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Thank you for pointing out this blog post. I used NFS for many years but moved away a while ago for opportunistic reasons. However, after reading that post, I will make every effort to go back to them. "Freedom of speech" does not include hate speech or racist speech or any speech advocating against a group of people in my worldview, and I therefore agree 100% with NFS's stance.

All freedoms have limits, agreed to by reasonable people living in a reasonable society. Freedom of speech,is only 'controversial' to people who think limits on racist speech and the like is unreasonable.

Politically incorrect things get labelled "racist" now a days.

I, as a brown immigrant, get to criticize my home country all I want. I can call my home country corrupt, filthy, polluted, no regards for women rights, gay rights, caste system, rapes etc and be totally okay as long as the other person knows I am brown.

But suddenly if a white person or someone with the wrong "political affilitation" says the same things about my home country - they get labelled racist/xenophobic etc when they are speaking the truth.

If I made a website criticizing the corruption or filth or disregard for women or gay rights in my home country, NFS would take down my site - probably until I dox myself and show that it's a brown person running it - then it might become okay.

Political correctness such as this is exactly why the good people in my home country suffer the most. All so that someone in western world or the elite class in my home country can feel morally superior.

And I hate to bring my skin color in a debate but that's the only way to explain how political correctness is making things worse for good people back home.

White people are allowed to criticize the country in the exact same way here too. That’s not the type of stuff we are talking about.

> Political correctness such as this is exactly why the good people in my home country suffer the most.

I think it might be income inequality that makes the good people in your home country suffer the most - but I don't want to assert this because I'm (probably) not from your home country and don't know it quite like you do.

> I, as a brown immigrant, get to criticize my home country all I want.

Countries are not people, so criticism of a country cannot be racist (it's a category error).

Criticism of people of a country could be racist, but that's a different thing.

Criticism of the government/establishment of a country could be racist, but again that's a different thing.

Unfortunately these three separate things often get conflated and mixed up.

> countries are not people, so criticism of a country cannot be racist

Then how do you explain those reactions? [1] "I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but racist".

GP is totally right, nowadays any remote criticism -- and I'm speaking of the factual ones, not the injurious kind mentioned before -- of a foreign country (except China, Russia and NK for some reason) by white people is labeled racist. And of course, people of color are allowed to speak anything they want against European countries, and spread hate speech mostly without any issue (granted one rapper is condamned from time to time... for instance Nick Conrad after singing "hang the whites" [2]).

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/12/politics/trump-shithole-c...

[2] https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/ces-rappeurs-qui-defr...

A bit of context,

> "I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but racist," Colville said, responding to reporters at a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland. "You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as 'shitholes' whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome."

You missed that second part.

Looks like they’re talking about dismissing the people of those countries just because they are from, what they consider, a ‘shithole’ country/continent.

I did not specify who was conflating/mixing-up these distinct topics, or for what purpose. Racists often conflate countries/governments/populations, which is what Trump did with his "shithole countries" comments. He was referring to the people of those countries, i.e. the pool which immigrants would be members of (or, in his delusional mind, "sent by").

Note that if a country itself were a 'shithole', say for example a war-torn region like Yemen or Syria, that would only help the case for immigrants from that country; since the place they're fleeing is so bad.

> GP is totally right, nowadays any remote criticism -- and I'm speaking of the factual ones, not the injurious kind mentioned before -- of a foreign country (except China, Russia and NK for some reason) by white people is labeled racist.

Citations and examples please (also for the China/Russia/NK criticism; I suspect you're also conflating criticism-of-government/people with criticism-of-country)

> And of course, people of color are allowed to speak anything they want against European countries

What complete and utter total bollocks. Have you never encountered the thought-terminating cliche of "if you don't like it then leave", or its more overtly-racist cousin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_back_to_where_you_came_from ?

> and spread hate speech mostly without any issue

I find this use of the word "mostly" to be mostly questionable.

> Countries are not people, so criticism of a country cannot be racist (it's a category error).

Technically true, but practically useless. What is a country other than a group of people? Almost all criticism of a country will inevitably be about people in it or their actions - with very few exceptions (ex. complaints about the geography, weather, etc).

It’s far from useless and even a cursory review will find many examples of criticism which says things about the people of a country being mislead, poorly served, etc. which is different from racist claims that they are innately disposed to be that way. The key part is acknowledging the fundamental humanity of the people you’re talking about – they may make choices we dislike but that’s a decision, not genetics.

