Gab.com goes down after GoDaddy threatens to pull domain | Hacker News Reader

Gab.com goes down after GoDaddy threatens to pull domain

theverge.com

Related: Gab had also posted a public statement [0] on Medium after the shooting in Pittsburgh.

However, Medium has now suspended Gab from their platform, so that the only way to read the statement is to use an archive link [1].

Hopefully the tech community learns from this about the dangers of using centralized external services for your public presence. If you find yourself under distributed political attack your voice will not make its way out there without being filtered by intermediary media outlets unless you own the full stack of your system from top to bottom.

[0] https://medium.com/@getongab/gab-com-statement-on-the-tree-o...

[1] http://archive.is/vysbL

Medium's actions seem particularly bizarre and insidious. I can understand why people might believe that Gab should be shut down, even though I disagree (not very strongly - Gab, like Voat with Reddit, was capable only of attracting the worst of Twitter). But Medium appears to believe that defending the existence of a free speech platform is so fundamentally indefensible that it should be impermissible!

It also disturbs me how complete and total these lockouts tend to be - if you get put under the wrong spotlight, it's clear how completely and totally the corporate sphere will coordinate to shut you down. You won't even have a platform to defend yourself on, and the situation is getting worse, not better. Short of laying your own fiber cables and creating your own Internet, there's nothing you can do. This makes me very uneasy.

I think the NPR interview with the founder of Gab is worth listening to. [1] It strikes me that just a few years ago, most people would have been in support of their position. The world has changed dramatically in just a few years.

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/29/661676103/after-synagogue-att...

Look through this thread, people have already decided that "free speech" is a dog whistle meaning that you are anti-semetic and support murder. It's a shame that people are willing to throw away their personal freedoms in exchange for fake civility.

No. You're confused.

There are anti-semetics hiding behind the 'free speech' banner, saying they have a right to try and convert more people to anti-semetism, and that nothing should stand in their way. It's not the other way around.

The version of Article 19 in the ICCPR amends the "freedom of expression" by stating that the exercise of these rights carries "special duties and responsibilities" and may "therefore be subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others" or "[f]or the protection of national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or morals".

https://web.archive.org/web/20080705115024/http://www2.ohchr...

If the government can censor free speech for the "public order" or for "morals", it isn't free speech. Those are the exact justifications tyrants have used for thousands of years to justify repression. Often they were even true: expressing yourself against a repressive or discriminatory regime can certainly be disruptive to the public order. It sounds like the ICCPR is meaningless fluff.

Okay so if I start a Youtube channel with the specific intent of convincing people they should kill your wife, it's all good?

Where do you draw the line?

There is a difference between someone convincing people about killing ALL wives vs a particular one.

The first one obviously needs medication, and will be ignored. The second one - depending on the specificity of the threat - a request to take the video down or a police visit.

You say it will be ignored, but here we are after the shooting. And gab was not willing to take it down. Nor did laws help.

I love the idea of free speech to explore the space of possible ideas even against the current flow. But now we have easy filter bubbles and are missing effective mechanism pushing towards consensus. I have a hard seeing how it will not end with violence when hate speech and other surreal propaganda doesn't have consequences. But yes, we haven't found a good solution for that, yet.

The situation here in germany is even more... "funny". Gov decided to ban hate-speech, but the decision per individual case isn't up to some judge, but has to be done by the platform or face fines. Yeah, so far I prefer the current US way of not doing business with assholes.

> You say it will be ignored, but here we are after the shooting. And gab was not willing to take it down. Nor did laws help.

What was the direct/specific threat that Gab refused to take down?

As an upper bound, I would certainly draw the line at shutting down all of Youtube on because of the presence of particular offensive videos.

I think the US's Brandenburg test is a good line. It is much narrower than some nebulous concept of the public order.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test

Are you offering the ICCPR as an example of what free speech should mean?

It has been signed by Thailand, where insulting the king is illegal; Pakistan, where blasphemy is illegal; and Israel, where boycotting the state is illegal.

The ICCPR's definition of "freedom of speech" allows almost any restriction the government desires.

If the article was worded differently, would it make any difference when there is no way of holding bad-faith regimes accountable?

There are strict limits on free speech in Germany, showing it can work as intended.

If anything, it shows that free speech can be abused by bigots on both sides.

Meh. Look at the official PR of gab, and tell me again they're solely concerned with free speech:

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1056266704148262912 https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384?...

are a good start, but there's lots more (even though they're currently deleting some of it).

They're trolling and not actually concerned with free speech. It's just a way to sow division for them.

One of those tweets satirically calls for "open borders for Israel".

What's wrong with pointing out that Israel is an ethnostate with tightly controlled immigration? It's a useful example for those advocating tighter immigration controls in the US.

