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Gab.com Booted from Hosting Provider Due to User Account
- mohammedbin 8y agoI'm not even white, nor do I honestly "admire" white people per se. But it seems perfectly okay to say- "kill all white people" on twitter. Only recently Australian parliament voted against a symbolic motion- "It's okay to be white". And nobody seems to raise a finger. I mean fucking white people ruined Asia, sure. But it had nothing to do with their skin color and it was the ancestors. Somehow gab is the bad guy here just because a certain group is the one being victimized. Also just to be clear, I have nothing against jews (before you read my name and call me an "enemy"). Just like nothing against whites. I just want fairness. Period.
- SwellJoe 8y agoGab hosts many, many, white supremacists. It has become a dumping ground for every social network's rejects...the people who've been booted from Twitter, reddit, etc (platforms that have been criticized for being slow to remove hate speech and incitement to violence, etc.) have congregated on Gab. This isn't a free speech issue, it is an issue of whether Joyent wants to have responsibility for spreading that kind of thing. They don't, so they aren't. They gave Gab time to sort out alternatives, even though the kinds of things Gab hosts conflict with Joyent's terms of service. I think Joyent is well within their rights to tell'em to kick rocks and go spread their shit somewhere else.
- mohammedbin 8y agoYou're arguing a tangential point. Why is it okay to say - "kill all whites" and the platform let's you be but not okay for a user to say "kill jews" and the platform boots the user and yet gets booted itself.
- jbarciauskas 8y agoThere is no credible threat against white people as a group. Those who say this generally do so as a way to raise awareness of the very real threats posed by white supremacists, not as a real threat. Taken in context, the distinction is easy to make.
- Inconel 8y agoAs a non-white person who is wholly unsympathetic to the ideas espoused by white supremacists, partly out of reasons of self preservation, making statements such as "kill all whites" doesn't seem like a particularly good method of raising awareness of the dangers posed by hateful and bigoted ideologies. Then again I don't spend much time on Twitter so maybe such statements are able to lead to constructive dialogue there.
- jbarciauskas 8y agoI think we can argue tactics in good faith, while understanding that there is not actually a credible movement to eliminate white people. On the flip side, there are active and organized white supremacist groups advocating for the elimination of any number of minorities.
- Inconel 8y agoI'm in agreement that there isn't a credible movement to eliminate white people, but I still feel that if companies, and social media sites in particular, are going to have guidelines around acceptable speech on their platforms, they should probably be applied equally regardless of what groups they may target.
- jnbiche 8y agoOh, come on. As today's horrible event demonstrated, all it takes is one single unbalanced individual with a semi-automatic weapon, and the members of any group -- white, black, Asian, Latino, Jewish, Muslim -- are at risk. And writing about killing members of any group only services to rile up and incite those people among us who are predisposed to violence. And those people are of every color and nationality that exists.
- milemi 8y agoMove along sockpuppet.
- mohammedbin 8y agoPlease don't make ad-hominem attacks, you're hurting HN as a community.
- SwellJoe 8y agoThat's not the conversation I'm having. Surely, you can see that a sustained effort to recruit for racist violence, and an ongoing celebration of racist violence, by people who have a history of racist violence, is not comparable to a joke about killing white people by someone who is not organizing to commit violence against white people or celebrating the death of or violence against innocent white people. The fact that you know enough about the situation to make that comparison, but still ask that question...means that I can't trust the sincerity of your question.
- Inconel 8y agoWhile I find statements like "kill all whites" to be hateful and unproductive, I'm certainly in agreement that such statements don't pose the same threat to whites as white supremacists ideologies pose to non-whites, largely based on the current power structures in the US and West. However I would caution you in your assumption that the same people who would "joke" about killing white people aren't also celebrating when death and violence is visited upon some innocent white person. From my experience there's certainly quite a bit of overlap between the two.
- SwellJoe 8y agoThe specific instance of someone saying "kill all white people" on Twitter, at least the one I know of that caused a firestorm, I guess because its poster wasn't immediately banned forever by Twitter or whatever, was a joke by a white person. In poor taste? Sure. A credible threat or an incitement to real violence? Hardly. I will concede that sometimes "jokes" aren't really jokes...sometimes, they're the first step toward making an abhorrent idea a reality, and white supremacists know that and use it to their advantage by wrapping every evil intention up in a "it's just a joke, don't be so sensitive". Again, poor taste, sure, but not comparable to white supremacist gangs planning and celebrating murder. I'm sure there are people who incite violence against white people, and people who would like to commit violence against white people. But, they don't have a voice in our society, whereas violent white supremacists do, and on a level they haven't in my lifetime. Just in the past week there have been three white supremacist terrorist attacks: 11 Jews dead in a shooting, 2 black folks killed in a shooting, and the unsuccessful bombing attacks. That didn't happen because those folks are white, it happened because they were perceived as being a threat to a particular way of life that has white folks on top.
