Well you can host your own website on your own server.
Of course, I do wonder how far this goes. What happens if the DNS server refuses to host the IP lookup? Host your own DNS server? What if the browsers refuse to allow access to the site? Build your own browser? What if ISPs refuse to transfer the data over the wire? Make your own internet?
People have defended that this vs. Net Neutrality (at least the extent of the ability of an ISP to control what goes over its wires) as having a core difference, but it feels to me they are closer than people realize and the standards set by one can influence the other.
> Well you can host your own website on your own server.
Sure, then the people who drove you off Facebook/Amazon/Apple iTunes/Youtube/Azure/EC2/Digitalocean/Cloudflare will go after your DNS registrar and the ISP/CDN/colocation-facility you're using. They won't give up and they'll ruthlessly go after every single commercial entity you do business with. After all, if it's not the government punishing you for speech, it's not censorship and it's fine!
That's the trick of this kind of lawfare -- having any kind of internet presence inherently involves relationships with private, non-governmental entities, and it's disturbingly easy to suborn them and shame them into refusing to do business with unsavoury people.
> Yeah, I don't buy that. If Stormfront and Daily Stormer can still be up, then there can't really be any credibility to that argument.
That those two loathsome websites are still up doesn't mean that the technique I described is invalid; it just means it doesn't have a 100% kill rate, and it certainly works on less resourced and less indefatigable targets.
I'm not worried about those specific websites -- I'm worried about the increased spread and normalisation of the "contact everyone %s has a business relationship with, and shame them until they drop them as a customer" tactic. Where does it end? We've established that pressuring domain registrars and hosts is fine; what's fair game after that?
Is it fine for me to pressure and suborn an electric company into cutting off service to someone I don't like (after all, without electricity, they can't make those bad internet posts!). If I can rile up enough of an internet mob, can I get them evicted from their residence, simply by annoying their landlord until the trouble's not worth the monthly rent cheque? I've seen firsthand these tactics used by internet mobs and it's a very ugly process, and it's not something whose prevalence I'm happy to see expand.
Just because in these cases the targets are generally disgusting doesn't mean it's something that should be tolerated (if only because those who you hate will positively relish a chance to use that against your side of things).
> Is it fine for me to pressure and suborn an electric company
By using this analogy, you are implicitly arguing that Azure (and presumably cloud hosting generally) is a public utility and ought to be regulated like one, with tariff controls, neutrality requirements, universal service subsidies, etc.
If that's the argument you wish to make, fine, lets have that discussion.
> Just because in these cases the targets are generally disgusting doesn't mean it's something that should be tolerated
No, it should be tolerated because the nature of the service is not one which has been established to warrant utility-like treatment.
It should be cheered, given that it is already within the class that should be tolerated, because the targets are despicable. But, were the type of service outside the kind that would warrant tolerating this independently of the targeting (presuming its not against a generally protected class for a service offered publicly), then it wouldn't be acceptable even with this target group.
"Is it fine for me to pressure and suborn an electric company into cutting off service to someone I don't like (after all, without electricity, they can't make those bad internet posts!). If I can rile up enough of an internet mob, can I get them evicted from their residence, simply by annoying their landlord until the trouble's not worth the monthly rent cheque?"
The really funny, and by funny I mean sad, thing about your argument, is that you're all upset about this happening to racists and bigots, but you completely ignore that this was a fact of life for many of the marginalized communities that they terrorize.
"I've seen firsthand these tactics used by internet mobs and it's a very ugly process, and it's not something whose prevalence I'm happy to see expand."
You know what's even uglier? The tactics used by white supremacists to terrorize marginalized communities.
> The really funny, and by funny I mean sad, thing about your argument, is that you're all upset about this happening to racists and bigots, but you completely ignore that this was a fact of life for many of the marginalized communities that they terrorize.
No. This is frankly wrong. In my comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17730702) that you replied to, I described the websites in question as "loathsome" and "generally disgusting". If that wasn't enough, I will say it explicitly: I do not endorse/support racists or bigots or white supremacists or white nationalists or Nazis or Neo-Nazis or the alt-right or other flavours of fascism.
I find this incident mildly troubling not because of the targets in question (I don't give a solitary fuck about Gab or the Daily Stormer or their users/admins/owners), but because of the precedent it sets -- and specifically that this precedent will be exploited by these racists, against marginalised communities.
And like for everything else, first a precedent is created with an indefensible case of terrorism/pedophilia/neo-nazism, then the rule gets progressively applied more broadly.
Or, in the real world, cases like these actually reinforce the applicability of legal rights. Because in the real world, judges are able to protect the rights of pedophiles and neo-nazis while also upholding the laws against child pornography and hate crimes.
In fact, a fair number of modern legal rights were established in cases involving fairly heinous defendants. For example: in recent decades, a lot of non-political free speech cases involve pornography or hate speech.
[Note: terrorism is different because nationality matters. Domestic terrorists get the benefit of their constitutional rights, foreign terrorists do not, especially if said foreigners have renounced the citizenship (and thus protections) of another state. This is why Guantanamo was legally defensible, if morally reprehensible.]
