
GoDaddy to suspend domain name Gab.com tomorrow - daenz
https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1056708683130781696
======
jake_the_third
Ignoring the offending content in question: What does a registrar have to do
with the content of the website the domain points to? They are not hosting the
content themselves, nor are they even pointing to it (assuming private
nameservers are used).

I don't see any grounds on which godaddy could reasonably claim policy
jurisdiction over objectionable content they do not actively host themselves.
To me, this seems like a conservative phone company bricking users phones
because they've been used to watch porn. If the hosted content is illegal,
they should be reported to authorities. If it is not, godaddy should act like
the transparent utility service that it is and not intervene.

Am I wrong in my line of thinking?

~~~
wpietri
It's freedom of association. Except for groups who faced historical
discrimination and so are protected by law, businesses are not obliged to
provide services to anybody the don't want to. Anti-Semites are not a
protected class.

The analogy you make, a phone company, doesn't really work. Because of their
natural monopoly status, phone companies are obliged to provide common carrier
status: they can't arbitrarily interfere between two network users. The ISP
equivalent is of course net neutrality, which also doesn't apply here, because
domain registration is not a natural monopoly.

~~~
paulddraper
> Anti-Semites are not a protected class.

Even if they were, would that matter?

Civil Rights Act of 1964:

> All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods,
> services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any
> _place of public accommodation, as defined in this section,_ without
> discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or
> national origin.

GoDaddy is not a restaurant, hotel, or any other "public accommodation"
business as defined by law.

AFAIK, GoDaddy could also discriminate against Jewish customers (which _is_ a
protected class) all day long and not be in violation of federal U.S. law

~~~
extra88
There is a fair amount of case law establishing online businesses as place of
public accommodation.

~~~
paulddraper
If that were true -- and it's not -- online businesses would also be subject
to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).

Such lawsuits have been attempted, but AFAIK without success.

~~~
extra88
Generally they settle those cases but judges think it’s likely enough for them
to be places of accommodation to proceed. A website acts as if the ADA doesn’t
apply at their peril.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_Bli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_Blind_v._Target_Corp).

[https://www.adatitleiii.com/2012/10/netflix-settles-
massachu...](https://www.adatitleiii.com/2012/10/netflix-settles-
massachusetts-web-video-captioning-action/)

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
I wonder how far this will eventually extend. For example, what about websites
that have games on them (flash, html5, etc.)? What about websites that host
game clients to be downloaded? MUDs could be decently accessible, but most
games aren't at all accessible.

~~~
extra88
Reasonableness is generally a part of determining accommodations for
disabilities. For many games, there are no reasonable steps to make them
accessible to someone with a sensory or mobility impairment. But there are
also reasonable steps that _can_ be taken, like captions for recorded dialog
for the hearing impaired or color/pattern alternatives for people with color
vision deficiencies (I don't think color vision deficiency meets the legal
definition of a disability but it's still something to keep in mind).

A site that offers games to download can be very accessible but the games
themselves might not be and don't have to be; not every product a store sells
has to be usable by every potential customer. That's not a reason to not make
the site accessible; e.g. a disabled parent should be able to download a game
for their non-disabled child.

------
daenz
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think it's time for the US
government to step up and provide its citizens with minimal tax-funded
government-managed hosting and domain services, for people to say whatever
lawful speech that they want, without being censored. It's becoming clearer
that the public sphere for speech is now online, and that space is managed
only by private companies. If we want principles like free speech to continue,
we need to segment some of that sphere to be funded and protected by the
government.

I say all this, because I believe both that a) yes, these private companies
should be able to do what they want WRT who they associate with and b) online
is the new "public space" for voices to be heard, which is currently only
occupied by private companies. If you believe private companies shouldn't be
able to buy up all the public land, then I think you would support something
like this. The internet is the new public land, but it is theoretically
infinite, and for some reason it's only occupied and controlled by private
companies.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _If we want principles like free speech to continue, we need to segment some
> of that sphere to be funded and protected by the government_

This is diametrically opposed to the First Amendment’s intent. Nobody is
entitled to spout garbage. Or associate with those who do. What we are
entitled to is protection _from the government_ in respect of the garbage we
spout. (And, protection from the government for assembling, or choosing not to
assemble, with those who spout what we believe to be garbage.)

~~~
daenz
>What we are entitled to is protection from the government in respect of the
garbage we spout.

With the implication being that only the government can legally stop you while
you're in a _public space._ If there are no public spaces, what does it matter
if the government can't legally touch you, if a private entity legally can? We
have to ensure publicly-owned spaces exist for free speech to exist.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _only the government can legally stop you while you 're in a public space_

Its meaning is closer to the opposite than to this.

> _If there are no public spaces_

The public space is deeper and more easily-accessible than ever before. Nazis
aren’t having trouble distributing their message—Gab will find another
registrar. Society, on the other hand, is having difficulty responding. The
threat from the latter eclipses the former.