- ascorbic 8y agoYou missed an important step: nobody was on the platform saying "kill all whites" and then going and actually killing whites. If there was a site that was filled with people saying "kill all whites", and the site was fine with this, and then one of its members went and murdered a load of white people, then yes I'd say they would probably be booted by their host too. They don't get points for booting the actual murderer after he'd done the murders.
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- SwellJoe 8y agoNo, because it's a lie spread by white supremacists to engender false equivalency. The Dallas police shooter was not involved in Black Lives Matter, and BLM is an explicitly non-violent organization and always has been.
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- jrs95 8y agoMedia and activists that pressure social media platforms, advertisers etc. treat the two very differently. Yes, whites are generally the privileged group, but I don't think it's reasonable to say that excuses the type of behavior you're talking about happening on Twitter, and that sort of thing feeds into the conspiracy theories you'll find in places like Gab.
- lgierth 8y agoWe're talking about more than just saying things here. 11 people have been murdered by a white supremacist, and Gab is the online community for white supremacists / neonazis / anti-semites, one of whom is the murderer, whose actions have been heavily influenced by the specific culture of that community. What does the white-people stuff you allegedly saw "on twitter" have to do with that? Come on, really?
- mohammedbin 8y agoI would say to you the same thing I said to your sibling- this is a tangential point.
- lgierth 8y agoYour whole point is tangential to the story posted. Go away sockpuppet.
- aldoushuxley001 8y agoGab is not the online community for white supremacists, that's just an absurd hyperbolic statement. I would downvote you if I could.
- lgierth 8y agoAre there others in the >100,000 users range?
- aldoushuxley001 8y agoYou haven't even proven that Gab is a white supremacist site. It's not. That's simply a mudslinging accusation meant to unfairly defame a site, probably because it contains different opinions than your own.
- pvg 8y agoYou can easily find antisemitic tripe in Gab's official account. It's a site run by bigots for bigots that likes to pretend it's some neutral, principled free speech crusader. It's thoroughly, painfully obvious to any reasonable person that it's not - it's just a generic online septic tank.
- krschultz 8y agoAbsolutely nothing in Twitter's policies supports your argument. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...
- sago 8y agoI find your point to be staggering. Based on your name alone, are you really suggesting that you could engage online in the systematic advocacy of killing against whites in America, and face no consequences?
- toasterlovin 8y agoI guess you’re not exposed to mainstream media? I’m not very worried about the fate of white people in the US, but racism directed at whites is, as far as I can tell, perfectly acceptable discourse among the cultural elites. Might even get you a job at the New York Times.
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- dna_polymerase 8y agoJoyent is a private company, they can choose to refuse doing business with anyone they like to, I think this was confirmed (by supreme court) a few weeks ago when some baker refused the business of a gay couple. (That decision is protected by the same first amendment that Gab claims to be protecting! Brilliant really.) However, for everyone looking to host at Joyent: Beware they might cancel on you, too. And giving a company 2 days notice is far beyond comprehension. I wouldn't want to deal with this. I think it's really poor business standards.
- jbarciauskas 8y agoIt doesn't seem like this scenario should make you nervous unless your platform is a venue for discussing genocide.
- dna_polymerase 8y agoThere were many cases in which hosting companies decided to terminate accounts for whatever reason. And that's generally not a big problem, but 2 days notice on a weekend is just outright shitty behaviour. I can understand Joyent trying to cut ties to Gab, but seriously guys, give them time to migrate.
- jbarciauskas 8y ago11 people died and this is where you want to make a stand?
- syshum 8y agoNo that actually was not confirmed at all by the US Supreme Court which ruled in favor of the Baker is very very very narrow technical grounds based solely on the comments/action of the Civil Rights agency that issued the fines. The 1st amendment did not factor into the case at all really. Please try to actually understand the law before commenting on a legal position.
