these douche bags.

    8. Re:https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png by Mashiki · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How is the fact that people are saying "we won't use you as an ad platform anymore" controlling someone's speech?

      Let's look at this history of this shall we?

      People are banned because of neboulous reasons, like posting milquetoast memes. Or for directly quoting 'blue checkmark' people who attack others race, spew open misandry, and promote open sexism. The original people who've posted this don't get even a slap on the wrist, the people who pointed it out - get banned. People get upset.

      Progressives state: If you don't like it build your own platform.

      People build their own platform, setup their own network, servers, get funding. More people flock to it instead of staying with a site while enforces rules in a non-competent manner. Site states that it has a "1st amendment rule" to protect speech.

      Site grows

      Site continues to grow big. Draws good people, bad people crazies from both sides.

      Now progressives and leftists start attacking their payment processors, filing false complaints against upstream posts, colo's and so on. So much for that "build your own" idea.

      One guy shoots up a synagogue. Progressives are chanting to shut it down. But happily ignore that the platform that they're already on openly support terrorist groups, those same misandrists and racists are still hanging out on their platform, but don't seem to have a problem with it.

      And now we've reached this point. Now tell me, and everyone again why there's such a huge backlash against the left for being among the most shittiest of humans out there.

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      Om, nomnomnom...
  2. Just be happy by makerfixer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Something happened as a god excuse to shutdown the remaining platforms before the election. The worst mistake made by the blog-o-sphere was consolidating into platforms that had a strong ideological bent and zero interest in free-speech.

  3. Free Enterprise by TheDarkener · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These are all non-government corporations making these decisions. If Gab is free to conduct their service how they wish without government intervention, so is PayPal and Stripe. Simple as that.

    --
    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    1. Re:Free Enterprise by TheDarkener · · Score: 2

      PayPal is a monopoly? What about Apple Pay? What about Google Pay Send?

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    2. Re:Free Enterprise by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      In a corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship. When there's no meaningful space between corporate power and government power, it doesn't make much difference whether the guy silencing your dissent is Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Sessions. America most definitely has such a system.

      And when independent candidates run for office and can't get their message out for being shadow banned, and the corporatist candidates are always the number one trending subject, you'll be there to finger wag for not bothering to set up their own world-class content distribution system first.

      Any time you try to talk about how internet censorship threatens our ability to get the jackboot of oligarchy off our necks you'll always get some guy in your face who's read one Ayn Rand book and thinks he knows everything, saying things like âoeFacebook is a private company! It can do whatever it wants!â Is it now? Has not Facebook been inviting US government-funded groups to help regulate its operations, vowing on the Senate floor to do more to facilitate the interests of the US government, deleting accounts at the direction of the US and Israeli governments, and handing the guidance of its censorship behavior over to the Atlantic Council, which receives funding from the US government, the EU, NATO and Gulf states? How "private" is that? Facebook is a deeply government-entrenched corporation, and Facebook censorship is just what government censorship looks like in a corporatist system of government.

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      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:Free Enterprise by Powercntrl · · Score: 2

      In a corporatist system of healthcare... corporate denial is state denial.

      And *poof*, just like that, your argument becomes leftist...

      --

      ---
      DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
  4. Free markets at work by quonset · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Torba can whine all he wants, but in the free market one is free to associate, or not associate, with who they want. No one says PayPal or Google have to deal with Gab.

    As to Gab being a "conservative" social network, if conservatives believe saying Jews should die, that only white men should be in power, that women deserve to be raped, then sure, why not. Because that is what you'll find there.

    This is almost as hilarious as white supremacist Robert Rundo fleeing the country he complains is being taken over by foreigners, and being arrested in Central America. If he didn't like people who weren't white, why would he try to hide in a country where his white skin would stand out?

    1. Re:Free markets at work by tinkerton · · Score: 2

      Neoliberal free markets are only free for corporate business. The rest is just free to leave or shut up.

    2. Re:Free markets at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If PayPal can make it effectively impossible for Gab to operate, then anti-trust laws come in to effect.

