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posted by takyon on Monday August 21 2017, @12:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the internet-hate-cycle dept.

Propublica: Despite Disavowals, Leading Tech Companies Help Extremist Sites Monetize Hate

Most tech companies have policies against working with hate websites. Yet a ProPublica survey found that PayPal, Stripe, Newsmax and others help keep more than half of the most-visited extremist sites in business.

Very interesting:

Because of its "extreme hostility toward Muslims," the website Jihadwatch.org is considered an active hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. The views of the site's director, Robert Spencer, on Islam led the British Home Office to ban him from entering the country in 2013.

But either not their job, or they just didn't know:

Traditionally, tech companies have justified such relationships by contending that it's not their role to censor the Internet or to discourage legitimate political expression. Also, their management wasn't necessarily aware that they were doing business with hate sites because tech services tend to be automated and based on algorithms tied to demographics.

ProPublica goes on to say:

The sites that we identified from the ADL and SPLC lists vehemently denied that they are hate sites.

"It is not hateful, racist or extremist to oppose jihad terror," said Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch. He added that the true extremism was displayed by groups that seek to censor the Internet and that by asking questions about the tech platforms on his site, we were "aiding and abetting a quintessentially fascist enterprise."

Business is business. IG Farben said much the same when it had exclusive contracts with the (then current) German government.

See also: After Backing Alt-Right in Charlottesville, A.C.L.U. Wrestles With Its Role

Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has weighed in on the recent controversy surrounding Charlottesville and the effective removal of certain sites from the internet for expressing vile views. This entire incident and our response has an enormous implication on the future of internet freedoms as we know them.

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. No one should have that power."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation agrees. Even for free speech advocates, this situation is deeply fraught with emotional, logistical, and legal twists and turns. All fair-minded people must stand against the hateful violence and aggression that seems to be growing across our country. 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. Those on the left face calls to characterize the Black Lives Matter movement as a hate group. 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.

Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected. 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.

It's notable that in GoDaddy and Google's eagerness to swiftly distance themselves from American neo-Nazis, no process was followed. Policies give guidance as to what we might expect, and an opportunity to see justice is done. We should think carefully before throwing them away.

It might seem unlikely now that Internet companies would turn against sites supporting racial justice or other controversial issues. But if there is a single reason why so many individuals and companies are acting together now to unite against neo-Nazis, it is because a future that seemed unlikely a few years ago—where white nationalists and Nazis have significant power and influence in our society—now seems possible. We would be making a mistake if we assumed that these sorts of censorship decisions would never turn against causes we love.

Part of the work for all of us now is to push back against such dangerous decisions with our own voices and actions. Another part of our work must be to seek to shore up the weakest parts of the Internet's infrastructure so it cannot be easily toppled if matters take a turn for the (even) worse. These actions are not in opposition; they are to the same ends.

We can—and we must—do both.

We're at a very fortunate point in history where most of society is still reasonably just, but people forget how rapidly change can come. Rosa Parks chose to not yield her seat in the United States just 62 years ago. Legally enforced racial segregation ended only 53 years ago. Living at a time with overt segregation feels like a time centuries past. However, many living today were still alive when it was the status quo. And things going in the opposite direction just as rapidly is entirely possible as well. Actions and policies should not be guided by the here and now, but by the justness of said policy. In other words policy should be decided based not on who it effects, but on the justness of the said policy. Is it more just to live in a world where people have the right to say things that others may find distasteful, or where people can be effectively removed from society by the [transitory] powers that be? We should answer these questions in a period of just times, not when we desperately need them resolved to restore justness.

As the EFF's statement reminds us, if certain groups are successful organizations such as Black Lives Matter may end up being characterized as a hate group. Radical left organizations such as Antifa have already been declared a domestic terrorism group by at least one state. And this is just on a government level. Nestle, Bayer, BMW, General Electric, Coca Cola (rebranded just for Nazi Germany as Fanta), Standard Oil (now Exxon/Chevron/BP ), IBM, Random House Publishing, and many more are some companies that cooperated and collaborated with the Nazis. To think that the supercompanies of today somehow would never possibly consider going down the wrong path is simply naive. And in a world where just a handful of companies now have a practical monopoly on information access - that's something that I think should give people pause before jumping to silence even the most vile of speech.