~~~
daenz
>The public space is deeper and more easily-accessible than ever before.

The internet is not a public space. But the argument I'm making is that part
if it _should_ be. The Nazis have only been online with hosting and registrars
through the blind eyes of the private company gatekeepers. Actions like what
is happening to Gab, while morally and logically defensible ("they're nazis
and its private companies"), are proving that these spaces are not public, and
owned entirely by private entities with their own rules. Rules that may be in
your favor today, but not tomorrow.

The internet is a vast resource, and we can all see it's where public
discussion actually takes place. Companies can and should run their parts of
it. But there should also be a part delegated to citizens and protected by the
principles we claim to want to uphold.

------
iamnothere
Well, so it finally happened. The Rubicon has been breached.

One of the great things about the Internet, up until recent times, has been
the relative neutrality of the infrastructure. No matter who you were, it was
fairly easy to set up shop as long as your content was not super illegal. In
general, you could count on having your host back you up unless you were
incredibly controversial, and it was out of the question that a mainstream US
provider would drop your .com name! A US-hosted .com was a "gold standard" you
could count on.

The first indication that things were changing was the DMCA. But for all its
faults, at least it has a _process_. This new political "anything goes" trend
is going to be awful for anyone not already in the Fortune 500. But I guess
that's the point, isn't it?

The useful idiots standing by these actions are going to be shocked, SHOCKED
when the political winds shift and their favorite site is suddenly forced off
the net by tech oligarchs. Do you really think this won't get turned against
left-leaning/anti-war sites the moment we get into a large-scale conflict
again? But I guess that's the point, too, isn't it!!

I'm appalled that anyone on the left who remembers the GWB "with us or against
us" era of politics would support this kind of politicization of our
infrastructure. The left would NEVER have been able to elect Obama without
being able to organize on a free and open Internet!

This kind of action is killing what little remains of the open Internet! And
all for a petty, temporary victory over a fringe political group! What are you
throwing away???

~~~
aninhumer
Except the actual left has been complaining about centralised capitalist
control of the media for decades. Indeed, it's precisely because of that
control that you've apparently never heard anything other than liberal
centrists talking about access to speech.

>This new political "anything goes" trend is going to be awful for anyone not
already in the Fortune 500. But I guess that's the point, isn't it?

Yes of course. Welcome to Capitalism.

When the system starts to break down from the inevitable inequality it causes,
capitalists turn to fascism to maintain control. It happened in the Weimar
Republic, and it's happening again now. We're seeing business news outlets
openly talking about the "investment opportunities" in Brazil as a result of
the election of an overt fascist.

>And all for a petty, temporary victory over a fringe political group!

The left celebrates this, not because the control is good, but because the
threat of fascism has become so overt that this is the best we can hope for
right now.

~~~
iamnothere
Access to speech has indeed been a problem; there were plenty of court cases
about it in the 2000s. What is new, at least in my awareness, is a breakdown
in access to infrastructure. Many (though not all) hosts/registrars/etc were
built by ideological libertarians who had an absolutist free speech bent.
Sites seemed more likely to encounter resistance from the government and big
corporations than from their providers. Now the providers _are_ big
corporations, and they have close ties with the government!

A prime example is rotten.com. They faced plenty of C&Ds and government
lawsuits, but it looks like they weren't forced into self-hosting until 2014
based on some quick research. Rotten was 1000x worse than Infowars, Gab, or
even 4chan, but it was a protest site of sorts and an important free speech
canary. (It's dead now, obviously.)

