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Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

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Re: Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

#71

Post by mychael »

jrs95 wrote: post #62
mychael wrote: post #16

I don't visit Gab, but I will definitely be closing my Joyent account. If you're not a courageous and principled defender of free speech, you should get out of the cloud business.

You may as well stop using the internet entirely, there simply isn't anyone in this business that is the type of defender of free speech you're talking about. And if there was, toxic elements would gather there and then they'd most likely have other companies they depend on cut them off somewhere down the line.

Just because you can't think of any examples of businesses not cowering to censorship, doesn't mean that there are none.

Twitter has made lots of mistakes, but they've also stood on first principles many of times when it comes to free speech. Cloudflare is another great example.

Re: Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

#72

Post by toasterlovin »

walrus01 wrote: post #19

The irony of a bunch of Rand worshipping free market libertarians being outraged and indignant when another private business no longer wants to take their money.

FWIW, I don’t think classifying white supremacists as free market libertarians is accurate. There is a decidedly collectivist bent in white nationalism that is at odds with the individualistic nature of libertarianism.

Re: Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

#73

Post by cjhopman »

mychael wrote: post #16

I don't visit Gab, but I will definitely be closing my Joyent account. If you're not a courageous and principled defender of free speech, you should get out of the cloud business.

Usually when people make these statements, they don't actually mean it.

If Gab were strictly a child porn site, would it be okay if Joyent stopped serving them? If yes, then your absolutist statement isn't actually what you mean and it's just a question of where to draw the line. If not (which has yet to have been the case when someone initially stated such a trivial statement), then I disagree with you and maybe there's some interesting discussion to be had.

Re: Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

#74

Post by [deleted] »

syshum wrote: post #70
jbarciauskas wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are we setting the right precedent, because while we all likely agree that things like Daily Stormer and Gab are platforms for truly hateful people...are we emboldening them by driving them underground? Yes. No. I don't find the slippery slope argument compelling. As a society we can decide what is and isn't within the realm of reasonable debate and discourse. Whatever the lines are, the discussion of racial suprema…

The problem is ofcourse your entire comment is strawman akin to "think of the children" politicians use when attempting to pass bad policy. If back here in reality the "major platforms" only ever kicked off and censored "the discussion of racial supremacy and systematic oppression and elimination of others" then you might have a point, maybe. But in reality there is an on going attack against the expression of many m…

[deleted]

Re: Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

#75

Post by SwellJoe »

jnbiche wrote: post #40
jbarciauskas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no credible threat against white people as a group. Those who say this generally do so as a way to raise awareness of the very real threats posed by white supremacists, not as a real threat. Taken in context, the distinction is easy to make.

Oh, come on. As today's horrible event demonstrated, all it takes is one single unbalanced individual with a semi-automatic weapon, and the members of any group -- white, black, Asian, Latino, Jewish, Muslim -- are at risk. And writing about killing members of any group only services to rile up and incite those people among us who are predisposed to violence. And those people are of every color and nationality that e…

Why is there always an "all lives matter" person?

Re: Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

#76

Post by Inconel »

SwellJoe wrote: post #27
mohammedbin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're arguing a tangential point. Why is it okay to say - "kill all whites" and the platform let's you be but not okay for a user to say "kill jews" and the platform boots the user and yet gets booted itself.

That's not the conversation I'm having. Surely, you can see that a sustained effort to recruit for racist violence, and an ongoing celebration of racist violence, by people who have a history of racist violence, is not comparable to a joke about killing white people by someone who is not organizing to commit violence against white people or celebrating the death of or violence against innocent white people. The fact…

While I find statements like "kill all whites" to be hateful and unproductive, I'm certainly in agreement that such statements don't pose the same threat to whites as white supremacists ideologies pose to non-whites, largely based on the current power structures in the US and West. However I would caution you in your assumption that the same people who would "joke" about killing white people aren't also celebrating when death and violence is visited upon some innocent white person. From my experience there's certainly quite a bit of overlap between the two.

Re: Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

#77

Post by walrus01 »

partiallypro wrote: post #58

There is a lot of strawmanning when it comes to free speech. Virtually no one claims the 1st Amendment guarantees people a platform or that it applies to corporations. Yet, I see people clarifying that constantly...when no one is saying otherwise. Free speech as an American ideal, that's all people are really saying. Anyhow, Joyent has every right to shut down their hosting services to anyone they feel...and no one r…

If you want to host something really controversial, but not illegal on the internet, do as the largest adult websites/content providers have done, and become your own ISP. Put your own gear in colo at some major IX points, get an ASN and IP space, hire some network engineers who know bgp, etc. Buy transit from like 5 different top ranked (by CAIDA ASRANK) transit providers, and set up peering.

This is a great deal more resilient than relying on any one hosting provider.

Re: Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

#78

Post by Inconel »

jbarciauskas wrote: post #52
Inconel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-white person who is wholly unsympathetic to the ideas espoused by white supremacists, partly out of reasons of self preservation, making statements such as "kill all whites" doesn't seem like a particularly good method of raising awareness of the dangers posed by hateful and bigoted ideologies. Then again I don't spend much time on Twitter so maybe such statements are able to lead to constructive dialogue th…

I think we can argue tactics in good faith, while understanding that there is not actually a credible movement to eliminate white people. On the flip side, there are active and organized white supremacist groups advocating for the elimination of any number of minorities.

I'm in agreement that there isn't a credible movement to eliminate white people, but I still feel that if companies, and social media sites in particular, are going to have guidelines around acceptable speech on their platforms, they should probably be applied equally regardless of what groups they may target.

Re: Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

#79

Post by [deleted] »

pvg wrote: post #67
aldoushuxley001 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't even proven that Gab is a white supremacist site. It's not. That's simply a mudslinging accusation meant to unfairly defame a site, probably because it contains different opinions than your own.

You can easily find antisemitic tripe in Gab's official account. It's a site run by bigots for bigots that likes to pretend it's some neutral, principled free speech crusader. It's thoroughly, painfully obvious to any reasonable person that it's not - it's just a generic online septic tank.

[deleted]

Re: Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account

#80

Post by daxterspeed »

lgleason wrote: post #66

Irregardless of what you think of Gab etc.. Unless the platform is being used for illegal activity and or it is engaging in something that breaks the law these service providers can and should be treated like the phone company. In other words the phone company does not turn off your phone because you are a nazi, racist etc.. Also, and this is an important distinction, there has been no established link between the sh…

Setting up your own hosting provider (read: servers) might be a bit of a hassle, but it's nothing compared to setting up your own telephone network. Gab is free to purchase their own servers and provide the necessary facilities.
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