Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account
twitter.com
twitter.com
Anyhow, Joyent has every right to shut down their hosting services to anyone they feel...and no one really says otherwise on that point either. The sticking point is, are we headed down the right path on this issue? 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?
Likewise, as cloud providers beginning to show too much discretion over content? Let's take it outside of politics and into copyright. What if AWS hosted a new video streaming service, and some corporation XYZ claimed a (false) copyright violation. Amazon has a large contract with corporation XYZ because of Prime Video and kicks the video services off of AWS with short notice. Would that be acceptable, essentially putting that company out of business? Sure, it would legally not be a problem but would it be a moral problem?
Back to politics. Let's say GCS hosted DailyCaller or something, and employees internally find out and force it off because they find it as morally outrageous as the pentagon contract. It sounds crazy, but it could totally get to that point.
That seems like a bit of a leap from where we are now, but with cloud providers starting to show more and more discretion of what they host, I don't rule out that we could slip our way to things like that happening. It also seems increasingly likely that the more politicized the major players become, the more likely political disagreements could effectively ruin alternative platforms.
Gab might rightfully deserve being kicked off, but we do need to tread carefully on what type of precedent we are setting going forward as things like this become normalized.
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 supremacy and systematic oppression and elimination of others seems like something we should all be able to agree is outside the bounds.
I would argue that it is possible that cracking down on public platforms them gives them a platform in and of itself that once did not exist. It's similar to a Streisand effect. People become even -more- radicalized because they feel "oppressed." It sort of reminds me of how the ATF raid on Waco unwittingly played into their cult's idea of the apocalypse and has since bred people like McVeigh.
THAT is the slippery slope.
This is a great deal more resilient than relying on any one hosting provider.
> If you're not a courageous and principled defender of free speech, you should get out of the cloud business.
> Gab might rightfully deserve being kicked off, but
> Free speech as an American ideal, that's
> all people are really saying.
> people who disagree with you about foreign policy
More seriously, the friction here is over which behaviors are beyond the pale. Personally, I would feel uncomfortable describing Nazi sympathizers as holding "different views." It's in the same bucket, for me, as people who torture small animals. That's not just a "different view" to me, it's "beyond the pale."
I would not like to meet someone for whom nothing at all is beyond the pale. Even libertarians will do some hand-waving to support state restrictions on rape, murder, etc. Their hand-waving is not so different from mine regarding free speech.
2. Even those libertarians would give murderers and rapists benefit of a court of law where they can explain themselves. Consider this video: https://youtu.be/NUqytjlHNIM
> Even those libertarians would give murderers and rapists benefit of a court of law where they can explain themselves.
> Isn’t viewing someone as “beyond the pale” such that they deserve summary punishment and/or execution dehumanizing?
Everyone on the left quotes Karl Popper these days, but it's worth noting that he only condoned intolerance against the intolerant in cases where it was the last resort. So if there's a movement gaining real popularity that threatens to replace your government with a dictatorship, it's a problem. If it's a few harmless cranks, society can ignore them.
> How is that different than the guy who tortured small animals because he views them as objects and not living things?
>The clip I linked is from a film which is one of the best-selling and most critically successful pieces of Americana.
This is true, but I would like to take issue with this scene in particular. The guy might not have been a Nazi sympathizer - he might have thought that the Soviet Union was far worse, and it was better not to have intervened.
>If the court had been less tolerant, they would have spared 6 millions Jews, 20 million Russians, and many others.
Yes, and the Soviet Union had already murdered 3-8 million people in the Ukraine famines before the war started. It's not easy to make moral calculations in foreign policy.
>how much obligation do we have to give a talking stick to a movement that condones torture for fun
There's no doubt that's disgusting, but I would put it to you in a different way: wouldn't you rather the "movement" be given the right to speak so that they can expose themselves as lunatics to the public? Violent (or peaceful) suppression magnifies the amount of potential sympathy they could gather in the public eye.
Who can precisely define the line between "beyond the pale" and "normal speech"? If you can't put it in words that can be written down and made law, then it's merely a matter of subjective opinion. Human history has taught us that suppression is used against all kinds of minorities, virtuous and otherwise. It's best to avoid it altogether, for fear of endangering human liberty.
> so that they can expose themselves as lunatics to the public?
Besides, it's not necessarily the case that there is any "correct answer." There have been societies that were extremely brutal. I read somewhere that ancient Mayans may have played soccer with human heads. I presume Mayans were generally content with that sort of society.
I happen to like the living in a liberal democracy, and I'll advocate for liberal democracy as long as there's breath in my lungs. That doesn't mean it's objectively better. It's just better to those who share my values. There are probably plenty of sound arguments for other systems under which I personally could not bear (or perhaps be allowed!) to live.
> suppression magnifies the amount of potential sympathy they could gather in the public eye.
It's tempting to think of humanity in terms of a narrative. The truth is, an asteroid could smash into the earth a year from now, and none of the human events we may feel are so inevitable today would come to pass.
I choose to not engage with sites like gab and voat, but I also vehemently defend their right to exist. Hosting providers, payment processors shouldn't discriminate except on the basis of the customer's ability to pay or illegal use of the platform. That doesn't mean they should be forced to serve those they don't agree with, but we as a culture should avoid companies that discriminate.
I saw posts in favor of PayPal's choice to refuse service to Gab, and honestly the whole thing made me want to use PayPal _less_. I don't appreciate censorship at all, though I respect people's right to censor.
