2 ms·
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 a
by djsumdog 8y ago
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-censorship/ https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-...
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 8y agoI'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.pdf https://beforetheban.com/BeforeTheBanWhitepaper2018_10_01.pd...