- Tycho 8y agoThe real question is, was there external pressure applied to the hosting company or was this entirely their own decision?
- minimaxir 8y agoWhat is the "external pressure" in this case?
- tootahe45 8y agoThe usual lynch mobs (which FB & Twitter allow on their platform) reported it en masse I'm guessing. This works well for getting conservatives banned on social media because their report systems are somewhat automated, but it also works for domains and email providers. I think they recently got Gab booted off Azure too.
- lgierth 8y ago"Lynching" is a terrible term to use for filling out an online abuse form, while there have been 11 people murdered by a white supremacist.
- jbarciauskas 8y agoYes. The victims at Tree of Life today were victims of lynching, not the platform on which the lynching was promoted.
- happytoexplain 8y agoIt's frankly incredible that you decide to use the term "lynch mob" to describe people criticising platforms that are notable exactly for supporting literal lynch mobs and people encouraging actual murderers. Equally baffling is the equating of the criticism of these platforms to criticism of conservatives in general, which seems like something anybody with any respect for conservatives would want to avoid.
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- mychael 8y agoI don't visit Gab, but I will definitely be closing my Joyent account. If you're not a courageous and principled defender of free speech, you should get out of the cloud business.
- ubernostrum 8y agoDo you believe a baker should have the right to refuse to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, if the baker has a deeply-held religious belief that same-sex relationships are sinful? If the baker turns out to have that legal right, would you argue that baker should nonetheless not exercise that right? Asking because people in these kinds of threads often seem to get suspiciously selective about when and why they decide to argue for stripping the right of free association -- and disassociation -- from others.
- jbarciauskas 8y agoThe US standard for what is legally free speech is absurdly low. Why should companies hold themselves to it? Why should they force themselves to support organizations that promote the wholesale elimination of other classes of people?
- stuart78 8y agoThe ‘US Standard’ for free speech is exactly where it should be, and applies to the government’s role in censoring citizen speech. Joyent, as a business has no obligation to support anything outside of their own policies.
- jbarciauskas 8y agoI think we are mostly in agreement?
- syshum 8y agoThe "US Standard" generally means the standard by which the people of the US value the concept of Free Speech, which extends beyond that of the 1st amendment. We the people of the US codified our position on speech in the 1st amendment of our governing document to ensure that our government would never infringe upon our most vital right as free humans. This however does not in anyway mean we believe others including large corporations should have the right to infringe upon said rights simply because "its a business" There are many avenues one could seek to hold Joynet and others like them that proclaim to be open to all in their advertisements then reject many they disagree with. First and foremost would be Truth in Advertisement laws, Fraud, and other legal regulations which if they were properly enforced these companies would be clearly violating No the "US Standard" of Free Speech is not just about government censorship, that is ignorant and naive view of what Free Speech is as a concept. Free Speech is concept where by a person is free to express themselves with out fear of censorship from either government or society at large. Free Speech today is under massive attack not by government in the US (yet) but by society at large. //Edit for the record. I do not have nor do I plan to sign up for a Gab account (or twitter Gab's competitor) this is not about Gab as a service, I honestly could not care less about Gab it is about the precedent this sets when it comes to cloud and other internet infrastructure
- walrus01 8y agoThe irony of a bunch of Rand worshipping free market libertarians being outraged and indignant when another private business no longer wants to take their money.
- toasterlovin 8y agoFWIW, I don’t think classifying white supremacists as free market libertarians is accurate. There is a decidedly collectivist bent in white nationalism that is at odds with the individualistic nature of libertarianism.
- sbuttgereit 8y agoI am find Rand an invaluable philosophical resource. While I wouldn't count myself an Objectivist, I certainly find more correct with Objectivism than not. From this perspective, a few observations. Joyent should be able to do business with whomever they want, period. So long as they don't commit fraud or infringe on the rights of others in so doing, then they are within their rights AND within their moral prerogative to not do business with Gab. Note also that there is no moral obligation of Joyent to give Gab a platform and they're not doing so is not censorship: Gab's right to free speech cannot rightfully compromise Joyent's right to speech or association. The only way Joyent would be in the wrong here is if they represented to Gab that their business was acceptable/welcome and they did so with fore-knowledge of that business; and even then they'd only be in the wrong due to the short notice of termination given and the resulting damage to Gab's business, not because of the change of heart. To suggest that those that think like me might think otherwise is to speak without the requisite education to comment or is simple intellectual dishonesty. Regardless the degree to which you hate Rand and those that think like me, the ridiculous and ill-informed hyperbole that your message contains is unwarranted and leads to the very state of affairs in which we find ourselves. It doesn't matter toward which "team" you express unmitigated hate, it only matters that you and those that shout disparagements (regardless of which side they sit) advocate acting on raw emotion rather than reason... indulging in hate over disagreement and debate. The facts, the truth, and the legitimate back-and-forth of competing ideas tested by reason seems to matter not once that's done. It may play well to the home team, but it does nothing to advance the discussion in the more general sense. Very sad.