    3. Re:Free markets at work by hazem · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So why is it that conservatives are big supporters of Israel?

      For many, it's a religious thing for bringing about the "end times" from the Bible's Revelations. For the end times to come, all the Jews have to go back to Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital, before Jesus will come back for his second-coming.

      It's not that these religious conservatives like Jews or Israel in themselves. Supporting Israel is a means to an end, and they're gleeful at the idea of Jews (and all the rest of the heathens) being cast into lakes of fire if they don't convert to Christianity.

      For the rest, it's a geo-political power play.

  5. In two minds... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Interesting
    On one hand, such networks allow extremely violent people to create an echo chamber and reinforce one another till some one or the other goes over board.

    On the other hand, banning such networks only drives them underground where no one can monitor them, creating an even bigger louder more resonant echo chamber.

    If it is possible for such people to openly express their views, however disturbing they might be, while at the same time remove the perverse incentives for others who make money or leverage political power off them it would be better than banning them outright.

    But it is very difficult to come up with such a solution where there are so many different players and enforcement is very difficult.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  6. You forgot one thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    From: https://medium.com/@getongab/gab-com-statement-on-the-tree-of-life-synagogue-shooting-a6c1de715b39

    "Gab unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence. This has always been our policy."

    They have had this policy for a while: https://medium.com/@getongab/gab-disavows-all-political-violence-cc4031b4899d

    1. Re: You forgot one thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      He said hate speech. Including speech that threatens and purports violence to groups or individuals like the guy who just acted out on his groups violent fantasies. Or like the dude who killed Heather with his car, also sharing similar violent fantasies in social groups. Gab believes these types of communications OK.

  7. Can't see the forest! by Mr307 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All these damn trees are in the way!

    All these virtue signalling assholes have lost the plot. WE dont need to be saved, we want free speech.

    If you can't see the vile disgusting edges of speech, then you dont know where the middle is. When you hide, curtail, restrict, and lie about speech then the publics perception of it over time becomes warped and allows for true evil.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Let the other assholes say their stupid and vile stuff and we are big enough to point our fingers and laugh at them or even take them seriously and fix it ourselves.

    1. Re:Can't see the forest! by Mr307 · · Score: 2

      Hardly, it is the bedrock of Western Civilization, it underpins everything.

      While you are specifically correct in the literal, in practice its not important that its not a government thing, pointing out those groups are assholes for actively attempting (at the very least) to restrict speech is exactly the kind of thing we all need to do.

      The fact that free speech is embedded in a government structure is not the be all end all of the point, we collectively instantiate in law(especially and maybe specifically in common law), what we believe to be our best ideas as a guide towards the ideal. So when assholes like those who want to restrict speech in our private lives use their tools to do so we point it out and call them for what they are.

      I will decide for myself what ideas are bad/wrong and act accordingly, dont want someone else to decide for me 'for my own good', i'm not a child.

  8. Re:In before someone says it by quantaman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    the issue with Gab is that it explicitly allows speech that Paypal does not.

    No, the issue is that Gab takes the platform / common carrier position while facebook and twitter exercise a degree of editorial control. This means that Gab is not liable for hosted content while facebook and twitter are.

    That might be their official position but a little context is required.

    Gab was started as a direct response to alt-right and white supremacist personalities getting kicked off of Twitter, it's the White Supremacist Twitter.

    It doesn't really matter what their official policies are, they're a social networking company created to serve an extremely controversial community, they can't pretend extremists on their platform are some random unfortunate situation no one could have predicted.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  9. Is the mainstream news any different ? by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Watch CNN and it is nothing but hate towards all things Republican.

    Watch Fox and it is nothing but hate towards all things Democrat.

    The only thing that differentiates them from Social Media is they have total control of the narrative.

  10. On the other side of the spectrum you've got Citi by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    who got away with knowingly laundering money for drug cartels for years (decades?), got to keep all the profits and had little to no repercussions ($100 million dollar fine sounds like a lot unless you consider the profits they made from the illegal activity).

