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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.
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: 3, Informative) by linkdude64 on Monday August 21 2017, @05:28PM (1 child)
Mohammed himself was a warlord, as was his child bride. These are not "spins" on quotes, but indisputable historical facts intrinsic to the very history of Islam. I will say it again:
Mohammed was a warlord.
Mohammed's child bride became a warlord herself.
Objective reality is important at some level, and with your massive wall of text, you have done everything to get around it.
Mohammed was a warlord and died by assassination. Jesus never killed anyone and died for the sake of other people. The cultures we have today are the descendants of those two ideologies, on average.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Tuesday August 22 2017, @05:30AM
That's a bit one-dimensional but not a total miss.
"Mohammed's child bride became a warlord herself."
What? Participating in one battle, and rather inadvertently at that, doesn't exactly qualify a 'warlord' in my use of the term.
"Objective reality is important at some level, and with your massive wall of text, you have done everything to get around it."
It is quite important, but you misunderstand what I have done. I do not seek to evade reality, I seek to dissolve illusions so that you may see reality more clearly.
"Mohammed was a warlord and died by assassination. "
I'll give you the warlord part but he lived to an advanced age for the time and as far as anyone knows he died of natural causes. He was buried in Medina, and the tomb is still there, although when the Saud's took over it was almost completely destroyed.
"Jesus never killed anyone and died for the sake of other people."
Jesus is a fictional character, a composite figure that only ever existed in the Book. Come on. The story screams allegory from the very first act. His mother is a virgin! What? Why? Why does this odd bit of pagan mythology show up in the very first act? In fact it's the result of an incredible misreading of Isaiah - one that only makes sense if the person who *invented* this story had only read the story in Greek. And of course, like any good fictional character, he raises after death to give closure to his followers, and make sure they remember his message. Unlike Mohammed, he left no body behind to be entombed - and also unlike Mohammed, no one thought he was important enough to mention in writing for until nearly a century later.
Anyway, fun fact. Mohammed was buried where he died, and the house became a shrine. Over time other companions were buried there, and within a few decades of his death the nearby mosque had been expanded to include this. They left one empty tomb, and expected that Jesus would one day come back and rule for 40 years as the last Caliph, then die and be buried in that last spot.
The site was carefully maintained and periodically expanded from the day he died - 8 June 632 - until 1805. The first time the Sauds took the city. They said venerating tombs was sinful, stole all the gold, silver, gems, etc. and then started taking sledgehammers to the place.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?