But don't pretend to be free speech defenders then siphon money to fight your own customer because it makes you feel better.
It makes me feel like the margins are too high all around to even have such a plan. And judging by prices last time I looked, that's about right.
This is 100% consistent with being a free speech defender. Free speech defenders' position is that speech you don't like should not be fought by censorship, but should instead be fought by speech you do like, which is what what they're funding.
"It makes me feel like the margins are too high all around"
We don't know how the finances work out, for all we know, they take a loss on these accounts when their full effort to handle payment to charities is taken into account.
This is where they are wrong. Not doing something you don’t agree with is not censorship, it’s freedom of expression. Publishing things, even when saying they don’t support them is supporting those opinions with extra steps.
It's both. It's not government censorship, so it's not a free speech issue in the legal sense. But private entities can still censor things, because that is part of their free speech, as you point out. nearlyfreespeech's free speech allows them to either allow or censor other entities' free speech on their platform.
As a matter of principle, nearlyfreespeech does not want to censor other entities' free speech. They explain why here: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#TheLongGame
I don't quite understand what you're saying. Does donating to a charity they support make them not free speech defenders?
>It makes me feel like the margins are too high all around to even have such a plan.
They didn't say they're donating all the revenue. Just a portion of the revenue that's a bit higher than the profit. So if the margin is 5%, then they might donate 6% of the revenue from that customer.
The policy is not so innocent. It's not just good charities they support, it's charities that have a belief opposite your own, if they disagree.
Let's say you were really(and rightly) against pineapple on pizza. And you find a host saying they're OK with anything, have at it. So you make one.
Little do you know, they are taking your money and donating to those pineapple on pizza places.
Yes, it's contrived. Still, in some professions this would be outright illegal. I'm not saying it should be, but that it shouldn't be lauded, either.
I'm not sure what you mean by "good charities." They're supporting charities they agree with ("The recipient organization does share our values") to counteract speech that they disagree with. So by definition, these are "good charities" from their point of view.
What professions are you thinking of?
Pretty much any profession where one has a duty to their client and has or pretends to have the client's best interest at heart - legal, financial, governmental, medical, etc.
You usually wouldn't either because you want the business relationship to continue, but it'd be news to me that your professional duties would extend so far that you'd have to consider how to spend the money you make from that business.
I'm for free speech, but please don't say stuff like this, in any context. Nobody said the policy was "innocent," whatever you mean by that. The policy is a device that they use in order to make themselves feel better about facilitating the speech of people they dislike. The policy is not intended to create "innocence."
> they are taking your money
No, they're taking their money.
> Still, in some professions this would be outright illegal.
Which? I can't imagine one.
I love your analogy, even though I disagree with your conclusions. They publish their MMFAM policy right on their website, so you have fair warning that they may be donating a portion of your payment to those pineapple on pizza places, or other places whose views you disagree with.
I'm not saying it's a perfect policy that every company should mimic, but I think many companies may find this model preferable to applying active viewpoint discrimination to the content they host.
Then they use their own freedom to support speech that counters the shit they find offensive.
To me, it sounded an awful lot like they really want to be paid to host content but are also desperately trying to avoid the negative backlash of hosting it.
To make matters worse, they openly call their paying customers morons.
It would be very hard to take a stance that's worse than this, to be honest.