Satire isn't trolling. I don't know the context in which Gab made that tweet but I've seen "open borders for Israel" in other contexts, where it was used to advocate adopting policies more like Israel's, not merely to sow division.

Comeon, you're cherry-picking. The comment about inferring a position on free-speech from Krassenstein's name clearly was a play on his name sounding Jewish. [EDIT: WRONG: And the retweet in the other link was just after the shooting (along with a lot of other trolling) - hardly the reaction of an organization horrified about what happened.]

EDIT: The tweet referenced above actually significantly earlier. They deleted many tweets, so it's a bit hard to figure out when what exactly happened.

The retweet by PopeHat was after the shooting, but the tweet from Gab was on August 9th.

Taking that out of context now and claiming it was a response to the shooting is dishonest.

Oh, if that's true, I'm sorry. They did tweet a lot of stuff around that time, but so much of it is deleted, that it's hard to remember exactly what is what. Edited post to note uncertainty.

Not that I think that makes the post any more acceptable.

Edit: leereeves was/is right.

It's one of the tweets in the second link as well, where you can see the date.

How is this an issue of free speech? Im not aware medium said they will host anyone

> Hopefully the tech community learns from this about the dangers of using centralized external services for your public presence.

Which means... what? Put your stuff on the dark web? Because if you host your own blog - GoDaddy can shut you down. Use an ISP that doesn't do anything? The domain name can be shut down. The internet is full of centralized services.

I don't know Gab. But if they did something illegal, then the police should shutdown the service. Of course the hoster, Domain service or PayPal is free to choose there customer. But in my opinion it's a bad thing to shut down just somebody because somebody don't like there nose or mind.

In future, this will be in a cashless world, even more problematic.

It's funny how those who cry hardest about being censored, when given a completely free space to express themselves, fill it to the brim with xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism.

As much as free speech advocates may decry this, it works. Alex Jones audience has suffered since popular private companies have terminated their relationship with him.

As much as I can't stand hate speech rants on social media. I would much rather have these people in plain sight, where their views can be somewhat challenged, rather than sentencing them to the dark echo-chamber corners of the internet for them to brew up storms. Just my two sense. It's hurtful to hear some extreme views, but ignoring and ostracizing these people is not equivalent to eliminating hate.

On the other hand, putting those views out there to be seen by others also has the effect of encouraging others to either subscribe to those viewpoints or to feel comfortable expressing those viewpoints as well. If it's allowed on SOCIAL_MEDIA_X, it's implicitly socially acceptable. If SOCIAL_MEDIA_X shuts it down, it sends a message that it's not socially acceptable.

The rate of cigarette smoking among young people has dropped dramatically over the past few decades. This isn't because of any change in scientific finding, we've known cigarettes are harmful and cause cancer for decades prior to that. What changed is we stopped advertising them on TV and putting cigarettes in kids cartoons and movies. We stopped letting people smoke them in restaurants/airplanes/schools/hospitals/etc. Cigarettes became uncool, became socially unacceptable.

In one generation, smoking went from the coolest thing you could do to one of the least cool things you could do. Because it was made abundantly clear that it wasn't socially acceptable anymore, and that message was sent by banning smoking from public view.

> In one generation, smoking went from the coolest thing you could do to one of the least cool things you could do...that message was sent by banning smoking from public view

Being made illegal or banned only makes things cooler. Marijuana is cool now despite being illegal.

Attitudes toward tobacco changed because of the power of advertising. There's a certain justice in that, since advertising made it popular in the first place.

No one said anything about illegal. A ban on smoking in restaurants is not the same thing as making smoking illegal. You can still walk into any gas station and buy cigarettes, you can smoke them in your house and your car and on the sidewalk and in public parks and even right in front of a police officer.

My university banned smoking on campus years back, and no one said "aww man smoking is so cool now that I can't do it on campus". It's just so inconvenient to smoke now that fewer people bother to do so. It's not cool to have to put on your coat and walk three blocks to go have a smoke every hour.

All of that applies equally to marijuana. Yet the public image of one is improving while the other is declining, for reasons other than your explanation.

To be socially unacceptable, society has to agree that it's unacceptable. But the process works both ways, and something that was socially unacceptable can also become socially acceptable over time. Right now it seems society is rejecting the notion that marijuana is unacceptable, which is leading to it become more socially acceptable and more legally accessible. The realities of the drug seem to have failed to live up to the picture painted by anti-marijuana marketing and so the marketing failed.

For a long time being homosexual was illegal and socially unacceptable, but that has changed over the years after the expected social harm from homosexuality had not been realized. It's the same process, just in reverse. Society is attempting to minimize harm to itself, whether that's rejecting ideas that are socially harmful or demanding the decriminalization of activities that are not socially harmful.

>> If SOCIAL_MEDIA_X shuts it down, it sends a message that it's not socially acceptable.

