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Comment by jaclaz | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it queer that "right-wing extremists" are seemingly prohibited from expressing their own "political weird thinking"?

>Think of us as your friendly drunk (but responsibly so) straw person that takes the blame for your expressions. As long as you keep within the boundaries of reasonable law and you're not a right-wing extremist, we’re for promoting your freedom of speech, your political weird thinking, your kinky forums and whatever. Even Trump is welcome. Hell, he might even be a customer. We’ll never know. We might even be approved by him! Or not. We don’t really care.

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That line also struck me as odd. I feel like these guys maybe don't understand their customer base.

I have no need for this service, and would never register a business address to it for all the legal reasons being discussed in another thread on this topic, but I would have registered a private domain or two there anyway, just for the sake of supporting something I believe in.

But that sentence sunk it for me. If you're gonna offer an anonymous service to help promote freedom of speech, it can't be just the kind of speech you like. It's reasonable to say "nothing so illegal that we're gonna end up talking to three letter agencies about it", but beyond that you're either promoting freedom of expression or not, it's very much a binary thing.

I found this strange too. It sets a bad precedent. Neonazis are banned but the Black Bloc is OK? Does the Westboro Baptist Church fall under the umbrella of right-wing extremists? They mention reasonable law too. That seems to exclude child porn. What about libel? Copyright infringement? Pro-marijuana domains? Or domain usage that is pro-hard drugs?

> Copyright infringement?

This is one of Peter Sunde's projects, I wouldn't be too worried about that one.

You could always email them to find out.

I find it easy to understand; I would assume that the answers to your questions are yes, yes, no, no, no, likely depends on commercialization (i.e interest from governments; hardly even a policy decision).

I think so too. It's not freedom of speech if it's "you're free to say what you like as long as it doesn't bother me". It's also concerning that this service is the arbiter of what's moral and what's not in their domains.

When is 'freedom of speech' in practice not conditional?

These are merely conditions which many will find more favorable than existing alternatives.

You're right, but I prefer my conditions as open as possible...

As a dedicated left-wing not-at-all-extremist, I'd never support an organization that wants to muffle the voice of others.

This organization doesn't want to muffle the voice of others, in that they don't go out of their way to silence somebody.

I think it's okay for me to 'censor' people from my cooking blog network. It's not at all my obligation to channel the voices of those who don't know how to use slow cookers. They are inferior human beings, and I think of them worse than any cruel racial narrative ever uttered in the US.

That doesn't stop you from engaging in free speech. That doesn't stop you from creating your own cooking blog and discriminating against those who eat the wrong kind of sushi.

The fight over free speech ought to end at my mouth. I don't want a world where other people have ownership over my mouth, telling me how I didn't give equal speaking time to CNN.

Have you ever used Facebook, Google, Apple, HN, or The Government?

Well since Peter Sunde and his family has recieved death-threats from nazi and the majority of terrorist attacks and murders in europe is done by the nazis. I can understand and support this statement.

> and the majority of terrorist attacks and murders in europe is done by the nazis

What?

It's their service, they're bearing the weight of being your "straw person," they can do what they want. I see nothing wrong with them writing their terms of service to reflect their values, and conveying them it in a cheeky manner like this.

I don't think it's so weird, some other services have such stipulations. It's part of the idea of no-platforming, in which the provider of a service wants to minimise spreading of ideas (in this case far right ideas) by not affording people who hold such ideas a platform to speak on.

It can be quite effective to prevent spread of these ideas, and even if you disagree with this particular instance (I don't) most services do this to some degree. I do think it is strange though, that they say that they are "for promoting your freedom of speech" simultaneously. Their barring of right-wing extremists suggests that they don't care much for freedom of speech (there's nothing wrong with that, though).

Yep, but the whole point about anonimity on the net revolves directly or indirectly around freedom (of speech).

An anonimity service is provided to allow people to express their ideas (wrong as they might be) without fear of retaliation .

By - more or less - preventing "right wing extremists" to express their "weird" ideas they contradict the base premise.

This is not entirely different from some (still queer in my opinion) "free" software licenses, prohibiting the use of the software to (example) members of the US government or military, it is simply not "free" anymore when such clauses are given.

Here, as always happens when there is a discretionary choice involved, is determining what qualifies a "right wing extremist", and whether the ban applies to the person/member (and to his/her political ideas) or to the content, let's say that you are a "right wing extremist" that wants to put online a set of cooking recipes, should you be prevented from having a domain there? Or is it when in the recipe for some stew you make a not-funny reference to "kosher" meat being not suitable?

And who determines if that is only "not-funny" (maybe it is actually funny) or if it is a non-acceptable pro-Nazi hint?

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