    They way I look at it is like this: Police yourselves so the gov't doesn't have to. See here for a far more amusing take on it though

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  11. Abandon everything then by SirAstral · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is no service that has been created that cannot and has not been used for evil. But don't think for a moment that certain groups are not quick to recognize when one group uses the actions of the few to imply support similar desire by the whole.

    It has taken some time, but many have managed to make even liberty look like it is only a tool used for oppression.... my my my how much work must have gone into convincing people that you cannot be allowed to manage yourself and must instead have your liberties managed for you. All in the name of keeping you safe.

    Tyranny is usually though of as a problem brought on by Government agency... yet the control businesses have gained over our lives it has become clear that economically assaulting another group is more than enough to provide it's own form of tyranny.

    Perhaps other businesses should start to refuse to do business with banks that do this as well... or do they too not fear reprisal? All it takes for a business to become suspect is by mere associate with something now... whether that associate is properly represented or not. We are only going to see more and more of this as we continue down this, "those that do not think like me are evil" path. This is the mindset that gets people to agree with mass genocide of entire groups of people and when those groups feel oppressed, no matter the form that oppression takes they will discover now that when avenues of diplomacy or discussion are taken away, they become isolated... and many unfortunately feel that violence is the final resort of regaining any attention for their cause... no matter how terrible other think of them for it.

  12. And Big Tech? by wjcofkc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No worries, the Giant Tech companies are not responsible for what people say on their platforms. Really this is good news. Gab itself was an innovative reaction to increasing censorship. For that matter BitChute and a few others. So fuck PayPal and Stripe. This will result in competition for them. When you shut something that large out, customers are already waiting.

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
  13. I'm not opposed to politics as a protected class by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    but that makes things a little hard for the American Right wing vis-a-vis gay rights, so I don't see that happening. Nonetheless if the right wanted this to stop for real that would be the way to do it.

    That said, I don't think they do. The right wing own all 3 branches of government and nearly all of the media (they dominate talk radio, Fox News' ratings are much higher than MSNBC and, well, as a lefty I can safely say that MSNBC is right wing on economics, just go watch some of their coverage of Orcassio-Cortez and the Medicare for all Issue).

    What I'm saying is this is great for them. It lets them paint themselves not as the ruling class in charge of everything that matters but as an oppressed minority because their extremist aren't welcome. That narrative of oppression grants them sympathy that folks like this normally wouldn't have it.

    --
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  14. Re:Great virtue signalling! by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

    I guess because it's "conservative" that it's automatically bad.

    You're equating a white supremacist who shot up a synagogue with "conservative" (the backlash was for hosting that guy). You must really really despise conservatives.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  15. Re:In before someone says it by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    it would be pretty bad if banks started booting customers who said things they didn't like.

    That may be where we are headed. Conservatives and liberals once talked to each other. Then they started reading different newspapers, watching different TV channels, and moved to different forums on social media. Then forums got banned, and they moved to different social media platforms. Now platforms are being banned, so the next step may be for different ideological groups to have their own app-stores, payment processors, etc.

    What is next? "Conservative" and "liberal" grocery stores? Conservatives banned from Whole Foods, and liberals banned from Walmart? Where will Libertarians shop?

    All this polarization can't be good for our society.

  16. Re:Hate Speech by HanzoSpam · · Score: 2

    Actually, it is protected in the United States. If it wasn't, people would be getting arrested for it.

    --

    Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
  17. Re:Far-right by Bobrick · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This. Where I come from, what people call "the left" in the United States would be considered center-right, at the very least. The liberals there are our right-wing conservatives here trying to privatize everything, austerity measures incessantly diminishing our social services, health care and education, zero environmental vision. That's left-wing in America. The right-wing takes the same starting position and launches forward at lightspeed. It's a fascinating yet profoundly depressing shit show.

  18. Re:Consume or Die by CaptainDork · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This.

    The reason things are so fucked up is because we, the consumers, are served content that we ask for.

    We hate one news outlet and love the other. The providers don't give a flying rat's ass as to how we got there, they just want more of us.

    There is a middle ground of sorts with PBS and NPR, but notice that we are not rushing to those sites.