Can you give some examples of leftist sites being booted from their hosts in
the 2000s? Maybe I'm not aware of them. WSWS, for instance, seems to be hosted
by Godaddy currently, and that's about as left as you can get. Wikileaks is an
example of an (IMHO) non-partisan site that has faced troubles, but that's
because they actively leaked classified intel about ongoing conflicts. Cyptome
faced some government pushback in the 2000s for leaking less controversial
material, but they were hosted with Network Solutions in 2012, and now with
Web.com.

~~~
Faark
The sad truth is lefties are mostly irrelevant these days, shifting the
overton window far to the right. When have you last heard significant people
someone talking nationalizing industries?

A few hippies or blue-haired university students are no threat to any ones
lives. (Near-)fascists taking over countries is. As usual, people take action
not because of some principle, but because a problem got so bad it cannot be
ignored anymore. And as usual, it might already be too late...

------
dr-rachet
I’m an observant Jew. I’ve never considered posting a comment on here before.

Despite disliking the anti-Semitic speech hosted on sites like gab, silencing
them this way puts a bad taste in my mouth.

Yes, their speech is hateful. Yes, these are private entities that are well
within their rights to refuse service.

But that’s not the point.

At the moment, a majority agrees this type of speech is unacceptable. But
what’s next? Maybe next time it’s speaking against google or anything, for
that matter.

The famous saying “first they came for the X..., then the Y..., who was left
to speak for me?” Is appropriate here. I don’t condone hate speech, but just
words aren’t hurting others. Until that speech becomes action or highly
encourages action, it is just words.

Additionally, if the majority destroys the gathering place of the minority,
they’ll just go to ground. Burying themselves deeper, re-enforcing their
conspiracy theories, and polarizing them more. Our actions will be the
catalyst to their radicalization.

We need to think, long and hard, before jumping on this bandwagon.

~~~
alphabettsy
I see your point, but there is also the issue of helping to make this kind of
content available. If the content is hard to find or hidden then maybe less
people are exposed to it? Is that the answer? I have no idea, but to me
there’s a big difference between arguing the merits of single-payor healthcare
and whether or not certain people should be allowed to exist.

There are loads of racist and bigoted opinions on Facebook and Twitter, but
Gab takes that to another level. The people being banned from Twitter aren’t
saying things like black people have lower IQs, they’re saying they’re animals
that shouldn’t exist in this country, etc. That’s not the same.

~~~
dr-rachet
My main point is that this is a tricky subject. One that we should be very
careful in regards to our actions.

If the content was so terrible on this site, why only remove it now? Why was
it tolerated for so long?

Acting against gab now, seems to be more of a show than reality. All these
companies are attempting to show their disdain for this behavior. But they
allowed it before. And I’m sure they allow many other sources of hate to
persist on their services.

~~~
alphabettsy
Gab is a relatively new site and you might be surprised to learn that it
wasn’t that well known before. But you can bet that after an event like this
most companies are wanting as much distance as possible with the content of
the site being in press worldwide.

Twitter allows David Duke on their platform, but he’s careful not to post the
kind of things you’ll find on Gab. Twitter allows everyday racism and white
supremacist speech. They do not allow you to talk about culling millions from
this country violently. The difference is that Gab does and won’t remove it.

I think we should be equally careful in how we combat ideologies that lead
people to and even encourage violence. Where were all of the free-speech
slippery slope people when YouTube and other groups were banding together to
combat ISIS recruitment on their platforms?

------
kennywinker
Massive eye roll at the linked tweet. Acting like a company severing their
service is an attack on their freedom of speech is completely crying wolf. I'm
sure there are many domain registrars who will take their money. This is not a
case where any speech is being chilled. Gab is making money off a platform
where people are saying horrible things. Godaddy is distancing themselves
because they don't want to be associated with those things. That's the cost of
doing horrible business.

~~~
dionian
> That's the cost of doing horrible business.

But doesn't Twitter have many people saying horrible things? If gab is letting
people talk about murdering people and not taking action, I'm fine with it -
but is that the case?

~~~
notatoad
Twitter is bad at removing abusive or threatening content from their site.
That's not the same as refusing to remove it.

~~~
hhjinks
Right, it's worse. Twitter has selectively been enforcing its ToS for years.
How is removing hate speech conductive to anything but hiding the issue. Let
people moderate their own feeds, and don't make people rely on archiving
services to see politically significant information like a terrorist's social
media history.

~~~
notatoad
>How is removing hate speech conductive to anything but hiding the issue.

well for one, it makes it a slightly nicer place for the victims of that hate
speech.

~~~
hhjinks
That is so much better handled by just letting your users control their own
feed.

------
nafizh
Wonderful news. There is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech. People
are threatening and inciting violence against some target demographic, and you
are only being obtuse by trying to be apathetic to that in the name of free
speech.

Besides, godaddy is a private company. It is not obligated to give rights of
freedom of speech to anyone.

