Re: [libreplanet-discuss] helping newcomers start blogs - but where?

[J.B. Nicholson]

John Rooke wrote:
> The example of Daily Stormer is not a good one.  The site was being used
> to organise alleged criminal activity up to and including murder.

I think the point stands: intermediaries and proprietors can "wake up in a 
bad mood" and decide to "kick [someone or some group] off the Internet". 
Also, if there's anything to learn from the recent Russophobic attacks by 
the US government and commercial media, allegations aren't good enough to 
support a claim.

The point I'm making in the context of /this/ thread remains the same: one 
shouldn't ignore the power of an intermediary or proprietor when one seeks 
to publish with the intention of being read. Picking any third party to 
handle one's blog is always a risky tradeoff. Today DreamHost.com fights 
the US government in their pursuit of access logs (per 
https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/we-fight-for-the-users/ ), tomorrow 
DreamHost.com could hand over such data to another party without telling 
anyone they did so, or shut down a blog they host that has become (even 
only temporarily) politically uncomfortable. Non-technical users are not 
socially encouraged to think through the ramifications of hosting with 
someone else's computers. I maintain that a right-minded effort to get 
non-technical users their own Internet-based publishing setup should help 
make them aware that no matter how friendly their current hoster appears to 
be, that hoster has the power to cut them off, hand over access logs, and 
domains. If this power is leveraged against some (particularly those whose 
political messages are disagreeable) the same can be done to the rest of us.

> It was hardly a case of 'waking up in a bad mood', subsequent to the
> death of Heather Heyer.
Then your complaint is properly lodged with CloudFlare's CEO who made the 
glib "wake up in a bad mood" comment and acted apparently extrajudicially 
to "kick them off the Internet" as he put it.

> Incidentally, Chomsky is rather less of a libertarian when it comes to
> criticisms of his own work.
I'm unaware of Chomsky "kicking someone off the Internet" in reaction to a 
disapproving review.