    America has two races: Republicans and Democrats.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  19. Re:In before someone says it by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The reason they haven't also banned Twitter is that Twitter has a policy of not allowing that kind of thing on its network.

    That's complete BS. Twitter allows multiple terrorist organizations to operate on there. They even have terrorist groups like the muslim brotherhood verified. It doesn't get much further in terms of extremism when you're talking about a group that wants to commit genocide because religion tells them to.

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    Om, nomnomnom...
  20. Re:In before someone says it by king+neckbeard · · Score: 4, Informative

    The problem is that Gab is filling a niche that Twitter has forced open through bans, and disproportionately just that niche. Throw in the existing persecution complex of those groups and you've got a recipe for trouble, because you've created an even stronger echo chamber for the worst elements.

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  21. Re: Trump Effect - MAGA Bomber / Shooter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Meanwhile the GOP invites Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys, to speak at their events.

    In his own words:

    “I think there’s not enough violence in today’s day and age. I want violence. I want punching in the face. I’m disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough.” - Gavin McInnes

      "We do it cause it’s fun. It’s fun beating you up, because you suck s--t." - Gavin McInnes

    https://www.salon.com/2018/10/...

  22. Re:blame social media by alexgieg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In the real world, a "party" is a club of people. These people move around, new people entering, other people leaving, and people changing clubs. And there's an interesting history of how and where the many individuals of the club called "Democrat Party" moved to in the decades since and which people replaced the as those left and where these came from. Google it, and google the same for the club "Republican Party". You'll find all the plot twists quite interesting, if not entertaining.

    --
    Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
  23. Re:In before someone says it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The problem is that any genuine "conservatives" are so bloody bad at drawing the line between themselves and the racist, hate spewing, violent Nazis out there.

    They are so similar in many cases that the temptation for "conservatives" is to think that they are the same, only that the nazi scum is a bit more "dedicated", and in any case "better dead than red". Which becomes a particularly thorny problem when you define anything to the left of hard core reactionarism as "socialism" or "communism".

    And you're right it's not good for a society. It's what happened in Germany in the past, Nazis to the right, Communists to the left. There are reasons why the people who ultimately bore the responsibility for put old Adolf into power, Alfred Hugenberg and von Hindenburg were very conservative politicians. And there were reasons why the Nazis let Hugenberg retain his place in the Reichstag until 1945, despite all other parties than the NSDAP being banned. These are also the reasons why Europe haven't had the kind of crazy "conservatives" the US has had for a long time; they all convinced themselves that the Nazis weren't so bad, and either joined the "winning" team directly, or allied themselves to them to the extent that they discredited themselves for decades. Only now, when the people who were actually around back in the day are starting to die out, are we beginning to see their ugly faces again - again accompanied by the hate-filled breed of losers they in vain hope they will be able to exploit.

  24. Re:Free Market, RIGHT? by HanzoSpam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A free market is when willing sellers and willing buyers are prevented from doing business by middlemen with a monopoly position?

    --

    Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
  25. Isn't a lack of change the point by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    of being Conservative? If change isn't happening then they're winning.

    I think you're mixing up the radical right (alt-right?) with actual Conservatives. But even then the radical right wing is doing pretty well for themselves. There's been a massive and successful attack on gov't regulation. Much of Dodd Frank has been repealed. Most of the Obama era EPA guidelines have been eliminated or toned back. Net Neutrality is dead putting control of the internet in the hands of private industry. Mitch McConnell is even able to talk openly about ending Social Security and Medicare. These are policies the far right has wanted for decades and had to back down on.

    Meanwhile the left can't get any tracking on Medicare for All, even though a majority of Republicans support it (let alone Democrats). The left are completely on the defensive in all respects. The right is winning on all fronts.

