| Some thoughts: 1: The WHOIS entry ( https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=altright.com ) seems strange to me: >This domain name has been suspended due to invalid Whois information. Is this a normal WHOIS message for sites that get shut down for ToS violations of the sort being described in the Twitter link? Does anyone know if the WHOIS data for the site was actually invalid? Regardless, that rubs me the wrong way as sounding like finding a technicality to shut it down. I wish they'd be more open about what they're doing. 2: Sites like this have had to change webhosts before, that's nothing new. Politically extreme content has always had issues with that (to be honest I'm wondering what Spencer was thinking going with GoDaddy rather than one of the hosting services out there that tends to be more resistant to outside pressure). The real question is what is going to happen to the domain name itself, if these people are going to be able to set up shop again with a different registrar. "Host it on your own server" is different from "start your own domain registrar company" as excuses for censorship, no matter how legitimate it feels. 3: No matter the content, we should be treating these events as canaries in the coal mine. The tech world has rightfully focused on countering censorious efforts by governments, but that's not the only source of censorship. Censorship doesn't just happen by governments; it can be done by private entities as well in the form of 'deplatforming.' This tactic has been proven to be effective, and there will be very little outcry because -- well, look at who's getting shut down. But it's not going to stop there. I'm a free speech absolutist who thinks it's a culture and not just an 18th-century legal document. Censorship in the 21st century isn't going to look like what it looked like in the 20th century; it will be a new form that is harder to counter, harder to argue against with only outdated definitions as ammunition. I hope that in the future, the tech world finds ways to make "deplatform-resistant" content feasible at all layers of the stack. |