Christians Bailing on GoDaddy Due to 'Immoral' Advertising
blog.wired.com
blog.wired.com
I have no problem with groups (christian or not) choosing to boycott certain companies because they object to their marketing practices. But I personally don't have time to cherry-pick these companies myself and make a public statement out of it.
I'm too busy trying to nurture my own family and business to worry about GoDaddy.
One last note: when it comes to watching sports (which my daughters enjoy watching with me), I find ads for E.D. treatments much more uncomfortable than GoDaddy's.
Second, Going to church on Sunday and believing Sunday to be a Sabbath day are two totally different things.
In fact, keeping Sabbaths is not a Christian thing to do at all. Christians do it, but that's because they think they are (really, really want to be) Jews. Tons of the crazy stuff Christians do are because they try to adopt little pieces of the Jewish economy (10 commandments, feast days, sabbaths, etc, etc,).
I don't know when/why Sunday became the de facto day for Christian church-going, but I can answer for myself, that I attend church on Sundays because it is the most convenient day (where I live) to do so. I don't regard it higher than any other day of the week (ok, maybe Monday ;).
Catholics are explicitly, overtly allowed to work on Sunday. It is, however, a venal sin to work on Sunday (a) at the expense of worship and reverence (in other words, don't skip Mass) and (b) when you had a reasonable option not to. Five generations of American Catholic men appear to have established the convention that Sunday afternoon football incurs minimal expense to revering Jesus.
Most of the biblical emphasis a Sunday sabbath comes from the fact that Easter was celebrated on Sunday, and a few verses saying that religious holiday observance didn't matter.Some Catholic Catechisms mentions that there is no biblical support for a sabbath on Sunday, and justify it by saying that the church has the authority to change religious holidays. I'm not sure if this is atypical compared to most catechisms, I am not very familiar with Catholic theology.
Explanation for change:http://www.religioustolerance.org/sabbath.htm
Catholic Catechism excerpts: http://www.biblestudy.org/godsrest/catholic-protestant-confe... The site is definitely biased, but it has a nice collection of excepts from christian and catholic doctrines.
That is the tip of the iceberg, hats play a major role in many forms of worship.
I don't think a single Wikipedia article could contain the hat concept alone, let alone your example.
The sabbath (whatever day you observe it) is for resting from work. Sometimes I rest by watching sports, sometimes I sit in my hammock, sometimes I go snowboarding. And, yes, if one of my servers crashed on the sabbath, I will work on it.
This explains it better than I can: http://tinyurl.com/cjqf2q
You are certainly not the only one. Sports fan friends with kids mentioned E.D. ads on sports games over the holidays. They like to watch games as a family, but the ads make them think twice. I can't say I blame them.
I see this as part of a larger problem that the only way we currently have to control the ads we see is to just turn off or change the channel.
Also: http://nodaddy.com
And a comic I find particularly funny: http://echopic.com/gnv
What'd you end up switching to?
Here's a blurry screenshot of the control panel, no ads: http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/7423/dynadotnq4.png
I dare anyone to figure out how much it costs to renew a domain name with GoDaddy. It took me a full 5 minutes, and that was with a logged-in account.
Much worse, though, was the ad for some damn NBC crime drama which showed some pretty young girl falling into the hands of a serial killer, then showed him burying her in a shallow grave down by the river or something. Yet another show about fear, pain and misery.
A whole lot of Christians are not Fundamentalist Christians who want to control your life and dictate your morals. Unfortunately, the sane ones don't get nearly as much press.
I'd much rather my kids see a pair of boobs, than see a guy shooting another guy with a gun, which for some reason seems to be totally acceptable.
It's a tough call for parents though...
It's a fairly pathetic episode and a sad description on modern religion.
(as an addendum when I asked the Church at the end of the road to stop handing leaflets/preaching to my young cousin as she walked passed I got into all sorts of trouble for religious descrimination.... double standards!).
/rant over (sorry)
Censorship would be these groups lobbying the FCC to ban the commercials.
It's a fine line but if the aim is to make GoDaddy tone down the Ad's to "religion approved" [sic] versions (as it seems it is) then it is an attempt at censorhip surely ;D
As I said it is a fine line: but read into it and their main aim is to stop them using the ads. That's an attempt at censorship (I'm not disagreeing that it is a boycott too).
Trying to get a company to stop doing something that a consumer considers offensive isn't censorship. This is just like the anti-sweatshop boycotts that are common on the left end of the political spectrum.
The maturity here really shines through on occasions like this.
