(Oh the irony thread closed) Gab hosting and DNS services terminated because of user content

So you are advocating for regulation that says companies cannot deny service based on content?

Or would you rather hosting and registration be controlled by the government so that freedom of speech would apply to domains and website?

Yeah, I know it’s not the best comparison. I’m not sure if it should be factored.

I don’t know about that. If you spend some time on there, you might see that the vast majority of the people are peaceful. You probably won’t agree with the political views of them, but differing political views is different from violence.

I’d take this to the logical (imo) conclusion that if we keep them on these platforms, we can see their posts and hopefully stop things before they happen. Like, if they have no place to go, they’re going to get more radicalized from underground sites or /pol/ and then they’ll just do these things with no public warning signs.

I really urge you to go check out gab (when it comes back up). You’ll disagree with the political views, but I think you’ll find that the vast majority are peaceful and want to make their country as good as possible, they just have a different idea of how to get there.

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That is common knowledge but isn’t actually true. Deplatforming people does substantially reduce their reach. Alex Jones is the most obvious example of this.

If racists are forced to go to Tor, which is a pain in the ass, less of them will congregate, drum up their fear and hatred, and it logically leads that less people will be murdered.

Of course since it’s on Tor you won’t be able to track down the really bad actors, so it shouldn’t go that far.

Are we sure this applies to whole communities and not just figureheads?

I’m legitimately asking. I don’t know.

Nah, but it seems worth a shot!

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Well the idea of government regulation is nothing new.

Almost everyone on here has whined about the need for net neutrality so I don’t see how legislation here can be just as helpful.

Once again you keep bringing up “racists.” Nobody here is bringing this up as an excuse to persecute an entire platform but you.

But that’s not even 5% of the people on there. You’re bringing up the red herring of neo-nazi again. Stop. The US does not have a neo-nazi epidemic. Yes, one neo-nazi is too many, but we aren’t infested. That’s all I have to say on the subject.

You’re misunderstanding the definition of racism. Not caring about the color of someone’s skin or where they’re from is not racism. In fact, it’s more the opposite. Giving someone handouts or preferential treatment because they can’t get in because X minority can’t make it on merit alone is racism, however.

It’s not written, but it’s happening. We’ve got conservatives being suspended from twitter until Nov 7 right now. I can give you plenty of source on it if you’re interested.


My concern right now is that the Silicon Valley tech companies have more power over public opinion than any government in the world.

I think everyone, EVERYONE, would be baffled at my political views. OP, you, everyone. No one asks, as is taboo for this forum :wink: The left calls me a redneck, racist, bigot, and the right calls me a liberal, leftist, lunatic. I’m neither :man_shrugging:

I’m expressing my thoughts and opinions on a matter, personally. I can set aside mild discomfort or anger I have for the common good or the rights of others. Hence, why I think Gab should be standing free as a bird. I do think they need to quit this victim playing and understand that being obnoxious, condescending, and exuding a veil of literal superiority (talking about the owner/Twitter account at this point) is going to cause them more long term harm than good.

When Azure is saying “Hey take this post down” instead of the forum moderators, I think that’s a problem with culture and, maybe maturity. Until that changes, that’s not going to happen, in my opinion.

I’ll take a gander. From the mainstream stuff I’ve seen and the behavior of the owner, I won’t last long, I don’t think. Nothing personal, but if an event is “open to the public” but the host has a history of spitting on poor people, I wouldn’t go either. Tis why I only visit 2 or 3 sites on the Internet.

I don’t like bodybuilding.com forums, 4chan, or Reddit either, for the record.

I’ll reiterate since the point likes to be ignored. Almost everyone here has complained about net neutrality being repealed. Which is government legislation and involvement in the internet.

Why should it not be needed here as well if people are being unequally silenced in a biased or unregulated manner?

I don’t think “Regulation, so regulation.” is sound reasoning.

Idk man, Gab has everything it needs to exist. Operations will be more difficult and expensive for them than a lot of other sites, but they should have factored that into their business plan. Their existence is not being outright prevented.

That’s not what net neutrality is. Net Neutrality is preventing service providers for charging more for certain content.

IE if you want YouTube and Gmail, it’s another $20 a month. Net Neutrality has nothing to do with throttling or censorship.

Please, do more research on these things.

Because when you sign up for a domain, you’ve agreed to the terms laid out. Net Neutrality prevents the ISPs from pigeon holing the consumer.

Registrars have actual competition and rules which give the consumer a set of choices.

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If you’re talking about the Northern Irish bakery who refused to bake a cake which had “support gay marriage” on it, the supreme court ruled that it wasn’t discriminatory.

In that case, the bakery is well within its rights to not do business with people they don’t want to - in the same way that these domain registrars aren’t obliged to do business with anyone they don’t want to. It just happens that the registrars go the extra step, and write a contractual clause which gives them power to cancel any prior agreements, at their discretion.

Laws and contracts are written in a way that’s up for interpretation on purpose. They’re made to be interpreted in the interests of the many or companies, respectfully.

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Sure, it does. Zero rating is contrary to net neutrality, and that’s an ISP not charging for certain data, because that is anticompetitive.

Throttling data is contrary to net neutrality also, “paying for fast lanes”. But since most non-techies understand why that’s bad, nobody is doing that.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with free speech or government regulation, because Gab is completely legal and the government has nothing to say about it, private companies just decided to turn them away.

@AnotherDev: From this thread not being locked, it’s pretty clear that politics are fair game in the forum.

Lol, talk like that is going to get it locked pretty quickly.

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Got my fingers crossed, dude.

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I think it really depends on what it is. If it’s illegal content, yes. If it’s protected speech, which is the major goal of Gab, no.

I appreciate your openness. It’s your choice if you stay or not, but I feel that everyone should have experience with the thing that they’re criticising. Which, coincidentally is why I’m on gab in the first place, then I found out it’s not as bad as I thought it was at first. I originally thought it was a neo-nazi meeting ground, then I found out there’s a few on there, but it’s about the same rate as twitter.

Probably. I had Aremis pinned all wrong, so I’m bad at judging things like this.

I agree. I’m arguing for utilization of antitrust laws.


It’s up to discretion, but because of leadership’s potential bias, we typically allow them if they’re amicable and related to tech, but we’re definitely on the very edge right now.

Seems the discussion has been shifted to those who believe some opinions should be removed from society and those that believe in free expression.

At the very least, could the thread title be made more descriptive? “This needs to be addressed” is just useless clickbait, maybe you could instead use something like “Gab hosting and dns terminated for user content” so that people can know what the thread is about?

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