Ask HN: Pro free speech domain registrars?
What are some great pro free speech registrars that independent journalists could use to help ensure their website is not taken down for being critical of Western governments?
The most "free speech" lip service sites (parler) ended up moving to "free speech" platforms for which their digital neighbors were quite literally stormfront.
Do you have real examples of western governments taking down independent journalists using free speech to speak truth to power? Because that would do a lot to win me over.
Are you looking for privacy or are you looking for non take-down-ability or are you looking to promote a message?
The government barely has to "silence" people because the governments work on behalf of money, for which media is also beholden. I think it's hard to get a message out without the support of billionaire owned media enterprises.
Belarus:
"Freedom of the press in Belarus remains extremely restricted. State-owned media are subordinated to the president and harassment and censorship of independent media are routine. The government subjects both independent and foreign media to systematic political intimidation, especially for reporting on the deteriorating economy and human rights abuses. Journalists are harassed and detained" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Belarus
Turkey(which is mix of eastern and western but is part of the EU so I think counts):
"Turkey has earned an accolade which holds no glory: according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, it is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world" https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/02/free-tur...
Turkey is more complicated. Given it's religious demographics, location, and politics, I have a hard time calling it west. I agree that as part of the EU and its political relevancy, turkey merits some consideration. I would be surprised if turkey could get a .com taken down or get an American extradited to them, but I'm open to being wrong about that.
I don't think OP is asking about being critical of Turkey. I think OP is asking about UK/AU/NZ/US/FR/DE/CA.
Assange and wikileaks seems like the only thing I can think of that might be relevant, and I am pretty on the fence about it. I would probably agree with someone who called wikileaks pro-fascist, yet at the same time the idea of wikileaks is liberal and respectable. Whistle-blowing is good, but whistle-blowing selectively to manipulate who is in power is definitely bad.
Australia tracked down and detained journalists for reporting on war crimes, with the explicit goal of seizing evidence, so it could not be further reported on. They raided their homes and all of their associates homes, too.
Further, they denied the capability for the whistleblower, David McBride, to call witnesses in his favor. His crime? Showing evidence that special forces were murdering children. One of these murderers bragged about shooting a father in the head and laughing as his children screamed and tried to put his brains back inside his skull. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NCPkoUekHQ)
And the US was planning to extrajudicially kill Assange by poisoning him.
And yes, freedom of speech and freedom of association do fundamentally include some aspect of "freedom from consequence". Otherwise it would be legal and ethically acceptable to fire people for joining a union or privately advocating for viewpoints not accepted by management. What you want is not freedom of speech, it's controlled speech.
Freedom of speech exists to protect good faith speech. Bad faith speech is protected as a consequence because it is hard/impossible to tell the difference between bad faith and good faith speech.
When speech is used in bad faith it erodes the right. Paradox of tolerance and all that. If intolerance is a winning strategy, then a strategy of intolerance will grow. Here is a game to understand a very deep political truth, maybe the political truth: https://ncase.me/trust/
It is like the second amendment. The second amendment literally says sometimes it's right for there to be "consequences." Is murder bad? Yeah. Do we have a constitutional right to sacrifice ourselves attempting to kill people who take away peoples freedoms? That is certainly the colloquial understanding. Extra judicial murder to ensure a free state is almost literally enshrined in our constitution. Guns represent violence and violence against the state can only be done extra juridically.
The second amendment is like freedom of speech. Our right to own weapons is being eroded because people are using weapons in bad faith, to shoot up schools.
So I am in favor of these rights, while against bad faith exercises of these rights. There is nuance to be understood and black and white views of freedom and rights ultimately hurt those freedoms. Someone who has a gun pointed at them is not free, yet we have a right to own guns which are a tool that can take away freedom. So are guns a right to take power, or are guns a right to prevent oppression? A gun can do both, yet our right is to own guns. We have a right to speech, but a responsibility to use it correctly, just like we have a right to guns, but a responsibility to use them correctly.
Do you see how it's a little more complicated than wanting controlled speech? I don't want controlled speech because that asserts a position the powerful are taking against the poweless. I want responsible speech just like I want responsible gun use. That's a cultural value and I want a cultural change promoted.
> Otherwise it would be legal and ethically acceptable to fire people for joining a union or privately advocating for viewpoints not accepted by management.
Isn't it already legal? Definitely in practice if not statute. Unions are not first and foremost a legal construct. If people think their unions are a legal construct then they have already failed. Unions are a power construct, they are a tool to exert force by collectivizing it. Laws regarding unions are ultimately a tool of oppression because the government works on behalf of the wealthy and so those laws ultimately represent wealthy interests. Unions are exactly like the 2nd amendment in that to exercise unionization to fight oppression, it must be done extra-judicially.
There was this discussion... some suggestion that iceland is one of the freer ones, and looking at wikipedia it seems some unpalatable websites were hosted there, which imo is the best way to see if a registrar is not going the take your stuff down.
I'd be cautious of following the linked post.
Njalla is good as long as your site is not openly racist and does not cater to racists. If I trust anyone to protect people from western overreach, it's the Pirate Bay founders.
EasyDNS has a history of being decent but has had an openly right wing slant for the last few years, which could translate into how they handle complaints for domains owned by the "other side". They successfully fought against British takedown requests and protected their client's info. I do not know if they would be legally empowered to fight against a US request.
NearlyFreeSpeech has hosted many controversial domains in the past and I've never seen them take one down, unless it was breaking the law. But they have posts about Jan 6th that indicate they will co-operate with law enforcmement if asked. Does this translate to legal but unwanted speech? I don't know.
easyDNS spokesbot here.
We take the same attitude toward our client domains regardless of political affiliation or orientation.
In the past we were the DNS provider for both BLM and Antifa, who brought in their fair share of takedown requests and are arguably left-of-centre.
When we were added as a defendant in a defamation suit because we wouldn't take the website down ahead of a court ruling, that was a legal battle between two different factions of socialists - which we're not a fan of - we still fought the lawsuit at our own expense.
Everybody seeking to deplatform an easyDNS customer because of their political ideology gets the same answer: "GFY".