- paraditedc 8y agoI have been following the issue of Internet polarization since 2014 [1], and I propose two different ways to mediate the situation on a societal level: - Have a neutral platform to facilitate discourse and mutual understanding. This is hard as it requires a largely informed populace. - Complete segregation of groups having different opinions. This proves to be also hard because of incidents like this. [1] https://paradite.com/2014/11/11/internet-polarized-society/ https://paradite.com/2014/11/11/internet-polarized-society/
- jbarciauskas 8y agoWhat if, instead of either of these, we made it clear as a society that advocating violence against or the elimination of a class of people is unacceptable and we gave no venue for that conversation whatsoever?
- faissaloo 8y agoBut most people believe some people should be eliminated, the only thing that changes is who depending on your political alignment.
- ubernostrum 8y agoI think some people should suffer social consequences for their beliefs, which may include absolutely no-one from "polite" society being willing to associate with them unless/until they show a genuine change. Those people, in turn, tend to believe that people like me should be forcibly rounded up into camps, gassed, and then cremated or dumped into mass graves. Do you really and truly believe, deep in your heart of hearts, that these are exactly perfectly identically equivalent positions? That both of them consist of "eliminating" opponents? Because from where I'm sitting, only one "side" is advocating for actual literal violent mass extermination of the people they don't like.
- canhascodez 8y agoI can see how this might be a convenient belief, but I'm having a hard time imagining a more foul lie.
- zzo38computer 8y agoI like free speech, even if I do not agree what they are saying. Although, a hosting provider could stop their service if they do not like it I suppose, although I think they should not do so unless it causes technical problems such as 100% CPU usage or stuff like that, although I am not saying they do not have the right to ban them, only that my opinion is to don't. But, you could just use a different hosting provider, I suppose. One hosting provider will not necessarily be available forever anyways.
- revel 8y agoLet's get real for a second here: gab courted neo-Nazis and became a refuge for anti-semitites and racists precisely because that was their target user base. Gab's pearl-clutching about anti-semitism is about as genuine as an arsonist's complaints about smoke. I will not miss gab, nor will I miss it's fetid assortment of wastrels. The best thing I can say about gab is that their pathetic shrieks at least made me laugh. Oh, and "Free speech" has nothing to do with forced hosting for assorted terribles. This is one of the most persistent and irritating misinterpretations of the first amendment. "Free speech" covers the government and the government alone.
- jbob2000 8y ago> Big tech can not stop us. The mainstream media can not stop us. > The People will defend freedom against tyranny as they always have and always will. > God bless you all and God bless... These comments are kind of partisan, no? A neutral company would just say “hey, we’re going to a new service because of X, back soon!”. Let the users cry “free speech, god bless”.
- sremani 8y agoIsn't @Joyent part of Samsung ? https://www.joyent.com/blog/samsung-acquires-joyent https://www.joyent.com/blog/samsung-acquires-joyent This should be really interesting in days to come.
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- bmarquez 8y agoJoyent, the hosting provider, has a history of pulling the rug from under people. Here's an HN discussion of Joyent ending lifetime hosting accounts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669 I also knew someone who was using BingoDisk and was left hanging when it was sold to another company.