In fairness (rereading back) I should have done so about 2 posts earlier :( oh well.
vs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott
"A boycott is a form of consumer activism involving the act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with someone or some other organization as an expression of protest, usually of political reasons."
Clearly, the Christian businessman in the article would like GoDaddy to "clean up" their act, but I didn't find any request by him for government intervention, nor any government action at play with regard to GoDaddy. Plain and simply, he has a moral objection to pornographic advertising, and has chosen to take his business elsewhere.
As a Christian myself, I've held the same stance towards GoDaddy for a long time, because I personally don't like being sold domain names with sex. They can continue to do business as they choose, and I can continue to state my opinion about their practices and take my business elsewhere.
I think my main point was the huge emphasis on the story - definitely (and I dont think it is because of my bias) born out of the religious nature of the complaint.
If yourself were hosting a few thousands sites with GoDaddy and had objected in the same way (from a non-religious stance) and sent the same letter would it have made such a big story....
As I always say (it might be my catch phrase :P) "each to his own, and leave me to mine".
[for the record in case people misconstrue my bias I have great respect for faith (to a point, obviously); but I believe religious organisations to often be an evil force]
Personally, I found the commercials stupid and I dislike GoDaddy for reasons beyond their advertisements.
Yes, that is precisely what they are doing.
Let's pretend this isn't about commercials and boobies, but about companies employing sweat shop workers, companies serving meat from animals that were fed growth hormones, a company treating its employees poorly, etc.
If I'm morally opposed to cows being fed growth hormones and tell some friends and write in my blog that I'm not going to buy hamburgers from McWendy's or whatever, is that censorship in your book? Is me holding the companies I patronize to some set of moral standards wrong?
Now, if this were a controversial news story, and back-room pressure from an influential advertiser, I might be more opposed to the exertion of economic pressure. But it's not. It's a commercial trying to get you to buy domains with low-brow boobie jokes. And for some customers, rather than making them want to purchase the product, it made them want to avoid the product, and they're now voicing that. There's nothing scandalous going down here.
If a government shuts down GoDaddy's web ads, that's censorship.
Writing a law as a member of the Senate to shut down Godaddy's web ads is probably censorship.
Is organizing a lobby to campaign to shut down their web ads censorship?
Is writing a blog post asking people to vote for a law in which Godaddy's web ads are shut down censorship?
Is voting for such a law censorship?
Is saying "we should have such a law" censorship?
In a democracy, at what point do we go from saying "Godaddy should shut up", which is a first amendment right, to full-on censorship? A government is full of people; there's nothing fundamentally different about a group of people executing their rights in a boycott and a group of people exercising their voting rights to accomplish some goal.
> Is organizing a lobby to campaign to shut down their web ads censorship?
Yes: if the aim is to get someone to shut them down then it is an attempt at censorship (and if they succeed it is). That is not, and I believe wheel would agree here, simply a boycott anymore.
> Is voting for such a law censorship?
That's a difficult question. I'd probably say yes.. but I'd want it to actually happen before acusing everyone (so you could check motives etc.)
I've admitted I was wrong to call it censorship - but I do still think it's getting a lot more press than it deserves. Lots of people "boycott" GoDaddy for non-religious reasons (some in protest at the adverts - comments here are testament to that) and have been doing so for a long while. Why is it such a big deal now? Because this guy "represents" religion.. which is media friendly.
Indeed these ads have been around for a while: why is it such a big problem now?
It's certainly the perfect basis for the lobby group (and I am sure the Christian lobby groups will sieze on it at some point :)).
I think in a democracy that people forget it is "majority rule". You are, of course, entitled to your own opinions and ideas of what is right (that, though, is probably not part of the democracy per se). But you view does not represent everyones unless a majority of people agree with it.
Therefore IMO it is wrong to try and turn a legitimate boycott on personal grounds into an attempt to impose your morals onto the majority. I would say that most people either do not care or enjoy the ads (probably mostly in the former category).
The person in question did not write the letter in a way to say "I am not using your service any more, this is why" he wrote from the perspective of "your offending out sensibilities so please change or we'll stop using you". Which is a threat in my eyes :D
Also, it's an old adage that America's fine with violence but hates breasts and naughty language. See South Park/every anti-censorship comedy ever made in America.
Also also, it;s fair enough to say you don't want to deal with a domain host because they think the best way to advertise services is to wave tits in your face. I'm regretting that I use it to register domains, because frankly I'd like to hold companies to a slightly higher level of self-respect.