[yontherubicon]

>There's a reason the ACLU has in the past defended neo-Nazis and other unpopular speakers, and it's not because they support these speakers' messages. It's because you need a canary in the coal mine.

People aren't mentioning this, but this has already happened.

I'm not white, just to be clear, however back sometime last year I knew infrastructure-level censorship was coming when DNS services, GoDaddy in particular, started censoring sites. The canary in the coalmine was the Daily Stormer.

It's one thing to want them to be quiet. It's another thing to set the precedent of infrastructure forcing them to be quiet. As you said, it sets a precedent.

EDIT: DNS censorship has indeed been mentioned in this thread.

[betterunix2]

Except that the Daily Stormer is still online. As long as net neutrality exists (in practice if not in law) there is no "infrastructure-level censorship" to speak of beyond a slight lack of convenience. What is the worst-case outcome of DNS registrars refusing to do business with nazis? People who want to visit nazi websites would have to type in numerical IP addresses.

The only "infrastructure-level censorship" we should worry about is the Internet itself. As long as you can set up your own servers and host your own services, your free speech rights are not really in jeopardy. Free speech does not mean you have the right to buy the megaphone of your choosing; it does mean that you can voice your opinion using a megaphone, even if you had to assemble the megaphone yourself.

[yontherubicon]

All true. And yet still we have to grapple with the reality that our public square is in the private sector.