For example, I grew up in California and heard a lot about Mexico’s problems — some people would repeat racist claims about Mexicans being lazy (despite them universally hiring undocumented workers for cheap labor) or dishonest, but others would correctly identify problems like corruption being due to things like the huge amounts of money from the U.S. drug trade ensuring that cartels regularly killed off non-corrupt officials, where the system didn’t work well for most people who didn’t have a choice and everyone involved having acting on the options available to them rather than some innate determinism or moral weakness.

> What is a country other than a group of people?

Which group of people? The population? The government? These can be very different (just ask Myanmar)

You raise a point that seems to come up increasingly frequently, and it's a good one because it highlights some complexities in the issues.

I don't think you're entirely wrong, but I don't believe you're entirely "correct" either :)

Some brown people can be racist, including towards other brown people, and including those of the same heritage. (I'm not saying that you are.)

Some subset of comments by racists may be categorically true. For example, a racist might decry the appalling rapes and murders that have been reported from India, saying violence towards women in India is a serious and pressing issue.

Isolated statements don't necessarily reveal motivations or underpinning beliefs. A blog post might report "truth", but that might be selective, framed and phrased in certain ways, and so on. So a hosting service necessarily needs to make a judgement call regarding acceptable content, and sometimes this will require looking beyond the content itself to discern motivations.

The motivations of a writer or broadcaster are key. If someone is writing about corruption and endemic violence in a foreign land, why are they doing this? Is it to call attention to the issue so it might be addressed and fixed? Or is it to build a wall?

For what it's worth, I doubt NFS would ban you from writing about the issues you've raised, provided they were constructive. Yes, that's a judgement call, and I think that's inevitable.

The issue of white allies (or cis-gendered, or whatever other area is concerned) is tricky, and frankly I think society is going through adolescence with this. Lots of outrage, lots of polarisation, and this is a shame and unhelpful. I agree that rejection of your allies by authorities that haven't attempted to understand the details is actively undermining, even if it's done with apparently good intentions. Personally, I think this sort of thing happens through fear of attracting outrage, misunderstanding the problem, wanting a simple answer to complex problems, pressure to act quickly and show decisiveness, and so on. Unfortunately this stuff is complicated and complex, and requires care and attention.

Personally I feel that the underpinning issues here are driven by polarisation, and this is what needs to addressed. Anyone who's writing to encourage collaborative solutions to grievous problems is unlikely to be banned by any hosting provider worth its salt. The sort of provider banning such content isn't contributing to a happier world, so should be avoided.

This is a straw man, legitimate criticism isn't racist and no one says it is.

If your idea of criticism is something like using a slur or stereotypes to make an argument then it is not politically correct.

What's the criticism you want to give but feel like you can't?

> legitimate criticism isn't racist and no one says it is

Free speech means freedom to express “illegitimate” views, “the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered”. No one has reached a universal agreement on what “legitimate” criticism is. Of course there are often prevailing societal opinions, but those change with the society. Eg. the Federalist Papers were largely written by someone who was literally labeled “illegitimate” by society at his time (and were full of slurs, stereotypes, etc.¹). Someone who got killed in a duel — the meaning of civility changes with the civilization. IMO ours is at a fairly high point at the moment (in part because of the value placed on tolerance for differing values), but it’s only a matter of time before it inevitably collapses much like the Greek and Roman ones before it (likely in part because of intolerance for free expression).

¹Eg. stereotyping the Republics of Greece and Italy as “petty” and slurring opponents as “advocates of despotism”. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Federalist_(Dawson)/9

>> "Freedom of speech" does not include hate speech or racist speech or any speech advocating against a group of people

Freedom of speech includes all those things.

>All freedoms have limits, agreed to by reasonable people living in a reasonable society.

That's a deeply flawed stance. The meaning of "reasonable person" changes so often as to be able to mean anything.

Neither you, nor GP knows what kind of speech exactly they were referring to. You're basing your decision on what you think they mean.

Thanks for sharing their post.

As the saying goes there's a difference between hate speech and speech that you hate. It seems like the line between the two is getting murkier everyday with people labeling things that hurt their feelings as micro-aggressions which are a form of "violence" to some people.

I prefer not to support businesses that anoint themselves arbiters of morality.