The main difference we are seeing in this new world of large tech companies is that the role of the "judge" is diminished. Groups figure out the fine lines on which to make judgment, but only as a matter of internal company policy, behind closed doors, which none of us get to have a say in or even read the guidelines.
When a judge sentences you to prison, you know pretty well exactly what sentence of which law was the one that did it. When deplatformed from these private-but-ever-growing services, vague "ToS violations" is the best you get. Very easy for "rule of law" to become "rule of man."
A website ban isn't even remotely the same thing as a legal sanction.
If you want to control the platform, create your own. You'll need the hardware and the software, and it could get expensive. But if you want to spread hate speech or libel, suck up the cost.
If you want to be on someone else's platform you accept the restrictions of using that platform. Hate speech is on the list of almost every major platform (except Twitter).
As someone else pointed out, what if they go after your DNS registrar? Your SSL certificate provider? Where will it end? De platforming people who spew vile (but legal) speech isn't good for society and it's contrary to the spirit of the first amendment.
Well it ends with (generic) you running a hidden service on TOR that only committed misanthropes are willing to participate in on a regular basis, and looking over your shoulder in public a lot.
De platforming people who spew vile (but legal) speech isn't good for society
On the contrary, I think it's very good for the same reason I would want to drain an abscess or excise a tumor. The vile speech that you mention isn't harmless, and the people targeted by vile speech are part of society. What benefit is achieved that exceeds the costs imposed upon them?
> A website ban isn't even remotely the same thing as a legal sanction.
The Supreme Court seemed to have very different take (Packingham v. North Carolina):
"Social media allows users to gain access to information and communicate with one another on any subject that might come to mind. With one broad stroke, North Carolina bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and
knowledge. Foreclosing access to social media altogether thus prevents users from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights."
That wasn't the point of my comment. Yes 1A only applies to government censorship, however the SC clearly view access to the internet and social media as necessary for full exercise of 1A rights. It's now on the legislature to actually write the laws that would grant free speech rights to internet users.
In 2002, only about 5% of incarcerated felons in the US received a trial[1]. The other 95% pleaded guilty, likely in the face of overwhelming pressure, insufficient legal representation, and the threat of many more years in jail if they took their case to trial and loss.
Almost all of the people who plead guilty are actually guilty. (I was a former public defender. Most of our clients admitted to committing the crime, they just wanted to minimize any fines or the time spent in jail/prison.)
The Hollywood trope of someone pleading guilty to protect someone else doesn't happen in real life--it's a disbarrable offense in most states for a prosecutor to suggest that they'd imprison a family member (such as a spouse) for X crime if the defendant doesn't plead guilty to Y crime. Moreover, plea bargains, by their nature, apply only to the defendant; other individuals are not parties to the bargain and aren't bound to (or protected by) it.
In some states, inadequate representation is a serious concern. These are mostly red states. People there have repeatedly, over the course of decades, chosen to underfund public defenders. Frequently, this is despite having friends or family who have been arrested and gone through the criminal process. If, after several decades and personal exposure to the inadequacies of the system, they choose to screw themselves over, why should I, in a state willing to fund its public defenders, spend more of my money when those people won't?
The threat of increased jail time is a popular online meme not borne out in real life. Armchair lawyers don't realize that you can plead at any time before the the verdict--literally, up to the second it's read out it. This means that you can wait to see how the case is going before deciding whether to plead. But again, most people are actually guilty, accept that their is a punishment to pay for their crime, and simply want to move on.
> What happens if the DNS server refuses to host the IP lookup?
No need. It's easier if DNS registrars conspire to confiscate and/or refuse to sell domain names. This has already been done. SSL certs can, and have been, revoked. The ISPs haven't really been involved in these types of actions since the 90s, so I'm curious what their stance is. For now, if you've been run off the face of the WWW, you still have TOR hidden services or IPFS. Who knows what will happen when the ISPs get involved.
Personally I would draw the line on requiring ISPs to carry legal IP traffic fairly ("net neutrality"), and pretty much everything else being free game for terms of services etc. I would considering extending the "neutrality" aspect for domains, considering that ICANN has effectively monopoly on DNS.
There are still some practical problems for hosting your own website with those "primitives", most importantly getting an internet connection suitable for hosting anything in the first place if nobody is willing to co-locate your servers. One would hope that with the proliferation of IPv6 and FTTx, actually hosting stuff from your basement would become more realistic.
The only thing you can really do is use tor. But you have to be very, very careful and know what you're doing. It's not something most people can set up, and not something most people can (easily) access.
Of course, I do wonder how far this goes. What happens if the DNS server refuses to host the IP lookup? Host your own DNS server? What if the browsers refuse to allow access to the site? Build your own browser? What if ISPs refuse to transfer the data over the wire? Make your own internet?
People have defended that this vs. Net Neutrality (at least the extent of the ability of an ISP to control what goes over its wires) as having a core difference, but it feels to me they are closer than people realize and the standards set by one can influence the other.