Somewhat dichotomously, I agree with every position mark takes in the linked post, but at the same time, I'm quietly waiting to see where Daily Stormer ends up landing, so that I can start treating them as the 'real' bastions of free speech, and very likely start throwing them my business.
It isn't because I'm sympathetic to the nazis in this scenario, but if you're trying to position yourself as "the free speech registrar", but draw the line at white supremacy because you're in an interracial marriage, then the signal I get from that is that you clearly don't cherish all free speech, and gives me pause that one of my community sites might end up running afoul of whatever those arbitrary policies are in the future.
OP is saying they want to support a private business that voluntarily shares the government's mandate on free speech, even when they are not required to.
I'm saying it's a somewhat nonsensical viewpoint, imagine substituting another governmental protection. Do you support businesses that oppose quartering soldiers in the homes of citizens? "Free speech" applies to the rights granted/enforced/protected by government and businesses are operating on a different level than that.
The OP (and myself) consider freedom of speech is an ethical right that everyone should support. I live in the UK, we don't have a first amendment, but I still support freedom of speech.
The viral video in Baidu this week is of a student activist in Hong Kong who supports freedom of speech, and her speech (independence for Hong Kong) is explicitly illegal.
After we let people speak, and we dislike the speech, we can can then mock, disagree with, and poke fun at it, using our own freedom of speech.
I suppose I'm still not conveying my point (or I'm misunderstanding the points of others).
Either way (pro-quartering/speech or anti-quartering/speech) a business has no impact on those rights. A business can't decide to quarter soldiers in your house. A business can't "restrict" free speech (unless that business is a complete monopoly in that market, a separate issue) as a user can easily find another registrar or start their own registrar to meet their needs.
Put another way, if your local theater won't allow you to show "Triumph of the Will", that's not a restriction on your speech, because you can start your own theater.
>Put another way, if your local theater won't allow you to show "Triumph of the Will", that's not a restriction on your speech, because you can start your own theater.
Legally we agree, but I can also choose to not support those businesses.
Countering your hypothetical with another hypothetical:
How would you feel if Twitter decided to ban all people of color from being able to use the platform?
Is that something you're totally cool with, because companies can't possibly affect your rights to free exercise of speech, or is it something you'd prefer they not do?
Please share your definition of "absolute free speech", as the government has defined many exceptions and regularly limits the speech of citizens. Would your definition exclude those exceptions?
This comment seems unrelated to the parent comment, as the parent makes no mention to government interference nor to any imagined requirement for a business to serve others.
I understood "free speech" in the parent comment to mean an unwillingness to censor for any reason except those related to legal matters.
It is one thing to say "we won't accept any supremacist or terrorist organization" outright; it is another to say you'll take anyone and then actually subject them to an arbitrary and unpublished terms of service.
Of course I'm talking about the first amendment, the only protection of free speech that exists in the USA. Any time someone brings up free speech and it's involving non-government entitites is just kidding themselves that they believe they have a "right" to express their views however they want.
So, because of the first amendment, we do have a "right" to express our views however we want. Because of the freedom of association, people and companies have the right to refuse to associate with us.
Irrespective of the first amendment, any given individual or company is free to respect the principle of free speech as much or as little as they like. I choose to respect the principle more than you. Thanks to free speech, we both have the express our disagreement. Because YCombinator respects free speech to some extent, they have furnish us a platform that allows us to publish these opinions.
Treating speech as a boolean is naive. There are a range of protections ranging from popular opinion, free speech devotees, all the way up to the first amendment.
OP simply wants to support those who truly believe in free speech. Not one who, in OPs opinion, has simply crowned themselves as free speech champions until pressured.
OK, but isn't it just as likely that you'll land on a registrar that is notorious for specifically hosting seedy stuff (perhaps even under the guise of free speech)? I wouldn't be comfortable giving my money to an organization like that, at all.
> Somewhat dichotomously, I agree with every position mark takes in the linked post, but at the same time, I'm quietly waiting to see where Daily Stormer ends up landing, so that I can start treating them as the 'real' bastions of free speech, and very likely start throwing them my business.
Please tell us what your business is and we'll be happy to boycott it too.
A more just, peaceful and opportune world won't be attained through the use of guilt-by-association tactics. It's ill-advised to convert otherwise totally-understandable anger against credible perceived existential threats into the targeting of any non-agreeing entity. History shows that the only possible outcome to this is that, in scaring onlookers about the turmoil in their community, it hand-delivers the justification for the boycott's censure to the government on a silver platter. This doesn't mean that the onlookers are always morally correct or never complicit, but they are always useful for invoking 'security measures'..
Not to mention that you're also more likely to (all in the name of defense against the Daily Stormer) unwittingly target a group also targeted by the Daily Stormer if mere non-action justifies retaliation, because of the Daily Stormer's lack in number compared to the breadth in scope of conditions of the boycott, all applied at a popular level.
If you want to make someone fail in public, actively give them a pedestal so they might do it in front of an audience. The side effects of devoting so much to the excision of such a small cohort comes at a bigger cost to the bigger party - unrelenting pursuit of a couple guerrillas is ruinous.
Preface: this is an honest question, stemming from my own life and current group of friends--the circumstances that frame the issue for me--it isn't intended as snark or a take-down or anything...
Do you have many friends right now who are people of color, or queer/gay, or even Jewish? How do you explain to them that you'd like to support the business that goes against the grain and hosts Nazi/white supremacist material?
I'm asking this because, right now, most of my friends are not white/hetero, and right now, they're all terrified of the US political climate for different reasons--the brown folks of being attacked (physically) by white supremacists and knowing the cops won't defend them (and in a lot of cases, the cops ARE the white supremacists), and the gays of being attacked by everyone. They're largely living in fear, and that's shitty.
I don't know if I could look them in the eye and say, "I've switched over to registrar X, because only they stood up for the Daily Stormer."
Actually, I know I couldn't say that to them, because what kind of asshole would I look like to my friends if I did that?
Again, this is my experience, but I'm curious how ours differ.
If their friends are being physically assaulted for those reasons, then it makes sense for them to fear for themselves.
If their fear is based off of sensationalist news articles that significantly over-exaggerate the political climate and influence of various groups in order to generate advertising revenue/clicks, they should reconsider, even if it's difficult.
There are far more articles about the KKK on the Internet than there are actual members of the KKK https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-w....
Those living in fear should try to rationalize about the probabilities of events happening to them based off of relevant statistics, not articles specifically designed to incite fear and anger.
They would not be standing for the Daily Stormer, they would be standing for Free Speech.
The concept that allowed the struggles from minorities to be heard in the first place, and therefore to improve things tremendously for gay and black people.
But defending free speech is sometimes hard, because it also means letting people you disagree with speak freely even if it obvious to you they're spewing bullshit. You can't force them to stop, legally or otherwise, but you can expose their bullshit for what it is.
It is much harder to actually argue with someone (or 100 of people), especially when they're unreasonable/stupid, than to shut them down. However, the alternative is to have some kind of moral police to decide what is allowed or not, and force the literally unquestionable selected truth on everyone, which is much more dangerous overall in my opinion (see what could be done with Trump and climate change, or Putin with gay people).
I am distinctly not white. I am pretty much the last person you'd expect to see at a Klan meeting. In fact, I'm pretty sure they'd lynch me.
I don't like what they have to say, but I'm really disheartened that they aren't allowed to say it. Free speech should be a social ideal. The liberty of free speech is a wonderful thing, even if it is sometimes abhorrent speech.
you have the privilege (in the 'white' sense) to 'defend free speech' (or whatever your motivation may be). your friends who lack this privilege have to face the very real consequences (providing a platform for the daily stormer) of your support. if you are okay with your actions contributing to the ill being of your friends you're not a very good friend. maybe your principles are worth that but that's on you
This is an odd phenomenon that's only happened in the last couple of years -- situations that folks would previously describe as "disheartening" or "disappointing" are now characterized as "terrifying". It's clever, really -- expressing concern over your physical well being (even when there isn't really any danger) is a cognitive kill-switch; physical safety is at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs, after all.
I have friends who are women / Jewish / black / brown / trans / gay / queer, etc, and because I feel it's somewhat implied, no, I do not have any friends who are nazis, neo-nazis, white nationalists, white supremacists, etc. I do have a co-worker who voted for Trump though.
I think anyone who knows me already knows that I value speech a great deal, and I consider it to be almost certainly the greatest ideal that we have. It is, as almost all my friends have probably heard me say, the one thing America gets more right than anywhere else. I've had a couple of websites utterly ruined by the fact that I refused to impose censorship upon them.
I dearly understand the position that EasyDNS is in, and I'm sorry that they are in it. On the flip side, I'm glad that they decided to announce to the world that their 'Free speech' principles have limits instead of quietly refusing service. That they felt the need to broadcast the limits of their respect for free speech is, to my opinion, a good thing, just not in the way that they might have expected. I'm sure they'll get lots of business out of it. People often like to ally the businesses they deal with to their own moral interests, which is almost certainly why they posted it, and decidedly why I'm turned off by it. If I see another company who respects speech enough that they'd be willing to do business with nazis, then maybe I'm on to something... or maybe not. I dunno. I'd still expect it to be a good DNS service, of course.
I feel where people get mixed up on this is that while I can totally and fully condemn nazis doing nazi violence, I have zero problems allowing nazis to talk about whatever nazis talk about. Sure, it's up to whomever owns the business they have to decide whether or not they wish to do business with any particular person or company or whomever, but I dislike the precedent, because it's not too farfetched for me to imagine Antifa, Black Lives Matter, The NRA, or even the ACLU on the wrong side of that line if and when public opinion ever gets codified into law.
