What Is the "Mffam" Policy?
nearlyfreespeech.net

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37 points

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Tomte

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3 hours ago

18 comments

jibcage ・ an hour ago

Nearly free speech for me is one of those services still (excellently) run by nerds.

Its no-frills, functional UI reminds me of the old internet before services and sites began coalescing into bigger, faceless, soulless monoliths. I didn’t know about this policy before today, but now I love them even more.

If you’re looking for a place to host your next project or domain, I can’t recommend them enough!

  • closewith ・ 13 minutes ago

    I put NFS is the same category as Tarsnap.

    While I love the aesthetic and mission, I long ago moved away because the UX is just so obtuse and pricing unpredictable.

    As NFS say, they're a service for smart people and while I hesitate to call myself smart, whatever neurons I do have are better spent thinking about my family than obscure service offerings.

neilv ・ an hour ago

This is kinda neat.

> 2. The recipient organization is as opposite (and hopefully as offensive) as possible to the site operator that funded the donation.

This is vulnerable to "false flag" abuse, from faux-morons.

> 1. The recipient organization does share our values.

This partly mitigates that risk.

Faux-morons can still generate more funds for recipients chosen by the site, and/or hurt the profitability of the site, but at least it's for causes within the values of the site.

  • willvarfar ・ an hour ago

    Wouldn't faux-morons be better off just giving the money to their target charities? Why set up a website pushing the agenda they don't support, and pay to do that, in order to get some of that money they pay be siphoned away to causes they do support?

    • neilv ・ 25 minutes ago

      (Sorry I said "site", which was confusing; I meant nearlyfreespeech.net.)

      I'm not certain, but I read the following part to probably mean that nearlyfreespeech.net donates their own estimated profit from providing service to the morons in question:

      > When we find a repugnant site on our service, we mark the account. We receive reports about all payments to such accounts, and we take a portion of that money larger than the amount of estimated profit and we donate it to the best organization we can find.

      • graemep ・ 20 minutes ago

        Yes, but their estimated profit is less than the revenue from providing the service, so the morons have still spent more than their target gets.

      • InsideOutSanta ・ 18 minutes ago

        Their own estimated profit comes from the entity that hosts the content, right? So if I want to trick them into supporting a charity, I open an account, give nearlyfreespeech x$, they make x-y$ profit, and then give that to a charity. I've just lost y on that transaction, compared to just giving it to the charity directly.

Innocuous42 ・ 21 minutes ago

Doesn't it defeat the purpose to fund organizations that are clearly against free speech such as ADL and SPLC, when you are claiming to defend free speech? It seems like a knee-jerk reaction to content they don't like as is also rather apparent in the link (https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#BecauseFuckNazisT...).

Why even bother to piss off users you don't like? For pretending rights?

> [...] a fair number of people who run them only believe in free speech when they're the ones talking.

Which includes the people who run this site.

Disclaimer: I have never used this service, maybe it is just a weak moment.

  • InsideOutSanta ・ 5 minutes ago

    "Which includes the people who run this site."

    How so? They're publishing things on their service they disagree with, so they clearly believe in free speech for people they disagree with.

    "are clearly against free speech such as ADL and SPLC"

    This is not clear to me. The SPLC has never taken any steps to criminalize speech or advocate for government censorship, as far as I can tell. In fact, it is just exercising its own right to free speech when it critiques what it perceives as others' harmful speech. That's the whole point of free speech, you counteract speech you don't like with speech you do like.

    Of course, you are also just engaging in free speech when you accuse them of being against free speech, and I also just engage in free speech when I disagree with you, so it's all good :-)

  • throw310822 ・ 14 minutes ago

    Ironic since the ADL is a staunch defender of Israel, a country whose leader is wanted for crimes against humanity.

silisili ・ an hour ago

Sounds kinda terrible to me. If you don't want to host content, don't. I fully support that decision.

But don't pretend to be free speech defenders then siphon money to fight your own customer because it makes you feel better.

It makes me feel like the margins are too high all around to even have such a plan. And judging by prices last time I looked, that's about right.

  • bulatb ・ 16 minutes ago

    If speech is speech, and giving to causes is speech, and the answer to bad speech is good speech, then giving in response to speech can only be a proper answer. Separating the support for speech from support for the views is exactly the point of the freedom of speech.

    You can speak, and they'll support your speech. But they'll fight your position.

  • InsideOutSanta ・ 24 minutes ago

    "But don't pretend to be free speech defenders"

    This is 100% consistent with being a free speech defender. Free speech defenders' position is that speech you don't like should not be fought by censorship, but should instead be fought by speech you do like, which is what what they're funding.

    "It makes me feel like the margins are too high all around"

    We don't know how the finances work out, for all we know, they take a loss on these accounts when their full effort to handle payment to charities is taken into account.

  • surgical_fire ・ 19 minutes ago

    They are effectively not pretending. They defend free speech by hosting shit that they explicitly do not like.

    Then they use their own freedom to support speech that counters the shit they find offensive.

  • Thorrez ・ 37 minutes ago

    >But don't pretend to be free speech defenders

    I don't quite understand what you're saying. Does donating to a charity they support make them not free speech defenders?

    >It makes me feel like the margins are too high all around to even have such a plan.

    They didn't say they're donating all the revenue. Just a portion of the revenue that's a bit higher than the profit. So if the margin is 5%, then they might donate 6% of the revenue from that customer.

    • silisili ・ 32 minutes ago

      > Does donating to a charity they support make them not free speech defenders

      The policy is not so innocent. It's not just good charities they support, it's charities that have a belief opposite your own, if they disagree.

      Let's say you were really(and rightly) against pineapple on pizza. And you find a host saying they're OK with anything, have at it. So you make one.

      Little do you know, they are taking your money and donating to those pineapple on pizza places.

      Yes, it's contrived. Still, in some professions this would be outright illegal. I'm not saying it should be, but that it shouldn't be lauded, either.

      • InsideOutSanta ・ 21 minutes ago

        "It's not just good charities they support"

        I'm not sure what you mean by "good charities." They're supporting charities they agree with ("The recipient organization does share our values") to counteract speech that they disagree with. So by definition, these are "good charities" from their point of view.

      • luckylion ・ 2 minutes ago

        > Still, in some professions this would be outright illegal.

        What professions are you thinking of?