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Why Epik welcomed Gab.com
This post will summarize why Epik welcomed Gab.com. It will also address why I believe the operators of the site have the right to be online.
epik.com
So, who the heck is Epik? Never heard of them.
After GoDaddy cut ties following Pittsburgh shooting, Gab back online thanks to Seattle startup
A Seattle startup has inked a deal to host domain registrar services for Gab.com, the site that was dropped by GoDaddy and other companies in the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
www.geekwire.com
The story is here: https://epik.com/blog/why-epik-welcomed-gab-com.html
Let Freedom Ring
To the casual observer, the case of Gab.com seems like it is something new. It is not. It is history repeating itself. While there are consequences to actions, there is also the proverbial risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. My hope, for all of our sakes, is that Gab.com treads wisely, using its liberty for the betterment of most, and the enlightenment of all.
Sincerely,
Robert W. Monster
Founder and CEO
Epik.comNovember 3, 2018
Maybe it's my browser configuration, but gab.ai doesn't seem to be working, completely. But, they haven't gone away. The pages that load are filled with bitterness, and maybe even some hate speech, if you're into that sort of vilification. Still don't know diddly about Robert Monster, but maybe he's a "good guy".
Previously: Social Media and the Pittsburgh Shooter: Gab.com Going Down
Gab's Plan To Use Blockchain To Make Itself Indestructible
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 07 2018, @01:59PM (33 children)
I signed up for a Twitter account when they first started years ago. I never sent a single message or logged in once. The breathless excitement about it coming from the press was enough to repel me.
Likewise I had little use for Gab. It's another copycat social media play to the eyes of one who has seen them come and go, come and go over the years (remember MeetUp.com? Friendster? GeoCities? Yahoo Groups? MySpace?). FireChat was briefly interesting because its use of mesh networking to evade cell network shutdowns by the Chinese authorities in Beijing, but that's the only thing I thought worth spending 60 seconds thinking about.
But now with this gross attempt at censorship at the infrastructural level, I decided to create a Gab account and give it a go. I don't need to converse with StormFront refugees per se. Flamewars between NPCs and SJWs and wingnuts define tedium. But virtual lynch mobs who want to destroy free speech must be opposed.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @02:20PM (29 children)
No. In order for society to survive, we must never tolerate the intolerant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday November 07 2018, @02:45PM (1 child)
We're losing a lot of very special people because of internet. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them. About closing that internet up in many ways. Somebody will say, "oh, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Speech." These are foolish people.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 07 2018, @03:47PM
EDO, or Early Dementia Onset is a thing with orange people, isn't it?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @02:54PM
Perhaps we can import them to the tune of several million a year instead.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Wednesday November 07 2018, @03:06PM (7 children)
You don't have to tolerate them, but you have no right to silence anybody. That is the working rule of all communication medium, or it should be.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 07 2018, @03:50PM (6 children)
Exactly. As much as I loathe the foaming-at-the-mouth white supremacists over at Stormfront - I've never considered trying to shut them up, or shut them down, or even organizing a girlcott. (Why is it always a boycott? Hell, they name hurricanes after boys these days, right?)
(Score: 3, Troll) by jmorris on Wednesday November 07 2018, @06:48PM (5 children)
Because you understand the reason for Free Speech. On an even halfway level field the Truth usually wins arguments. Our current world is the result of a century of horribly biased debate. Communists held all of the "commanding heights" of mass media, entertainment and news, education, etc. and even controlled the nominal "opposition" so they could carefully banish any ideas that could disrupt the lies we were being fed.
Which is why any forum that fails to practice active censorship quickly becomes a right wing "hate" forum. In a dark world of lies, any flicker of the Light of Truth is hurtful.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @06:52PM (4 children)
McCarthy didn't you die???? Maybe you found the Satanic ritual to convey your soul into a younger vessel?
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Wednesday November 07 2018, @07:07PM (3 children)
In your dark ignorance and malice you malign a good if misguided man's memory. History has issued a verdict, his only sin was a failure of imagination. What he thought a controllable infestation at State was already fully metastasized into the very Committee he called into being, thus it almost instantly turned into an investigation of himself.
Go read Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies and become educated. The reproductions of actual documents that finally came out of the Senate's fifty year seal leave no doubt.
(Score: 4, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday November 07 2018, @08:53PM
Oh, you mean Tail-Gunner Joe, the guy who lied about his war service?
Or maybe the "good if misguided man" who drove Senator Lester C. Hunt to suicide because his son was gay?
Or maybe the "good if misguided man" who was censured by the Senate? Because that's almost unheard of.
By the way "Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies" is written by a notorious propagandist for the weirdo religious far-right. You are probably OK with that though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @10:24PM
I wish I could believe you are trolling.
Jmorris and McCarthy sitting in a tree
G E N O C I - DING!
First comes fear
then come stupid
Next is a man baby committing homicide
Ya ya the last bit didn't rhyme that well, this isn't News For Poets, Stuff That Makes Jmorris Feel Like A Man
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @02:31AM
Shirley you're not serious with that!
Guess you're a fan of fiction, are you?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @03:50PM (11 children)
I have my own philosophy and that is that Karl Popper is an idiot. Humour is a sufficient method to cope with intolerance. Human psychology is more advanced than Karl Popper can imagine.
I can tell by experience that the most annoying thing for the people I have talked to, who have intolerant views is that I don't get angry and listen to what they have to say, while still politely disagreeing. If you meet an intolerant person, please be tolerant and offer them a way out, instead of strengthening their views.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday November 07 2018, @04:26PM (10 children)
That works up to a certain point. If someone is calling for $GROUP to be exterminated on a public platform, it's safe to say no amount of engagement with either reason or humor is going to persuade them otherwise. Should the Jews, Roma, gays, Communists etc in Nazi Germany have attempted satire on the Nazis? Would that have worked?