So the thing about free speech is https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment the first amendment means the government shouldn't be able to suppress what you say. That's all. Corporations aren't the government and shouldn't be held to the same standards.
This is such an intellectually lazy stance to take (I know, you thought you were being clever, but believe me this is the least clever thing to say about free speech).
1A doesn't have anything to do with it -- either free speech is a concept worth protecting, or it isn't. John Stuart Mill wrote at some length about it, and in particular about what happens when the population at large decides they don't like your speech.
Let's take this to its logical end -- let's say Joe wants to host a legal but repugnant site. Cloudflare doesn't want to protect it, ok; EasyDNS won't host it, sure; now let's say Comcast gets involved. They don't think Joe should have internet because he's espousing ideas they don't like, so they cut him off. Same with his mobile provider. Hell, what's to stop the local grocery store from banning him?
Point being, Joe could _legally_ be forcibly removed from society for having opinions some people don't like.
This is an excellent point, it is something I worry about and something we've blogged about in our two previous posts about this topic.
It's one of the reasons I'm so wary when flashmobs try to force other businesses to dump specific clients.
It's one thing if your views or actions or so repugnant that all suppliers voluntarily refrain from doing business with you. Maybe one would reconsider their actions faced with that prospect?
But the phenomenon today, where flashmobs form and demand vendors sever their clients because the mob is demanding it and for the reason that the target is politically or ideologically at odds with the mob, that can play out exactly as you fear. Where does that stop?
This is one of those cases where there wasn't an easy answer, unfortunately. Dreamhost unknowingly wound up with a Dailystormer domain on their system last week and they got DDoS-ed into a crater. Also not good.
I don't see anyone claiming that the government is preventing speech here. Just because it's legal for the company to deny their services, doesn't mean that said company can't be criticized for it.
You're correct, nobody is claiming that. I simply pointed out that "free speech" and saying whatever the hell you want are two different things. One is protected by law. One is not, and if I held an opinion you found morally wrong or vice versa, the other is not beholden to hear it, nor to serve the opinion holder if either party is a business. And I don't think that's bad.
Sure society may have prevailing moral standards, but the thing about having an opinion (which I think I'm proving with this comment) is we all, myself included, have forgotten that means we don't have to share it.
While technically correct, I don't understand how this has any bearing to my earlier response.
I explicitly state that I do not condemn EasyDNS for choosing to exercise their freedom of (dis)association in whatever manner they see fit. I would simply prefer to do business with someone whom I didn't have to guess at the moral convictions of, and obviate having to guess at whether or not the speech of users on a forum I host are crossing a line that I can't foresee, and would prefer to do business with a vendor where that wasn't something I had to worry about, even if it means having shitty neighbors.
> I'm quietly waiting to see where Daily Stormer ends up landing, so that I can start treating them as the 'real' bastions of free speech, and very likely start throwing them my business.
Until I was nearly finished with the second paragraph, I thought you were referring to Daily Stormer as the 'real' bastion of free speech you wanted to throw your bisiness at. That sentence could probably be clarified if that's not your intent.
As to the point, I agree that we'll articulated and followed policies would be beneficial for all, but I feel for these businesses as well. They are aware that regardless of how sane their policy or how much they profess to be upholding free speech, they will be called out as Nazi sympathizers and angry mobs will gather. People are not at their most rational currently, and any company hosting them might be affecting the future of their company and possibly even the wellbeing of their employees (which is ironic and sad if true, given the organization at the heart of this).
It should be clarified, but I appear to have missed your comment until the edit window had closed.
As to your second paragraph, I agree completely. I hate the negativity associated with a term like 'virtue signaling', but it seems like EasyDNS here was looking to virtue signal that they're not doing business with nazis. I expect they'll get a lot more business out of that than if they'd just quietly refused to do business with DailyStormer.
To (poorly) paraphrase someone else's thoughts on the matter, the fact that nazis, or the Westboro Baptist Church are free to spew their bile without censorship gives me comfort that the media has the freedom to be critical of our administration. I understand that this isn't government censorship, but honestly, I'm a little bit shocked that the DailyStormer is still hunting around for a host / registrar, and if this story hadn't broken, I might have gone on just assuming that they'd found a new home somewhere.
There's a distinction between the government repressing speech and private businesses refusing to give the speech-maker a platform.
Further, certain kinds of speech have never been considered protected: "fighting words", certain classes of harassment,
fomenting seditious, the famous "fire!" in a crowded theater.
Note, too, it's easy to draw a line around advocating for racial supremacy and genocide without stepping onto the famous slippery slope.
Anyway. "free speech" is not a uniform perfect right that applies maximally in all situations.
Would you agree, then, that Internet access is now a basic human right? If so, would you also agree that said access should include some platform where one is entitled to ownership and thus the freedom of expression - within the bounds of the law?
I really dislike Nazis, but I love the liberty of free speech more. It's hard to stand up for them, but it's not 'correct' speech that needs protection.
And no, no I don't have realistic answers - other than to suggest we consider adding those protections to domain registry and regulate ISPs to ensure the ability of hosting private servers.
I'm okay with saying nobody needs to host it. I'm not really okay with the domain not being allowed to be registered. There should be a solution for this.
If I don't stand up for the freedom of expression for the lowliest of views, then I didn't stand for it at all.
Edited to add:
I posted it below, but I think it salient here - even if just for contrast. I am not white. I'm pretty sure these Nazis hate me. Given the chance, they'd probably harm me. Until they make an overt threat, or attempt, to do so - I am still not okay with depriving them of basic human rights.
Yes, I feel that strongly about the freedom of expression. They don't scare me. I will never live in fear, nor will I ask that someone's rights be taken away without due process. My principles apply to more than speech which agree with.
The platform isn't being taken away, they can have their free speech hosted in some guys garage and accessible at x.x.x.x
I'm not accusing you of acting this way, but there are many "regulation is bad!" folks who now seem to think when it comes to hosting content on the internet, maybe it should be regulated so that private companies can't block people from doing basic things like registering a domain name if the company doesn't like it. This is the free market at work, and if the free market decides some speech is wrong, that's the free market America signed up for.
Presenting using only the IP address as a solution is intellectually dishonest. Additionally, I'm unsure of why you'd suggest there was a specific group of people and simultaneously assert that they are irrelevant to my comment.
Feel free to levy any accusations about me that you want. However, I think my comment history stands as evidence. I'm not asserting that this is a right. I'm asserting that it should be a right.
> Would you agree, then, that Internet access is now a basic human right?
I would neither disagree nor agree. Different theories of what a right is exist, and I don't believe it's a settled question enough to even claim that a $newer_thing is a right.
> If I don't stand up for the freedom of expression for the lowliest of views, then I didn't stand for it at all.
I understand this viewpoint. This is the "free speech maximalist" position. I disagree with it. I think there are bounds "beyond the usual pale" where no private institution should be asked to or forced to host it.
It may be that the proper solution is for the US government, as the duly appointed host of the Public Space by long-standing tradition, to create a Public Forum for such things.
I think I expressly acknowledge that there's a difference, and I'm not looking for government intercession.
> Further, certain kinds of speech have never been considered protected: "fighting words", certain classes of harassment, fomenting seditious, the famous "fire!" in a crowded theater
Also, legislatively, the fighting words doctrine is basically toothless today, if it's not entirely dead.
Worth noting though that punishments for use of speech are an entirely different thing than refusing to allow someone to speak. Again, I acknowledge that no one is beholden to DailyStormer, or any other nazi to hosting their site -- I get that, and it's not a decision that I particularly fault -- it just doesn't sit well with me that a website has apparently been searching for a host for some time now and can't find one.
Maybe that's a testament to how far we've come as society -- perhaps if I were a better human, that's how I'd see it, but I see it as troubling, regardless of the content.
> Anyway. "free speech" is not a uniform perfect right that applies maximally in all situations
Nor have I suggested that it is, but it seems you think you understand the subject better than you do, and I think it's an important enough right to be informed on.
Popehat tends to be a highly libertarian site. I would prefer not to be instructed by a highly libertarian site. It usually contains presuppositions that render it of limited use in thinking about the matter.
If you, however, have a link to a paper or op-ed put out by a reputable constitutional scholar in a reputable publication, e.g., Harvard Law Review, I would be more than happy to read such a thing.
Not in the usual statement, no. I believe there's a compromise suitable for both technical reality (video makes huge demands on bandwidth, and bandwidth is finite) and neutral communication. Appropriate regulation, suitably delivered in a balance of philosophical care and technical care should solve the bulk of today's problems in this specific arena.
I mean, it should give you pause. That's how civil society functions. You should care how your behavior affects other people, and you should be able to respond to immoral behavior without restricting yourself to a rigid core set of principles.
The reason the first amendment is so restrained is that the government is too powerful to be trusted with any more power. But people aren't, in fact they're expected to pick up the slack where the government doesn't have authority.
I don't want to live in a world where people feel comfortable doing whatever they want as long as it's legal.
So because laws are not perfect, and have at times in the past illustrated issues in our society, because they are the result of a long-term evolution, they can not be trusted? Ever?
Do you not think that in the long-run that our law will make all that is universally agreed to be unethical and harmful to others also illegal?
What I'm saying is law marches in the direction of ever improving it's fit to society. You seem to throw that out the window and think of law as some unrelated and untrustable thing.
