6 ms·

If free speech is only for people we like, it's not worth much.

dagw 8y ago
He's free to speak as much as he wants and private companies are free to not to business with people whom they believe violate their ToS. If GoDaddy had some sort of government monopoly on domain names and having your domain registered with GoDaddy was necessary to publish on the internet, you might have point. But it isn't.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jacksmith21006 8y ago
Private companies are not subject to freedom of speech. Something they do not like can go as long as not a protected class.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  While the First Amendment (in the US) doesn't apply to private companies, which is what you're thinking of, this doesn't mean GoDaddy isn't restricting free speech, in a general concept manner. GoDaddy is legally able to do what they're doing, but people can still find what they're doing detestable, and there's an argument to be made that while the First Amendment doesn't currently protect people from actions like this, that our laws really should. The street corner is no longer the place speech is conveyed. Speech is now conveyed primarily via online platforms, which are pretty much all corporate owned. The First Amendment is no longer significantly empowered to do its job.
  - anigbrowl 8y ago
    people can still find what they're doing detestable Please explain to me the vital public interest at stake in protecting explicit calls for the abandonment of due process and participation in atrocities by law enforcement, and incitements to rape, murder, and other crimes with emphasis on particular ethnic groups as detailed in the mentioned letter (https://lawyerscommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Clarke-letter-to-Altright.com_.pdf https://lawyerscommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Clar...). I find it odd that the idea of terminating an automated publication service is considered a greater moral ill than the idea of committing the egregious human rights violations which would have a far greater impact on the liberty of the target populations. Perhaps we could establish a calculus of social ills? I'm really anxious to know how many rapes, enslavements, and murders it takes to outweigh the injustice of someone suffering an impediment to publication of content inciting such acts.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      I don't think you can weigh "incitement" nearly as severely as an act curtailing rights to speak their mind. You are trying to equate the horrific acts of rape, enslavement, and murder, with the act of writing text on a website about such, and I do not believe those two things are equal. There is only so far I believe you can place blame on someone. While it is obvious that you can blame someone who commits a murder for that murder, there's an increasingly tenuous attempt to blame someone who told them they should commit a murder that I do not buy into. It seems to remove the agency of the murderer to try and cast the blame onto someone else.
      - anigbrowl 8y ago
        You are trying to equate the horrific acts of rape, enslavement, and murder, with the act of writing text on a website about such Writing about a behavior and encouraging people to engage in said behavior are distinctly different sorts of speech acts. I don't know what you find 'increasingly tenuous' about the very detailed and specific exhortations identified here. Writing such is of course not the same as committing it, but I don't agree with your position tha it's free of any culpability. Again, it seems like you're more troubled by people exhorting such behaviors being thrown off the platform than by the impact upon those targeted by such statements.
        ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        I definitely am more troubled by actions against people than words against people.
        anigbrowl 8y ago
        I'd point out that the altright.com website violated GoDaddy's ToS first, rather than their website being pulled for something one of them said or associated themselves with in another context. This is a peculiar hill to die on.
        8y ago
  - jacksmith21006 8y ago
    Depends on what thing we are talking about. Take YouTube. I think no advertisers you boot the content and problem solved. YT keeping the content on the site means YT is subsidizing.
- slededit 8y ago