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    1. Re:Isn't a lack of change the point by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Horseshit, they haven't been careful about evaluating change in the Trump era, they plowed ahead with changes at a speed the left could only envy. That's because conservatism is actually about the domination of society by an aristocracy. This can be mistaken for resistance to/caution toward change in a society that was recently or is dominated by an aristocracy if you don't look too closely.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    2. Re:Isn't a lack of change the point by meglon · · Score: 2

      You are truly a fucking idiot. Conservatives can't think a day ahead on anything. Trumps trade war is killing all the dipshit farmers who voted for him to better themselves, because they were too fucking stupid to think ahead. And that is situation normal for conservatives.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    3. Re:Isn't a lack of change the point by LaughingRadish · · Score: 2

      There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong.
          -- Henry Louis Mencken

      Phil Agre is a nut on the level of Timecube's Gene Ray. By his definition, Stalin was a conservative by preserving and elevating an elite at the expense of the masses.

  26. Re:In before someone says it by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Liberals? They're not liberals. Liberals believe in freedom of speech. They might disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. You are talking about Leftists. Leftists have little use for free speech and will happily silence those with whom they disagree. As is happening here.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  27. Re:blame social media by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Any excuse to de-platform conservatives will be takes.

    I'm not conservative, but unlike you I don't hate conservatives, and certainly not nearly enough to equate the whole of conservatism with white supremacy. What I want to know is why you despise conservatives so much? It's not healthy.

    That's what happened here, gab hosted white supremacists and one off then went off and did some actual white supremacist sort of things and now lots of people don't want to do business with gab any more.

    Bonus points if you reply with whataboutism involving antifa.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  28. Re:blame social media by lgw · · Score: 2

    Political views are something you choose, so they can never be a protected category.

    "Protected category" is a legal construct, and includes whatever arbitrary groups the law is written to include. California includes political affiliation as a protected category.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  29. Re:Great virtue signalling! by pjrc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I see this every day on social networking from my liberal friends.

    Historically, conservative leaders took the moral high road and measured their words carefully. But now the conservative standards bearer is saying crap like "If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell ... I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise".

    Many more statements called "dog whistles" have been made, such as "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks... Although the Second Amendment people â" maybe there is, I donâ(TM)t know.â

    Now you can say this is all just political hyperbole. You might even try to say it's merely coincidence that violent hate crime is up dramatically over the last 2 years.

    But the point isn't about "proof" or causality. The point is trying to understand the opinions, rather than merely dismissing them as "must really really despise conservatives". This sort of speech which is likely to incite hate and maybe leads to violence is reckless. Until only 2 years ago, far outside the norm of what anyone would consider acceptable from the president or other elected officials.

    Then again, maybe you'd prefer to believe Republican leaders have acted ethically or may be above questioning. In that case, I suppose the only explanation that fits is some folks must just really really despise conservatives.

  30. Re:In before someone says it by alvinrod · · Score: 2

    This partitioning is being driven by progressive extremists, for the express purpose of destroying America.

    I think that's taking it a bit far and probably attributing reasons to most of the people who fall into that group that don't exist. In reality, the explanation is much more banal: They're doing it because they think it will impress other people like them. It's as simple and stupid as that. It's not really different than conservative Christians that try to take tough moral stances against homosexuality so that they can show everyone how Christian and moral they are.

    Naturally this attracts a lot of sleazy people who want to hide behind the facade of moral superiority. They don't really care about the message, or even disagree with it, but find that they can hide behind it. Just like not all of those conservative Christians are closeted homosexuals, you can bet that of the people trying to appear to be the most virtuous, some are banging other men in private gay clubs. Just like you have no trouble finding many of the men who claim to be feminists have been harassing women and doing all of things they decry in public.

    I don't think the political correctness really matters. Even if you quit dancing around some issues, the solutions that the different political factions have are so incompatible as to be incapable of compromise. In the end it comes down to dogma and you won't get the conservative Christian to go along with gay marriage any more than you'll get the super-woke progressive to agree that inherent gender differences exist. The gun nut will never agree to any form of gun control and the socialist will never agree that their economic policy just doesn't work. Once you hit the central tenants of some faith, it doesn't really matter.

