We’ve seen an escalation in the deplatforming of nazi and white supremacists hate groups lately, with companies like GoDaddy, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Spotify, Cloudflare, Google, Squarespace, Paypal, Airbnb, GoFundMe, OkCupid, Twilio, SendGrid, Zoho, Reddit, Uber, Kickstarter, WordPress, LinkedIn, MailChimp, EventBrite, SoundCloud, Bumble, Instagram, Namecheap, Discover Financial Services, Visa, and Youtube denying them a place to spread their hate online, and off.
This deplatforming goes beyond just speech and involves hosting, dns, social network, credit cards, payments, fundraising, messaging, SMS, email, dating, music, audio, voice, video, images, newsletters, events, documents, links, comments, transportation, and lodging. Removing the digital components that are allowing hate groups to spread their message online, and radicalize others along the way.
This is not a slippery slope. This is just one adjustment on a single front along numerous frontline skirmishes across the cyber warfare landscape–hit them in the supply chain. I feel that Paypal’s message is pretty straightforward, and doesn’t open up any slippery slopes with, “this includes organizations that advocate racist views, such as the KKK, white supremacist groups or Nazi groups.” Let’s just all adjust our terms of service to reflect this and move on. We will discuss the next situation when it comes along, for now we just want to keep “organizations that advocate racist views, such as the KKK, white supremacist groups or Nazi groups” out of our communities, both on and offline.
