For years, the website Daily Stormer has promoted hatred against Jews, black people, LGBT people, and other minorities, making it one of the Internet’s most infamous destinations. But on Sunday, editor Andrew Anglin outdid himself by publishing a vulgar, slut-shaming article about Heather Heyer, a woman who was killed when someone rammed a car into a crowd of anti-racism protestors in Charlottesville.
The article prompted a response from the site’s domain registrar, GoDaddy. “We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service,” GoDaddy wrote in a tweet late Sunday night.
On Monday, the Daily Stormer switched its registration to Google’s domain service. Within hours, Google announced a cancellation of its own. “We are cancelling Daily Stormer’s registration with Google Domains for violating our terms of service,” the company wrote in an statement emailed to Ars.
No company should do business with nazis and white supremacists – ever. Still waiting on the darling of the podcasting industry, SquareSpace, to stop doing business with nazis. We can’t remove these sites – and its creators and their philosophy – from existence, but at least we can make life as difficult as possible for them.
And, since far too many people in the west do not understand free speech – kicking nazis out of your (virtual) store or house is free speech.
No company should do business with Christian Fundamentalists – ever.
No company should do business with Extreme Left “let’s burn the cars” groups – ever.
No company should do business with LGBTs – ever.
No company should do business with Muslims – ever.
No company should do business with people I don’t like – ever.
Or maybe business should be another domain, apart from politics. It would result in more freedom, maybe?
That is not in defence of Andrew Anglin. According to Wikipedia, even some far-right groups didn’t like his “tone”. The guy really should try to run his own server(s), or better, just disappear from the WWW. But that’s my preference, in the political domain, and I prefer companies to stay outside of the political domain. I’m not contesting their legal right, just their moral right. If we allow companies to have power and infrastructure in society, then companies should be careful to not cross the borders of their domain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer
Freedom doesn’t work like that.
The problem is it is kinda like the whole gay wedding cake stuff.
I’ve seen people the same people say “company X can kick whoever they like off their platform” and in the next breath say “well refusing to server gay people because their sexuality is wrong”.
There are 2 stances that you can take:
* Government can interfere with your politics of who you sell a product to.
* Or it is a their business and they can do what they like.
These things are mutually exclusive.
(I am going to ignore things like safety standards as these are objective and beneficial for everyone).
Also companies as large as Google, Facebook in their respective spheres are defacto utilities at this point.
You cannot reasonably create a service to rival either of these platforms due the the size of their infrastructure alone (they own that too btw!).
For some reason back in the 90s Microsoft almost got broken up by bundling IE with Windows, but nobody has battered an eyelid with Google bundling, Google Chrome, Google Maps, Google Docs, Gmail / Inbox, Google Drive with the Android and Chrome Operating systems.
As far as I am concerned if Google kicks you off their system for “wrong think” that is the same as someone removing your running water because you have the wrong political opinions.
This stuff really didn’t work well in the Communist and Fascists states of the past.
Edited 2017-08-15 00:41 UTC
The Google service that refused the Daily Stormer as their customer is Google DNS. DNS is a reasonably open ecosystem with plenty competition.
(GoDaddy is probably larger than Google DNS to begin with)
Nevermind the value of any “is it a utility” discussions, I don’t think they apply here.
This is why the idea of “privatization” should be more carefully thought through.
Anyway, As long as its a human that is a customer (or owner or employee), businesses and politics will always intersect.
Some people may not want to buy products from those companies who employ (or who are owned or do business with) people who disagree with them. That is their right as consumers. If a company wants those customers money (maximizing profits), the company can fire those who the company sees as a threat to their bottom line. Cold, Calculated, Capitalism. Its not about Morality, its about freedom.
The problem is that large companies such as Google, Facebook are defacto utilities.
Because of the James Damore document, I’ve started moving my accounts from gmail. I have almost everything tied to it.
There are people that say “well you can use alternatives”.
All of my family apart from my father and I use Facebook. I miss a lot stuff going on with regards to my nephews who I love very much because most of the photos of them going out is put on facebook. Of course I see them in person etc, but it still nice to be kept in the loop.
I have friends overseas where it is much easier to keep in touch via fb versus say email or IM. So you get cut off from them.
Regarding my business. I use TFS online and Azure. Moving code repositories is easy enough, it is just git. Moving bug reports, build scripts etc is more troublesome.
These companies can hold you effectively to ransom now because of their TOS.
I am someone that believes in capitalism, but when these companies are soo big they basically own social interaction online for the vast majority of people.
Edited 2017-08-15 00:56 UTC
It is Censorship by any other name. All it does is prove the white nationalists right, that the “white race” is under attack. Let them speak and they will hang themselves with their own words.
Back in 2010 Nick Griffin was let on Question time on the BBC and was representing the BNP (which is a white nationalist group in the UK). Him and his party were so humiliated on national TV that they haven’t been heard of since in any sort of serious capacity (every so often they poke a leaflet through my door that goes straight in the bin).
While I find the daily stormer vile, they are basically some edgelords living with their parents. Nobody takes them seriously and all Google and Go Daddy have done is elevate their notoriety online. .
It is kinda like 4chan trolling shia le bouf and HWNDU earlier this year. If he had just ignored them and didn’t go break down mode they would have got bored eventually and just gaveup.