    In this case, does anyone that anti-Semitic ever listen to reason? Even if you let him run around screaming about the Jews on Twitter all day, is he ever going to listen to anyone who he doesn't already agree with, or does he just invent some reason to lump any disagreement as proof that the Jews are controlling everyone? I almost think that social media disconnects people from one and other to the point where it's not possible to solve this issue even if you have a single service that everyone gets to use no matter what. I think that requires actually sitting down with people and talking to them. Fortunately, there's good reason to be hopeful that something like that actually works.

  31. Re:In before someone says it by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

    In a corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship. If Paypal had any competitors, they could be used. There aren't any that I've ever heard of. It's not a free market.

    You might not have sympathy for Gab as an individual, but I'd still be worried about the legal precedence this sets. You might not presently live at the cliff edge yourself, but the gradual erosion of liberty will certainly ensure that you eventually do.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  32. Re:blame social media by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

    And correlation is obviously causation.

    Except this isn't "correlation". Using a word that's only used in a certain community is a pretty good reason to believe you have spent time in that community.

    Any excuse to de-platform conservatives will be takes. Any. Excuse.

    Do you have any evidence that the views on Gab are "conservative"?

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  33. Re:Great virtue signalling! by lgw · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, the backlash is not for hosting that guy. He was on Twitter and Facebook too. No backlash there. The backlash is for not banning conservative speech in general. But that's just an excuse, really.

    The is the Silicon Valley Cabal using this shooting as an excuse to destroy the competition - pure business. Gab was starting to get actual traction as a competitor, and there's nothing a monopoly hates more than a competitor!

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  34. Re:In before someone says it by alvinrod · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think that the underlying issue there is that Republicans despise Democrats more than they hate Nazis or similar ilk. The same could be said of Democrats who despise Republicans more than they hate Antifa or similar groups. That is, they really don't like the most extreme elements of what could be broadly called their side, but they're too fixated on what the view as their main enemy to care or feel as though acknowledging that group in the same breath as themselves is just an attempt at a smear job. The more crafty (or perhaps the ones who don't minding playing with matches) among the parties even view those extremists as a kind of useful tool.

    I think the only thing that really frees us from this is ultimately removing the first past the post election system so that we don't get a concentration of two parties that must naturally exist in opposition to each other. I wouldn't be surprised that if you took the platform for a party and asked everyone who considered themselves to be a part of that party about their honest opinion for all of the different issues, that on average you'd find people only supported about half of those positions personally. They're really only a member of that party because of a few, or perhaps maybe only one, key issue that they view as that important. You don't really find many candidates who are both pro-gun rights and pro-abortion rights for example. Once you free the Republicans from needing the white nationalist vote and the Democrats from needing the Antifa vote, I think you'll get both of those parties telling both of those other groups to fuck right off.

  35. Re:In before someone says it by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Informative

    When liberals hate conservatives, it is because they do not understand what conservatives believe, nor do they care to learn. When faced with questions such as "One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" or "Justice is the most important requirement for a society," liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree.

    Jonathan Haidt's experiments ask liberals and conservatives to fill out questionnaires about their values, then to predict how someone from the opposite tribe would fill out the questionnaire. He finds that conservatives are able to predict liberals' answers just fine and seem to have a pretty good understanding of their worldviews, but that liberals have *no idea* how conservatives think or what they value.

    One of the most telling discoveries was that conservatives tend to be curious about what liberals think and why, while liberals see conservatives as inferior "other," inherently incapable of thought. The slur as substitute for argument is glaring on this website.

    One only needs to utter the name "Sarah Palin" to see how interested liberals are in women's rights, or "Clarence Thomas" to see how interested they are in racial equality.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  36. Re:Real news is hosting provider kicking them off by lgw · · Score: 2

    My 2 top comments in this story have each seen 10+ mod points expended on them, and they're still in rapid motion. And they're both fairly bland. Slashdot has been overtaken by tribalism, with modding going entirely by "are you fer em or agin em". That's exactly what destroyed Digg, and I'm not sure how much life Slashdot has left in it.