If you are the one being censored it sends the message that you are not welcome here, so you find another outlet. I hadn't hear of Gab until yesterday and my initial impression that it was a cool idea to have a social media platform that is pro free-speech, but obviously the community is very polarized and not very diverse in non-hate ideas (still don't have a complete picture of that site).

>>smoking went from the coolest thing you could do to one of the least cool things you could do

That's the power of marketing you're referring to. I was thinking about an individuals freedom to say what's on their mind. And if someone has super confused ideas, I would like for them to be able to express them so they can be addressed.

I would encourage you to go to reddit.com/r/the_donald and try to "address" their "super confused" ideas. Or find Alex Jones and see if your words can change his opinion. Or taking it to the farthest extremes imaginable, maybe even fly to Syria and see if you can talk some sense into ISIS. I'm sure their "super confused ideas" can be "addressed" if they're allowed to continue.

It's not censorship to shut down hate speech any more than it's censorship when `dang tells me I'm not allowed to call someone an idiot on Hacker News. It sets the tone for the conversation we're all having, and you know, after I got warned a few times I stopped calling people idiots because I know that kind of behavior doesn't fly here.

If people have to leave Twitter and go to Gab in order to spread their message of hate, that's fantastic. Because everyone knows Twitter, everyone uses Twitter, but no one's ever heard of Gab. And then when they visit Gab, they find it's full of hate speech and extreme opinions and never visit again. Bad business model for Gab, but a huge win for everyone else.

Obviously I don't think I'd be able to convert a member of ISIS. But I engage my trump-voter friends all the time. Most of the time, we both benefit from such discussions by gaining insight into each others' positions. At the very least you could gain perspective and understand how these distorted ideas originated, which helps prevent and address it in the future. Online censoring is the equivalent of ostracizing members of society for things they say. Sure you can do that, but at some point that becomes totalitarian.

Not calling someone an idiot, sets the tone of a conversation. You can have a civilized conversation that contains very twisted ideas. The same ideas can be expressed eloquently , i.e. eugenics, but that doesn't change what they are.

There is something very wrong with the conversation if Twitter says they want to fight hate speech and immediately people jump to the assumption that anyone who voted for President Trump will be censored.

If I say "hate speech" and Trump voters think I'm talking about them, that is a very big problem. Is there no nuance between "Trump voter" and "person who spreads hate speech"?

Somewhere in the minds of the people who are afraid of Twitter's hate speech rules, they themselves believe they are engaging in hate speech whether it's true or not. And since the US doesn't have any legal definition of hate speech, it's up to society to create and enforce its own rules. Twitter banning Alex Jones and Roger Stone is just society's way of saying that the message they're spreading is not acceptable in society.

Like you said, two opposing viewpoints can benefit from having a reasoned discussion. But hate speech is not a reasoned discussion, it's a one-way communication, generally against people who cannot defend themselves. Conservative or liberal viewpoints are one thing. Hate speech is something completely different. Again, if I say "hate speech" and you immediately think "Trump supporter", we're having two very different conversations.

At any rate I don't think either of us are getting anything productive from this conversation, so I'm going to back out. Have a nice day.

Allowing these people in plain sight without any pushback normalizes their views. And by allowing them to have a large platform they can freely spread their "free-from-facts" propaganda that will speak to a subset of people who are easily misled. Challenging them in public will not help when they're also convincing people that critics are the enemies that are out to destroy them.

Free speech is being abused, plain and simple.

I don't know that limiting free speech addresses such abuses.

Maybe the spread of "free-form-facts" propaganda is not as significant, as that there is a large subset of people who are easily misled. If you can't judge and think critically about the stuff you hear you're basically a house plant with complicated emotions.

Also how do you know what is propaganda and what is not if you've never been exposed to it?

"free speech" or "freedom of expression" was never without limits.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080705115024/http://www2.ohchr...

That's a strong point.

I have always thought of freedoms being limited by the effect they have on others' freedoms. You can't use your freedoms at the expense of someone else's freedom. E.g. you can't kill someone because you are restricting their right to live.

That being said, speech is kinda nuanced. Because, spoken word does not directly affect other freedoms. In extreme cases, like shouting "fire" in the theater or "bomb" in an airport, speech is limited because of the direct link between it and the result. But that's not really the case with propaganda, even if it is the goal to misled.

To conclude, we are victims to our own freedom of speech if it can be used against us. If someone can say outrageous things and there are people that hear it and don't immediately think "huh, that's crazy" and walk away that is a different problem. But I don't think the solution is telling him to go sit in the corner, I feel like this wrong and also polarizing.

The ICCPR allows Thailand to make insulting the king illegal, Pakistan to make blasphemy illegal, and Israel to ban boycotts.

It allows so many "certain restrictions" that the freedom effectively ceases to exist.

As I commented elsewhere:

If the article was worded differently, would it make any difference when there is no way of holding bad-faith regimes accountable?