  Your conflating the principle of "freedom of speech" with the implementation in law. The social expectation of neutral service providers has been seriously eroded over the last 2 decades. We never had laws in this space because we never needed them (we do for telephones).
  - mieseratte 8y ago
    I'm of similar mind on this. Free speech is a concept that transcends law, and while you absolutely don't have to agree with it I expect service providers to. The second they willingly remove content that is not illegal, I cannot trust they will treat my content fairly should it come under scrutiny. Should I find myself under the scorn of an internet lynchmob, I could very well find my content removed.
    - anigbrowl 8y ago
      How do you feel about the freedom to go on living? It seems like that is a prerequisite for exercising freedom of speech, no?
      - mieseratte 8y ago
        What kind of question is this?
        anigbrowl 8y ago
        A request for a comparison. The removed content involves incitement to various violent acts, which is carried out would not only impact the victims' free speech, but other liberties too. I think this ought to have been pretty obvious given the context provided in the article.
        mieseratte 8y ago
        A comparison to what? I stated an opinion on the role service providers should take in regards to content, that is, neutrality. Should no opinions on border policy or policing be allowed because the "end-user" would be harmed? Or only specific ones? What if I think we should assassinate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi for leading ISIS? Am I not being valid, or is it fine because he's a "bad guy?" If there is genuine incitement, let there be a court order. Businesses should not be arbiters of acceptable speech. This is bad territory.
ry_ry 8y ago
I'm almost kinda slightly entirely with you on this. I believe in freedom of speech, and genuinely believe that even positions I consider utterly reprehensible deserve the same liberties as everybody else, but I try to avoid helping those people with it. It's why I won't use Tor, I couldn't offer a node knowing what could potentially be going through it, so I don't. Even as a big ole' corporation GoDaddy are absolutely entitled to hold some beliefs (regardless of why, for the cynics)
- modbait 8y ago
  Thank you for your support. :-) It's not obvious in my original comment, but I was speaking somewhat wistfully about the philosophical concept of free speech. As a practical matter, I believe humans will generally continue spitting in the food of people whose ideas they don't like, or whose looks they don't like, or who even just happen to remind them of their asshole exes. Those who will actually live in a principled fashion are rare enough that we note them in history books.
anigbrowl 8y ago
GoDaddy took the site down because of posts explicitly calling for violence against migrants - to the extent of "a massacre or two" - which violated its ToS. It's kind of hard to take complaints about free speech being infringed seriously when the complainants (qua the website operators, not the commenters here on HN) are proposing to limit not only the speech of others, but their freedom of movement and indeed their freedom to go on living. While this particular episode is a commercial rather than a constitutional question, I'm inclined to agree with Justice Robert H Jackson's well-known dictum that 'the Constitution is not a suicide pact.'
- modbait 8y ago
  You seem to be saying that the principle of free speech should not include being able to say that some speech of others should be limited. I suspect GoDaddy would disagree.
dbasedweeb 8y ago
GoDaddy also has a right to free expression, which they exercised. Forcing them to broadcast Spencer isn’t compatible with freedom of expression either. At some point absolutes fail and you have to accept the individual’s/entity’s right to choose.
tonyhb 8y ago
Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. In this case, a private entity stopped serving a customer.
tdb7893 8y ago
They took it down for essentially advocating killing people, which is more than them just not liking the site. Also, I'm sure they still have plenty of sites that they personally disagree and to my knowledge they have tens of millions of domains and they've only taken down a few (I'm only aware of two domains they've taken down like this)
krageon 8y ago
I think I can live with that if the tradeoff means I don't have to deal with literal nazis on the internet.
dalore 8y ago
What about GoDaddy's free speech of them writing their own ToS? It's not like they have a monopoly or anything. Easy to go somewhere else if you don't like it.

