On Thursday, the nonprofit privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation said tech companies including Cloudflare, GoDaddy Inc. and Google, part of Alphabet Inc., threatened freedom of expression online by blocking Daily Stormer. The three tech companies pulled support for Daily Stormer after it published a story denigrating Heather Heyer, the 32 year-old woman killed in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend. The moves made Daily Stormer’s website inaccessible.
“Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected,” the EFF said in a statement. “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.”
Over the past week, tech companies including Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., and GoFundMe Inc. removed white supremacists from their platforms, overthrowing the image some of the companies convey of being neutral platforms with free-speech principles.
On Thursday, Spotify said it began removing white-nationalist acts from its music-streaming platform. “Illegal content or material that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like is not tolerated by us,” a Spotify spokesman said in an emailed statement. Dating site OkCupid, part of Match Group Inc., said it banned Chris Cantwell, a white supremacist who participated in the Charlottesville riots, within 10 minutes of being alerted that he used the service this week.
Tech Censorship of White Supremacists Draws Criticism From Within Industry
“Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected,” the EFF said in a statement. “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.”
Over the past week, tech companies including Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., and GoFundMe Inc. removed white supremacists from their platforms, overthrowing the image some of the companies convey of being neutral platforms with free-speech principles.
On Thursday, Spotify said it began removing white-nationalist acts from its music-streaming platform. “Illegal content or material that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like is not tolerated by us,” a Spotify spokesman said in an emailed statement. Dating site OkCupid, part of Match Group Inc., said it banned Chris Cantwell, a white supremacist who participated in the Charlottesville riots, within 10 minutes of being alerted that he used the service this week.
Tech Censorship of White Supremacists Draws Criticism From Within Industry