There are strict limits on free speech in Germany, showing it can work as intended.

If anything, it shows that free speech can be abused by bigots on both sides.

No, it shows that restrictions on freedom of speech can be abused, and that abuse usually takes the form of banning opposition to the ruling party or their ideas.

And as I pointed out in my response to your other comment, Germany has been governed by the SPD/CDU coalition since 1974. Banning opposition works.

"Banning opposition works."

You're either misinterpreting facts or wilfully ignorant. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/17/germany-s-top-...

In Germany, they ban ideas.

https://qz.com/668713/a-new-arrest-shows-you-cant-criticize-...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/12...

Oh cmon, afaik §103 StGB was copied from older law, never used then quickly removed the linked issue occurred.

I'm not familiar with the second case, but feel confident in someone writing "Kill Pope Francis" on his car being not acceptable anymore.

> Germany has been governed by the SPD/CDU coalition since 1974

This is just ridiculous. Like saying the US is governed by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans.

Actually, there is a difference: Our system allows more than two parties to exist practically. This pushes extremists into their own parties... NPD (+ now AfD) for Nazis, Linke for Communists. This makes our two big parties actually represent common people. But yeah, they are closer to each other than I'd like. Hope SPD will find a more socialist platform. If not... well, they are already on the way to be replaced by Grünen. Something that could never under the US two party voting system.

The Democrats and Republicans are bitter opponents. They would never agree to form a coalition like that between the SPD and CDU.

Yes, the SPD and CDU are just two of Germany's many parties - two who have long cooperated in order to gain a majority. In the US, political groups that cooperate that closely join into a single party (like evangelicals and business leaders in the Republican party). So I think that if Germany had a two-party system, the SPD and CDU would form a single party and it would be more obvious that one party has ruled for 40 years.

Regarding the limits on free speech, I could list many more examples. There's a law banning public dancing on certain holidays, for example. Infamous censorship of movies and video games (many need a separate German edition). And so on...

No, if Germany would switch to the US voting system, those two parties would quickly absorb all others on their respective "sides". [0] is a 6min youtube video for those unaware why FPTP voting is bad. And just like in the US today, we'd end up with a vote for smaller government also be a vote against brown immigrants. Yeah, i prefer our current system.

Or any system were politicians have to pander to a large block of voters in the middle instead of to extremists.

Yes, the swastika is a touchy subject as a result of what happened under it. I have little problem with it being banned. I understand it can be annoying, especially when the cut version of the game only includes german audio. Thankfully the USK seems to ease up a bit on swastika usage recently.

I'm sure there are lots of cases of stupid law leading to stupid situations. Then press will report about it and the law gets improved... hopefully.

But you were claiming "In Germany, they ban ideas.". With they exception of rewriting ww2 history (as mentioned a touchy subject), what is an idea I'm not allowed to communicate a civil manner?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=39&v=s7tWHJfhiyo

I've given you quite a few examples, criticizing foreign leaders, blasphemy, blood and gore in games, even dancing on Good Friday. And that's without even touching on "hate speech" laws.

Can you call Mohammed a pedophile? The fact that that's not allowed in Austria was big news recently.

I've also heard that you can get fined for insulting a civil servant.

This discussion could go on a long time, but it seems clear that you don't have free speech in Germany. You're only allowed to say what the government permits.

> you can get fined for insulting a civil servant

Not really a thing according to wikipedia [0]. But doing so is dumb in the same way you shouldn't sue a lawyer... he is fighting on home turf.

> Can you call Mohammed a pedophile?

The recent Elon Musk case has shown you shouldn't just call someone that under US law as well [1]

I never claimed there is "free speech" in Germany, where "free speech" is defined being allowed to say the same or more than the united states government permits. Germany choose a more restrictive approach that will probably lead to better outcomes for society. That doesn't make your claim "In Germany, they ban ideas." less wrong.

It is kind of telling to me that my understand of "free speech" is the freedom to criticize (especially the government), while you apparently value the freedom to insult.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamtenbeleidigung

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michellefabio/2018/09/18/why-el...

It's not realistically possible to challenge them. If you do, you'll be brigaded for weeks (hopefully just online). And a lot of it is not exposed to anybody challenging their views, but largely just to people at least vulnerable to their views. Look at the twitter feed of journos, especially female jewish ones, that have tried to report anywhere close to something in that area.

De-platforming by very central actors (In order of my currently perceived descending danger: tld operators, credit card companies, payment processors, end-user dns registries, hosting platforms) is dangerous, but so is just letting entities like gab, the daily stormer etc continue largely unchallenged.

I challenge them all the time. I think it is a moral duty to monitor them and push back against them. Anonymously, of course, because I don't want one of them turning up at my front door with a chainsaw. In my experience, they are like the proverbial paper tiger, a lot more fragile in the face of pressure than you think, and they do fold. You will also find that there is a silent majority which also despises them. They are aware of this and it frightens them.

