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A funny thing happened to me today. I had been waiting by the inbox for my invitation to the new crowd-funding site, Hatreon. After feeling the all-powerful hands of YouTube squeeze a little too tightly around my neck, I was seeking out a new home for my video content which, by all accounts, is mostly comedic with some political lecturing thrown in for fun. My YouTube channel also contains a historical record of all the rabble rousing I've done over the years in various suburbs in opposition to various elected bad actors. It's not as shocking or groundbreaking as I'd like to believe it is. It's pretty tame. But according to YouTube, it's becoming advertiser unfriendly. This is the death knell for any YouTube channel demonetization. And so I went looking for somewhere I could still get paid for the thousands of hours I put into creating content. I researched Patreon but realized that content creators to the right of Bernardine Dohrn are now getting booted off for "hate speech" as outlined in their draconian terms of service (TOS) which enforce speech codes. A few people suggested Hatreon, the so-called "alt-right" answer to Patreon. I immediately liked the name. If they're going to label us haters, we might as well laugh about it.

So my invitation to join Hatreon finally came (and why wouldn't it? After all, I am deplorable), but the joy quickly faded as I clicked the login link to find this waiting for me.

Are you freaking kidding me?

How is this happening? It's like the entire tech universe is conspiring together to keep us offline. Oh, wait. That's exactly what's happening. I confirmed on Twitter that this was a deliberate booting of Hatreon's account off DigitalOcean servers complete with self-serving virtue signaling from DigitalOcean crowing about what a good deed they did by denying service to a paying customer.

PJ Media reached out to Hatreon's founder Cody Wilson and interviewed the man Wired magazine once listed as one of "The 15 Most Dangerous People In the World 2012." He was the opposite of how I would expect someone to sound whose new project had just been tanked for no reason other than left-wing hysteria. Wilson's good mood and light tone made me feel a little bit better about being under the Big Tech Boot of Censorship. He seemed undisturbed. He cracked jokes. He made them seem ridiculous.

"What if I owned a bakery and someone asked me to make a transgendered, Islamic, gay-themed wedding cake and I said no?" He chuckled. "I think you know the answer."

Wilson was sure Hatreon would be operational again later that day, and as of 10:15 p.m. the site appeared to be back online. Clearly not a beginner in the highly censorious tech world, Wilson didn't put all his eggs in one basket. He counted on DigitalOcean's small profile to keep them safe from public scrutiny. What he didn't know was that the alleged white supremacist Daily Stormer website housed some data on DigitalOcean's servers, which made them the target of SJW lynch mobs on Twitter. (I say "alleged" because Google deleted them from the internet before I ever had a chance to see what they are or aren't. Having never read Daily Stormer myself, I refuse to take CNN's word on the matter as truth. They might be a white power news source or they might be just a poorly written weather fan site. No one knows now because they've been disappeared by Google and its henchmen.) When the SJW outcry began to take down Daily Stormer after the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville that ended in inexcusable violence and mayhem, everyone raced to the control room to start flipping the switch to "off" on any bogeyman they could find (or invent). Hatreon got caught up in the mad dash to purge the Internet of "Nazis." DigitalOcean shut off their service overnight with no notice and later claimed Hatreon had violated their TOS, but offered no proof of the violation. The TOS they supposedly violated was 3.2 and is so overbroad it might be a good test case for an enterprising lawyer who wants to get it declared void for vagueness.

Excerpt from:
Alt-Tech Bad Boy Cody Wilson Explains Hatreon, an Alternative to Online Censorship - PJ Media

In the aftermath of a violent protest in Charlottesville, Va., that left three dead and thrust neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalists back into the public eye, tech companies big and small have turned their back on far-right extremists by cutting off access to revenue and canceling service effectively banishing them to the far corners of the Internet.

The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, went offline. PayPal stopped transactions that benefited hate groups and their supporters. And OkCupid revoked the dating privileges of known white supremacists.

While some antiracist activists and tech leaders applauded the impact the digital ice-out would have on extremists reach and revenue, others worried that tech firms may have gone too far: Could they do the same to any group that challenges popular ideals or opposes the interests of Silicon Valley?

The same policies against hate speech or hate groups or terrorist propaganda that are leading companies to take down the Daily Stormer and its folk are routinely used against groups on all sides of the political spectrum that dont advocate violent ideology whatsoever, said Emma Llans, the director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Any tool that enables censorship online can be used against potentially everyone regardless of ideology.

White nationalists and free-speech activists have begun building alternatives to the mainstream Internet in an effort to operate outside the rules and norms of Silicon Valley, on networks where hate speech and extremist organizations can exist unchecked.

But there are significant drawbacks, said Cody Wilson, who helped to create Hatreon, an alternative to the better-known Patreon, a website that allows content creators to receive financial support from users.

No one truly wants to rebuild 20 years of Internet infrastructure so they dont have to engage in these full-scale social purges, said Wilson. Theres not a lot of money or talent behind the so-called alt-tech. This isnt a thing where were like, Oh, were going build a whole new world. It doesnt work that way.