There's a difference between "freely expressing your ideas" and eg. plotting a vigilante kidnapping.

The former should be protected, the latter should be reported to the police.

A lot of the people who say they want free speech actually have some kind of anarchist fantasy where they can do whatever they want without consequences.

It seems like you care about free speech, not anarchism, so I'm not sure why the blog post offends you so much?

As I understood it, the blog post just makes it clear that "free speech" to them does not mean "lawless place where you can hide from the police".

Nowhere in the blog post does it say that they will only allow content or opinions that they agree with.

Why are we letting tech companies become self appointed judge and jury, often forced to do so by online mobs? There's a full legal system to take care of those who actually incite violence/plot kidnapping etc. Nobody is talking about defending them.

You’re talking about forcing a company like nfshost to help them in their illegal and/or immoral endeavors? Companies have a right to fire customers they don’t like, with a few very well-specified exceptions. You’re trying to take away that right?

Well they're not really a judge and jury, they're reporting you to the police who involve the judge and jury. It's not like the web host is sending anyone to jail. They're just refusing to business with crappy people, which is something all business get to do.

The legal system requires companies to do so, not online mobs.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it but that blogpost doesn't sound like it's about anarchism or illegal content to me, it's sounds more like them justifying shutting down "problematic" content (like what happened with Gab or Parler). They also have a paragraph towards the end about how they don't want to host "racists".

Yea, this is where my line is. I absolutely believe in full free speech. However, i do not believe free speech is the same as a broadcast (televised, viral, etc).

Yes, it's muddy water, but so is everything. There's nuance in threatening to kill someone. However i think we're in a new age, and we need to analyze where free speech changes into coordinated/group-think hysteria.

Which isn't to say that we should tightly control coordinated communication. Rather it's just that i think the two are different, and i think the modern age requires us to recognize that and discuss it.

We're in the age of misinformation. And a nutter yelling on a street corner is one thing, but giving him a TV Show in Prime Time is another. The damage he can do on a street corner? Minimal. The damage when broadcast to the world? That is the concern to me.

It's interesting how free speech is being interpreted and abused for hate speech so often. This isn't as much of a thing in German speaking areas, where it is called freie Meinungsäußerung.

Frei ... Free Meinung ... Opinion Äußerung ... Utterance

It's the freedom of voicing opinions, not any speech even if it incentivises hate crime.

    After reading this, I made the decision to move my hosting elsewhere.

After reading this, I made the decision to use them next time I need a static web host, which is hopefully soon.

Thanks.

That blog post was why I decided to not use them too. Specifically their line about

> "and we have no interest in living in a sea of mayonnaise."

What is that even supposed to mean?? Who refers to people as "mayonnaise"?? While claiming to be against racism??

>Who refers to people as "mayonnaise"??

Racist people I'd guess

I read it as a succinct and derisive dismissal of white supremacist beliefs, particularly racial purity.

>racial purity

Not to be confused with the antiracist belief that people shouldn't date outside their race bacause... it's colonialism?

> Who refers to people as "mayonnaise"??

Self-hating white liberals.

This reductionism seems like identity politics at its worst. It sounds like you're saying that anyone who identifies as white (regardless of how arbitrary this race is) must avoid using a term you find disrespectful to describe their race, and doing otherwise means that they are hating themselves?

The post would have been just as effective without that oddly phrased phrase. It is a strange jab at "whiteness" which, I think, reveals the general attitude of the people running the company. Personally I think they should remove that sentence. It isn't a good look.

Funnily enough, arbiters of hate speech are usually quite racist against other minorities but are able to find very nice excuses for themselves and their circle.

Well it did say 'nearly' in the name!

Your comment is exceedingly political. It’s unfortunate you mistakenly feel you are politically neutral and that you represent “actual” free speech, whereas companies who don’t choose to render services to insurrection-plotting fascists and racists apparently only practice “convenient” free speech.

I hope you can step back and evaluate the mistake in your perspective. Number one, you are demonstrating that you care more for politics than for free speech (let alone the fact that your viewpoint literally leads to people being harmed in preventable ways where the prevention methods don’t threaten free speech). Number two, you are trying to define the conversation in a way where you are neutral politically and merely hold up an ideal principle, but that’s very clearly false to huge degree and you’re not admitting the political bias and blinders you are yourself bringing into it.