> ostracizing these people is not equivalent to eliminating hate

Eliminating hate is impossible, so that's not the goal.

It is possible to reduce the percentage of people who are consumed by attacking others with words, memes, threats and violence.

Isolating them reduces their reach and reduces their reproduction rate so that their numbers decrease.

Ostracizing works.

It works in what way? If I follow now you have the general populace with less hate and the group of ostracized - which are still members of the society - which probably hate more.

I guess I could see ostracism working if you removed them from society and kept them separate. Which doesn't work with the internet well.

I am exhausted from having these people be in constant sight over the last two years. Hate speech is a fire that feeds on emotions, and there seem to be a lot of feelings in the air these days.

So am I. Extremely tired of it all. But I don't think they should be banished.

They're not "banished". Stormfront is still on the Internet. Gab will be too, at least for a while. They're just going to have to work with companies that don't mind helping white supremacists.

I meant banished from the mainstream. If I understand it correctly Gab started in response to Twitter banning hate-speech. I feel like it's more difficult to radicalize out in the open than it is in an echo-chamber. And those places only have power when people are banned from the mainstream.

Obviously, these are companies that offer products and they can tailor them anyway they want. But I'm making this as a broader statement about our culture.

This is the story Gab likes to tell, but is anyone actually considering it critically? Twitter is full of out-and-proud white nationalists. Its AUP restricts violent and harassing hate speech, going out of its way to refine the definition to targeted harassment. Richard Spencer has an active Twitter account. For that matter, so does Gab itself, which until recently was also an out-and-proud white nationalist account. Gab has a blue checkmark!

What seems to have happened with Gab is that its founder got kicked out of YC for harassing batch-mates, got some publicity for that, and decided to use it to capitalize on the "alt-right". Is there any indication anywhere that Torba is doing anything more interesting than trying to sell neo-Nazis a monorail?

I agree that there's a very important distinction between private actors and the government, and don't like the contemporaneous trend in online discussion spaces of trying to erase that distinction.

That said, registrars act under contract with ICAAN which is at least quasi-governmental. It makes me a lot less comfortable for them exercise unguided discretion than, say, an ISP or app store.

>It's funny how [...]

It's an entirely mundane and predictable consequence when the free-speech branded platform is not already the market leader.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centrali...

'Popular private companies' have been put under severe pressure by political activist groups such as David Brock's Media Matters to 'deplatform' conservatives. The 'ending of relationships' has not necessarily been due to completely internal decisions of those private companies. Alex Jones is crazy, but you ought to have been more careful in your wording so as not to associate him with anti-Semitism. He is, in fact, a Jewish convert, married to a Jewish woman.

You're nut picking [1]. A right wing person that is insane is more likely to use a right wing platform.

We shouldn't blame Twitter for insane left wing people killing cops and we shouldn't blame Gab for this right wing attack.

[1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nutpicking

You also seem to be nut picking. I'm not really talking about the extreme ends that can be found on any platform. I am talking about the average discourse, which judging by the most popular posts is an appalling mix of the worst traits of humanity

> You also seem to be but picking.

That's not what nut picking is - see https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nutpicking. I've edited my comment above to add the same link for anyone else unfamiliar with the term.

> I am talking about the average discourse

That's a good argument - but I can't confirm, I'm not on gab, but as liberal and hence a free speech advocate I follow them on Twitter. Anyone have an archive link to the top posts on Gab?

Sorry, I meant literally picking nutcases on a platform rather than the literal sense. That didn't come across well!

I saw them yesterday when there was a previous thread here. There was one decrying "liberal insensitivity" just above two saying transexuals are mentally ill and "there are 21 genders, male, female and 19 types of [homosexual slur]".

Below that where typical memes about "rivers of filth" walking to the USA right now, etc.

I honestly don't think that represents an "appalling mix of the worst traits of humanity". I'll call people male or female based on their preference, but I'm not calling anyone 'xe' or any other pronouns, nor would I accept a biological man in a woman's change room with nothing more than self identification (as proposed in the UK). That's a pretty common view. Likewise, transexuality has only recently been declassified as mental illness by mainstream physchological groups.

Saying people who don't yet adopt the latest progressive outlook are full of hatred is a kind of hyperbole and often has the opposite effect than intended.

That said I appreciate how civil this discussion has been.

I also prefer to do that. I was not explicitly saying this was the worst trait, more the general biggotry, intolerance, racism, xenophobia, ignorance, sexism and anti-Semitism that seems to prevade the site. Examples of which I cannot link to, nor would I want to. However you can see a lot of the recent shooters posts are merely reposts of others, so it's not an isolated nutjob.

