Source: The Washington Post
SAN FRANCISCO — The push for Internet businesses to remove hateful speech spread to an influential corner of the tech industry on Monday as web registration service GoDaddy delisted a prominent neo-Nazi site in the wake of violent clashes over the weekend in Charlottesville.
The move by GoDaddy, which registers domain names for 71 million websites globally, is the latest and perhaps the broadest indication of how far technology companies are willing to go in response to public outcry that their services are being used to facilitate racism and white supremacy. Although Silicon Valley companies have long resisted calls to police the content they host, in the current political climate they are under more pressure than ever to take a stand — and appear to be bowing at least to some of it.
“This may very well indicate that the sense of responsibility among tech companies is deepening,” said Susan Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project, a nonprofit group that researches the intersection of harmful online content and free speech. “They are under gigantic pressure to solve this problem, and they are reacting as they never have before.”
On Monday, GoDaddy kicked the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer off its systems, citing company policies that prohibit websites from speech that incites “violence against people.”
Categories: America, The Muslim Times, USA