    Heck, I saw posts downmodded yesterday for suggesting such notions as "the rich use their money to become richer, they don't just sit on it" and "healthcare is really expensive". Those are almost progressive talking points, but they're not exactly progressive talking points, so mods were triggered.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  37. Re:In before someone says it by Powercntrl · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Leftists have little use for free speech and will happily silence those with whom they disagree. As is happening here.

    Wrong. Gab hasn't been silenced, they can still happily Gab away at whatever "thinly-veiled-racism masquerading as a nationalist agendas" trips their trigger. They may have to find another web host or plug their own server hardware into the internet, and accept cryptocurrency instead of PayPal.

    When you start telling business they can't choose to act on their own morals, you might end up telling Christian bakers they've gotta bake that gay wedding cake, too. I've always said it must take a lot of cognitive dissonance to be an alt-righter.

    --

    ---
    DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
  38. Then it's not conservatism by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Interesting

    and you shouldn't be using that word. You're misusing it. Perhaps intentionally in order to get real conservatives on your side. I've said this before, but Hilary Clinton was and is the best true conservative in America. She'd have kept everything the same, only making a few minor changes to keep everything on course. She lost because Americans don't want actual conservatism. They want change, and it's no wonder why.

    Also nobody is in favor of small government when it suits them. Folks who get it with a natural disaster want the Fed to come in and help. Most people support a large, national military for defense. And our interstate highway couldn't be built by a small government. The "Conservative" Red states get more money from the fed than they put in and if you touch those subsidies expect their Senators to fight tooth and nail against you.

    What you're really in for is "small enough to drown in a bathtub" government. In other words, small, local governments that can be pushed around by large power organizations. Even if that's not what you want, it's what the folks who fund and run the "small gov't" movement do. And they make the rules.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  39. Goal post moving much? by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    he was an active member of a community that in turn actively encourages folks like him to come to their side. You know this. You're trying to shift the narrative. I don't think anyone's gonna fall for it though. At least not anyone who doesn't _want_ to fall for it.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Goal post moving much? by Cederic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He was an active user of a platform.

      He was also an active user of other platforms, such as Facebook.

      He also shopped at certain supermarkets and wore clothes of a given brand.

      Maybe - just maybe - that doesn't make him belong to any of them. Maybe - just maybe - you're the person trying to shift the narrative and damn Gab by association.

      Stop it. You're being a cunt.

    2. Re:Goal post moving much? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 4, Informative

      he was an active member of a community that in turn actively encourages folks like him to come to their side. You know this. You're trying to shift the narrative. I don't think anyone's gonna fall for it though. At least not anyone who doesn't _want_ to fall for it. Flag as Inappropriate

      This is disengenuous AF. They actively encourage everybody to join their service. Is there something wrong with your brain?

      You (and OP) make it sound like Gab is a "conservative" forum. It isn't. It's about free speech for everybody, not just a few.

    3. Re:Goal post moving much? by fafalone · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yup, the owner is going on Alex Jones to talk about how biased everyone is against his platform used pretty much exclusively by awful people. He's totally neutral.

  40. That's not quite true by aepervius · · Score: 2, Insightful

    While fox quite clearly show a bias, and they gladly admit it, CNN does not necessarily has such a bias. In fact if you both er to check you will find that when it happen they also report bad things said or done by democrats. e.g. just simply example if you want like anthony wiener sexting. This isn't equivalent to fox. that Fox and some right wing people managed to bring a narrative that cnn and co and other media are democrat aligned , shows that they have managed to really control media and people far more than they readily admit.

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
  41. Re:blame social media by meglon · · Score: 2

    Yeh, he was upset because Trump hadn't gone far enough getting rid of all the Jews. Are you truly as fucking stupid as your posts suggests? Yeh, that was rhetorical.... we already know you are.

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  42. Re:blame social media by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And once again we see how deeply dishonest the fallacy of "whataboutism" is. If you want to deplatform people you accuse of being violent extremists you don't get to ignore the fact that all of these tech giants are actively defending groups like antifa and even very blatantly antisemitic fanatics like tankies.