"law marches in the direction of ever improving it's fit to society"
Right, we're all in agreement here. Law should conform to society, society need not conform to law. When the law is wrong, we can resist it, and when the law is absent, we can replace it.
Why should the law evolve to be more just? If anything, wouldn't the laws that were most fair be the ones that due to their age in spite of history's blows indicates preferential selection, and that age of the law may correlate to the relatively simplicity of its authoring government and hence maybe fewer externalities. We now live in a period of perennial voter disenfranchisement, and it seems that the civil rights movement will not have the lasting stopping power it was perceived to wield to cement incremental progress in our society. I think that recent legislation, although almost never as surely heinous as chattel slavery or slaughter of Native Americans or racial quotas etc., that there is a difference between the 'what we think is worth keeping' and the 'what we can expect to be exasperatingly legislated in the near future'
In particular, if you want to think of the law in evolutionary terms, it has two different pressures on it: pressure to become more just, and pressure to become a better tool to protect the powerful. It is not obvious that pressure to become more just is stronger.
I don't think so, I think it sounds like people abdicating their ethical power to the government. I'd rather live in a world where people are willing to break unjust laws sometimes, and uphold morals that don't exist in law. The government should not dictate our morals and culture.
For example, we have a culture that (rightly) discourages lying, but making lying illegal would be a disaster.
If I promise to pick my friend up at the airport and don't go, have I harmed them? Is it a crime?
If I run for president and lie about my positions to get elected, have I harmed anyone? Is it a crime?
If I create a second identity and maintain two relationships in different states, have I harmed anyone? Is it a crime?
In response to your edit, yes, that's exactly the point. Not all harm can be sued for. Not all wrongs are illegal. Some wrongs cannot be illegal.
If I promise to be faithful to my wife and then cheat on her, do you believe I've done anything wrong? If so, do you think it should be illegal?
Or let's take emotion out of it and focus on "real actual damages". Say I verbally promise my friend a job at my company in New York and encourage them to move here, with no intention of actually hiring them. Have I harmed them if they trusted me enough to sign an expensive lease in New York? If so, should it be illegal to break a verbal promise? Should everyone act like robots and refuse to trust each other without written contracts?
> if you're trying to position yourself as "the free speech registrar", but draw the line at white supremacy because you're in an interracial marriage, then the signal I get from that is that you clearly don't cherish all free speech
Not really. Free speech works both ways. You can't fault Mark's logic here.
Seems like companies are worried that if they host TDS, they'll just start harassing people again. The reason they lost their host in the first place wasn't free speech, it's because they were going after the family of Heather Hayes.
> It even means a restaurant should be able to refuse to seat (pick one): black people, white people, males, redheads, left-handed people or introverts. Whatever. They probably won’t stay in business very long, it’s a form of corporate Darwinism.
I wonder how the civil rights era would have gone if the courts agreed.
> It even means a restaurant should be able to refuse to seat (pick one): black people, white people, males, redheads, left-handed people or introverts. Whatever. They probably won’t stay in business very long, it’s a form of corporate Darwinism.
I find it ironic that this is (presumably) precisely the position The Daily Stormer would take on those issues.
The civil rights era argument outlines a pretty solid meta-principle. Certain public accomodations should be open to all. I think this list should be limited, but a public service that effectively acts as a gateway to public speech could be argued to meet the criteria.
I think we're seeing an illustration of the point(also made during the civil rights era) that the cost of discriminating against a disliked minority can in fact be very low, so low that the market tolerates this inefficiency. Or perhaps it isn't irrational at all, as the market majority may indeed reward the discriminator for providing this non-monetary good.
I hope they find a provider, on principle.
The cost of discriminating can be negative, for example, if the wealthier group that you allow in prefers your establishment if you keep the group they dislike out.
I don't think this is a legal issue but a moral issue. By siding with the moral majority this companies loses the ability to position itself as a baston of privacy and open speech. It is easy to say you support an idea but when presented with a choice this company decided to act differently. A light needs to shine on these imposters because when we really need privacy and openness we can't be fooled into trusting them.
First amendment protections derive primarily from the fact that the Government has a monopoly on force. It's monopoly power that is the ultimate motivator for the protections.
In this particular case, when every private entity with oligopoly power (de facto, not de jure, per the capital and other ICANN approval hurdles) denies your platform, then you're in effectively the same position as if the Government was denying you speech.
It's why we have antitrust and labor relations laws - we recognize that monopolies or effective monopolies approach the power of Governments in ability to deny rights.
"It even means a restaurant should be able to refuse to seat (pick one): black people, white people, males, redheads, left-handed people or introverts. Whatever. They probably won’t stay in business very long, it’s a form of corporate Darwinism."
Well unless, racism, islamophobie, or antisemitism are en vogue, then the minority is screwed.
Right. Societies without a government, or without an effective government, have no succor for the despised minority: If the majority hates you, nobody except the government can push back on that hatred.
Racism is like pollution, in that being the first to stop doing it has disastrous downsides, even if you don't like the end result. It's a Nash Equilibrium.
In an earlier post (https://www.easydns.com/blog/2017/09/06/why-does-easydns-pro...) supporting free expression, EasyDNS says that they will only refuse service to sites that advocate or encourage "physical violence or harm toward an identifiable minority." I have never been to the DailyStormer site, so I don't know if they meet that criteria. If they don't, EasyDNS, while well within their rights, is not living up to their own standards.
Could you quote it? I see it remarking on people he expects to be beaten up, fantasising about people being beaten up (it seems, from two opposing factions at least), anticipating people begin beaten up with relish. But I didn't see any asking for people to be beaten up.
Standing back and hooting as someone else commits violent assault ain't right [understatement!], but it's far from calling those people to commit the assault. It doesn't read as incitement to me, 'just' applauding anticipated violence, deplorable as that is.
I'm really not sure text on a website should count as incitement any way (maybe if it's UGC with specific threats against particular people); but is that there even?
I don't want to read whatever that is too closely but looks like some random blog post where some idiot claims 'antifa' or 'right wing protestors' located at some rally 'deserve to be beaten up'.
You may find there are other blogging platforms out there with actual requests for violence, often justified with a tagline 'Punch a nazi!'.
The OP asked if the daily stormer hosted content calling for physical violence and evidence was given. I'm sure plenty of other blogging platforms call for physical violence, whats the point? Are they EasyDNS customers? If they are, you should probably let EasyDNS know. If not, your comment is entirely worthless.
I read this whole thing, unfortunately, to try and find the 'immiment threat of harm' and found none. This article is not a good example of what you claim
I see no reason this should be seen as a threat of imminent violence. Simply saying 'so-and-so should get punched' is not, to me, a credible, real threat. Just some troll mouthing off.
Edit: that's like saying all the people who say on Twitter 'trump needs a punch to the face' are committing hate speech?
Wouldn't "actual Nazis" be members of the German National Socialist Party?
Pedantic, perhaps, but I think the proper term for these people is "racists" or "white supremacists" (edit: or even better, Neonazis) . I find the term "Nazi" to be overused in the modern discourse, often hyperbolic in nature, usually to refer to people who lean right of political centre.
Not sure why down voters appear to disagree : I prefer to call a spade a spade.
Yes, you are right. Only those people that were actual members of the party were called "Nazis".
Today in German, those that are still living are sometimes called "Altnazi", old nazi, to distinguish the racist people that follow their ideology but can't possibly have been alive at that time.
The latter are more precisely called "Neonazi", but that is often shortened to just "Nazi".
Perhaps the parent is confused as I am: Do these Nazis want "German Socialism" to take over in USA, so be ruled from Germany? If not then I think calling them Nazis definitely needs clarification.
Genuine confusion for me. Nazi to me is someone who wants to resurrect Hitler and be ruled by the Fatherland; that seems incongruent with what I expect from USA white supremacist??
"Nazi" derives from the word "National Socialism", it's not inherently German in that regard, they just invented it. The ideology isn't tied to one nation.
In Mein Kampf doesn't Hitler specifically link Aryanism and his anti-Jewish position to Germany's history and geography. If you take the same ideas and plant them in USA you'd get something like Native [North] American master race with Mexican hate, wouldn't you? Backing the Aryanism and adding holocaust denial and such seems to make it very much supporting Hitler's "German" Nazism; it seems inextricably linked with the concept of the Aryan master race which is based on a German [psuedo] history?
I'm probably expecting too much rationale and logical consistency.
Depends on if you care about the semantic difference between Neo-Nazi and Nazi.
Outside of historical discussions: I do not.
> Wouldn't "actual Nazis" be members of the German National Socialist Party?
No more so than to be a libertarian you need to be a member of the Libertarian Party. Or that said National Socialists were socialists.
Post-WW2 the term "Nazi" has been widely recognized to refer to a grouping of people that idolize or share the ideology of the Nazi regime and it's descendant movements.
No they are not Nazis anymore than I'm a Freemason because I say I am and hang some of their symbols up. Even less so, because Freemasons as a group are still active, the NSDAP is defunct.
It's just that saying "literal fucking nazis" sounds so much more dramatic than "Neo Nazis" or "
fucktards pretending to be nazis".
A publication that chooses the name The DailyStormer clearly wants people to think that it is by and for Nazis. We executed the publisher of the newspaper whose name it echoes [1] after the Nuremberg trials.
If you support modern nazi talking points, causes, rhetoric, actions, or regularly give them money (via page views, donation, or merch) then you're almost certainly a nazi. Doesn't matter if someone is white, poor, rich, disenfranchised, privileged, whatever.
