I, personally, think it's still debatable as to whether the DailyStormer issues qualify as censorship.
Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare, brought this topic up when they dropped DailyStormer. There's no easy answer on how to deal with it. Is there strong demand for a vertical monopoly in content hosting which will host any kind of offensive content? Are legislators close to passing laws denying the right to host a website for distasteful speech?
I would argue that censorship is an active action and that what happened to the Daily Stormer is mostly a passive action.
Analogy: This is not like burning a book. It's more like every book publisher passing on publishing the book before it's printed. Would you risk your reputation as a book publisher just because "I don't want to censor the author" despite not liking the content, not knowing if there was any paying market for the book, and despite the negative press + potential boycotts of your company? If you won't, how can you expect anyone else to do different in similar circumstances?
The slippery slope argument is a valid concern, but is there a moral panic spreading concerning things that are equally distasteful? Last I checked, the Westboro Baptist Church is still on the internet with both a website and a Twitter account. And they were used by the FBI to train agents to withstand hateful speech while maintaining their composure.
Note: Granted, Google Domains not allowing them to transfer their domain seems very icky, but I can see how there is no good policy for that situation.
I, personally, think it's still debatable as to whether the DailyStormer issues qualify as censorship.
Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare, brought this topic up when they dropped DailyStormer. There's no easy answer on how to deal with it. Is there strong demand for a vertical monopoly in content hosting which will host any kind of offensive content? Are legislators close to passing laws denying the right to host a website for distasteful speech?
I would argue that censorship is an active action and that what happened to the Daily Stormer is mostly a passive action.
Analogy: This is not like burning a book. It's more like every book publisher passing on publishing the book before it's printed. Would you risk your reputation as a book publisher just because "I don't want to censor the author" despite not liking the content, not knowing if there was any paying market for the book, and despite the negative press + potential boycotts of your company? If you won't, how can you expect anyone else to do different in similar circumstances?
The slippery slope argument is a valid concern, but is there a moral panic spreading concerning things that are equally distasteful? Last I checked, the Westboro Baptist Church is still on the internet with both a website and a Twitter account. And they were used by the FBI to train agents to withstand hateful speech while maintaining their composure.
Note: Granted, Google Domains not allowing them to transfer their domain seems very icky, but I can see how there is no good policy for that situation.