~~~
s9w
There was a facebook livestream where a disabled man was tortured. Twitter
contains horrible racism. Why is Gab measured different? It's simply free
speech. Not even that by the way, since certain types of porn were recently
banned.

------
djsumdog
GoDaddy is US based and in the US, you can discriminate against customers
except for very specific things (race, sex, etc.)

The Colorado cake case is a weird and bad example, because it came down to
people wanting him to commission art (most of that Supreme Court case was
about whether or not the cake was an artistic expression, protected by the
first 1st amendment). Interestingly that cake shop no longer does custom
cakes, so technically they do have to sell to everyone now.

There is another Supreme Court case coming up which will address speech and
platforms. This is going to be big. I wrote about this last year and I think
it's really relevant today:

[https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-
corporate-...](https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-
censorship/)

You might not say anything now, because you might hate Gab and think it's hate
speech, but just wait for them to come to a platform you don't think is wrong,
but goes against the current mindset of what people think is right.

There are too few providers and they are way too big. If AWS, DigitalOcean,
Vultr, Dreamhost, etc. all deny you a platform, where are you going to go? Are
you now going to pay out the ass for platforms that cater to Adult Website
hosting?

So few people even visit websites anymore either, unless they're linked via
Facebook/Twitter, which are both deleting things they don't agree with enmass!

Furthermore, this just pushes people more into these outlying platforms,
further polarizing them to deal exclusively with ostracised people and
opinions. It literally gives them more validity by censoring them (versus
ignoring them)!

If the shooter had posted on Facebook instead of Gab, we wouldn't demand
Facebook go down would we?

I think there are really serious implications to all of this, and many of them
are not good.

~~~
Mattasher
I'm not sure people understand the extent to which domain names (and thus
registrars & registries) are the linch pins of freedom of speech and identity
right now. This, and the ongoing breakdown in the reputational barrier between
consumer and service provider do not bode well at all for online freedom:

[https://beforetheban.com/BeforeTheBanWhitepaper2018_10_01.pd...](https://beforetheban.com/BeforeTheBanWhitepaper2018_10_01.pdf)

------
JohnTHaller
"We may terminate your access to and use of the Services, at our sole
discretion, at any time and without notice to you." \- Gab Terms of Service

~~~
altmind
this clause was added this week

------
wmf
We're in a weird place where the presence of multiple competing intermediaries
(in this case DNS registrars, but you see the same thing with banks and such)
leads to them not being regulated as utilities. So when every single
intermediary exercises their right to refuse service to someone they end up
locked out of the system but nobody's responsible.

~~~
threeseed
1) Not every intermediary has exercised their right so it's a strawman
argument.

2) Not sure why you bring up the utility argument. It's basically equivalent
to traditional newspapers where if I write some incendiary letter to the
editor I am not guaranteed that any of them will post it.

------
warent
PayPal and GoDaddy terminating business with them? I must be living under a
rock because I don't think I've heard of gab.com before these tweets started
appearing on HN.

What exactly did they do to piss everyone off?

~~~
anonymous5133
Basically they created a platform for freedom of speech. The problem is that
every crack pot on the internet basically flocked to the site to say very mean
thing about other people. I think we all agree that hate speech is not good
but outright silencing people is not the correct solution. If you want to
eliminate hate speech then you need to confront the people doing the hate
speech and argue with them about why they're wrong.

Many other social media sites also suffer from massive amounts of hate speech
as well.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> and argue with them about why they're wrong.

Does that actually work?

~~~
Faark
It can work.

It doesn't help that simple imaginary solutions that probably blame some scape
goat are easy to sell compared to complicated trade-offs that marginally
reduce systemic issues our society has.

The US political system practically allowing only two parties doesn't help,
since it makes it easy to disregard everyone not with your team instead of
having to engage with a large set of different opinions.

But you quite often see people post something like "thanks for saving me from
being an alt-righter" in the community of for example twitch-streamer Destiny.
He did engage alt right youtubers in discussions, but recently scaled that
back somewhat... apparently having a right wing mob hate you is a real thread
to your livelihood as well. He says he has still no idea why he got his
permanent twitter ban... so yeah, I'd love someone to look into that...

Anyway, we are talking about the marketplace of ideas. As with any
marketplace, you need marketing to sell the good (idea). Guess what kind of
ideas are worth paying for? Probably the kind that will benefit those with
lots of capital. And for that reason do real lefties think capitalism will
eventually always end in fascism once disillusioned people demand change and
only a communist revolution can save us.

I always disregarded that as stupid, but the last few years make it more and
more difficult...

------
msaharia
So I guess Gab is a Twitter clone like Voat was supposed to be for Reddit. As
an aside, how does Mastodon deals/will deal with the issue? Because it is
almost guaranteed that the most extremist elements will flock to it (I'm sold
on its long term usefulness).