The example above was just pretty funny, as users (or bots) decry "libtard intolerance" shoulder to shoulder with some of the most intolerant views there are

This is where you are wrong my friend. Alex Jones audience has suffered on the popular private platforms that banned him. Please don't be under the delusion that he has lost any of his core followers.

The fact that you cannot see them on your platforms does not mean that he is out or lost followers. He simply moved to platforms that you do not visit or are not that much visible on the open internet. The internet does exist outside of FAANG.

It's a significant difference whether you can become an infowars listener by watching a video on youtube that has infowars content as the next suggested title, or whether you need to explicitly search it out.

Amen. There are many studies that show people were radicalized simply by browsing Youtube on autopilot.

It does definitely speed up the process. But that's about it. You can still share the actual content. A follower of Jones can share content and information on messaging applications to others, for example. Unless tech companies start scanning and retroactively deleting content from user's devices, there is no stopping to this.

Even then word of mouth is a very effective and time tested way. Silk Road was very active and successful despite any social media presence.

tl;dr any tech solution to this problem is only gonna end up blowing in everyone's faces. Find some other ways.

Also potentially relevant to the tech community here and anyone who works on currently-non-dominant social media platforms: politicians are already demanding that Gab be held criminally liable for the speech and actions of their users.

From Howard Dean [0]:

>You are a facilitator of neo nazis and other haters. You should be tried for being an accomplice to murder. You’re lucky shutting you down is all you get.

[0] https://twitter.com/GovHowardDean/status/1056710782342311938

> anyone who works on currently-non-dominant social media platforms

This is whitewashing what Gab is. Before they purged their twitter history in response to this crisis, Gab's Twitter account was more than happy to tweet and retweet anti-semitic vitriol and conspiracies themselves[1]. While Gab likes to claim they're an impartial social network and defenders of free speech, they are actively courting a specific, often anti-semitic audience on Twitter.

[1] https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1027671587825172480

Congress could repeal section 230, bring back the republication doctrine, and hold online platforms civilly liable when the underlying content it itself civilly actionable.

But even as far as civil law goes, the posters themselves probably don't have any obvious liability, and under criminal law it's hard to see how they'd fall under either of the relevant extremely narrow exceptions to the First Amendment (incitement or true threat).

Unless the (former) politicians saying these things can plausibly garner the support of 2/3rds of both houses of congress and 3/4 of the states I don't see why we should pay much attention to their "demands".

Gab can reasonably claim safe-harbor over this. If they are not censoring user’s posts, then they shouldn’t be held liable.

Go-Daddy is 100% within their rights to kick Gab off of their service. But silencing certain speech is not, in my opinion, a smart way to prevent atrocities like this in the future.

As summarized in [1], whether or not they should be held liable is still up for discussion. How the law works and how it should work are two different things, the latter being subject to continuous debate.

IMHO, we can at the same time hold that Gab should not be liable for the actions (arguably) resulting from these posts, but that they have a legal responsibility to identify, report, and remove imminent incitements to violence.

For instance: one could argue that profiting from such incitements constitutes support / endorsement of said incitements. This is similar in spirit to the "business activity" approach mentioned in the above Wired article. One could also argue that failing to identify and report such incitements is negligence.

Are these commonplace interpretations of these legal terms? Perhaps not, but there are some signs of a general recognition that perhaps this should change. "Disruption" and "technology" are not valid reasons to shirk civic responsibility; if you cannot provide your service responsibly, perhaps you shouldn't provide it. After all, we demand the same of engineers who build bridges and contractors who repair houses - because there is demonstrable harm to be done by failing to exercise responsibility. What we're rapidly discovering is that demonstrable harm is equally possible in a digital realm; it makes perfect sense for our understanding of legal responsibility to be updated accordingly.

Also IMHO, while it is impossible to "silence" extreme hate speech like this, we should certainly try. The harder it is for neo-Nazis and other militant racists to self-organize, the better. By giving their ilk any kind of easily-accessible platform, we make it that much easier for atrocities like this to be supported, normalized, organized, etc. Sure, we should be very careful as to what we tar with the "militant racist" brush - but there are some very, very, very clearcut examples.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2017/01/the-most-important-law-in-tech...

Conflating bridge building with public speech is not a good analogy: one is physics, the other chaos.

I do not like to see distasteful ideas put forth where i can see them, but what happens when our opinions on what is distasteful are in opposition?

It is Gabs right to, but not a responsibility to block content they find objectionable on their platform. And the first amendment clearly defines our RIGHT (note:defines, not gives) to say whatever we want, no matter how distasteful some may think it.

Edit for fumble fingers

Safe harbor only goes so far; free speech is a thing, yes, but inciting hate and violence is iirc still illegal (IANAL), and if they had gotten reports from it or they could reasonably know about that behaviour on their platform, they can be held liable.

As I interpreted it, that tweet only mentions actions, not speech.