Note - I am not making a distinction between historical nazism and neo-nazis because we're talking about the present day not WW2. Modern Nazi's are the Daily Stormer and their ilk.
As it escalates in intent of violence and specificity, it becomes more of an issue for any service provider. And you can imagine imagine replacing "fascists" with different groups might get a stronger response earlier, i.e. "animal hurting medical researchers", "illegal aliens", "zionists", "catholics", and so on. But by the time you get to advocating specific illegal actions against specific people, I think you're pretty certain to get cut off.
I don't know if this is true for the daily stormer, but I think generally troll-right groups are going to keep getting cut off because they are doing targeted online harassment. When there are specific victims and things are clearly being coordinated on a certain site that gives service providers a strong motive to cut them off. Versus if someone is publishing some kind of racist newsletter that is only being seen by other racists no one is really going to know enough about that has a motive to cut them off.
> It even means a restaurant should be able to refuse to seat (pick one): black people, white people, males, redheads, left-handed people or introverts. Whatever. They probably won’t stay in business very long, it’s a form of corporate Darwinism.
I think the point of the argument is that you can't pick and choose when discrimination is OK. But then the second half, about corporate Darwinism, is a moral escape hatch, possibly because the author senses how manifestly wrong that argument feels.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Right vs. wrong will be a "you know it when you see it" case by case basis. And the test for that will mutate as our society mutates. Things that feel right today will embarrass our children.
What I think is important today is not to rely on capitalist mechanisms to protect minorities from discrimination. Wheelchair ramps are needed by a tiny fraction of our society. Many businesses probably wouldn't bother with accessibility, but it's mandated, because the disabled don't have a large enough wallet to bankrupt companies that don't put ramps in.
"There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Right vs. wrong will be a 'you know it when you see it' case by case basis."
this is something i observe people, especially intelligent people, rejecting almost out of reflex, and it bothers me more and more. reasoning from first principles and justifying each step of reasoning is fine, but it is only an exercise in making models and thinking through those models. the general terms you make up along the way are only objects of your thinking. in actual reality there are only unique, concrete circumstances. human judgement has a place, but so often people act as if it doesn't, and they act as if holding that view makes them less biased-- not biased by their own judgement, i suppose. but it doesn't, they only apply that treatment to everything... but for some things it never occurs to them. their biases are still there, hidden in their tepidness, even if they never say this or that is wrong, or because the never say this or that is wrong.
We are a free speech registrar.
free speech means a private company shouldn't be forced to host content it disagrees with.
We are a company and we disagree with the content, therefore we will not host it.
OK fine, but this reduces "free speech registrar" to something pretty meaningless from a consumer point of view.
This is part of a disturbing new trend of "political discrimination". If someone opposes the policies of an identity group, in this case mixed-race marriages, but it could be women, gays, or rural white Christians, then that opposition is labeled "hate". Once labeled, their speech is deemed offensive and censored, and they become fair game for political discrimination, to be fired from their jobs, kicked off social media, and otherwise ostracized.
Can you explain what you mean by the "policies of an identity group"?
In general the minority identity groups only policy is that they ought to be treated just like everyone else. I'd say that if you're trying to maintain a status quo where the majority is treated preferentially that your opposition is "hate" as is meant by the word today.
What does "treated like everyone else" mean and how do you know when it's been achieved? This kind of standard ranges from the most minimal legal equality of opportunity to full on equality of outcome.
No, they got kicked off of their hosts because they were harassing Heather Hayes' grieving family.
TDS are literally neo-nazis, not just some asshats who don't like interracial marriage. You either have literally no clue what you're talking about, or you're being purposefully intellectually dishonest.
With companies now coming up with exceptions to their free speech ideology, whats the technical solution? Seems the only place left for these unwanted groups, the dark web of tor.
The thing that interests me is technical issues of a site nobody wants to host. Deny them DNS, Deny them DDOS protection, Deny them hosting, whats left?
The fear that most Free Speech absolutists have is that tomorrow it will be: "I mean, not being a socialist|capitalist|religious individual is an option..."
From an Ideals perspective, its a valid and valiant fear, but I don't understand the absolutist position. Legitimate verbal threats are still allowed under absolute free speech, but they obviously produce harm. Should we really allow anyone to threaten the life or livelihood of another human being without repercussion?
Absolutism in the other direction is just as dystopian as well. Follow the exact line of populist opinion or else.
So "Free speech on principal" people, where does it end? What ISN'T "Free Speech" to you?
I think this has been answered many times over, even the most extreme free speech absolutists tend to agree that direct, specific threats are unacceptable. General, non-specific threats and expressing joy about violent acts however... opinions vary.
Anything that doesn't directly call for violence. If you're presenting a position that others are free to evaluate on the merits, then free speech covers it. The point of allowing free speech is to be open to the truth. That doesn't mean that the truth is never ugly or in disharmony with fashionable opinion.
Cultural rejection of white supremacist and neo-nazi ideology isn't necessarily part of a slippery slope that will inevitably encompass all non-mainstream speech, rather it's a manifestation of free speech. Those beliefs had their trial in the marketplace of ideas and have been found to be culturally toxic, and intellectually and scientifically void. One can believe in free speech while also accepting that speech can have consequences, and that not all ideas have equal value, or necessarily deserve equal consideration.
They've been using onion domains to provide service while their clearnet site is unavailable - so the technical solutions do indeed exist. They're just harder to use.
Of course, the other option is to find someone who does want to host you or start your own. They've done decently, bulletproof.al has been willing to provide them domains, bitmitigate is providing their DDoS protection, etc.
As others in this thread have mentioned, there's a tendency for many entrepreneurial types to gravitate towards services that are very much hands-off, BitMitigate and Bulletproof made a name for themselves here and I'll certainly give them a shot if I'm hosting anything where users can post comments or I'm posting things that are remotely controversial. There's value in knowing your site won't go down even if the worst kind of controversy is stirred.
Another cowardly "free speech but..." Either you support free speech (including Nazis or whatever today's boogeyman is) or you don't support free speech at all. Claiming you support free speech only when you like the speech is abjectly idiotic. When you start blocking people from using your service for their speech, it's time to stop calling yourself the "free speech registrar."
Why does it have to be either/or? Society does not operate by strictly logical principles. I see no problem with "mostly free speech, except for extremists".
"Extremists" like that communist agitator Martin Luther King and all those "extremist" satanic homosexuals spreading AIDS? Good thing we stopped them from speaking, right? Go to Saudi Arabia, they support free speech, except for those extremists who claim Mohamed wasn't the true prophet of Allah. Back in the USSR they supported free speech, except for those extremists who undermined worker morale.
Pretending you and your allies can quasi-objectively categorize "extremists" is exactly the sort of mass delusion we need free speech to prevent.
The particular speech in question matters here at some level, doesn't it? Society is messy and collaborative, and applying a first amendment-style rule to literally everyone on literally every subject is untenable.
In a sense it's even paradoxical. You can't say that everyone must uphold free speech on every subject without restricting their own freedom in some way.
The paradox being "either 'everyone must let others speak freely' or 'you are free to decide when others can't speak freely' but not both?"
Why would this paradox arise in a just society? Specifically the second condition.
My (Kantian) ethical justification for the first is "in any situation where I use the rule, I would want its use to be universally established", whereas in the second condition it is clearly false to say that every situation where I restrict someone else's speech coexists with my desire for everyone else to decide when another's speech should be restricted, since my desire to censor and my opponent's opposite desire would contradict that I am acting how I would if I wanted the rule to be universal.
Isn't the only freedom you're restricting by upholding free speech, the freedom to arbitrarily restrict freedoms all for the sake of promoting big-picture freedom? I find it hard to see this as consistent. What kinds of scenarios do you see as too messy/exceptional/extraordinary where freedom of speech becomes a self-imposed restriction?
"you are free to decide when others can't speak freely" is a bit reductionist considering we're talking about a platform providing the capability for others' speech. Other situations that introduce nuance are private spaces, individuals' social media feeds, etc.
It's not about "freedom" to restrict others' speech- it's about freedom not to support it or to listen to it.
Fair enough, I see how providing the medium for another person's actions is different than putting yourself in a position of authority over them.
That said, there is an argument to be made that a host should not worry that they are partly to blame for, or that their non-intervention suggests tacit approval of, a user's detestable messages - simply because the host just isn't accountable for the user's actions. The solution to not supporting it, imo, is to be explicit about the host's scope of permissions and banned content right up front, before problems occur, because then the responsibility for the user to not do so is recorded. [If the agreement clause is really vague and allows nearly anything, it doesn't change that the user can expect it to be used.]
Freedom to not listen to speech is in my opinion just as valid as the freedom to speak; maybe I'd call it the freedom to silence :P
[An extreme example of Kant is that, if a murderer asks, you should tell them where the person they say they are going to kill is, instead of lying. The reason goes: right and wrong having nothing to do with morality (universal law) so you can't justify lying to the murderer if you see them as a person who is an end in themselves- rather the lie is a way to pursue a right and wrong based in single situation hypotheticals (whether you should manipulate the murderer to save lives), which means it can't derive its value to you from being universally applicable, from not originating from a categorical truth. The reason although people are worth more than a means, you still can't mislead the murderer so as to protect a valuable life, is that the potential murderer, also an undeniable end in themselves, is the one upon whom the responsibility for the murder should be placed - you are not responsible whether or not the murderer tells the truth that they will kill or if they lie. They are still totally free to choose not to murder the person after you give their location away anyway. Do I think I would act this way? I really don't think so. Another way to resolve it is to keep quiet lol]
Conpletely agree. Most of the arguments I see on the subject are "slippery slope" arguments tbat imo end up doing more bad than good. Freedom of speech should not exist for people who do not want freedom of speech (e.g. nazis). It's similar To your liberty ends where the liberty of others begins.