    When the entire argument is a claimed moral high ground, or the claimed unacceptability of certain things, then it's 100% legitimate and relevant to bring up when they actually do accept and condone those same things. You don't get to scream "blue shirts are unacceptable" and then turn right around and say "that's whataboutism!" when people start bringing up the thousands and thousands of people in r/commieblueshirtclub.

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  43. Re:In before someone says it by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 2

    They call for genocide all the time. Against jews.

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  44. Re: In before someone says it by ljw1004 · · Score: 2

    That's interesting. Is like to learn more. Neither link was to the actual study (methodology, numerical results, ...) - only to takeaways. Do you have any idea where to find out about the actual study?

    I'm curious because the guy said he asked 2000 "visitors" to fill out his questionnaire. I wonder which visitors? To where?

  45. No, they wouldn't by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    any true Conservative's first concern would be preserving the existing order and stability. That's what Conservatism is. It's what the word means.

    Now, a libertarian would have let the banks fail. But not a Conservative.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  46. False dichotomies are bad for you, mmkay? by Thaelon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > catering primarily to US conservatives

    1. That's only seen as the case because they've been systematically deplatformed by twitter.

    2. The idiotic notation that there are only two political perspectives is literally six times dumber than astrology.

    I'm strongly left leaning, but more anti-authoritarian than left, so I'm seen as right wing buy left wing useful idiots because I oppose their aspirations of authority, and seen as left wing by right wing useful idiots because I oppose most of their social policy.

    Gab is laudable for their free speech support. Smearing them is more reprehensible than being the mere host of speech you don't like will ever be.

    >The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

    —H. L. Mencken

    --

    Question everything

    1. Re:False dichotomies are bad for you, mmkay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Conservatives haven't been systematically deplatformed by Twitter, though. Twitter regularly allows conservatives to stay on their platform even when they're in obvious breach of Twitter's stated rules in ways that would get non-conservatives banned. Twitter's moderation is massively biased in favor of conservatives, which anyone who uses Twitter knows. Hell, they let Paul Nehlen stay on Twitter for over six months after having explicitly called for violence against specifically named Jewish politicians. A huge number of right wing "intellectual" figures like Jack Posobiec still have accounts despite repeated and flagrant violations of Twitter's posted rules. Meanwhile, people on the left are frequently banned simply for repeating threats that right wingers have made against them and asking why those threats are allowed to exist on the platform.

      And Gab doesn't support free speech, certainly not more than Twitter does. Gab censors things from their platform all the time. It seems like your arguments don't take the facts of the situation into account at all.

  47. Re:In before someone says it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    They call for genocide all the time. Against jews.

    That's a lie.

    The Muslim Brotherhood is a peaceful, mostly secular charity organization. BLM is a pro-racial-diversity group. Antifa promotes open dialogue between people with differing ideological views

    -- J. Brennan, B. Obama, M. Waters, N. Pelosi

  48. Re:blame social media by aybiss · · Score: 2

    No, you haven't seen those things, you've just heard about it on Fox News.

    --
    It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
  49. Re: In before someone says it by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

    Jonathan Haidt has shown this most powerfully in his work on morality and how the moral positions we take are not governed, as we like to think, by our intellect and reason but by self-serving mental processes outside our awareness.

    See Haidt, J (2012). The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon Books.

    Here's a book review on Areo Magazine. If you don't read Areo, you really should add it to your RSS. Quillette too. They're both outstanding websites that carry material that the usual sites would happily censor.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  50. Re:blame social media by Barsteward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    the Democrats realised bigotry is retrograde humanity and changed. The Republicans with their fundamental christian friends took the opposite route and went retrograde. The wise ones learn from history, the dim ones repeat history

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
  51. Re:blame social media by lgw · · Score: 2

    Trump is the most pro-Israel president we've had in quite some time. Of course that sparks reaction.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  52. Re:Real news is hosting provider kicking them off by q4Fry · · Score: 2

    ... NPC style agreement...

    Off-topic here: What the hell is NPC in this context? I always read it as "Non-player character," which probably tells you something about me. It is a little fun to imagine people sending you off on a quest to "Collect 5 codes of conduct" or what have you.