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Comment by Asparagirl | Hacker News Reader

Good. Now for Stripe. I already called their customer support this morning and told them I'd pull my organization's account unless they dropped Gab. I'm sure I'm not the only customer who has. They enable payments processing for Gab, which means that they also profit from Gab. They make money off the alt-right. They choose to make money off the alt-right.

You want protests in front of your office, Stripe, raising hell about the blood money you take? We can surely arrange that. For every TechBro being oh-so-concerned about "financial censorship, oh noes!": you ain't seen nothing yet.

not doing business with white supremacist profiteers > nice API and documentation

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I notice your organization (reclaimtherecords.org from your profile) uses Cloudflare, which also serves Gab. Are you going to threaten to leave them, too?

Hmmm, that's a good point. But we don't pay Cloudflare, we're on their free plan, so you could say we're actually a drain on their system rather than a customer. In contrast, we pay Stripe quite a bit, so threatening to leave them actually hits them in their wallet.

I signed us up for a Braintree account today as soon as I heard the PayPal news (PayPal now owns Braintree). We can take our business elsewhere -- and so can lots of other organizations and companies.

What if someone from the "alt-right" donated to your organization? You should probably start screening donors.

Gab is a free speech platform.

Free speech != white supremacist

It's possible to focus on free speech without encouraging white supremacists.

That doesn't seem to be Gab's goal.

How, I would love to hear solutions.

People like asparagirl will not join a free speech platform because her speech isn't really restricted from the non-free speech platforms. The people who have the biggest incentive to join these platforms are the one which are kicked out from all the other networks.

The ACLU seems like a worthwhile cause for actual advocates of free speech. And no, they don't only advocate for liberal causes. Campaign finance laws would be one area of policy where they have starkly different ideas than the political left.

As to these platforms: the whole argument is essentially build on this slippery-slope fallacy that banning vile racism, anti-semitism, etc. inexorably leads more restrictions on speech, and (eventually) the end democracy.

That's demonstrably false: there have always been restrictions on speech (such as obscenity laws), so there really isn't some bright red line that would be crossed, and these restrictions have also not lead to the end of free speech.

There are restrictions on almost any other activity if you expand your definitions to the extremes: the right of peaceful assembly is just as central to democracy, but nobody is bothered by the restriction that you can't hold your protest in the Oval Office.

So maybe these people should consider being kicked out of all these platforms not as an incentive to change platforms, but to rather think about how far they must have removed themselves from society. Seriously: if the people who think youtube comments are worth it ban you, it's time to start listening more and posting less.

I am very confused by your response, it seems like you're responding to what you think I said rather than what I actually said.

I am saying that if you create a product NEW, and hope to lure away people from product OLD, the only people who will migrate to the new platform are the people who have problem with product OLD which product NEW solves for them.

In case of the 'free speech' platforms, the group which has the problem and need of 'free speech' are the ones which are restricted in their speech.

And oddly enough the ones that get kicked out from other networks are the ones repeatedly targeted by people like Asparagirl. Their mission is quite obviously to completely erase anyone who doesn't share their same set of hates and out-groups from the internet: first, get them kicked off the big platforms, then try to choke off payment processing to smaller platforms.

Then they sit back and wonder how they can get those people at the ballot box too.

I don't know how this ends, but people like Asparagirl are clearly the sort of people Trump means when he talks about mobs. They will presumably never stop trying to shut down anyone she identifies as an enemy. This probably ends with some sort of legislative solution, in the long run.

Free speech is free speech. Even if you don't like what people say (or perhaps specially when you don't like it).

Alt-right conspiracy nuts != free speech.

How do you figure?

They’re different concepts, and disassociating with alt-right conspiracy nutcases is unrelated to free speech.

Banning alt-right conspiracy theory nutcases might just be related to free speech, however. And that's what most people seem to want Gab to do.

Yes, it's related to free speech, but I just want to point out that it has nothing to do with the US first amendment protections and likely has nothing to do with free speech laws in other areas as well, since those only restrict what government can do.

Choosing to disassociate from speech you don't like is yet another use of free speech, as is banning groups that use speech you don't like from your private platform.

So yeah, gab, Reddit, and Facebook are exercising their right to free speech.

I think you may be confusing “government infringement upon free speech rights” and the much wider concept of “free speech” in general, which is the ability, provided by common spaces and a soap box, or printing presses, and now by the internet, that permits someone with something to say to reach their audience who wishes to hear them.

There are a lot more people who have the ability to shut down a website, regardless of hosting company choice, than have the ability to shut down dissemination of a flyer or stop a speaker from speaking.

Yes, a TOS is freedom of association. That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing for society when unpopular speech gets banned from every web host they use, in order.

It’s an interesting question. Speech on the internet does seem to depend on the cooperation of big companies in a way that isn’t seen in other realms.

However, this seems to be drifting off topic. Gab’s web site didn’t get shut down, they just got cut off by a payment processor.

Their web site is indeed being shut down. :/ I hate Gab and all the nazis they host, but I am troubled about the difficulty in hosting the wider category of unpopular speech.

Well now the web site’s getting kicked off Joyent. And, you know, I want the right to choose who I host and who I don’t host if I ran a hosting company. And I’d be happy to host conspiracy theorying white nationalists, but I wouldn’t want to have to transmit child porn wedding cake payments if that were legal.

Gab may have a large number of alt-right conspiracy nuts, but they also have a lot of users who rightfully mock those nutty people. It really is a platform for pure free speech. Unfortunately, its polarization was inevitable as Twitter and Reddit started cracking down on far-right users, leaving only pure free speech websites left for the crazies. But suggesting the website itself condones violence or sympathizes with neo-Nazis isn't accurate.

Per tptacek's comments, the founder does appear to be an asshole, but that doesn't make him a neo-Nazi.

suggesting the website itself condones violence or sympathizes with neo-Nazis isn't accurate.

It's pretty accurate. They sound like Nazis. Take a look at

https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1056332670513233920

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1056266704148262912

I like this one best of all.

https://mobile.twitter.com/getongab/status/10565833547645214...

Ok, I didn't see these. You're right. Whoever controls that Twitter account is definitely very alt-right and possibly sympathizes with Nazis. I take back what I said.

Gab controls Gab's Twitter account. Twitter even gave them a blue checkmark! This isn't a recent thing; there are examples going back for awhile.

"I take back what I said." They tapped out, Citation!

Fuck Gab.

I don't know what "neo-Nazi" means to you, but if you'd like, we can refine our terminology and simply talk about "white supremacists and anti-Semites", at which point if will become very difficult for you to argue that the site doesn't "condone or sympathize with" those forces.

Does Stripe still process payments for Gab?

Apparently yes, based on several conversations with/from some of their leadership on Twitter today. Stripe did suspend them earlier this month, but that seems to have been temporary.

You are the reason why the Republicans will easily win the mid-terms as well as the 2020 reelection.

Ask Republicans whether they think private businesses should be able to reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

As much as people seem to hate PayPal this event might actually improve people's view of PayPal.

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