"Freedom of speech should not exist for people who do not want freedom of speech"
This sounds like a conundrum to me. If you think groups should not have free speech if they don't support free speech, then you don't support free speech and shouldn't be allowed to speak.
What is free speech for if not to protect "extremist" speech? Under your rubric, we'll just call whatever we don't like "extremism" and suppress it and that would be allowing free speech.
Because then you're just applying a subjective set of rules and only protecting speech you agree with. The purpose of free speech is to ensure a world where no entity (such as the government) can dictate what is acceptable and unacceptable speech based on the sole views whatever party happens to be in control. I.e. do you want a trump administration to modify free speech to be "mostly free speech, except for extremists"? Do you think your view of extremists closely aligns with their view?
Because principles only count when they're uncomfortable to uphold. A principle that is only exercised in defense of the already-palatable is hollow and worthless.
There can be exceptions to principle, but each one is an encroachment that rightly raises questions whether the person making the exception is shirking responsibility.
The most palatable cases are when both principles co-exist in a way that they minimize the amount they compromise eachother's purpose.
For example: A defense of copyright creating a limit to free speech generally rests on an argument that such a restriction doesn't undermine purpose of free speech. The argument assets that free speech is primarily about sharing ideas that are contemporaneously unpalatable, or disruptive/subversive to existing power structures. Copyright doesn't prevent a speaker from expressing ideas also expressed in copywritten works, and it even offers many ways in which a speaker could quote a protected work verbatim.
On the other hand, structuring bounds of speech as "free, except when I really don't like it" is harder to defend as a commitment to free speech. It is counter to the very purpose of free speech to defend the unpalatable. There is certainly an argument to be made here that a limit both has a good reason and minimizes the amount of speech it preempts, but nobody is presenting one. And until they make that case, and make it very convincing, others are right to consider it an abandonment of principle.
Harassing someone isn't free speech, my dude. Nobody is going to host TDS anymore simply because they started breaking laws. Nobody wanted to host them before but did it out of principle, but the Nazism combined with harassing the family of a dead girl is a death sentence for their site.
Free speech doesn't mean people have to listen or even give you a platform. Nobody but the government is bound by the first amendment. Read up on the laws you're talking about.
There was an article in WSJ yesterday highlighting the hypocrisy of Big Tech when it comes to Net Neutrality. Everyone keeps railing against telecoms that they might start censoring things or making them unprofitable, while there isn't a single example of that anyone can name. Yet there are a lot of recent examples where tech companies censor or demonetize the material they don't like. Daily Stormer is an extreme example, of course, but there are far less extreme ones as well. The other day Dave Rubin got a lot of his videos demonetized without explanation. There's no "hate speech" in his videos and never was. And that's just one example out of dozens just recently.
You can't eat your cake and have it too. Tech companies should not be in the business of censoring views they dislike, even in the extreme cases such as this one, especially if they insist that telecoms must operate like utilities.
>It even means a restaurant should be able to refuse to seat (pick one): black people, white people, males, redheads, left-handed people or introverts.
That is an odd position for a man in a mixed-race marriage with a mixed-race child to take, because not too long ago it would have meant his child might not be served or seated. It's only because our government took steps to end discrimination (after being forced to do so by the people) that it's safe to hold such unenlightened opinions. I wonder if he'll ever explain to his own child that it's OK they were discriminated against because "corporate Darwinism".
One can and should be able to discriminate all day long on the basis of ideas or actions, which is what has happened with Anglin and his crew of a-holes (sort of - I suspect it's more ass-covering than principle in a lot of cases).
But, discrimination should not happen based on something an individual cannot change, which is what the OP seems to be OK with.
> That is an odd position for a man in a mixed-race marriage with a mixed-race child to take, because not too long ago it would have meant his child might not be served or seated.
That's not an odd position at all. Would I want to force some white supremacist line cook and their inbred waiter to serve my wife and child in their restaurant? No thanks. I'll go somewhere else.
"I uphold the right for any business to decide for themselves who they will or will not conduct business with. In the long run I firmly believe an unfettered free market would sort out who is on the right side or the wrong side of history. ... It even means a restaurant should be able to refuse to seat (pick one): black people, white people, males, redheads, left-handed people or introverts. Whatever. They probably won’t stay in business very long, it’s a form of corporate Darwinism. ... But as a man in an interracial marriage with a mixed-race child, being asked to risk our business and our customers, to put our asses on the line for a bunch of white supremacists?"
Bollocks. I agree with the right of his company to refuse to host a neonazi/hate speech mongering site. However, it wasn't the "unfettered free market" that resulted in civil rights laws being implemented, it was long drawn out resistance (with great costs especially to minorities' lives) and eventual government intervention that changed the status quo in the US and to suggest otherwise is asinine.
His reasoning also falsely suggests that he'd be fine with repeated psychological harm at minimum to his family if they were to face multiple blatantly racist encounters like being insulted/threatened/refused service anywhere because of who they are, since they'd be comforted with knowing the free market would eventually sort it out.
> I’ve stated numerous times in the past that I uphold the right for any business to decide for themselves who they will or will not conduct business with. In the long run I firmly believe an unfettered free market would sort out who is on the right side or the wrong side of history.
> That means that you can’t force a bible-thumping fundamentalist baker to make a cake for a gay wedding if he doesn’t want to.
> It even means a restaurant should be able to refuse to seat (pick one): black people, white people, males, redheads, left-handed people or introverts. Whatever. They probably won’t stay in business very long, it’s a form of corporate Darwinism.
Unfortunately, it doesn't always work that way. Consider just how pervasive and resilient segregation was; or, how a restaurant might actually attract business from like-minded customers who want to make a point (e.g. Chik-fil-a)
In Chesterton’s The Secret of Father Brown, a beloved nobleman who murdered his good-for-nothing brother in a duel thirty years ago returns to his hometown wracked by guilt. All the townspeople want to forgive him immediately, and they mock the titular priest for only being willing to give a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection. They lecture the priest on the virtues of charity and compassion.
Later, it comes out that the beloved nobleman did not in fact kill his good-for-nothing brother. The good-for-nothing brother killed the beloved nobleman (and stole his identity). Now the townspeople want to see him lynched or burned alive, and it is only the priest who – consistently – offers a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection.
The priest tells them:
> It seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. You forgive a conventional duel just as you forgive a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn’t anything to be forgiven.
He further notes that this is why the townspeople can self-righteously consider themselves more compassionate and forgiving than he is. Actual forgiveness, the kind the priest needs to cultivate to forgive evildoers, is really really hard. The fake forgiveness the townspeople use to forgive the people they like is really easy, so they get to boast not only of their forgiving nature, but of how much nicer they are than those mean old priests who find forgiveness difficult and want penance along with it.
Forgiveness here is somewhat like free speech. If you are for free speech when you do not find it objectionable, you are not really for free speech at all.
Parenthetically... I notice that the comments on this thread which provided the address the dailystormer domain in a ccTLD and the .onion address, have been completely removed. Not downvoted, but they look totally gone to me.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 215 ms ] threadIt isn't because I'm sympathetic to the nazis in this scenario, but if you're trying to position yourself as "the free speech registrar", but draw the line at white supremacy because you're in an interracial marriage, then the signal I get from that is that you clearly don't cherish all free speech, and gives me pause that one of my community sites might end up running afoul of whatever those arbitrary policies are in the future.
The viral video in Baidu this week is of a student activist in Hong Kong who supports freedom of speech, and her speech (independence for Hong Kong) is explicitly illegal.
After we let people speak, and we dislike the speech, we can can then mock, disagree with, and poke fun at it, using our own freedom of speech.
Given the option I'd pick them over a alternative.
Either way (pro-quartering/speech or anti-quartering/speech) a business has no impact on those rights. A business can't decide to quarter soldiers in your house. A business can't "restrict" free speech (unless that business is a complete monopoly in that market, a separate issue) as a user can easily find another registrar or start their own registrar to meet their needs.
Put another way, if your local theater won't allow you to show "Triumph of the Will", that's not a restriction on your speech, because you can start your own theater.
Legally we agree, but I can also choose to not support those businesses.
How would you feel if Twitter decided to ban all people of color from being able to use the platform?
Is that something you're totally cool with, because companies can't possibly affect your rights to free exercise of speech, or is it something you'd prefer they not do?
There's nothing nonsensical about a person believing in absolute free speech as a core value and supporting businesses that share that value.
Just because you don't share a value doesn't make it "nonsensical".
I understood "free speech" in the parent comment to mean an unwillingness to censor for any reason except those related to legal matters.
It is one thing to say "we won't accept any supremacist or terrorist organization" outright; it is another to say you'll take anyone and then actually subject them to an arbitrary and unpublished terms of service.
Irrespective of the first amendment, any given individual or company is free to respect the principle of free speech as much or as little as they like. I choose to respect the principle more than you. Thanks to free speech, we both have the express our disagreement. Because YCombinator respects free speech to some extent, they have furnish us a platform that allows us to publish these opinions.