For consideration: Stormfront exists solely to incite neo-Nazis to violence, and its members have murdered almost 100 people (pre-2014, that number is likely higher now)[1]. I wouldn't be shocked or constitutionally worried by a criminal case against them.

When you consider that Gab is really just Web 2.0 Stormfront with extra dogwhistles ("free speech" instead of "murder the Jews/Muslims"), it's not all that surprising that criminal charges are floated.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormfront_(website)

You know that site founder Don Black is an FBI informant, right? Sounds like the FBI needs to be investigated...

http://gab.ai/ has their full statement.

> We have been smeared by the mainstream media [...] for working with law enforcement to ensure that justice is served for the horrible atrocity committed in Pittsburgh

That's quite an interesting spin.

If you believe this statement is false, I would be most interested in understanding why you think so.

I wonder if you're being obtuse, but I'll try to explain anyway (I'm not parent commenter, but let's see if I can capture why they think this statement is spin.)

Gab claim they're being smeared for "defending free expression and individual liberty" AND "working with law enforcement".

People and organisations attempting to shut Gab down, and/or be critical of them, are assuredly not doing so because Gab are working with law enforcement.

That renders Gab's claim spin, as per parent commenter.

Your argument is mistaken on both counts. The smear and de-platform campaign began when Gab reported the details and profile of the synagogue murderer to law enforcement, providing them with "concrete evidence for a motive that they can use in a case to seek justice against this awful monster."

As for the 'people and organizations attempting to shut Gab down, or and/or be critical of them', they are 'assuredly not doing so' on the grounds Gab hosted violent anti-Semitic and extremist material. Otherwise they would express equal outrage at the violent anti-Semitic tweets from Louis Farrakhan, one example among many, who uses the exact same rhetoric as the Pittsburgh shooter. The 'mail bomber' Cesar Sayoc Jr. also made numerous violent threats on twitter. In neither case are there calls to shut Twitter down.

Because the criticism by mainstream media obviously isn't that they're cooperating with law-enforcement (if they are), but that they're very willing to host a lot of the awful stuff.

They're just trying to stoke the flame. Look at the stuff they're tweeting https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1056266704148262912 https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384?...

Details matter. They alerted law enforcement to Robert Bowers' profile before the police or the public knew about it, and certainly before criticism from the mainstream media. They could quite plausibly covered this up seeing Gab.com does not have a wide user base.

The profile had been discovered before they removed the contents. A few people / journos downloaded the contents. So no, they couldn't have covered this up.

The full profile had been given to law enforcement before its removal from public view. It was removed, as is routine for such profiles, in order to prevent copycat murders.

Do you really believe the reason they're being smeared is that they've cooperated with law enforcement?

Yes, I do. They discovered the murderer's profile and reached out to law enforcement with the details, including his chilling statement of intent. They could have silently deleted the profile and deflected criticism from themselves.

No, they couldn't have silently hidden everything. There are archival links that people could (and did, IIRC) post.

I am not aware of anything resembling 'archival links' other than screenshots of only the most recent posts, and verbal reports from others as to past posts.

archive.li/k63LE

One single page of vileness. No 'likes' to his posts, so not very popular. Notable is the anti-Trump sentiment. Not enough to confirm that this profile actually belonged to Robert Brower since names and profile pictures can be misappropriated.

Meanwhile, Gab was able to provide a complete profile of this individual and confirmation of his identity to the authorities.

> Meanwhile, Gab was able to provide a complete profile of this individual and confirmation of his identity to the authorities.

This repeatedly has been presented as an achievement. How on earth isn't that the absolute absolute basic thing? That ANY service is going to do?

Not just any service. For instance, Apple refused to assist the FBI in unlocking the iPhone belonging to one of the late prime suspects in the San Bernadino massacre. Wikileaks is refusing to co-operate with the CIA. Microsoft is resisting the FBIs demand to conduct so-called 'sneak and peek' searches on emails held on foreign servers.

Bowers also had profiles on Twitter and facebook which were probably just as nasty, but we are not hearing any calls to shut those services down.

> Not just any service. For instance, Apple refused to assist the FBI in unlocking the iPhone belonging to one of the late prime suspects in the San Bernadino massacre. Wikileaks is refusing to co-operate with the CIA. Microsoft is resisting the FBIs demand to conduct so-called 'sneak and peek' searches on emails held on foreign servers.

Oh, for crying out loud. These are absolutely apples and oranges. Apple refusing to unlock - wasn't about disclosing readily available data; in this case we're talking about public and payments data. Microsoft v US has been mooted by a change of the relevant laws. Wikileaks, wait, what?

> Bowers also had profiles on Twitter and facebook which were probably just as nasty, but we are not hearing any calls to shut those services down.

Yes. Their monitoring isn't great, but they do some. Not comparable.

