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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.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @02:01AM (2 children)
propublica and the electronic frontier foundation are not the southern poverty law center but marginal bait
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @02:11AM (1 child)
And this is relevant exactly how?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @02:17AM
this is relevant how? good gaming fascist mcfasistface
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @02:07AM (3 children)
The SPLC stopped being a credible organization years ago when they joined forces with the terrorist group CAIR and the others to promote a jihadist agenda inside the US . SPLC is just promoting CAIR's islamist agenda at this point and suckers are falling for it because of its past work, failing to realize that the old name is on effectively a new group.
Its a damn shame this shite article made it past the editors and onto the politics section of SN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @02:10AM (1 child)
again propublica and the electronic frontier foundation are not the southern poverty law center
Hey idiots get a clue
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @02:23AM
EFF and Propublica need to get a clue. The sites that were identified from the ADL and SPLC lists were targeted because of the latter's islamist agenda. Read back to what happened to SPLC once it was taken over by the terrorist group CAIR. The SPLC did good work in the past but the new goals are hostile to liberty and common sense. It's now relegated to doing CAIR's jihad by proxy and ruins the name of SPLC, threatening to smear by association its past work. If CAIR were doing this in its own name, most would not be fooled, but they are doing it under the name of the SPLC it fools many.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @02:10AM
I see nothing to indicate any relation with Islamism in TFA. Care to explain?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by khallow on Monday August 21 2017, @03:01AM (6 children)
I'd care, if the people who have this concern knew what a Nazi was. Instead, it's just a delusional waste of time. Show there's an actual problem first, then call me.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday August 21 2017, @03:39AM (5 children)
How many people need to be killed before it's an "actual problem" by your standards? It's obviously more than 1.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @04:36AM (1 child)
You should watch what you say. You just used the exact same argument that people who want to 'ban' Islam in the US use. Horse shoe theory [wikipedia.org] indeed! The problem is not one-off extremism. It's when violence and intimidation begins to become a standard part of a group's platform. People are free to espouse the most detestable views. The time for concern is when those views begin to include violence or intimidation as a part of the group's normal platform. When groups organize specifically for the purpose of physical confrontations or intimidation then yeah - I'd be the first to side with you. There's a difference between expression and violent mobs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @11:19PM
"How many of you agree that the punishments described in the Quran and the Sura, whether it is death [for homosexuality], or stoning for adultery or whatever it is, if it is from Allah and his messenger [Mohummad], it is the best punishment ever possible for humankind?" [youtube.com]
It's Not the ''Radical Shaykh'' - it's Islam [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 21 2017, @09:35AM (2 children)
Quite a few actually. Let us keep in mind that the actual Nazis were involved in street riots that killed plenty of people. For example, 18 people died in a street riot [wikipedia.org] that involved the Nazis and Communists in 1932 which triggered the coup [wikipedia.org] that took down the Free State of Prussia and escalated from there.
If you want this to stay a non-problem then tend to the economics and politics of the US not its speech. It's troublesome how so many people are obsessed over the trappings of a wealthy country, like publicly funded entitlements, while ignoring what it takes to create and maintain said wealthy country (lots of people get to work and sacrifice).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday August 21 2017, @11:34AM (1 child)
Except not really. When you look at when America was truly a great nation, the late 1950's, there wasn't a huge amount of "sacrifice" involved in taking most of the available jobs. The work culture really tended towards 40-hour work weeks with generous pay (often thanks to government funding and/or a union contract), which brought enough in that substantial numbers of families could afford to have an adult at home as well as quite a lot of discretionary spending and free time. Between OSHA and union protections, work was relatively safe to do.
That plus the FHA establishing affordable home mortgages made it a pretty good time to be alive if you were white (non-white people faced institutionalized discrimination, particularly in housing). It also enabled the US to have unprecedented levels of improvement to science, education, industry, infrastructure, and quality of life.
And the idea that we couldn't do that again is also false, since other countries are doing that and get similar or better results than the US does.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @03:11PM
You're not considering arguably the most important issue in modern society today.
That is the ratio of qualified workers to the number of desirable jobs. It has gotten bad. This is the reason you'll see "entry level" positions requiring years of experience and knowledge of industry specific technologies. Whereas in the 50s entry level meant 'high school degree preferred.' Yes the jobs have gotten more technical, but the reason for the extensive experience requirements for "entry level" positions is not because people without such experience could not be trained to do such work, but because there are people who have such experience that would be willing to work for entry level wages. And if there aren't - then no problem, simply get an H1B to fill the position, and publicly bemoan the "STEM shortage" in the US.
I'd agree with you that employers, as a whole, have gotten substantially more sociopathic in the interim but I think that's also in related to this. It's increasingly profitable to intentionally churn through workers as they're replaced by automated systems, foreign workers willing to work for cheaper, or even new overqualified domestic employees willing to start for "entry level" wages to "get their foot in the door." That greatly discourages forming any sort of relationship or bond with your employees. In times when workers were valuable somebody you hire is somebody you might expect to see 20 years from now. Now a days people working for 20 years (and increasingly often we can really change that into even just 4 or 5 years) at the same job is just not something that really happens. Think about how you treat the family dog as opposed to how farmers treat their pigs and beef cows. A very different relationship forms depending on the expected outcome, even if the people involved don't change.
