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Comment by illiac_1962 | Hacker News Reader

illiac_1962

Suspending domain name registration is truly disturbing. I'm literally speechless and I feel like a line has been crossed. This is domain registration, an abstract service that routes requests based on a name. How did the policing of speech get to this level? I don't have words for the things I'm feeling right now. The actions of a mentally ill person has triggered full on censorship. This is entire situation is fucked up beyond words. We just need to man up and legally ban hate speech instead of beating around the bush and before we start quietly, effectively banning other forms of speech.

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It started when the domain for The Pirate Bay was seized. And the precedent that linking or providing a way for someone to search for illegal content is the same as hosting the illegal content. Internet companies have to now take an aggressively proactive approach to avoiding hosting, linking, or being associated with a domain or content provider that may become the target of a lawsuit.

Started there, and that's far worse too. It was government action and none of the objectionable content was actually on the site.

The policing of speech got to this level when the site owner expresses no responsibility for contributing to the murderous radicalization of its members.

Far worse content is seen in Twitter, and they keep their domain. How so.

edit: immediate downvoting with no response. Really? So isn't there abhorrent content divulgated by Twitter/Facebook/YouTube/etc? Are any of their domains threatened by it? Any of the downvoters, feel free to engage in discussion.

The difference is that the worst stuff you generally see on Twitter is the stuff that is highest-voted content on Gab.

The difference is Twitter is willing to remove the "far worse content" while Gab is not.

The shooter's content was scrubbed and gab notified the FBI once they were made aware of it. What else were they supposed to do?

Is there any chance they don't yet have the tools to police it? It's taken a fair amount of time and resources for other platforms to do it, to the point that YouTube/Twitter rely on users to do so.

And when threatened, they've done so:

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/gab-user-deletes-anti-semitic-...

Again, seems to me we're holding to different standards.

If you read interviews with Gab’s owner you will see there is no intention to mitigate the site’s extremism or radicalization of its members toward violence.

GoDaddy is completely in their right to do this. They are demanding Gab.com find another provider.

Yes, domain registration is an abstract concept. GoDaddy, on the other hand, is in no way, shape, or form abstract and as a corporation, has the rights to do this.

>The actions of a mentally ill person has triggered full on censorship

How do you know he was mentally ill? Lot of non-mentally ill people commit crimes. Were all the Nazis mentally ill? Was Hitler mentally ill?

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