You said:

>That ANY service is going to [provide the data on a suspect to law enforcement]?

Are the aforementioned not services?

>Apple refusing to unlock - wasn't about disclosing readily available data;

They refused to provide information required by the FBI to investigate an extremist attack. And there was data that was not readily available to the public in the Bowers' profile.

> Microsoft v US has been mooted by a change of the relevant laws

So what? It was still data that law enforcement wished to acquire in order to investigate criminal activity, in this case organized crime.

>Wikileaks, wait, what?

I am sure the authorities are very interested in who was responsible for leaking classified information. Something Wikileaks refuses to provide.

>Yes. Their monitoring isn't great, but they do some. Not comparable.

'Not comparable'? Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitic rants are directly 'comparable' for one, and he is not alone. Twitter's 'monitors' appear to be more concerned with influencing elections than removing extremist content.

Also, try searching Youtube for 'six gorillion' or 'six million lies'. Reporting the content that is revealed appears to be completely ineffective. Again, such 'censorship' as is done is largely concerned with influencing elections.

Is there a large enough presence of "non deplorables" on these sites to worry about unnecessary and unintended polarization due to these purges?

Your use of the phrase "non deplorables" suggests that polarization exists outside those sites.

Honestly: no. I'm a classical liberal and a long time Twitter user, and I intensely dislike Twitter's recent move to the left (Peter Fonda making death threats against the president, Sarah Jeong making a massive series of racist tweets, and Louis Farrakhan comparing Jewish people to termites, all still having Twitter accounts) but gab doesn't appeal since I don't want to be in a right wing vacuum either.

Currently Twitter with a long list of block words is about the best I can get.

As someone on the other side of that, I have to agree with your strategy; I'm on the far-left side of Twitter (about as left as it gets) and although my list of blocked words is short (usually to get rid of right-wing posts but liberal ones too sometimes), it's the best I can do without moving to a much smaller platform.

This is amazing free publicity for them. But what it really is is Torbas's exit. He'd never get acquired by SV so he's taking his donations and running.

GAB basically deplatformed themselves, they waded into the shooter debate by willingly handing over all their info to the Feds and then shouting about it and made such a stink that every company that deals with them had to distance themselves i.e 'deplatforming' them, there's zero reason for them to be offline now.

It's either publicity or an exit, or both.

"Gab is presently inaccessible through its website, with a message stating that the company is “under attack” and “working around the clock to get Gab.com back online” with a new provider. “We have been smeared by the mainstream media for defending free expression and individual liberty for all people and for working with law enforcement to ensure that justice is served for the horrible atrocity committed in Pittsburgh,” the statement reads."

What does this site do? Is it one of the ridiculous free speech sites?

The proper thing to do for Gab.com is to become their own domain registrar, and the same goes for the Daily Stormer and Alec Jones.

The hosting issues and the potential DOS attacks they face can be handled separately.

>The proper thing to do for Gab.com is to become their own domain registrar

...and payment processor & bank, and hosting provider, and internet access provider. Still could be blocked on DNS resolution level and IP routing level, so better build out alt-Internet while at it.

At some point it becomes more cost-efficient to skip the grind of fighting-or-building every service provider tier, and go lobby the legislators for some protections.

I, and many others, don't like Gab's speech, going by the 2nd hand accounts of it.

Which is exactly why it needs free speech protections from various pressure groups.

The fact is that service providers in the desire to control content are distorting what an internet connection actually is in the courts, especially when that corporate shill Ajit Pai insists on claiming that internet providers are information service providers rather than providers of dumb pipes who are supposed to link the customers wherever they want to go.

Blocking at the DNS level and routing level is technically a breach of the contract with the customer, because an internet service is simply an agreement to connect your equipment to an IP address, and the providers are in breach of contract when they do that.

>Blocking at the DNS level and routing level is technically a breach of the contract with the customer, (...)

A salient point. Throw in "False advertising", because they advertise providing providing Internet access but instead provide their own "walled garden internet" access.

I would add that it should also strip the ISPs of their safe harbor protections[1] if they choose to perform editorial function of the Internet's content, instead of being providers of dumb pipes. If they want to editorialize, sure, by all means, go for it - but play by the relevant legal rules.

How about this: when an ISP is found to have excercised editorial control of the internet, we penalize the ISP by stripping of save harbor protections[1] for 1 years into the future, and also deem them to have willingly rescinded the save harbor protections[1] during the whole period they were making editorial choices? Effectively making the editorializing ISPs liable for every single copyright infringement, libel, and any other relevant transgression that went on their platform while they were performing editorializing, and would be otherwise shielded from if they were proper dumb pipes.

Let the ISPs decide whethey they want editorial control, or safe harbor protections. No more Schrödinger's ISPs holding on to both privileges that are supposed to be mutually exclusive.

[1] DMCA 512, aka Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, and any other relevant.

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