Because make no mistake, "Intolerance" is a watered-down, weak, toothless euphemism for what's really going on here: calls for at *best* a return to pre-Civil-Rights-Act society and at worst outright genocide. That's intolerant, yes, the way the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is a little damp and kind of hard to see in.
Mockery might work, but it only works if widespread and it reaches more people.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday November 07 2018, @05:17PM (1 child)
Mockery might sometimes work on the group doing the hate-xenophobic behavior, yes, but I wouldn't discount the power of reason and humor.
Reason and humor reach not the xenophobics, but rather everyone else, calling out the xenophobes for being just that--and providing a framework from which those with reason and intact senses of humor make the xenophobes look even worse by comparison. (Mockery is not as good at this, as it requires moving a tiny bit closer to the xenophobe position.)
I'd say that to the extent that it might have highlighted the jarring evil of the Nazis during that period and provided additional impetus for those countries and influential individuals "on the fence" about whether to appease Hitler or oppose him, to go ahead and oppose him, that yes, it might have. No way to know for sure at this remove, but I don't think the suggestion is without value.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @12:07AM
Reason and humor reach not the xenophobics, but rather everyone else
Exactly the point that wannbe censors prefer to ignore. It's the followers/believers that are dangerous. The xenophobes are just loudmouths. It is not their fault if other people choose to take them seriously and follow. Those who want censorship obviously don't believe in free will. If there is no free will, then the leaders can't help themselves either and shouldn't be punished for their actions. Everything was already predetermined.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @05:53PM (3 children)
Nor should invaders be tolerated. Of course, when Germany tried to defend their country from enemy moles, the international Zionist banksters who controlled the recently conquered Russia, the British monarchy and the US treasury decided to teach them a lesson. Ever since then, the Jewish controlled media and school systems have been brainwashing everyone's children that the Jews were the victims.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @06:25PM
I'm pretty sure dead jews can be classified as victims.
(Score: 3, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday November 07 2018, @09:08PM (1 child)
By invading Czechoslovakia? Then invading Poland then invading France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands and The Soviet Union?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @06:15PM
yes. the best defense is a good offense. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @06:23PM
While there could be a perfectly reasonable rationale for exterminating $GROUP, I'm faily certain in most cases there aren't and the problem these people are trying to solve could be solved a better way, without creating a world where some arbitrary group decides who should be exterminated. I don't think that's the kind of end game these people want. So we killed $GROUP1, but that $GROUP2 is pretty annoying as well. Okay guys, let's pinky-swear that we won't exterminate more groups!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @07:49PM (2 children)
Are you seriously defending gypsies?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @10:24PM
> Are you seriously defending gypsies?
If gypsies/Roma break the law, the authorities ought to be able to deal with it the same as if anyone else broke the law. No need for all the hate and mob action.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 09 2018, @05:17AM
What the AC below you said. Yes, I am defending the Roma, for the same reason and to the same extent, no more and no less, as any other group that faced genocide. You don't seem to understand this whole human rights thing...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 07 2018, @04:04PM (2 children)
So, we should not tolerate those who are intolerant of the intolerant?
Free speech means everybody gets to talk, even, and most especially, those we disagree with. That is a core American value we can never relinquish nor equivocate on.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @09:10PM
It's not tolerating anyone who does not tolerate anything, all the way down.
(Score: 3, Touché) by RandomFactor on Wednesday November 07 2018, @11:05PM
It's funny, based on snippets of speech, signs and behavior I noticed in passing, I actually thought 'ANTIFA' meant ANTI-First-Amendment for like a year before I found out it meant ANTI-FAscist.
There is a very strong sentiment propagating that is quite favorable towards restricting the first amendment.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @05:09PM (2 children)
I'm seeing lots of intolerance in the responses realDonaldTrump gets on Twitter. So much hate for our president! You'd support banning that, yes?
Anti-semitism is now running rampant in the Democratic party. What should be do about it? There's Linda Sarsour, Louis Farrakhan, Rashida Tlaib, Keith Ellison, Cory Booker... when do we ban them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @11:09PM
You know, you misspelled Cory Borker, right?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @12:31AM
Ilhan Omar just got elected as a democrat.
One of her tweets: "Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel"
She is now elected. She is an islamist from Somalia who MARRIED HER BROTHER. Seriously, WTF. She will now represent house district MN-5 in congress.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @02:22PM
"The breathless excitement about it coming from the press was enough to repel me."
This was the big one for me and why i never even looked at it at the time.
"But virtual lynch mobs who want to destroy free speech must be opposed."
* drinks to that *
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday November 07 2018, @03:02PM
I got a Twitter account some time ago mainly to make sure no one else took my handle. Not that I've ever had any problem with anyone trying to or wanting to impersonate me, or just coincidentally coming up with the same handle, as far as I know. I feel I don't have to concern myself too much about it, unlike public figures such as realDonaldTrump.
Twitter is big enough I thought it worth reserving my handle even if I never made a single tweet. But there are plenty of sites, such as this gab, that I've never visited or heard of. I'd rather not be in any way associated with a wacky alt-right site. Don't want to create an account there even if it's only to prevent someone else from creating an account with my handle.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 08 2018, @12:35AM
I signed up, did one post and got advertised to by people 'posting comments and 'likes'' in order to get me to login and see the advertisement and haven't been back since.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---