Wilson doesnt align himself politically with white nationalists or far-right extremists. But he believes that they, too, should have a forum to express themselves.

Hatreon, which has about 1,000 users, was booted off of its infrastructure provider, DigitalOcean, Friday amid a widespread purge of hate groups from the Internets most prominent gatekeepers.

Several online civil rights groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology and San Francisco advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have questioned the power of big tech firms and cautioned those who cheer the dismantling of Nazi websites that they could be next.

After terminating its contract with the Daily Stormer, Matthew Prince, the CEO of website security firm Cloudflare, said in an interview with TechCrunch that the power Internet companies have is troubling, and without a system in place to regulate decisions that result in censorship, its unlikely those decisions will be made objectively.

Privately owned tech companies are not subject to the First Amendment, which ensures the right to speech free from government censorship. Most, instead, operate in accordance with their own terms of service.

But even then it can be hard to tell whether a company is implementing its rules fairly or singling out certain people or groups that it may not like, Llans said.

We need more transparency across the board, she said. Its kind of hard to talk about content moderation when we still dont have very good information about what social media platforms are actually doing.

Even the open Web, a supposed free-for-all, has posed challenges for far-right groups. GoDaddy and Google refused to manage the Daily Stormers Internet domain, forcing it to bounce around to several different domains including one on the dark Web and another in Russia before resurfacing with the unlikely address dailystormer.lol through the domain registrar NameCheap.

NameCheap did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though the companys terms of service explicitly outlaw hate sites.

Discord, a voice chat service popular among video game enthusiasts that had been instrumental in organizing far-right extremists, axed several accounts, chat rooms and servers affiliated with neo-Nazi sentiments or white nationalist groups.

Google also banned social network Gab, billed as the far-rights version of Twitter, from its Android app store Thursday.

Our online community leans libertarian, small-c conservative, and anti-corporatist left, Gab spokesman Ustav Sanduja wrote in an email.

Since then, the social network has raised $400,000 from its users, Sanduja said, pushing its total contributions since July to more than $1 million. Gab, which has 207,000 users, was founded by Bay Area entrepreneur Andrew Torba, who considers the social network a haven for Internet separatists.

Twitter, YouTube, Reddit and Facebook have long been the subject of criticism both for suspending and banning accounts because of the content they publish on those sites and also for not doing enough to combat hate speech and harassment.

Facebook and YouTube have recently announced plans to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to better identify and more quickly suspend groups that promote hate speech and white nationalist ideologies on the social networks.

We all felt this righteous indignation after what happened (in Charlottesville), and fair enough, Hatreons Wilson said. But look, if some radical San Francisco LGBT group got kicked off the Internet for violating terms of service, we would all be having a very different conversation.

Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae

Visit link:
Tech response to extremism fuels debate on censorship - San Francisco Chronicle

Google has removed the Gab app from Google Play because they claim it violates their speech policy:

Is anyone surprised the company that fired a man for pointing out that men and women are different would consider a free speech site like Gab hate speech?

People who think silencing those they disagree with is a good thing certainly arent capable of understanding this simple point.

Considering how subjective hate is, how do they determine what should be banned? Most Conservatives believe abortion is hateful, but we dont see Google banning or suspending Planned Parenthood.

This is pretty simple, were not sure why Lefties cant figure this out. If you dont like Gab, dont go there. Dont download the app. Why take it from other people who do go there and who want the app?

Freedom isnt always pretty, and whether you like it or not, haters still have the right to be hateful in this country.

And no amount of banning will change that.

And we thought 2016 was stupid.

Related:

SHOCKER: Woman who resisted by destroying Durham Confederate statue is pro-N. Korea Marxist

Read more from the original source:
'Full net censorship is HERE': Google moves to de-platform Gab for being a 'hate site' - Twitchy

Chinas crackdown on academic freedom has reached the worlds oldest publishing house.

Cambridge University Press (CUP) said it has pulled over 300 articles and book reviews on its China site from the China Quarterly (CQ), one of the most prestigious journals in the China studies field, at the request of the governments General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP). The news came to light after an undated screenshot of an email to CQs editorial board from the journals editor, Tim Pringle, went viral on social media today (Aug. 18).

According to Pringle, CUP complied with the request so as to prevent the shutdown of the entire CUP site. Most of the articles in question relate to topics deemed sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party, such as the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and date back to the 1960s, wrote Pringle, adding that CUP had received a similar request to take down more than a thousand e-books a few months earlier.

Yang Guobin, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is also a CQ editorial board member, wrote on social networking site Weibo (link in Chinese) yesterday (Aug. 17) after he received Pringles email: This is one of the most important international publications in contemporary Chinese studies, yet its subject to such restrictions This is unheard of. Isnt the Chinese government trying to promote contemporary Chinese studies?

James Leibold, an associate professor at Australias La Trobe University whose research focuses on Xinjiang, called CUPs decision shameful in a tweet.

