Gab is not a far/alt right specific platform. It's just a place where you can say whatever you want.
Problem is the left calls far right or offensive to anything they disagree with.
Far-left / Socialist is the only "acceptable" way of thinking
anything Libertarian, (which is labeled "far-right" now) should be shut down, out, and banned
US Capital-“L” Libertarians tend to be solid-to-far right as well as libertarian, but, no, genuine center- and left-libertarian isn't usually called far-right by anyone.
Also, right-libertarians are a pretty big segment of the HN community, possibly more dominant than anything on the left.
Not just HN. Almost all tech companies are HQ-ed (at least for policy making purposes) in and around San Francisco. And they ALL behave the same way - impose their world view with impunity on the rest of the population, at a scale unheard of in human history. Just ponder for a moment that some overpaid Mozilla censorship committee employee, enjoying his/her/zi $20 soy latte in their $4000/month studio in San Francisco got to shut down an entire community's online presence with a single click, because they found the speech there disagreeable (not illegal)
It’s not necessary for a bloated non profit to remove access to an extension for political reasons (versus technical deficiencies).
Free speech is useless if you’re not willing to defend that which you find most disagreeable.
Good thing it is not the government telling Mozilla to remove the plugin then, otherwise there might be an actual problem here.
What makes free speech useless is pretending that someone else has a responsibility to promote your message or provide you with access to a printing press. Neither are true. This does not even appear to be the case that Mozilla is preventing anyone from using the plugin, they are just deciding that they aren't going to make any effort to promote it.
I guess it is not too hard to see who the real snowflakes are...
Note we heavily regulate private companies in many US industries when we deem it necessary.
Uhh, Mozilla didn't outlaw anything. Do you want to force Mozilla to put that extension on their site against their free speech rights? The only thing guaranteed by the first amendment is the federal government cannot prevent you from saying what you want. It says nothing about preventing you from using a 3rd party platform. Feel free to get a literal soapbox and preach your truth wherever you want in the real world, no one is stopping you.
I want to hold Mozilla up to their public advertisements, and commitments they made to the public at large, these are a contract if you will to the public. Both because of their Tax Exempt status, and a truth in advertising issue.
If mozilla wants to exercise their right to free association as censorship platform, then they need to give up their Tax Exempt status, as well as cease all public advertisement around "Our mission: Keep the internet open and accessible to all.", Clearly this is only true to people that share the ideological worldview as Mozilla. AS such this is a false statement.
>If mozilla wants to exercise their right to free association as censorship platform, then they need to give up their Tax Exempt status, as well as cease all public advertisement around "Our mission: Keep the internet open and accessible to all."
Firefox extensions are not the internet.
Your understanding of the first amendment's protections is fundamentally flawed. The first amendment protects individual freedom of speech from prosecution and silencing by the government. It does not preclude private businesses or individuals from choosing to ban or prevent certain thoughts and opinions from a service which they provide. If Mozilla gets enough complaints about the speech that can be found on Dissenter, they have every legal right to choose not to host that app.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of said speech. Dissenter users are perfectly free to find another home on the internet to voice their opinions.
>It’s not necessary for a bloated non profit to remove access to an extension for political reasons (versus technical deficiencies).
Mozilla themselves has said that they didn't remove it for political reasons, rather it was the language and vitriol being used on the platform. As an example, it's one thing to use something like Dissenter to calmly and rationally discuss why you might think a nation should close its borders to all immigrants, it's another thing to use that same platform to say stuff like, "Fuck those worthless lazy piece of shit beaners coming to this country and stealing white jobs" (not my opinion, btw).
I'm not going to pretend to know that stuff like that was posted to Dissenter, but you and I both know that language like that is commonplace on alt/far-right platforms. It's by no means a stretch to imagine that those kinds of posts are what got Dissenter banned.
>Free speech is useless if you’re not willing to defend that which you find most disagreeable.
I go back to my point above. It's one thing to have a political opinion, it's another thing to be a horrible human being to other people just because you disagree with them. I still think that people should be able to say whatever they want, but if Mozilla doesn't want them to do it on their platform, then the rest of the internet is literally wide open for them to go and find another place to say whatever they want.
It is protected against government intervention by the exact provision which protects Mozilla’s right to not feature it.
> Free speech is useless if you’re not willing to defend that which you find most disagreeable.
You confuse defending the freedom to speak with actively supporting those speaking it.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to amplify speech.
For example we do not allow Churches to comment on politics they have to remain neutral or they lose their tax exemption
The same should apply to Mozilla. They need to be politically neutral, up holding Legal Speech, or they need to shutdown the Mozilla Foundation and become a for profit organization
Given the rhetoric that is often found in comments from those groups, it's not too hard to imagine that the complaints Mozilla cited as the reasons for removal are legitimate.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)#Dissenter