Treating speech as a boolean is naive. There are a range of protections ranging from popular opinion, free speech devotees, all the way up to the first amendment.
Easydns has chosen to follow the Non-aggression principle which is a limited free speech moral stance.
https://www.easydns.com/terms-of-service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle
OP simply wants to support those who truly believe in free speech. Not one who, in OPs opinion, has simply crowned themselves as free speech champions until pressured.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aeasydns.com+free+spee...
Please tell us what your business is and we'll be happy to boycott it too.
Not to mention that you're also more likely to (all in the name of defense against the Daily Stormer) unwittingly target a group also targeted by the Daily Stormer if mere non-action justifies retaliation, because of the Daily Stormer's lack in number compared to the breadth in scope of conditions of the boycott, all applied at a popular level.
If you want to make someone fail in public, actively give them a pedestal so they might do it in front of an audience. The side effects of devoting so much to the excision of such a small cohort comes at a bigger cost to the bigger party - unrelenting pursuit of a couple guerrillas is ruinous.
Do you have many friends right now who are people of color, or queer/gay, or even Jewish? How do you explain to them that you'd like to support the business that goes against the grain and hosts Nazi/white supremacist material?
I'm asking this because, right now, most of my friends are not white/hetero, and right now, they're all terrified of the US political climate for different reasons--the brown folks of being attacked (physically) by white supremacists and knowing the cops won't defend them (and in a lot of cases, the cops ARE the white supremacists), and the gays of being attacked by everyone. They're largely living in fear, and that's shitty.
I don't know if I could look them in the eye and say, "I've switched over to registrar X, because only they stood up for the Daily Stormer."
Actually, I know I couldn't say that to them, because what kind of asshole would I look like to my friends if I did that?
Again, this is my experience, but I'm curious how ours differ.
If their friends are being physically assaulted for those reasons, then it makes sense for them to fear for themselves.
If their fear is based off of sensationalist news articles that significantly over-exaggerate the political climate and influence of various groups in order to generate advertising revenue/clicks, they should reconsider, even if it's difficult. There are far more articles about the KKK on the Internet than there are actual members of the KKK https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-w....
Those living in fear should try to rationalize about the probabilities of events happening to them based off of relevant statistics, not articles specifically designed to incite fear and anger.
The concept that allowed the struggles from minorities to be heard in the first place, and therefore to improve things tremendously for gay and black people.
We can see that this is not a given, for example Russia is starting to crack down on 'pro-gay' speech : http://thegroundtruthproject.org/russias-assault-on-gay-free...
But defending free speech is sometimes hard, because it also means letting people you disagree with speak freely even if it obvious to you they're spewing bullshit. You can't force them to stop, legally or otherwise, but you can expose their bullshit for what it is.
It is much harder to actually argue with someone (or 100 of people), especially when they're unreasonable/stupid, than to shut them down. However, the alternative is to have some kind of moral police to decide what is allowed or not, and force the literally unquestionable selected truth on everyone, which is much more dangerous overall in my opinion (see what could be done with Trump and climate change, or Putin with gay people).
I don't like what they have to say, but I'm really disheartened that they aren't allowed to say it. Free speech should be a social ideal. The liberty of free speech is a wonderful thing, even if it is sometimes abhorrent speech.
This is an odd phenomenon that's only happened in the last couple of years -- situations that folks would previously describe as "disheartening" or "disappointing" are now characterized as "terrifying". It's clever, really -- expressing concern over your physical well being (even when there isn't really any danger) is a cognitive kill-switch; physical safety is at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs, after all.
I think anyone who knows me already knows that I value speech a great deal, and I consider it to be almost certainly the greatest ideal that we have. It is, as almost all my friends have probably heard me say, the one thing America gets more right than anywhere else. I've had a couple of websites utterly ruined by the fact that I refused to impose censorship upon them.
I dearly understand the position that EasyDNS is in, and I'm sorry that they are in it. On the flip side, I'm glad that they decided to announce to the world that their 'Free speech' principles have limits instead of quietly refusing service. That they felt the need to broadcast the limits of their respect for free speech is, to my opinion, a good thing, just not in the way that they might have expected. I'm sure they'll get lots of business out of it. People often like to ally the businesses they deal with to their own moral interests, which is almost certainly why they posted it, and decidedly why I'm turned off by it. If I see another company who respects speech enough that they'd be willing to do business with nazis, then maybe I'm on to something... or maybe not. I dunno. I'd still expect it to be a good DNS service, of course.
I feel where people get mixed up on this is that while I can totally and fully condemn nazis doing nazi violence, I have zero problems allowing nazis to talk about whatever nazis talk about. Sure, it's up to whomever owns the business they have to decide whether or not they wish to do business with any particular person or company or whomever, but I dislike the precedent, because it's not too farfetched for me to imagine Antifa, Black Lives Matter, The NRA, or even the ACLU on the wrong side of that line if and when public opinion ever gets codified into law.
1A doesn't have anything to do with it -- either free speech is a concept worth protecting, or it isn't. John Stuart Mill wrote at some length about it, and in particular about what happens when the population at large decides they don't like your speech.
Let's take this to its logical end -- let's say Joe wants to host a legal but repugnant site. Cloudflare doesn't want to protect it, ok; EasyDNS won't host it, sure; now let's say Comcast gets involved. They don't think Joe should have internet because he's espousing ideas they don't like, so they cut him off. Same with his mobile provider. Hell, what's to stop the local grocery store from banning him? Point being, Joe could _legally_ be forcibly removed from society for having opinions some people don't like.
It's one of the reasons I'm so wary when flashmobs try to force other businesses to dump specific clients.
It's one thing if your views or actions or so repugnant that all suppliers voluntarily refrain from doing business with you. Maybe one would reconsider their actions faced with that prospect?
But the phenomenon today, where flashmobs form and demand vendors sever their clients because the mob is demanding it and for the reason that the target is politically or ideologically at odds with the mob, that can play out exactly as you fear. Where does that stop?
This is one of those cases where there wasn't an easy answer, unfortunately. Dreamhost unknowingly wound up with a Dailystormer domain on their system last week and they got DDoS-ed into a crater. Also not good.
Why exactly shouldn't corporations be kept to the same or a higher standard?
You still might object to infrastructure companies refusing infrastructure to certain parties, especially if it is political.
Sure society may have prevailing moral standards, but the thing about having an opinion (which I think I'm proving with this comment) is we all, myself included, have forgotten that means we don't have to share it.
I explicitly state that I do not condemn EasyDNS for choosing to exercise their freedom of (dis)association in whatever manner they see fit. I would simply prefer to do business with someone whom I didn't have to guess at the moral convictions of, and obviate having to guess at whether or not the speech of users on a forum I host are crossing a line that I can't foresee, and would prefer to do business with a vendor where that wasn't something I had to worry about, even if it means having shitty neighbors.
Until I was nearly finished with the second paragraph, I thought you were referring to Daily Stormer as the 'real' bastion of free speech you wanted to throw your bisiness at. That sentence could probably be clarified if that's not your intent.
As to the point, I agree that we'll articulated and followed policies would be beneficial for all, but I feel for these businesses as well. They are aware that regardless of how sane their policy or how much they profess to be upholding free speech, they will be called out as Nazi sympathizers and angry mobs will gather. People are not at their most rational currently, and any company hosting them might be affecting the future of their company and possibly even the wellbeing of their employees (which is ironic and sad if true, given the organization at the heart of this).
As to your second paragraph, I agree completely. I hate the negativity associated with a term like 'virtue signaling', but it seems like EasyDNS here was looking to virtue signal that they're not doing business with nazis. I expect they'll get a lot more business out of that than if they'd just quietly refused to do business with DailyStormer.
To (poorly) paraphrase someone else's thoughts on the matter, the fact that nazis, or the Westboro Baptist Church are free to spew their bile without censorship gives me comfort that the media has the freedom to be critical of our administration. I understand that this isn't government censorship, but honestly, I'm a little bit shocked that the DailyStormer is still hunting around for a host / registrar, and if this story hadn't broken, I might have gone on just assuming that they'd found a new home somewhere.
Further, certain kinds of speech have never been considered protected: "fighting words", certain classes of harassment, fomenting seditious, the famous "fire!" in a crowded theater.
Note, too, it's easy to draw a line around advocating for racial supremacy and genocide without stepping onto the famous slippery slope.
Anyway. "free speech" is not a uniform perfect right that applies maximally in all situations.
I really dislike Nazis, but I love the liberty of free speech more. It's hard to stand up for them, but it's not 'correct' speech that needs protection.
And no, no I don't have realistic answers - other than to suggest we consider adding those protections to domain registry and regulate ISPs to ensure the ability of hosting private servers.
I'm okay with saying nobody needs to host it. I'm not really okay with the domain not being allowed to be registered. There should be a solution for this.
If I don't stand up for the freedom of expression for the lowliest of views, then I didn't stand for it at all.
Edited to add:
I posted it below, but I think it salient here - even if just for contrast. I am not white. I'm pretty sure these Nazis hate me. Given the chance, they'd probably harm me. Until they make an overt threat, or attempt, to do so - I am still not okay with depriving them of basic human rights.
Yes, I feel that strongly about the freedom of expression. They don't scare me. I will never live in fear, nor will I ask that someone's rights be taken away without due process. My principles apply to more than speech which agree with.
I'm not accusing you of acting this way, but there are many "regulation is bad!" folks who now seem to think when it comes to hosting content on the internet, maybe it should be regulated so that private companies can't block people from doing basic things like registering a domain name if the company doesn't like it. This is the free market at work, and if the free market decides some speech is wrong, that's the free market America signed up for.
