Okay, but we're in a discussion about avoiding services that randomly ban people, so that sounds like a positive: If they won't even ban white supremacists, they probably won't ban me.
Well, so this is a matter for the FBI and the DOJ.
If you know of any such case, please report to them.
And by the way, another reason private companies should not be in the business of law enforcement is because by cutting service to such sites they could well be damaging ongoing investigations
It's not about legality; it's about societal norms. Visiting the bar known to be a stormfront hangout doesn't make you a white supremacists, but would make most reasonable people not want to associate with you.
Google doesn't protect scammers and actively goes after them. But if they flag _you_ incorrectly then your entire legitimate business may be defunct if you have your domains there as well.
If you use a service that has the moral high ground, that is all fine and good. But there is chance the service may decide you are immoral.
The only way to protect yourself is to use a service that also protects people you don't like.
I couldn't have said it better. If we refuse to allow speech for those who we don't like, then we will soon be the next silenced.
Remember Google came for Tulsi Gabbard by banning her Adsense account and now they are even coming for the anti-establishment classical liberals like Jimmy Dore, Aaron Mate, Glenn Greenwald. Anyone who opposes forever wars is the next "white supremacist" and "russian agent".
I don't see how skin color is relevant but since your comment enjoys assigning responsbilities based on skin color - I am a brown immigrant. Divide and conquer has been used for centuries and is what’s being used as usual to get political points. Nothing new about it.
Your comment is doing the same racism which you claim to be against. Usually the next response is to call me an Uncle Tom for not falling for the boogeyman and going along with the narrative. Anything which doesn't fit the establishment narrative gets classfied as "white supremacist" and other such labels now a days - just like your comment did.
Ps. Won’t be replying further because this discussion is neither relevant nor productive, plus probably borderline breaks HN rules.
Well we are talking about companies with questionable ethical practices. It would be weird to NOT mention the neo-nazi tolerance when suggesting epik in a discussion like this.
As someone who has a lot to lose if nazis ever get back in power:
isn't the correct thing to still register their domains and just go to the police with it?
Based on my sysadmin background I actively try to know as little about my customers as possible: sure I might become a hero whistleblower but more likely I'll taint myself in various ways.
No, because this isn't a Phillip K Dick novel. Police don't do pre-crime: they comes after the crime happened.
We are also not the police.
You needn't ask your customers "Are you going to do something bad?" (sometimes regulation forces you to ask if they _did_, but that's a past-looking question).
But once you know they are using that service for unacceptable activities, it's ok to remind them that such behavior is unacceptable. After all, you don't want having a reputation of the place that has those kind of customers.
I think life as a neo-nazi should be as difficult as humanly possible so I'd try find a way to boot them off any service I operate. It's likely many hosting providers etc have a "no illegal stuff or neo-nazi shit" clause in their TOS. A few of these sites have bounced around providers before landing with Epik, so it doesn't seem to be rare or hard to do. It's a choice Epik have made to, if not welcome them then tolerate them.
Sorry if that might seem naive, if it makes anyone feel better I'm not operating a domain registrar or hosting provider so my opinion is kind of moot anyway :)
How does one effectively police who is a neo Nazi? This thread is about the failures of customer service and anti-abuse techniques at scale, the inevitable false positives and the dire consequences. You seem to be advocating for more of that.
With broadly applied rules, you either have to accept some rule breaking will occur, or accept that you will end up punishing the innocent in efforts to prevent it. Realistically it's both, but there is a give and take between them.
Those inevitably flawed systems are not an ultimate solution to the problems they mitigate. To tackle the problems stemming from bigotry and intolerance, for example, attacking the perpetrators as "bad people" doesn't work, and is a bit self defeating. The goal should be to defeat the harmful ideas underpinning it, through positive proof of better ideas.
When one doesn't defend free speech for those they don't like, then they don't care about free speech. Would you rather have them run their site in open so people can simply not visit their site and others can watch for vile stuff they might be talking about? Or put them under the rug so they go even more underground with even less opposing view points and thus falling in their echo chambers?
Also now a days any opposing speech gets classified as nazis and white supremacist etc labels. Take Tulsi Gabbard getting her Adsense account censored by Google for example and getting called a russian agent and then it escalating to her supporters being called nazis and Assad toadies. Bernie supporters got called misogynsts for political purposes. The censorship tools always get abused eventually on those who advocated for it.
Related article on how ACLU used to defend free speech of even neo-nazis but have since then abandoned their principles and now actively give their data to Facebook:
I think ACLU are severely misguided, if not acting dangerously in their active support of a CLIENT rather than a CAUSE, and thus actively supporting and encouraging proprietors of hate speech.
Those who are already clicking on "reply" ready quote Niemöller's poem back to me should expect to be quoted Popper back, and be reminded that those that came for Niemöller are the same ones they wish to protect, and that those assholes wouldn't lift a finger to help you back: they'd rather punch you. It's not a bad idea to punch them back and remind them that they have no place in society, and should crawl back to whatever beerhall they crawled out from.
> the company serves at least seven groups on the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Shabab, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), al-Quds Brigades, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Hamas.
> CEP has sent letters to Cloudflare since February 13, 2017, warning about clients on the service, including Hamas, the Taliban, the PFLP, and the Nordic Resistance Movement. The latest letter, from February 15, 2019, warns of what CEP identified as three pro-ISIS propaganda websites.
I do wish CF would apply the same standards to other sites too.