And in the 50s there was, as you mention, institutional discrimination. Women were mostly entirely removed from the workforce, overt racism was very much a real thing, and outsourcing didn't exist. You started with a worker base (before considering things like education and so on) of a fraction of the population size relative to today. That leads to another metric - that metric being the ratio of all individuals needed to produce the goods and services to sustain the remainder of the population, but I expect this post is already getting a bit long as is.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday August 21 2017, @03:37AM (10 children)
Tech companies are under exactly zero legal obligation to provide services for organizations they don't like for whatever reason. They also can and do censor all kinds of sites for all kinds of reasons.
Your free speech rights mean that (a) you can say / write things, and (b) the government can't send you to jail for it. It does not mean that anyone else has to help you spread whatever you said / wrote, nor does it guarantee that nobody will choose to respond to what you said / wrote in ways you don't like (e.g. firing you from your job).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @04:14AM (1 child)
This is like discussing slavery and then responding, "Once again it's very clear under law that black people are property. Property cannot have rights. Stealing property is theft. This is all extremely simple and has been understood for thousands of years and is very clearly written in our law."
The reason that our founding fathers focused on government is because in times past they were the primary body of influence on the people. Our founding fathers would have had complete disbelief at the notion that in a very short period of time the largest grouping of people under one body would not be a nation under a government, but billions of people digitally connected under a private company. For that matter private companies are now starting to rival nations even in terms of GDP. Wal-Mart, alone, is the 23rd largest economy in the world and that's just comparing their revenue to GDP - GDP is artificially multiplied, revenue is not. I really think the only imaginable reason people support private companies being able to remove individuals from discussion in society is because they currently agree with who's being removed. It's much like slavery. There is no doubt that most people understood, internally, that slavery was wrong - but since they weren't the slaves, cognitive dissonance kicked in and suddenly it's okay. As stated above:
I have 0 love for the people being removed from society, but I have the ability to separate my schadenfreude from my views of morality and ethics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @04:18AM
I think the EFF might have put it even more eloquently:
(Score: 3, Touché) by Arik on Monday August 21 2017, @05:24AM (5 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 21 2017, @08:35AM (4 children)
If you ever used subsidized medicine (or any "special treatment from the government"), does it mean you forever are bound to the same contract towards the other fellow citizens as the government?
Is the "you took public money, you behave how I tell you" a contract that bounds you, a private entity, forever and under any/all circumstances?
Maybe they acted within the bounds of a contract with the government, but I really really doubt they acted as agents of the government.
I'm happy to be proved wrong, though: would you be so kind to provide a citation to your claim?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday August 21 2017, @10:03AM (3 children)
Private should be kept private and public should be kept public. There's no excuse to do otherwise.
But we've been doing otherwise, in spades, for a good century now.
It's ludicrous to look at the actions of entities that could not take those actions without their cozy relationship with the state, that would not even exist without it, as the actions of purely private entities. They are government agents and they should be held to the same standard. If they find this cumbersome, they should seek to disentangle themselves and create a clear separation.
"Maybe they acted within the bounds of a contract with the government, but I really really doubt they acted as agents of the government."
You're not even making sense. If they are acting within the bounds of a contract with the government, on behalf of the government, that makes them government agents. If they're government agents, then the bill of rights applies to them.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 21 2017, @11:36AM (2 children)
Are we still speaking about GoDaddy, Google and CloudFlare here?
Because your description apply better to defence contractors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday August 21 2017, @12:06PM (1 child)
They have spooks patched into their main lines bro. Have for years. When the US Govt says jump they say "how high?" When they're told 'add this binary to every image and autoexec it' they say 'yes sir.' They're just as much government agents as any PFC or traffic officer under direct orders.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 21 2017, @12:38PM
It would be so if you can demonstrate their willing participation (rather than, perhaps, reluctant obeisance of the law)
Otherwise, it is no different from conducted businesses in, say, China or Germany.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @09:01AM (1 child)
Not true. What do you think would happen if they closed my account because I was black? What do you think would happen if they closed my account because I was muslim? There'd be lawyers lining up to represent me.
But if I put up a website that said "why are blacks and muslims in a protected class and I'm not?" then I would be labeled a bigot and my site WOULD be taken down.
When you have a few protected classes, pretty soon everyone wants to be in one. Not being in one becomes a class of its own.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @10:36AM
> Not being in one becomes a class of its own.
Pretty much the "Pariah" class.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Monday August 21 2017, @07:57AM (1 child)
No Comment.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday August 21 2017, @11:30AM
https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/22/from-artistic-to-technological-mash-up/ [techcrunch.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by inertnet on Monday August 21 2017, @08:53AM (1 child)
By silencing a group you will only make them more determined, they will go underground.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @01:12PM
Good. Less wasted time stolen from beneficial activities. Like sleeping 8 hours each night
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @09:55AM
Because someone managed to gather a group of 500 loons from all across a nation with >300 million people in it, really?
(Score: 1) by garrulus on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:14AM
Companies that kick these off the white european created internet are treasonous internationalists.