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According to an announcement by Voat administrator Atko, HostEurope.de has shut down the servers of Reddit alternative Voat on the grounds of Voat hosting "political [sic] incorrect" content. This was done without warning and without reference to any specific content. Voat has since moved to CloudFlare.
takyon: CloudFlare is displaying Error 520 for the site, so here are some other articles about Voat:
Censorship, fat-shaming and the 'Reddit revolt': How Reddit became the Alamo of the Internet's ongoing culture war
Reddit users flee to Swiss copy Voat after harassment clampdown
Amid censorship brouhaha, Reddit clone Voat has its servers closed by hosting provider
Anti-censorship community Voat dropped by hosting service over 'political correctness'
From VentureBeat:
"Our hosting provider, hosteurope.de, has terminated all our contracts and shut down all our servers without issuing a warning or trying to talk to us," wrote Atko. "This includes my private server which was only used to host my girlfriend's blog. She is a scientist. She published her research papers on that blog (preformatted papers to which she owns the copyright). That server contained no other data whatsoever."
Atko says the only reasons he was given by the host were: "We have received significant information that the content on your server includes political incorrect parts that are unacceptable for us" and "we cannot keep bond of trust to you as our customer."
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday June 20 2015, @01:54PM
Far more important than anything else: freedom of expression is something that we should all support. It doesn't matter if we agree with what is being said - the right to express our opinions and beliefs is a cornerstone of civilization.
As a private company, HostEurope.de can do whatever they want. As a private consumer, so can I. Since they do not support freedom of expression, I will not use HostEurope.de services, and I will advise others not to as well.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2015, @03:07PM
Freedom of expression is one thing. Coordinating attacks on real people because one just don't like them is another. The five banned groups consisted of people that stole photos of fat, trans gender, and black people and had their personal information abused. Same for people on some gaming site NeoGAF. Dunno why anyone bothered with the last.
(Score: 1) by bitrotRnotbitrot on Sunday June 21 2015, @03:31AM
#notyourshield
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Saturday June 20 2015, @03:10PM
Actually they can't do what they want.
For lots of historically obvious reasons, Nazi shit gets a special exemption to free speech laws in Germany. They could have been less bullshit idealistic about it, or they could have done a cursory check on local laws before picking a hosting company, but the reality is that voat's owners are dumb. Stupid. Incredibly lacking in foresight. Which is about par-for-course for internet-based free speech idealists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2015, @03:17PM
Which is about par-for-course for internet-based free speech idealists
Translation free speech is an awesome thing except when it is talking about things I dont like.
That sort of attitude is how we get dumb ass shit like the patriot act.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 20 2015, @03:43PM
Or why people are accusing others of being "racist" for being anti-immigration, or "anti-Semites" for criticising the policies of Israel.
Oddly enough it's not "racist" or "anti-Christian" or whatever when Muzzies bomb and rape, they're just victims of an extreme ideology that preyed on them, and so they aren't responsible for their actions.
The people [ukip.org] are [wikipedia.org] waking [wikipedia.org] up, [wikipedia.org] however. [telegraph.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2015, @08:18PM
Except there hasn't been a legal action at all, I can understand if the service provider was compelled by court to shut it down, but they decided to do it on their own on their personal volition because they didn't like the content. This is what the operator had to say about it [archive.org] (note: original service is down).
Note, that Europe implements safe harbor laws [europa.eu].
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Sunday June 21 2015, @01:30AM
A host choosing to follow the law rather than not isn't surprising.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2015, @03:12AM
The host wasn't in violation of any laws, and until a court verdict, neither was the hosted service. Innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2015, @05:02AM
> The host wasn't in violation of any laws, and until a court verdict, neither was the hosted service.
Yeah and it isn't burglary until the burglars are caught and convicted.
Par
for
the
course
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2015, @09:59PM
Which country supports free speech? The US will fuck you over for anything copyright-related (a lot of countries are like that to varying extents), Germany will do so if you have Nazi content, etc. I can't think of a country that truly supports free speech. There are many that *appear* to, but you do more research and find out there are all sorts of exceptions that are just silly.