Also you haven’t mentioned the far left groups either such as Antifa which started the esculation of violence beginning at Berkeley last year. Do you denounce those groups as well? They have been violent at many events that were simply just pro free speech or pro Republican / Donald Trump.
One of the Alt-Right guys (he has a anti-violence stance) is going is going to have permanent damage to his eye sight from being pepper sprayed in the face from far left antifa members.
Far left violence is as serious of a problem as far right violence, but it is rarely mentioned.
Edited 2017-08-15 00:09 UTC
Who drove a car into a crowd?
Who’s currently awaiting trial for clubbed a number of people over the head with a bike lock?
The murder at Charlottesville is the worst incident so far, but Antifa members have carried out assaults that easily could have killed someone.
Political violence is wrong regardless of which group of extremists it comes from. Anyone who justifies or tolerates either side’s random unprovoked violence is part of the problem.
Thankyou, I forgot about Eric Clanton.
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6d0_1492697965
BTW hitting someone with a head with such a weapon could kill them.
[q]Political violence is wrong regardless of which group of extremists it comes from. Anyone who justifies or tolerates either side’s random unprovoked violence is part of the problem.[q]
Agreed.
Edited 2017-08-15 00:25 UTC
Exactly, I didn’t seem the same reaction to BAMN, Antifa or any of the other groups that have been getting away with next to murder for a long time. The failure here is the lack of attention on both sides of spectrum to try and de-escalate this nonsense.
We need the media amplifying the nonsense coming out of both sides so we can laugh them into oblivion. Not censoring them so they feel emboldened. The problem is the lack of a proper conversation in the US, nobody wants to have a honest dialogue it always devolves into name calling and a lack of facts on the table, this is how ideology becomes hostile and violent.
You missed the whole point of what I was saying about the escalation of violence that started with Antifa which is a left wing group. You are missing the overall bigger picture.
But I’ve been following news of similar clashes over the last year and a half and both sides have been escalating their violence in response to one another.
As I said Antifa have been pepper spraying, throwing explosives at people, beating people unconscious and for quite some time and you hardly heard about it. This time someone that is far right, next time it might be antifa.
One of these sides were bound to kill someone sooner rather than later and it just happened to be someone that was allegedly far right.
Make no mistake, I denounce the Daily Stormer, yet I feel extremely troubled that registrars are taking action against this domain owner for editorial reasons. It wasn’t hosted at godaddy and despite godaddy’s claims to the contrary, I see no evidence of abuse against godaddy or it’s TOS with regards to the domain registration.
If godaddy was hosting the content on it’s own property, then things would be different. But to be absolutely clear, godaddy’s official position is that they can pull an owner’s domain registration simply because of what the owner has published outside of godaddy’s walls. Registrars should not have editorial oversight over websites that aren’t even hosted there.
It would be extremely bad for registrars to become actively involved enforcing domains are only used for “politically acceptable” views. While it happens to be against some despicable people this time, it’s a very slippery slope. If we allow registrars to take down domains because of what the owner says, then we will be weakening freedom of speech for everyone online.
We all need to stand up against the hatred, but it’s a really bad idea to have registrars deciding who’s allowed to register a domain. It will end badly, let’s not go down that path.
Edited 2017-08-15 00:43 UTC
Interesting to see the leftwing Last Days Saints arguing for human rights violation. In EU and particularly nordic countries this would be blatantly illegal. It does not matter how vile the nazishit is; a contract cannot legally be voided based on political views. Discrimination is illegal when done on basis of ethnicity, sexuality, religious convictions and political convictions.
Edit: This is true for vertical as well as horisontal relations.
Edited 2017-08-15 00:44 UTC
Nothing like violating free speech, simply because it offends you, if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
And soon we need to learn to keep our political opinions to ourselves Or type them out and spread outside of internet ………. Luckily I dont have any opinions ever … (thats to you Big Brother.)
Hate speech laws in the UK have basically made some jokes in the UK illegal.
There is a Youtuber called Count dankula that could face a year in jail for teaching his dog (as a joke to annoy his girlfriend) to raise his paw when he says “sieg heil”.
In my home town some racist taunts are basically jokes at the football stadium now (these laws were drawn up in response to the football firms of the 1980s in the UK which were violent). These days they are long running jokes but are still considered racism because 30 years ago it wasn’t a joke. The problem is now isn’t 30 years ago.
The UK itself is a joke these days.
Edited 2017-08-15 02:05 UTC
Wowzers Batman, smells like censorship. What will be memory holed next?
So apparently, equating anti-fascists to nazis and KKK is totally OK.
Insanity. Even without the context, the KKK/Nazis in USA were armed with guns to the teeth, so much that the cops did not want to intervene.
Tell me again how both sides are equal? Especially since one side is literally fighting to limit the LITERAL rights and espouses the genocide of the non whites?
What the fuck.
Deeply saddened there are so many Nazi sympathizers on OSAlert. Apparently the cowards in these comments think you can reason with people who literally want to exterminate and murder all Jews, blacks, etc.
Ask your grandparents, kids. They know how to deal with nazis, and here’s a sneak peek: it doesn’t involve “many sides”.
Fucking cowards.
Let’s silence those, who do not think like us because they want to silence those who do not think like them, to show them that silencing those who do not think like them is wrong…