Feel free to levy any accusations about me that you want. However, I think my comment history stands as evidence. I'm not asserting that this is a right. I'm asserting that it should be a right.
I would neither disagree nor agree. Different theories of what a right is exist, and I don't believe it's a settled question enough to even claim that a $newer_thing is a right.
> If I don't stand up for the freedom of expression for the lowliest of views, then I didn't stand for it at all.
I understand this viewpoint. This is the "free speech maximalist" position. I disagree with it. I think there are bounds "beyond the usual pale" where no private institution should be asked to or forced to host it.
It may be that the proper solution is for the US government, as the duly appointed host of the Public Space by long-standing tradition, to create a Public Forum for such things.
> Further, certain kinds of speech have never been considered protected: "fighting words", certain classes of harassment, fomenting seditious, the famous "fire!" in a crowded theater
You should really read this:
https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/11/hello-youve-been-referred...
and to a lesser extent, this:
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
Also, legislatively, the fighting words doctrine is basically toothless today, if it's not entirely dead.
Worth noting though that punishments for use of speech are an entirely different thing than refusing to allow someone to speak. Again, I acknowledge that no one is beholden to DailyStormer, or any other nazi to hosting their site -- I get that, and it's not a decision that I particularly fault -- it just doesn't sit well with me that a website has apparently been searching for a host for some time now and can't find one.
Maybe that's a testament to how far we've come as society -- perhaps if I were a better human, that's how I'd see it, but I see it as troubling, regardless of the content.
> Anyway. "free speech" is not a uniform perfect right that applies maximally in all situations
Nor have I suggested that it is, but it seems you think you understand the subject better than you do, and I think it's an important enough right to be informed on.
If you, however, have a link to a paper or op-ed put out by a reputable constitutional scholar in a reputable publication, e.g., Harvard Law Review, I would be more than happy to read such a thing.
So you do not support net neutrality, correct?
The reason the first amendment is so restrained is that the government is too powerful to be trusted with any more power. But people aren't, in fact they're expected to pick up the slack where the government doesn't have authority.
I don't want to live in a world where people feel comfortable doing whatever they want as long as it's legal.
Lol why not? Sounds like freedom.
Do you not think that in the long-run that our law will make all that is universally agreed to be unethical and harmful to others also illegal?
What I'm saying is law marches in the direction of ever improving it's fit to society. You seem to throw that out the window and think of law as some unrelated and untrustable thing.
Right, we're all in agreement here. Law should conform to society, society need not conform to law. When the law is wrong, we can resist it, and when the law is absent, we can replace it.
For example, we have a culture that (rightly) discourages lying, but making lying illegal would be a disaster.
Edit: I'm talking 'real' harm. The kind you could sue someone for, with real actual damages. Not simply emotional distress or inconvenience.
If I run for president and lie about my positions to get elected, have I harmed anyone? Is it a crime?
If I create a second identity and maintain two relationships in different states, have I harmed anyone? Is it a crime?
In response to your edit, yes, that's exactly the point. Not all harm can be sued for. Not all wrongs are illegal. Some wrongs cannot be illegal.
If I promise to be faithful to my wife and then cheat on her, do you believe I've done anything wrong? If so, do you think it should be illegal?
Or let's take emotion out of it and focus on "real actual damages". Say I verbally promise my friend a job at my company in New York and encourage them to move here, with no intention of actually hiring them. Have I harmed them if they trusted me enough to sign an expensive lease in New York? If so, should it be illegal to break a verbal promise? Should everyone act like robots and refuse to trust each other without written contracts?
Not really. Free speech works both ways. You can't fault Mark's logic here.
what does that even mean?
good thing you didn't marry a jew, you ignorant hypocrite.
you're all idiots.
I wonder how the civil rights era would have gone if the courts agreed.
I find it ironic that this is (presumably) precisely the position The Daily Stormer would take on those issues.
Notwithstanding that, there might well be similar laws in Canada.
i think the legal structure for this relationship would be different
In this particular case, when every private entity with oligopoly power (de facto, not de jure, per the capital and other ICANN approval hurdles) denies your platform, then you're in effectively the same position as if the Government was denying you speech.
It's why we have antitrust and labor relations laws - we recognize that monopolies or effective monopolies approach the power of Governments in ability to deny rights.
Racism is like pollution, in that being the first to stop doing it has disastrous downsides, even if you don't like the end result. It's a Nash Equilibrium.
Standing back and hooting as someone else commits violent assault ain't right [understatement!], but it's far from calling those people to commit the assault. It doesn't read as incitement to me, 'just' applauding anticipated violence, deplorable as that is.
I'm really not sure text on a website should count as incitement any way (maybe if it's UGC with specific threats against particular people); but is that there even?
You may find there are other blogging platforms out there with actual requests for violence, often justified with a tagline 'Punch a nazi!'.
Edit: that's like saying all the people who say on Twitter 'trump needs a punch to the face' are committing hate speech?
They aren’t called Nazi’s because people disagree with them but because they are actual Nazis
Pedantic, perhaps, but I think the proper term for these people is "racists" or "white supremacists" (edit: or even better, Neonazis) . I find the term "Nazi" to be overused in the modern discourse, often hyperbolic in nature, usually to refer to people who lean right of political centre.
Not sure why down voters appear to disagree : I prefer to call a spade a spade.
Today in German, those that are still living are sometimes called "Altnazi", old nazi, to distinguish the racist people that follow their ideology but can't possibly have been alive at that time.
The latter are more precisely called "Neonazi", but that is often shortened to just "Nazi".
Genuine confusion for me. Nazi to me is someone who wants to resurrect Hitler and be ruled by the Fatherland; that seems incongruent with what I expect from USA white supremacist??
You can read about nazism in the US here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism#United_States
In Mein Kampf doesn't Hitler specifically link Aryanism and his anti-Jewish position to Germany's history and geography. If you take the same ideas and plant them in USA you'd get something like Native [North] American master race with Mexican hate, wouldn't you? Backing the Aryanism and adding holocaust denial and such seems to make it very much supporting Hitler's "German" Nazism; it seems inextricably linked with the concept of the Aryan master race which is based on a German [psuedo] history?
I'm probably expecting too much rationale and logical consistency.
For what it's worth, the Congolese government calls themselves democratic. So, make of it what you will.
Outside of historical discussions: I do not.
> Wouldn't "actual Nazis" be members of the German National Socialist Party?
No more so than to be a libertarian you need to be a member of the Libertarian Party. Or that said National Socialists were socialists.
Post-WW2 the term "Nazi" has been widely recognized to refer to a grouping of people that idolize or share the ideology of the Nazi regime and it's descendant movements.
I'm not defending these people, but are they really Nazis? Or just angry, uneducated and disenfranchised white people?
It's just that saying "literal fucking nazis" sounds so much more dramatic than "Neo Nazis" or " fucktards pretending to be nazis".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer
If you support modern nazi talking points, causes, rhetoric, actions, or regularly give them money (via page views, donation, or merch) then you're almost certainly a nazi. Doesn't matter if someone is white, poor, rich, disenfranchised, privileged, whatever.
Note - I am not making a distinction between historical nazism and neo-nazis because we're talking about the present day not WW2. Modern Nazi's are the Daily Stormer and their ilk.
down-with-fascists-and-that-sort-of-thing .com
ban-all-fascists-from-rhode-island .com
fascists-deserved-to-be-punched .com
lets-attack-all-fascists-in-rhode-island .com
list-of-rhode-island-fascists-to-attack-tonight .com
As it escalates in intent of violence and specificity, it becomes more of an issue for any service provider. And you can imagine imagine replacing "fascists" with different groups might get a stronger response earlier, i.e. "animal hurting medical researchers", "illegal aliens", "zionists", "catholics", and so on. But by the time you get to advocating specific illegal actions against specific people, I think you're pretty certain to get cut off.
I don't know if this is true for the daily stormer, but I think generally troll-right groups are going to keep getting cut off because they are doing targeted online harassment. When there are specific victims and things are clearly being coordinated on a certain site that gives service providers a strong motive to cut them off. Versus if someone is publishing some kind of racist newsletter that is only being seen by other racists no one is really going to know enough about that has a motive to cut them off.
So a blog about beating up white christian males for being WCM is fair game? Good news...
I think the point of the argument is that you can't pick and choose when discrimination is OK. But then the second half, about corporate Darwinism, is a moral escape hatch, possibly because the author senses how manifestly wrong that argument feels.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Right vs. wrong will be a "you know it when you see it" case by case basis. And the test for that will mutate as our society mutates. Things that feel right today will embarrass our children.
What I think is important today is not to rely on capitalist mechanisms to protect minorities from discrimination. Wheelchair ramps are needed by a tiny fraction of our society. Many businesses probably wouldn't bother with accessibility, but it's mandated, because the disabled don't have a large enough wallet to bankrupt companies that don't put ramps in.
this is something i observe people, especially intelligent people, rejecting almost out of reflex, and it bothers me more and more. reasoning from first principles and justifying each step of reasoning is fine, but it is only an exercise in making models and thinking through those models. the general terms you make up along the way are only objects of your thinking. in actual reality there are only unique, concrete circumstances. human judgement has a place, but so often people act as if it doesn't, and they act as if holding that view makes them less biased-- not biased by their own judgement, i suppose. but it doesn't, they only apply that treatment to everything... but for some things it never occurs to them. their biases are still there, hidden in their tepidness, even if they never say this or that is wrong, or because the never say this or that is wrong.