Here's an HN discussion of Joyent ending lifetime hosting accounts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669
I also knew someone who was using BingoDisk and was left hanging when it was sold to another company.
- Have a neutral platform to facilitate discourse and mutual understanding. This is hard as it requires a largely informed populace.
- Complete segregation of groups having different opinions. This proves to be also hard because of incidents like this.
[1] https://paradite.com/2014/11/11/internet-polarized-society/
If you're not a courageous and principled defender of free speech, you should get out of the cloud business.
This however does not in anyway mean we believe others including large corporations should have the right to infringe upon said rights simply because "its a business"
There are many avenues one could seek to hold Joynet and others like them that proclaim to be open to all in their advertisements then reject many they disagree with. First and foremost would be Truth in Advertisement laws, Fraud, and other legal regulations which if they were properly enforced these companies would be clearly violating
No the "US Standard" of Free Speech is not just about government censorship, that is ignorant and naive view of what Free Speech is as a concept. Free Speech is concept where by a person is free to express themselves with out fear of censorship from either government or society at large. Free Speech today is under massive attack not by government in the US (yet) but by society at large.
//Edit for the record. I do not have nor do I plan to sign up for a Gab account (or twitter Gab's competitor) this is not about Gab as a service, I honestly could not care less about Gab it is about the precedent this sets when it comes to cloud and other internet infrastructure
I suggest you re-read that and point to where it says "society at large". The 1st Amendment is a restriction on the government, not on the people (except maybe the "peaceably" bit).
Freedom of speech exist beyond and outside of the 1st amendment, that fact that many people believe all free speech issues are limited only to the 1st amendment and government censorship is part of the massive problem we have in society at large
Straw man arguments like this really lower the quality of discussion.
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.
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.
This is exactly the same as if I told you to get off my porch.
Asking because people in these kinds of threads often seem to get suspiciously selective about when and why they decide to argue for stripping the right of free association -- and disassociation -- from others.
https://www.joyent.com/blog/samsung-acquires-joyent
This should be really interesting in days to come.
This may be or may not an angle of attack. I am speculating it would be.
From this perspective, a few observations. Joyent should be able to do business with whomever they want, period. So long as they don't commit fraud or infringe on the rights of others in so doing, then they are within their rights AND within their moral prerogative to not do business with Gab. Note also that there is no moral obligation of Joyent to give Gab a platform and they're not doing so is not censorship: Gab's right to free speech cannot rightfully compromise Joyent's right to speech or association. The only way Joyent would be in the wrong here is if they represented to Gab that their business was acceptable/welcome and they did so with fore-knowledge of that business; and even then they'd only be in the wrong due to the short notice of termination given and the resulting damage to Gab's business, not because of the change of heart. To suggest that those that think like me might think otherwise is to speak without the requisite education to comment or is simple intellectual dishonesty.
Regardless the degree to which you hate Rand and those that think like me, the ridiculous and ill-informed hyperbole that your message contains is unwarranted and leads to the very state of affairs in which we find ourselves. It doesn't matter toward which "team" you express unmitigated hate, it only matters that you and those that shout disparagements (regardless of which side they sit) advocate acting on raw emotion rather than reason... indulging in hate over disagreement and debate. The facts, the truth, and the legitimate back-and-forth of competing ideas tested by reason seems to matter not once that's done. It may play well to the home team, but it does nothing to advance the discussion in the more general sense.
Very sad.
Oh, and "Free speech" has nothing to do with forced hosting for assorted terribles. This is one of the most persistent and irritating misinterpretations of the first amendment. "Free speech" covers the government and the government alone.
> The People will defend freedom against tyranny as they always have and always will.
> God bless you all and God bless...
These comments are kind of partisan, no? A neutral company would just say “hey, we’re going to a new service because of X, back soon!”. Let the users cry “free speech, god bless”.
Hosting providers policing things like this is akin to vigilante justice vs letting it go through the legal system where there is actually due process for everybody, not just the people that the mod likes.
Sure, you don't need shared server space, just setup your own co-location facility. Until someone decides not to give you backhaul...
Or until someone decides they won't provide you with DNS. Or DDoS protection. Or Payment gateway. Or... or... or...
The reality we are facing is that some political opinions (even relatively benign ones) aren't allowed access to the same resources as others.
Gab is benign, they started based on people getting kicked off Twitter - because you don't need Twitter, just start your own. So they did. And now they find themselves being booted around, because of virtue signalling tech companies.
Read the official twitter profile (what they write and reteweet). And then tell me again that they're not explicitly reaching for the racist fringe.
The term "safe harbor" is typically used to refer to the provisions of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), not the Communications Decency Act you're discussing. OCILLA protects hosting and network providers from liability for copyright infringements committed by their customers, so long as they aren't aware of the infringement and don't directly benefit from it, and so long as they comply with the DMCA takedown process. This is, obviously, completely irrelevant to this situation.
The CDA actually does the exact opposite of what you are claiming here. It explicitly indemnifies service providers for blocking content, regardless of whether that content is constitutionally protected or not -- it reads in part:
> (2) Civil liability: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
> (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected […]
However, for everyone looking to host at Joyent: Beware they might cancel on you, too. And giving a company 2 days notice is far beyond comprehension. I wouldn't want to deal with this. I think it's really poor business standards.
Please try to actually understand the law before commenting on a legal position.