CUP said in an emailed statement:

Freedom of thought and expression underpin what we as publishers believe in, yet Cambridge University Press and all international publishers face the challenge of censorship.

We can confirm that we received an instruction from a Chinese import agency to block individual articles from China Quarterly within China. We complied with this initial request to remove individual articles, to ensure that other academic and educational materials we publish remain available to researchers and educators in this market.

We are aware that other publishers have had entire collections of content blocked in China until they have enabled the import agencies to block access to individual articles. We do not, and will not, proactively censor our content and will only consider blocking individual items (when requested to do so) when the wider availability of content is at risk.

However we are troubled by the recent increase in requests of this nature, and have already planned meetings to discuss our position with the relevant agencies at the Beijing Book Fair next week.

We will not change the nature of our publishing to make content acceptable in China, and we remain committed to ensuring that access to a wide variety of publishing is possible for academics, researchers, students and teachers in this market.

China signed up to the International Publishers Association last year, and one of the bodys guiding principles is that of freedom to publish. The issue of censorship in China and other regions is not a short-term issue and therefore requires a longer-term approach. There are many things we cant control but we will continue to take every opportunity to influence this agenda.

Pringle didnt respond to a request for comment from Quartz. The School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where CQ is based, didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. Chinas GAPP couldnt be reached for comment.

A Chinese academic based in Hong Kong, who asked not to be named for fear of repercussions from speaking publicly, said the academic community was totally shocked by Pringles comments, and noted that there is a broad deterioration in academic freedom in China. What is more worrying, the academic added, is that the long arm of Beijings censorship apparatus is clearly extending beyond its own borders, citing the recent case of the detention of Feng Chongyi in China, a professor working at the University of Technology Sydney.

This story has been updated with comment from Cambridge University Press.

See the article here:
Forced to comply or shut down, Cambridge University Press's China Quarterly removes 300 articles in China - Quartz

PayPal this week banned at least 34 organizations for promoting hate, violence or racial intolerance, including Richard Spencers group and others apparently involved in the Charlottesville riot. PayPals announcement mentions KKK, white supremacist groups or Nazi groups that have violated its acceptable use policy.

Its a private company (thats not yet regulated as a utility) so it can do as it pleases, and the Nazi/Klan creeps certainly arent going to evoke any sympathy. But as someone whos been at the receiving end of hate group smears, it would be good to know how such decisions are made. PayPals announcement notes that our highly trained team of experts addresses each case individually highly trained in what? Sniffing out heresy? (No one expects the PayPal Inquisition!) When PayPal goes beyond the objective standard of banning activity prohibited by law to banning those it simply doesnt like (however loathsome they might be), all dissenters are vulnerable.

PayPals highly trained experts havent yet targeted my organization, but Twitter has, albeit in a small way so far. You can pay them to promote a tweet thats already been posted, as a form of advertising, and here are three that we submitted for promotion that were rejected:

All three were rejected on the grounds of Hate:

They contain nothing hateful, obviously, but the common thread appears to be that all three refer to the costs to society of illegal immigration, and all three contain the word illegal two refer to illegal immigrants and one to illegal aliens.

When you look at Twitters Hateful content in advertising page, it looks like the very word illegal is indeed prohibited with regard to immigrants (as opposed to the U.S. Code, where its common). It mentions Hate speech or advocacy against a protected group or an individual or organization based on, but not limited to, the following including Status as a refugee and Status as an immigrant.

This is merely a nuisance for me, so far, but it does point to the broader issue addressed by Jeremy Carl in his piece on the homepage this week about regulating the big internet firmsas public utilities. Carl writes What is needed is not regulation to restrict speech but regulation specifically to allow speech regulation put on monopolist and market-dominant companies that have abused their positions repeatedly.

One internet company this week abused its position but at the same time practically begged for the government to step in. Cloudflare is a sort of middleman facilitator between users and the web sites theyre visiting. Because of the companys position in the infrastructure of the internet, its CEO, Matthew Prince, was able to simply shut down the Daily Stormer neo-Nazi website: Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldnt be allowed on the Internet. He explained his decision by noting that the people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes, which they no doubt are.

But to Princes credit, he continued: No one should have that power:

We need to have a discussion around this, with clear rules and clear frameworks. My whims and those of Jeff [Bezos] and Larry [Page] and Satya [Nadella] and Mark [Zuckerberg], that shouldnt be what determines what should be online, he said. I think the people who run The Daily Stormer are abhorrent. But again I dont think my political decisions should determine who should and shouldnt be on the internet.

As Prince wrote in a blog post on the incident, Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online.

The internet is now a utility more important than phones or cable TV. If people can be denied access to it based on the content of their ideas and speech (rather than specific, illegal acts), why not make phone service contingent on your political views? Or mail delivery? Garbage pickup? Electric power? Water and sewer? (I hope Im not giving the SPLCs brownshirts any ideas.)

Read the original here:
More Internet Censorship - National Review