- partiallypro 8y agoThere is a lot of strawmanning when it comes to free speech. Virtually no one claims the 1st Amendment guarantees people a platform or that it applies to corporations. Yet, I see people clarifying that constantly...when no one is saying otherwise. Free speech as an American ideal, that's all people are really saying. Anyhow, Joyent has every right to shut down their hosting services to anyone they feel...and no one really says otherwise on that point either. The sticking point is, are we headed down the right path on this issue? Are we setting the right precedent, because while we all likely agree that things like Daily Stormer and Gab are platforms for truly hateful people...are we emboldening them by driving them underground? Likewise, as cloud providers beginning to show too much discretion over content? Let's take it outside of politics and into copyright. What if AWS hosted a new video streaming service, and some corporation XYZ claimed a (false) copyright violation. Amazon has a large contract with corporation XYZ because of Prime Video and kicks the video services off of AWS with short notice. Would that be acceptable, essentially putting that company out of business? Sure, it would legally not be a problem but would it be a moral problem? Back to politics. Let's say GCS hosted DailyCaller or something, and employees internally find out and force it off because they find it as morally outrageous as the pentagon contract. It sounds crazy, but it could totally get to that point. That seems like a bit of a leap from where we are now, but with cloud providers starting to show more and more discretion of what they host, I don't rule out that we could slip our way to things like that happening. It also seems increasingly likely that the more politicized the major players become, the more likely political disagreements could effectively ruin alternative platforms. Gab might rightfully deserve being kicked off, but we do need to tread carefully on what type of precedent we are setting going forward as things like this become normalized.
- jbarciauskas 8y ago>Are we setting the right precedent, because while we all likely agree that things like Daily Stormer and Gab are platforms for truly hateful people...are we emboldening them by driving them underground? Yes. No. I don't find the slippery slope argument compelling. As a society we can decide what is and isn't within the realm of reasonable debate and discourse. Whatever the lines are, the discussion of racial supremacy and systematic oppression and elimination of others seems like something we should all be able to agree is outside the bounds.
- vabmit 8y agoThe "Gab.com banned from PayPal" post is still up. But, this post has been hidden.
- lgleason 8y agoIrregardless of what you think of Gab etc.. Unless the platform is being used for illegal activity and or it is engaging in something that breaks the law these service providers can and should be treated like the phone company. In other words the phone company does not turn off your phone because you are a nazi, racist etc.. Also, and this is an important distinction, there has been no established link between the shooters activity on Gab and what he did. IE: it does not appear that he collaborated with others on it to plan things etc. on the service... and if he had, odds are he probably also used other providers more extensively such as gmail etc.. Hosting providers policing things like this is akin to vigilante justice vs letting it go through the legal system where there is actually due process for everybody, not just the people that the mod likes.
- daxterspeed 8y agoSetting up your own hosting provider (read: servers) might be a bit of a hassle, but it's nothing compared to setting up your own telephone network. Gab is free to purchase their own servers and provide the necessary facilities.
- legostormtroopr 8y agoSure, you don't need shared hosting, just setup your own servers. Until someone kicks you out of there server space... Sure, you don't need shared server space, just setup your own co-location facility. Until someone decides not to give you backhaul... Or until someone decides they won't provide you with DNS. Or DDoS protection. Or Payment gateway. Or... or... or... The reality we are facing is that some political opinions (even relatively benign ones) aren't allowed access to the same resources as others. Gab is benign, they started based on people getting kicked off Twitter - because you don't need Twitter, just start your own. So they did. And now they find themselves being booted around, because of virtue signalling tech companies.
- anarazel 8y ago> Gab is benign, they started based on people getting kicked off Twitter Read the official twitter profile (what they write and reteweet). And then tell me again that they're not explicitly reaching for the racist fringe.
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- lgleason 8y agoFor all of the people saying that Joyent can do this because they are a private company that statement there is a catch to this. All service providers are exempt from being sued for content on their platform under safe harbor under the argument that they were neutral platforms. If they are going to start to curate content by kicking companies like Gab.com off then it is time that a few copyright, libel test cases against these companies make their way to the courts given that it is in violation of the spirit behind safe harbor as it is stated in section 230 of the communications decency act.. It also is going beyond the "good Samaritan" definition.
- duskwuff 8y agoThis is incorrect on multiple levels. The term "safe harbor" is typically used to refer to the provisions of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), not the Communications Decency Act you're discussing. OCILLA protects hosting and network providers from liability for copyright infringements committed by their customers, so long as they aren't aware of the infringement and don't directly benefit from it, and so long as they comply with the DMCA takedown process. This is, obviously, completely irrelevant to this situation. The CDA actually does the exact opposite of what you are claiming here. It explicitly indemnifies service providers for blocking content, regardless of whether that content is constitutionally protected or not -- it reads in part: > (2) Civil liability: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— > (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected […]
- lgleason 8y agoYes, but the preamble tells a much different story as to the intent of the act.... There is also talk about updating the act as well which is a better solution IMHO because a lot has changed since it was written.