And at EFF we see the consequences first hand: every time a company throws a vile neo-Nazi site off the Net, thousands of less visible decisions are made by companies with little oversight or transparency. Because Internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world. That’s because, even when the facts are the most vile, we must remain vigilant when platforms exercise these rights. That’s what laws like CDA 230 in the United States enable and protect.īut we strongly believe that what GoDaddy, Google, and Cloudflare did here was dangerous. We at EFF defend the right of anyone to choose what speech they provide online platforms have a First Amendment right to decide what speech does and does not appear on their platforms. We do it because we believe that no one-not the government and not private commercial enterprises-should decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t. Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected. Cloudflare, whose service was used to protect the site from denial-of-service attacks, subsequently dropped them as a customer. It’s unclear whether this is for a limited amount of time, or whether Google has decided to effectively take ownership of the domain permanently. Google also placed the domain on “Client Hold”, which means that Daily Stormer’s owner cannot activate, use or move the domain to another service. Within hours Google announced that it too was refusing Daily Stormer as a customer. Daily Stormer subsequently moved their domain to Google’s domain management service. What Happened?Įarlier this week, following complaints about a vitriolic and abusive Daily Stormer article on Heather Heyer-the woman killed when a white nationalist drove a car into a crowd of anti-racism demonstrators-GoDaddy told the site’s owners that they had 24 hours to leave their service. In the Civil Rights Era cases that formed the basis of today’s protections of freedom of speech, the NAACP’s voice was the one attacked. Those on the left face calls to characterize the Black Lives Matter movement as a hate group. But we must also recognize that on the Internet, any tactic used now to silence neo-Nazis will soon be used against others, including people whose opinions we agree with. All fair-minded people must stand against the hateful violence and aggression that seems to be growing across our country. Even for free speech advocates, this situation is deeply fraught with emotional, logistical, and legal twists and turns. In the wake of Charlottesville, both GoDaddy and Google have refused to manage the domain registration for the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that, in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is “dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism.” Subsequently Cloudflare, whose service was used to protect the site from denial-of-service attacks, has also dropped them as a customer, with a telling quote from Cloudflare’s CEO: “Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet.
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