
Heroku terminates Ruqqus site and account without a warning or an explanation - ecmascript
https://ruqqus.com/post/301l/you-cant-cancel-freedom-that-easily
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CydeWeys
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it was because of bad user-contributed
content.

This problem happens a lot with reddit competitors whose selling point is they
don't "censor" (e.g. Voat). What happens is the people who are so extreme they
got banned from reddit end up on your platform, and these people are generally
pretty terrible. Next thing you know you're hosting a predominantly far right
racist discussion forum and your hosting provider wants nothing to do with
you.

~~~
ecmascript
Maybe, most likely true. But either way I think it's pretty noteworthy that a
big hosting provider like Heroku can't give them a heads up. I don't agree
with most stuff that is being posted there, but the same goes with Reddit or
Twitter. It is true that there are a lot of communities there that came there
because they were banned from Reddit but that doesn't really make all of the
communities bad even if there is a lot of shitty stuff up voted to the front
page.

This can happen with any app even if it's more unlikely.

~~~
CydeWeys
I've been enough on the insides of these kind of decisions in the past to know
that it's very much lawyer and PR-driven, and that the right thing to do from
those perspectives is to terminate the relationship as quickly as possible. If
you give lots of lead time then you're just creating a festering sore for
yourself and giving the other party time to mobilize against you. It's better
for it to be a fait accompli with minimal notice given, so that the other
party immediately focuses on moving on rather than trying to mobilize to
reverse the decision.

It's definitely not good for the company caught on the receiving end of such a
decision, of course, but the hosting company is optimizing for themselves, as
all companies are inherently selfish. And given how much racist garbage Ruqqus
is hosting, I don't think Heroku cares too much about any hardship incurred.

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marcinzm
> It is my opinion that by not warning us first (ex. "please remove X which
> violates Heroku's acceptable use policy") that Heroku actually violated
> their own terms of service.

They clearly never read the Heroku terms of service which have this at the
top:

>If you are found to be in violation of our policies at any time, as
determined by Heroku in its sole discretion, we may warn you or suspend or
terminate your account

Literally Heroku says that they may terminate you with no warning.

edit: And based on a quick glance at the site a five year old could see how it
violates multiple parts of the acceptable use policy.

------
trollied
"I do not believe we violated Heroku ToS (though Heroku may think otherwise)
..... It is my opinion that by not warning us first (ex. "please remove X
which violates Heroku's acceptable use policy") that Heroku actually violated
their own terms of service."

I've never used the site before but, looking at just a fraction of the
content, it's the gutter of the internet. Obviously that's my opinion, but if
I were Heroku I'd have probably made the same decision.

------
scrollaway
Never heard of them, so taking a look at their patreon to see what they might
have been...

"Ruqqus is an open source, USA-based, First-Amendment focused social platform
restoring free speech to the internet."

If I'm not surprised, why are they?

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saxonww
I had no idea what Ruqqus is/was, apparently it's a game community site. The
other threads right next to this one are people making fun of 'lefties'. I'm
guessing those are not about handedness; I expect this is about some
communities that have crossed from political speech over to hate (in Heroku's
estimation, at least).

------
762236
Lots of swastikas on that page.

------
tzs
> At 16:09 EDT on 04 Sep 2020 (about 26 hours ago), SalesForce (the owner of
> web hosting company Heroku) notified us that they had suspended the Ruqqus
> live and test server environments, with account termination to follow
> twenty-four hours later.

Assuming Ruqqus is in the EDT time zone, this means they got notified shortly
after 4 PM on a Friday that their account would be terminated in 24 hours.

Does that mean that 23 of the 24 hours they would have to download all their
data would be outside of normal work hours, with 16 hours of those 24 being on
a weekend?

I can't think of any reasonable justification for such short notice. If it is
a TOS violation that the hosting company is not willing to let them try to
fix, account termination should be several business days after the immediate
live environment suspension.

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dewey
Never heard of that site but just from browsing the top post it looks like an
alternative social network (or in their words: "free of censorship") like Gab
and others and Heroku probably decided they don't want the headache of hosting
them.

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geofft
Scroll down about a screenful and you'll see someone pointing out that Marc
Benioff is Jewish, and saying "Every. Single. Time." 42 upvotes.

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kace91
This seems to be a reddit alternative, by my quick search.

What's the audience like? Is it just a competitor, or a voat-like site to
receive those people... not welcome in more mainstream places?

~~~
marcinzm
Based on looking at the front page, the latter.

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jansan
Can anyone explain in one sentence what Ruqqus is? Are there any radical
(politically right or left wing) discussions? Is it comparable to reddit or
4Chan? We are running a few business apps on on Heroku and this is slightly
worrying.

On the other hand, isn't Heroku a really expensive choice if you are running a
popular website with many users?

~~~
geofft
It's comparable to 8Chan or Gab or Voat - it's a refuge for all the people who
have been censored from places like 4Chan or Twitter or Reddit, and it turns
out there's a reason why those folks get banned from such sites and when you
get them all together in a room, predictable things happen.

(This is one of the few examples of such sites showing technical competence,
so I wouldn't put too much stock in their decision to go with Heroku, and I
wouldn't worry about your own apps.)

~~~
jansan
You can be censored from 4Chan? Wow!

~~~
chippy
It's ironic but 4chan has quite a lot of moderation and bans and is also more
pro-actively cooperative with law enforcement than other platforms like
reddit, facebook etc. That last point might be why it has continued to
survive.

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ksec
Is there any reason why this is being Flagged?

It reads to me the site is something similar to Reddit.

------
Semaphor
So another right-wing white-power haven like Voat and Gap.

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SylvieLorxu
I scroll down a bit into the comments and it's all "jews this", "jews that",
etc. I'm pretty sure this was completely deserved. Mods, can we just close
this pathetic attempt to get more users on this right-wing site?

~~~
krapp
No, every time a platform or person gets banned online it's our solemn duty as
the last bastion of true online intellectualism to clutch our pearls over the
crushing Orwellian boot of political correctness and the death of free speech,
the internet and civilization that it represents, and then get bogged down in
pedantic tangents about the nature of free speech, hate speech, SJWs,
leftists, Nazis and how Stallman did nothing wrong.

I don't make the rules, those are just the rules.

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zxcvbn4038
Looking at the site I suspect someone doesn't agree with free speech - common
misconception in the US that free speech only applies to stuff you agree with.

Wherever you host next try fronting with Cloudflare and make sure your origin
servers only accept connections from their servers. Cloudflare generally
supports free speech and it provides a layer of indirection to keep people
from complaining to your hosting provider. Make sure you don't expose your
origin IPs in server messages or DNS.

~~~
paledot
It's a common misconception that free speech has no legal limits, and that it
affects private companies. Neither of these are true. Hate speech is not
protected, and companies certainly aren't obligated to enable it.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> " _It 's a common misconception that free speech ... affects private
> companies_"

Incorrect, it is the US First Amendment that doesn't affect private companies
but the First Amendment != freedom of speech. Your statement is a uniquely
American misconception.

Freedom of speech, as a philosophy, affects everyone. That's why the ACLU has
historically defended some rather deplorable people; liberal principles
matter.