~~~
beatgammit
Mastodon deals with it my not being popular enough even for trolls ;)

In seriousness, isn't it federated like PeerTube? In that case, you'd likely
only allow people to link to your network if you trust them, and each network
would be responsible for vetting its users. If a particular network becomes a
cesspool, you just remove them from your network instead of having to
completely overhaul the entire system.

------
shiado
Why stop with Gab? The CIA has a fucking verified account on Twitter. Why
should a platform which not only tolerates but tacitly endorses organizations
which perform extrajudicial torture and murder be allowed to keep their
domain?

~~~
mikesickler
Lots of noble and admirable people use Twitter, in addition to shitbags. I
challenge you to find a decent person who is an active user of Gab.

------
danesparza
Does anybody else see the irony of a self-proclaimed 'social networking
service' turning to Twitter because nobody would notice if they posted
something on their own service?

~~~
c0brac0bra
They can't post on their own service because their hosting was pulled by
joyent.

~~~
alphabettsy
True, but it’s also how they posted about other businesses refusing to do
business with them.

------
altmind
It's probably not related, but I cannot be quiet about management access
outage GoDaddy is experiencing right now - nobody can login to their accounts
and multiple authoritative dns servers dont work
[https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/outages/2018-October/01177...](https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/outages/2018-October/011779.html)

------
forgottenpass
What can be used to silence your opposition will be used to silence you.

------
tehwebguy
The _only reason_ I can imagine their domain is registered with GoDaddy is so
that they could gain attention from its inevitable suspension. Everyone knows
GoDaddy does things like this.

------
Waterluvian
I feel almost too defeated to share this. I'm somewhat ignorant on the issue,
which might come across as having a politicial leaning. I don't.

This is a proxy battle for "Big Tech is Liberal and Liberals are trying to
shut down Conservative speech", is it? Or am I wrong? If it is, why don't
Conservatives just create their own tech stuff? Like what is fundamentally
stopping people from being heard if the government isn't the one stopping
them? Is it currently too hard to create another registrar so we're stuck with
the ones we have?

~~~
paulddraper
> If it is, why don't Conservative just create their own tech stuff?

That's literally what Gab is.

> Is it currently too hard to create another registrar so we're stuck with the
> ones we have?

Sort of. In theory it's possible [1], but it's hard enough almost no one does
it.

Not even Twitter has their own registrar (which it why they went down during
the DynDNS attack).

[1]
[https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/accreditation-2012-02-...](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/accreditation-2012-02-25-en)

~~~
Waterluvian
Interesting.

So right or wrong, hate or not, illegal or not, there's ultimately a
corporation somewhere deciding if you get a domain name to point at your
content.

I guess there's also an ISP and all of that also involved.

I wonder how much this changes or should change if the Internet was to be
considered a fundamental right. Mentally rambling now. Anyway, thanks for the
link.

~~~
soneil
It's turtles all the way down.

You can host your own services, but better hope your colo doesn't decide
you're more trouble than you're worth. Build out your own datacenter, but hope
your ISP(s) don't decide you're more trouble than you're worth. Build out your
own ISP, but hope anyone wants to peer with you.

And that's just on the transit side. We've a growing history of piracy sites
having their access to the DNS infrastructure curtailed, and porn sites
finding the only payment processors who'll touch them charge above and beyond
for the 'privilege'.

It becomes difficult to ignore that members of society do depend on the rest
of society.

~~~
iamnothere
Wait until the banking and credit systems step into the censorship game. (The
banks already shut out porn sites, adult performers, and legal cannabis
businesses.)

Payment processors are just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine not being able to
take out your rent money because the banks have "deplatformed" you! That's
where we're headed.

It's going to turn really nasty when the political enemy du jour shifts away
from Literal Nazis and back to anti-government critics, environmentalists, and
the like.

