Why do you host offensive content?

> Christchurch. Charlottesville. Numerous terrorists have indicated very clearly that they were radicalized online. Why the fuck is it somehow your responsibility to provide these people a platform to spread their poison?

People can also be radicalized in person. Rallies, meetings, one-on-one conversations.

Does that mean we have to police everyone's personal lives and invade their privacy?

If "progressives" aren't visiting the website or doing anything to speak out against the website and it's content, it must not be important enough for them to warrant doing it.

Also, it's not a pitiful justification. It's a really good business move on their part. I assume NFS has seen in the past that larger webhosts don't/won't allow this type of content on their platform and are removing it because it's easier for their legal team/marketing/PR/etc.

NFS has filled the hole saying "hey, we'll support your right to free speech, even if you're offensive as all hell. We're just letting everyone know (including you) that we're donating all of the profits plus some to charities that actively fight against this type of culture since we don't agree with it."

They get good PR, they get the "woe is me, we're beaten and downtrodden from censorship" customers that keep getting removed from other platforms, and they can still be on their moral/ethical high horse by donating the proceeds to charity. NFS shouldn't be responsible for who goes to their website or the content on it. NFS's job is to host websites, not police them.

I admit I was playing devil's advocate, but I appreciate the good faith response.

I genuinely do have trouble unifying my instinct that nazi propaganda, for example, should be censored, against my understanding that what constitutes "solicitation to commit crimes" is relative to what a society considers "good" or "bad," which is (somewhat) arbitrary.

Take your list as an example. Any action that is damaging to the State could be considered Criminal - perhaps something as simple as developing good cryptography, for example. Some things are crimes that shouldn't be - smoking marijuana, an example. Simply saying "solicitations to commit crimes should be censored" thus doesn't jive with me.

> If you have to resort to extreme examples, then it shows the weakness of your position

What is extreme about them? An example of an extreme would be "child porn" or "your credit card number" or "the password to your email". The examples I listed are pretty mundane and actually quite common. Either way, you haven't actually explained why any of the examples I listed would be "bad".

> Those examples are mostly illegal

None of those examples are illegal except the naked photos and not even that in all states (but most, and not even just "naked photos" in and of themselves necessarily, i.e. naked photos in the context of "revenge porn"). But even if they were, so what? If it's illegal does that mean it's not censorship to remove it?

> If Free Speech applies to the Internet, then it means precisely that everyone has to agree to let everything appear on the Internet

This is obviously wrong. Based on that logic you should never be able to delete a comment from your personal blog because you're censoring the critics.

>The idea that good ideas will win, and that common sense and rationality will take the day, are not really supported by what we see around the net. Instead the greater internet fuckwad theorem holds more true, and the spread of vile, violent ideologies is enabled.

The anti-vax movement and climate change deniers are better examples of this than Nazis and similar shitheads, IMO. There's easily accessible, scientifically sound evidence that both these groups are completely wrong. It's not at all open to debate. If the "free marketplace of ideas" worked then these groups would have disappeared long ago, yet the former group has led to almost ten thousand preventable deaths and the latter may result in far more. Maybe the truth will eventually reign supreme and both groups will become a footnote in history, but there are real consequences in letting groups like these spread their views online.

There's a good Contrapoints video on the limits of free speech, which you will probably enjoy (NSFW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBUuBd5VRbY

Violence is one solution to a given problem. Sometimes problems are worse than violence needed to fix them. Ideally a non violent solution is found instead (changing system from within, peaceful activism, etc). But non-violent solutions are only viable if speech is unrestricted. You have to convince enough people that things need change for society to flip on the issue and eventually fix it. By keeping speech free you are preserving the option. Otherwise you are left with 2 choices: violence or status quo.

Free speech is a tool for reducing need for violence. That's why direct incitement to violence is usually not protected -- it goes against the whole point.

If you want a tech solution to misleading speech and outright lies though, then mandate all publications of debunked speech to publish links to rebuttals, without having to remove original content.

"Those Three Shocking Ways Vaccines Cause Mice Tails To Fall Off Will Shock You!!! [Five Factual Claims This Article Gets Wrong ]"