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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday August 21 2017, @02:57AM (14 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Monday August 21 2017, @02:57AM (#556852) Journal
    Yeah I saw some of the other messages to this effect. This is the narrative of jihadiwatch.

    Straight to the point, I'm no less skeptical of that narrative than I am of the SPLC.

    From what I've seen (and I haven't done any in-depth investigation, I'll admit) CAIR seems to be an organization deserving of significantly more credibility than either the SPLC or jihadiwatch.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @07:49AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @07:49AM (#556916)

    I see that Arik and Runway have both been added to the list of hate groups, which is quite an accomplishment for mere individuals. The SPLC has been a stalwart defender of the human rights of Americans since its establishment, and anyone who has the temerity to suggest otherwise casts their lot with the Neo-Nazis, and will be executed just like Gobbels, Heimlich, and Hesse. Fucking Nazis!

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 21 2017, @01:04PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 21 2017, @01:04PM (#557003) Journal

      Remember my earlier use of the obverse sides of coins? You want to execute people - so you're just another fucking Nazi. Grape flavored Kool-Aid drinker, instead of orange flavored, maybe, but still another Nazi. You and the KKK would get along just fine, Nazi.

  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 21 2017, @11:06AM (11 children)

    Meh, CAIR is so obviously nothing but the specifically designed political front for jihadists.

    You will embrace this rebellion. Support it from our lands in the north. I will gain English favor by condemning it and ordering opposed from our lands in the south.

    If Hollywood can understand the gambit, anyone should be able to.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday August 21 2017, @12:01PM (10 children)

      by Arik (4543) on Monday August 21 2017, @12:01PM (#556986) Journal
      Wow. I had no idea you were so paranoid.

      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 5, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 21 2017, @01:12PM (9 children)

        Paranoid? Because I expect that political organizations have more going on than their publicly stated purpose? Are you insane?

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday August 21 2017, @11:27PM (8 children)

          by Arik (4543) on Monday August 21 2017, @11:27PM (#557278) Journal
          "Because I expect that political organizations have more going on than their publicly stated purpose?"

          No, as far as it goes, that's fine, and we agree on that. But what you're suggesting is way crazier than that. CAIR's a thoroughly western organization with a base of fairly moderate muslims. Moderate muslims are the number one victims of the jihadis, by far. The people CAIR appears to represent are exactly the people that have the most to fear from the jihadis. Why would they consciously help them?

          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 21 2017, @11:42PM (7 children)

            Because most moderate Muslims support some goodly portion of Sharia at the very least and supporting violence against the west is not at all out of the question for them either.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday August 22 2017, @01:34AM (6 children)

              by Arik (4543) on Tuesday August 22 2017, @01:34AM (#557339) Journal
              "Because most moderate Muslims support some goodly portion of Sharia at the very least"

              This is a good example of a horribly successful propaganda meme, one of the best really. First off, it has the advantage of being technically correct - and easily proven. Secondly, in order to see how it's being used to deceive you, you'd have to understand what the word 'sharia' means, in a serious way, rather than simply as a scary word you've heard on tv and associate with beheading and the like.

              Sharia is simply the Arabic word for religious law - for keeping the religiously ordained code of conduct. Of course Muslims are mostly in favor of sharia, just as Catholics are in mostly favor of Canon law and Jews are usually down with Halakha. If you are against Canon law why are you still a Catholic? Sharia is way less specific than canon law though, because canon law is promulgated by the church, from a central authority, while sharia works more like anglo-american common law (and halakha) in relying a lot on precedent and tradition.

