Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday October 29 2018, @08:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the social-commentary-on-social-media dept.

The social network gab.com is apparently going down on Monday, October 29th at 09:00 ET. Their ISP has terminated their services, ostensibly because Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh mass shooting suspect, had made offensive posts on Gab.

To get this out of the way: I have mixed feelings about Gab, more specifically, about the founders. However, the idea that some social network somewhere should refuse to censor anything that is not outright illegal? This is good. Social media has become the modern "market square", and free speech should be guaranteed, even if the platforms are technically private.

If you want free speech, you apparently don't want to be in the U.S.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheFool on Monday October 29 2018, @01:34PM (6 children)

    by TheFool (7105) on Monday October 29 2018, @01:34PM (#755076)

    I have to wonder what you'd do if SoylentNews's host threatened to pull the rug out from under you if you didn't delete a single user's posts, though. Hopefully we never have to see that happen, but who knows with how things are going.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 29 2018, @02:44PM (3 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday October 29 2018, @02:44PM (#755110) Homepage Journal

    We have multiple backups going back daily for a week, weekly for a month, and monthly for three months of everything worth saving (and a bunch of stuff not worth saving) from each server with an entirely different hosting company. We'd just switch hosts.

    Frankly, if it wouldn't be a huge pain in my ass, we'd stop using any payment processor that doesn't support free speech before year's end. Unfortunately that would exclude both of our current payment processors and mean I'd have to find a new processor and code an interface for their API in addition to all the other stuff I have on my plate already.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @04:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @04:26PM (#755170)

      implement coinpayments.net gateway with privacy capable and standard coins. you can apply a discount for privacy coins or coins in general. coinpayments.net will even auto reconcile your wallets to USD for you if you want them to. once you've gotten enough people paying with coins you can disable PP/stripe, etc if you want.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by jmorris on Monday October 29 2018, @07:44PM (1 child)

      by jmorris (4844) on Monday October 29 2018, @07:44PM (#755302)

      There aren't any. The banned have already tried everything. Visa and Mastercard are the blockage, none trades without the mark of one or both of those beasts. When you get the Paypal / Stripe ban you find every smaller processor will also refuse your business and you can't even make your own. Loss of hosting is bad, loss of the financial system is death. Ask Alex Jones or RooshV, both have tried everything to run a credit card and hit a brock wall. Roosh has already put his website in deep freeze mode because he can't get money and Alex Jones will run out of operating reserves soon enough.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 30 2018, @10:44AM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday October 30 2018, @10:44AM (#755560) Homepage Journal

        I wouldn't sweat it. If big corps can have shell companies, so can we. Hell, we've been meaning to set up a 501(c)(3) since the very beginning. Plus, we've got nothing against taking checks, money orders, or cash.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday October 29 2018, @02:47PM (1 child)

    by Unixnut (5779) on Monday October 29 2018, @02:47PM (#755115)

    It is an interesting question. The green site had its share of pressure, I remember the scientologists being particularly difficult.

    Back then, /. did in fact start pulling articles and topics/posts when pressured, and it did cause quite a bit commotion in the community, but in the end, it survived another 10+ years, so it wasn't a death knell.

    When the choice is between censoring the public forum, or buckling under pressure (that may extend beyond just soylent into the staffs private lives), there is no real easy answer, both have quite bad consequences.

    Hopefully it will not come to this, but the world is slowly being stifled and segregated into opposing groups, then fed propaganda and turned against each other.

    Things are looking more dire as the days pass by (the USA is just ahead of the curve, being polarised between two parties for a long while now).

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 30 2018, @10:49AM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday October 30 2018, @10:49AM (#755561) Homepage Journal

      I wouldn't sweat it. We'll take up a collection for some cheap servers and run the thing out of someone's bedroom if necessary. Our modest bandwidth needs make that a very real possibility, so we're going to be exceedingly hard to kill.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.