Comment by geoffpado
8 years ago
It's very hard, if not impossible, for someone to have a "their own website" that doesn't have someone in the loop that can kick them off: hosting company, domain registrar, ISP, etc. See what happens regularly with piracy sites, for example.
If there were any examples besides Stormfront, that would make more sense.
But it seems like if that were to actually happen, it would make more sense for pushback to be aimed at those providers, rather than it currently being aimed at private social media companies out of a fear of what providers “may” do if people were to set up their own websites (or use one of the many existing ones).
You want an example besides Stormfront, and I did so in my original post: piracy sites.
If you want something a little more morally clear, take a look at what happens with Sci-Hub. They finally actually lost a court order (which led to the suspending of their hosting), but it doesn't always take that. They've been playing "domain whack-a-mole" for a very long time now: https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-battles-pirate-bay-esque-do.... And as that article mentions, less-savory sites such as The Pirate Bay get taken down without court orders all the time.
To be clear, my confusion is due to the fact that sites like Gab and certain Chan boards host this type of content, yet they do not have issues. And again, I am not understanding why social media websites are to blame for what may happen as a result of them creating their own websites or joining hate-friendly ones, versus what seems more sensible: Blaming infrastructure providers when they actually do take actions against clients due to speech, which appears to be your actual concern, right?
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