February 28, 2019

The creep of censorship hits home

Published by Carolyn Yeager on Wed, 2019-02-27 22:14 



IT CAN NOW BE TOLD. The company that has hosted my server for the past 10 years without a problem took me offline without warning on Sunday morning, Feb. 17. When I made contact with them on Monday, Feb. 18, I was informed that 1&1 (recently become 1&1 IONOS) had terminated my account. The best reason the “security” rep could give me was the vague word “hate.” We're all supposed to accept that as meaning something. He said they would send me a letter of explanation. Why didn't they send the letter first?

The letter that came contained the two “relevant” points from the Terms and Conditions, to wit: thou “shall not contain or link to any material which is harmful, violent, threatening, abusive or hateful.” Didn't seem to be relevant to me - my site is mild and factual - but it's all in how you define these words, right? It really came down to the most important point: We're a private company, headquartered in Germany, so we don't have to defend ourselves. They had received complaints, and that's enough.


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