~~~
all2
This is how fascism and several forms of communism have come to power. If
those in power can silence whom they choose, then they play to the people only
as long as they have to. When they have enough power, they play no one's game
and silence whoever they want.

[edit] It is worth noting that GoDaddy does not equate to "those in power". A
business has every right to deny service on whatever grounds they choose (even
for no reason). [/edit]

------
mooseburger
Aside from the "this chills speech/does not" discussion, I just want to point
out that hate speech laws or deplatforming don't actually accomplish any of
their stated goals. Timothy McVeigh did not need any online echo chambers to
perpetrate the Oklahoma City Bombing. In the Weimar Republic, there were hate
speech laws ([https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-
speech-v...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-
violence)). Relevant quote:

"Researching my book, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar
Republic. I found that, contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did
have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion
that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish
sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could
have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been
banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels,
Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic
speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis
and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-
relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never
have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to
1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors
taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges
Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The
courts became an important platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews.
In the words of a present-day civil-rights campaigner, pre-Hitler Germany had
laws very much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with
some vigor. As history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved
ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it."

Hell, Hitler himself was convicted of high treason, but only got a slap on the
wrist because the judge and jury were basically on his side.

The only thing strong or soft speech policing contributes to is the further
erosion of our civil liberties.

------
nyolfen
> The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to
> found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen,
> your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled
> civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to
> live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-
conservative...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-
the-eternal-struggle/)

------
illiac_1962
Suspending domain name registration is truly disturbing. I'm literally
speechless and I feel like a line has been crossed. This is domain
registration, an abstract service that routes requests based on a name. How
did the policing of speech get to this level? I don't have words for the
things I'm feeling right now. The actions of a mentally ill person has
triggered full on censorship. This is entire situation is fucked up beyond
words. We just need to man up and legally ban hate speech instead of beating
around the bush and before we start quietly, effectively banning other forms
of speech.

~~~
whoopdedo
It started when the domain for The Pirate Bay was seized. And the precedent
that linking or providing a way for someone to search for illegal content is
the same as hosting the illegal content. Internet companies have to now take
an aggressively proactive approach to avoiding hosting, linking, or being
associated with a domain or content provider that may become the target of a
lawsuit.

~~~
Dylan16807
Started there, and that's far worse too. It was government action _and_ none
of the objectionable content was actually on the site.

------
someguydave
Using horrific and tragic deaths as a cudgel to beat your political enemies
discredits any moral claims in my opinion.

~~~
threeseed
1) Please stop with the hyperbole. This isn't war.

2) Godaddy is apolitical. They are merely trying to distance themselves from
the actions of the Gab site like everyone else is.

~~~
someguydave
1.) It's not hyperbole. Innocent people on gab.ai are now cut-off from
discussion with each other because some loon happened to post on their site.
2.) "distancing yourself" is the same as taking a political stance.

------
Firebrand
There's nothing more liberal in 2018 than worshipping at the altar of billion
dollar banking institutions and web hosters for colluding to suppress the
speech of people they disagree with.

~~~
bobbyT314
As a private (non-govermental) organization, GoDaddy isn't bound to providing
free speech to anyone. Gab.com is welcome to keep gabbing on someone else's
platform.

------
liftbigweights
That is ridiculous. We really have to address the bias/extremism in the tech
hierarchy and their shortsighted foolishness. Gab did nothing illegal. All
this does is opens up godaddy to pressure to start suspending other
"offensive" domains.

These groups of large tech companies are acting as puritans and social
engineers in concert are worrying. The same companies complaining about other
countries forcing them to censor and going above and beyond censoring at home.

Edit: 10 years ago, nobody with any sense would have supported this. People
valued free speech. The anti-free speech brigading is rather shocking,
especially on a site like hacker news.

~~~
fma
I actually agreed with you, except with the edit. GoDaddy did nothing illegal,
either. GoDaddy is executing their free speech. Per Citizens United (pushed by
the right, of course)

"The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) on January 21, 2010, that the free
speech clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the
government from restricting independent expenditures for communications by
nonprofit corporations, for-profit corporations, labor unions, and other
associations".

We should just admit that businesses censor one way or another - whether
suppressing speech (removal of tweets), or extreme bias in information
dissemination (looking at you, Fox News).

~~~
rabbitonrails
(looking at you, NYT)