dagw 8y ago

He's free to speak as much as he wants and private companies are free to not to business with people whom they believe violate their ToS. If GoDaddy had some sort of government monopoly on domain names and having your domain registered with GoDaddy was necessary to publish on the internet, you might have point. But it isn't.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jacksmith21006 8y ago

Private companies are not subject to freedom of speech. Something they do not like can go as long as not a protected class.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
While the First Amendment (in the US) doesn't apply to private companies, which is what you're thinking of, this doesn't mean GoDaddy isn't restricting free speech, in a general concept manner. GoDaddy is legally able to do what they're doing, but people can still find what they're doing detestable, and there's an argument to be made that while the First Amendment doesn't currently protect people from actions like this, that our laws really should. The street corner is no longer the place speech is conveyed. Speech is now conveyed primarily via online platforms, which are pretty much all corporate owned. The First Amendment is no longer significantly empowered to do its job.
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  people can still find what they're doing detestable Please explain to me the vital public interest at stake in protecting explicit calls for the abandonment of due process and participation in atrocities by law enforcement, and incitements to rape, murder, and other crimes with emphasis on particular ethnic groups as detailed in the mentioned letter (https://lawyerscommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Clarke-letter-to-Altright.com_.pdf https://lawyerscommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Clar...). I find it odd that the idea of terminating an automated publication service is considered a greater moral ill than the idea of committing the egregious human rights violations which would have a far greater impact on the liberty of the target populations. Perhaps we could establish a calculus of social ills? I'm really anxious to know how many rapes, enslavements, and murders it takes to outweigh the injustice of someone suffering an impediment to publication of content inciting such acts.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    I don't think you can weigh "incitement" nearly as severely as an act curtailing rights to speak their mind. You are trying to equate the horrific acts of rape, enslavement, and murder, with the act of writing text on a website about such, and I do not believe those two things are equal. There is only so far I believe you can place blame on someone. While it is obvious that you can blame someone who commits a murder for that murder, there's an increasingly tenuous attempt to blame someone who told them they should commit a murder that I do not buy into. It seems to remove the agency of the murderer to try and cast the blame onto someone else.
    - anigbrowl 8y ago
      You are trying to equate the horrific acts of rape, enslavement, and murder, with the act of writing text on a website about such Writing about a behavior and encouraging people to engage in said behavior are distinctly different sorts of speech acts. I don't know what you find 'increasingly tenuous' about the very detailed and specific exhortations identified here. Writing such is of course not the same as committing it, but I don't agree with your position tha it's free of any culpability. Again, it seems like you're more troubled by people exhorting such behaviors being thrown off the platform than by the impact upon those targeted by such statements.
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        I definitely am more troubled by actions against people than words against people.
        anigbrowl 8y ago
        I'd point out that the altright.com website violated GoDaddy's ToS first, rather than their website being pulled for something one of them said or associated themselves with in another context. This is a peculiar hill to die on.
        8y ago
- jacksmith21006 8y ago
  Depends on what thing we are talking about. Take YouTube. I think no advertisers you boot the content and problem solved. YT keeping the content on the site means YT is subsidizing.
slededit 8y ago
Your conflating the principle of "freedom of speech" with the implementation in law. The social expectation of neutral service providers has been seriously eroded over the last 2 decades. We never had laws in this space because we never needed them (we do for telephones).
- mieseratte 8y ago
  I'm of similar mind on this. Free speech is a concept that transcends law, and while you absolutely don't have to agree with it I expect service providers to. The second they willingly remove content that is not illegal, I cannot trust they will treat my content fairly should it come under scrutiny. Should I find myself under the scorn of an internet lynchmob, I could very well find my content removed.
  - anigbrowl 8y ago
    How do you feel about the freedom to go on living? It seems like that is a prerequisite for exercising freedom of speech, no?
    - mieseratte 8y ago
      What kind of question is this?
      - anigbrowl 8y ago
        A request for a comparison. The removed content involves incitement to various violent acts, which is carried out would not only impact the victims' free speech, but other liberties too. I think this ought to have been pretty obvious given the context provided in the article.
        mieseratte 8y ago
        A comparison to what? I stated an opinion on the role service providers should take in regards to content, that is, neutrality. Should no opinions on border policy or policing be allowed because the "end-user" would be harmed? Or only specific ones? What if I think we should assassinate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi for leading ISIS? Am I not being valid, or is it fine because he's a "bad guy?" If there is genuine incitement, let there be a court order. Businesses should not be arbiters of acceptable speech. This is bad territory.

ry_ry 8y ago

I'm almost kinda slightly entirely with you on this. I believe in freedom of speech, and genuinely believe that even positions I consider utterly reprehensible deserve the same liberties as everybody else, but I try to avoid helping those people with it. It's why I won't use Tor, I couldn't offer a node knowing what could potentially be going through it, so I don't. Even as a big ole' corporation GoDaddy are absolutely entitled to hold some beliefs (regardless of why, for the cynics)

modbait 8y ago
Thank you for your support. :-) It's not obvious in my original comment, but I was speaking somewhat wistfully about the philosophical concept of free speech. As a practical matter, I believe humans will generally continue spitting in the food of people whose ideas they don't like, or whose looks they don't like, or who even just happen to remind them of their asshole exes. Those who will actually live in a principled fashion are rare enough that we note them in history books.

anigbrowl 8y ago

GoDaddy took the site down because of posts explicitly calling for violence against migrants - to the extent of "a massacre or two" - which violated its ToS. It's kind of hard to take complaints about free speech being infringed seriously when the complainants (qua the website operators, not the commenters here on HN) are proposing to limit not only the speech of others, but their freedom of movement and indeed their freedom to go on living. While this particular episode is a commercial rather than a constitutional question, I'm inclined to agree with Justice Robert H Jackson's well-known dictum that 'the Constitution is not a suicide pact.'

modbait 8y ago
You seem to be saying that the principle of free speech should not include being able to say that some speech of others should be limited. I suspect GoDaddy would disagree.

dbasedweeb 8y ago

GoDaddy also has a right to free expression, which they exercised. Forcing them to broadcast Spencer isn’t compatible with freedom of expression either. At some point absolutes fail and you have to accept the individual’s/entity’s right to choose.

tonyhb 8y ago

Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. In this case, a private entity stopped serving a customer.

tdb7893 8y ago

They took it down for essentially advocating killing people, which is more than them just not liking the site. Also, I'm sure they still have plenty of sites that they personally disagree and to my knowledge they have tens of millions of domains and they've only taken down a few (I'm only aware of two domains they've taken down like this)

krageon 8y ago

I think I can live with that if the tradeoff means I don't have to deal with literal nazis on the internet.

dalore 8y ago

What about GoDaddy's free speech of them writing their own ToS? It's not like they have a monopoly or anything. Easy to go somewhere else if you don't like it.