              But of course they're in favor of sharia, just not the same sharia the jihadis favor. For a single, obvious example, the jihadis reflexively call everyone outside of their own sect "kafir" or infidel. This is in keeping with *their* sharia, but it's actually a major violation, a major sin, in more traditional sharia. Most schools either prohibit 'takfir' (the act of labelling another kafir) entirely, as the prerogative of G_d and Mohammed alone which no man should usurp, or else have a procedure that is nearly impossible to follow and strongly prohibit the act outside of that procedure. (To make that more clear, an example I remember required 3 witnesses swear an oath before a religious court that the person in question had actually proclaimed himself kafir in their hearing, at which point the court is to investigate and may, at their discretion, decide to apply the label. If anyone aside from the court were to proclaim it, or if the court were to do so without the witnesses, that would be a great sin.)

              The point being, three very very different rules in regards to a simple question, two of them are consistent with liberal democracy and no worse than what we are used to from Christians, etc. Only the Wahhabi version, which is diametrically opposed to the others, is a problem. All are called sharia. This is how a mundane and unremarkable truth can be used to stir up unfounded fear, which is then exploited as you surely realize.

              --
              If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 22 2017, @01:52AM (5 children)

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday August 22 2017, @01:52AM (#557345) Homepage Journal

                Try again. Shi'a as practiced in Iran is no better. Regardless, allowing any religion's laws to supersede national laws is fundamentally incompatible with western civilization.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday August 22 2017, @03:12AM (4 children)

                  by Arik (4543) on Tuesday August 22 2017, @03:12AM (#557366) Journal
                  Did you really just confuse sharia and Shia? ;)

                  "Regardless, allowing any religion's laws to supersede national laws is fundamentally incompatible with western civilization."

                  Of course, and they don't. The only case where sharia law comes up in e.g. the US Court system is in family law. If it's a Muslim divorce they can (and should) take account of what the parties actually understood and agreed to in the marriage. That means sharia - the particular tradition of sharia under which their marriage was performed. There are usually fairly elaborate provisions that have been set ahead of time, there will be a set amount of money that was set aside ahead of time for her etc. and there is no problem with a court honoring the provisions the parties agreed to. Just the same way that they can apply canon law in a Catholic divorce, they can apply halakha in a Jewish divorce, and they can consider sharia in a Muslim divorce.

                  Yet this perfectly normal and unremarkable happening gets presented as if it means beheadings are going on at the county courthouse. Getting people all worked up over nothing, it's effective though, it keeps people too agitated and too distracted to focus on the real problems.

                  --
                  If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
                  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 22 2017, @10:52AM (3 children)

                    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday August 22 2017, @10:52AM (#557458) Homepage Journal

                    No... I named the major Islamic sect of Iran in comparison with the major Islamic sect of Saudi Arabia.

                    Oh, so you mean the honor killings and such that have already taken place on US soil are irrelevant? Yeah, no. We do not go for that kind of shit over here. You do not get to practice your religion as if you were five hundred years in the past. Christians, Jews, and every other religion of any size already know and have adapted to this. Islamists can adapt too or they can stay the fuck out of the west.

                    --
                    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:33AM (2 children)

                      by Arik (4543) on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:33AM (#557803) Journal
                      "Oh, so you mean the honor killings and such that have already taken place on US soil are irrelevant?"

                      Irrelevant to this discussion? Absolutely. Murder and other crimes are illegal. There's no religious exemption to that.

                      --
                      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
                      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:38PM (1 child)

                        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:38PM (#557950) Homepage Journal

                        Legality is irrelevant. We're speaking of morality. Entire different -ality.

                        --
                        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                        • (Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:12PM

                          by Arik (4543) on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:12PM (#558128) Journal
                          As I understood it the subject you brought up and I was responding to was sharia in the context of US Court system. I explained to you that like other religious law it was considered by judges sometimes in family court, and it should be. You bring up cases in the realm of criminal law, but sharia is NOT considered AT ALL in criminal cases, let alone somehow trumping civil law (which it never does in any sort of case.) I point that out, and you say we're not talking about law but morality?

                          I'm sorry, I'm trying to communicate, and I believe you are too, but I'm either not understanding you or you're making remarkably little sense here.
                          --
                          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?