We are a free speech registrar. free speech means a private company shouldn't be forced to host content it disagrees with. We are a company and we disagree with the content, therefore we will not host it.
OK fine, but this reduces "free speech registrar" to something pretty meaningless from a consumer point of view.
In general the minority identity groups only policy is that they ought to be treated just like everyone else. I'd say that if you're trying to maintain a status quo where the majority is treated preferentially that your opposition is "hate" as is meant by the word today.
TDS are literally neo-nazis, not just some asshats who don't like interracial marriage. You either have literally no clue what you're talking about, or you're being purposefully intellectually dishonest.
The thing that interests me is technical issues of a site nobody wants to host. Deny them DNS, Deny them DDOS protection, Deny them hosting, whats left?
I mean, not being a neo-Nazi is an option...
I think their only option left is tor.
From an Ideals perspective, its a valid and valiant fear, but I don't understand the absolutist position. Legitimate verbal threats are still allowed under absolute free speech, but they obviously produce harm. Should we really allow anyone to threaten the life or livelihood of another human being without repercussion?
Absolutism in the other direction is just as dystopian as well. Follow the exact line of populist opinion or else.
So "Free speech on principal" people, where does it end? What ISN'T "Free Speech" to you?
Of course, the other option is to find someone who does want to host you or start your own. They've done decently, bulletproof.al has been willing to provide them domains, bitmitigate is providing their DDoS protection, etc.
As others in this thread have mentioned, there's a tendency for many entrepreneurial types to gravitate towards services that are very much hands-off, BitMitigate and Bulletproof made a name for themselves here and I'll certainly give them a shot if I'm hosting anything where users can post comments or I'm posting things that are remotely controversial. There's value in knowing your site won't go down even if the worst kind of controversy is stirred.
Pretending you and your allies can quasi-objectively categorize "extremists" is exactly the sort of mass delusion we need free speech to prevent.
In a sense it's even paradoxical. You can't say that everyone must uphold free speech on every subject without restricting their own freedom in some way.
Why would this paradox arise in a just society? Specifically the second condition.
My (Kantian) ethical justification for the first is "in any situation where I use the rule, I would want its use to be universally established", whereas in the second condition it is clearly false to say that every situation where I restrict someone else's speech coexists with my desire for everyone else to decide when another's speech should be restricted, since my desire to censor and my opponent's opposite desire would contradict that I am acting how I would if I wanted the rule to be universal.
Isn't the only freedom you're restricting by upholding free speech, the freedom to arbitrarily restrict freedoms all for the sake of promoting big-picture freedom? I find it hard to see this as consistent. What kinds of scenarios do you see as too messy/exceptional/extraordinary where freedom of speech becomes a self-imposed restriction?
It's not about "freedom" to restrict others' speech- it's about freedom not to support it or to listen to it.
That said, there is an argument to be made that a host should not worry that they are partly to blame for, or that their non-intervention suggests tacit approval of, a user's detestable messages - simply because the host just isn't accountable for the user's actions. The solution to not supporting it, imo, is to be explicit about the host's scope of permissions and banned content right up front, before problems occur, because then the responsibility for the user to not do so is recorded. [If the agreement clause is really vague and allows nearly anything, it doesn't change that the user can expect it to be used.]
Freedom to not listen to speech is in my opinion just as valid as the freedom to speak; maybe I'd call it the freedom to silence :P
[An extreme example of Kant is that, if a murderer asks, you should tell them where the person they say they are going to kill is, instead of lying. The reason goes: right and wrong having nothing to do with morality (universal law) so you can't justify lying to the murderer if you see them as a person who is an end in themselves- rather the lie is a way to pursue a right and wrong based in single situation hypotheticals (whether you should manipulate the murderer to save lives), which means it can't derive its value to you from being universally applicable, from not originating from a categorical truth. The reason although people are worth more than a means, you still can't mislead the murderer so as to protect a valuable life, is that the potential murderer, also an undeniable end in themselves, is the one upon whom the responsibility for the murder should be placed - you are not responsible whether or not the murderer tells the truth that they will kill or if they lie. They are still totally free to choose not to murder the person after you give their location away anyway. Do I think I would act this way? I really don't think so. Another way to resolve it is to keep quiet lol]
This sounds like a conundrum to me. If you think groups should not have free speech if they don't support free speech, then you don't support free speech and shouldn't be allowed to speak.
"your freedom of speech ends where the freedom of speech of others begins"
Because principles only count when they're uncomfortable to uphold. A principle that is only exercised in defense of the already-palatable is hollow and worthless.
There can be exceptions to principle, but each one is an encroachment that rightly raises questions whether the person making the exception is shirking responsibility.
The most palatable cases are when both principles co-exist in a way that they minimize the amount they compromise eachother's purpose.
For example: A defense of copyright creating a limit to free speech generally rests on an argument that such a restriction doesn't undermine purpose of free speech. The argument assets that free speech is primarily about sharing ideas that are contemporaneously unpalatable, or disruptive/subversive to existing power structures. Copyright doesn't prevent a speaker from expressing ideas also expressed in copywritten works, and it even offers many ways in which a speaker could quote a protected work verbatim.
On the other hand, structuring bounds of speech as "free, except when I really don't like it" is harder to defend as a commitment to free speech. It is counter to the very purpose of free speech to defend the unpalatable. There is certainly an argument to be made here that a limit both has a good reason and minimizes the amount of speech it preempts, but nobody is presenting one. And until they make that case, and make it very convincing, others are right to consider it an abandonment of principle.
Free speech doesn't mean people have to listen or even give you a platform. Nobody but the government is bound by the first amendment. Read up on the laws you're talking about.
I'd prefer the court system decide who has broken which laws, rather than domain registrars or random internet commenters.
Do Nazis have a right to have their op-eds published in the New York Times? No.
Where does DNS lie on this continuum? It feels pretty infrastructure-y to me. Perhaps there should be a "public option" for DNS.
You can't eat your cake and have it too. Tech companies should not be in the business of censoring views they dislike, even in the extreme cases such as this one, especially if they insist that telecoms must operate like utilities.
That is an odd position for a man in a mixed-race marriage with a mixed-race child to take, because not too long ago it would have meant his child might not be served or seated. It's only because our government took steps to end discrimination (after being forced to do so by the people) that it's safe to hold such unenlightened opinions. I wonder if he'll ever explain to his own child that it's OK they were discriminated against because "corporate Darwinism".
One can and should be able to discriminate all day long on the basis of ideas or actions, which is what has happened with Anglin and his crew of a-holes (sort of - I suspect it's more ass-covering than principle in a lot of cases).
But, discrimination should not happen based on something an individual cannot change, which is what the OP seems to be OK with.
That's not an odd position at all. Would I want to force some white supremacist line cook and their inbred waiter to serve my wife and child in their restaurant? No thanks. I'll go somewhere else.
Bollocks. I agree with the right of his company to refuse to host a neonazi/hate speech mongering site. However, it wasn't the "unfettered free market" that resulted in civil rights laws being implemented, it was long drawn out resistance (with great costs especially to minorities' lives) and eventual government intervention that changed the status quo in the US and to suggest otherwise is asinine.
His reasoning also falsely suggests that he'd be fine with repeated psychological harm at minimum to his family if they were to face multiple blatantly racist encounters like being insulted/threatened/refused service anywhere because of who they are, since they'd be comforted with knowing the free market would eventually sort it out.
https://dailystormer.at/
And if we get shut down again we will always be on pedoweb:
https://dstormer6em3i4km.onion.link/
Also you can read Andrew Anglin's personal blog at:
https://andrewanglinblog.wordpress.com
and gab:
https://gab.ai/AndrewAnglin
> That means that you can’t force a bible-thumping fundamentalist baker to make a cake for a gay wedding if he doesn’t want to.
> It even means a restaurant should be able to refuse to seat (pick one): black people, white people, males, redheads, left-handed people or introverts. Whatever. They probably won’t stay in business very long, it’s a form of corporate Darwinism.
Unfortunately, it doesn't always work that way. Consider just how pervasive and resilient segregation was; or, how a restaurant might actually attract business from like-minded customers who want to make a point (e.g. Chik-fil-a)
In Chesterton’s The Secret of Father Brown, a beloved nobleman who murdered his good-for-nothing brother in a duel thirty years ago returns to his hometown wracked by guilt. All the townspeople want to forgive him immediately, and they mock the titular priest for only being willing to give a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection. They lecture the priest on the virtues of charity and compassion.
Later, it comes out that the beloved nobleman did not in fact kill his good-for-nothing brother. The good-for-nothing brother killed the beloved nobleman (and stole his identity). Now the townspeople want to see him lynched or burned alive, and it is only the priest who – consistently – offers a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection.
The priest tells them:
> It seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. You forgive a conventional duel just as you forgive a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn’t anything to be forgiven.
He further notes that this is why the townspeople can self-righteously consider themselves more compassionate and forgiving than he is. Actual forgiveness, the kind the priest needs to cultivate to forgive evildoers, is really really hard. The fake forgiveness the townspeople use to forgive the people they like is really easy, so they get to boast not only of their forgiving nature, but of how much nicer they are than those mean old priests who find forgiveness difficult and want penance along with it.
From Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
Forgiveness here is somewhat like free speech. If you are for free speech when you do not find it objectionable, you are not really for free speech at all.