Right Forge
rightforge.comHosting service free from big tech, but uses Squarespace, Google Maps, Google Analytics, Facebook
Edit: even if they can't host their own site yet, the embeds/links aren't a great sign
Got this up quickly while we launch the real thing on our stack. I mention this in the podcast, absolutely going to be moving off of squarespace.
At the core I think a service like this is a good idea, but the amount of political rhetoric in the landing page would make me not want to use this service. Would prefer the service be completely agnostic to the underlying users and not favor a political party or ideology.
That being said, I think this is more a reaction to a business need/market opportunity that exists rather than a true attempt at a platform that is free for all to use.
If RightForge truly supports diversity of thought (we'll see) it will be a welcome improvemrnt over the usual suspects.
That's a lot of very specific claims with no corroborating details, to the point I wondered whether it's real at all.
Seems to be, headed by a Chris Bedford (apparently a The Federalist Senior Editor?).
https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/29/finding-creative-intern...
Looks to me like a landing page for a probably still-being-built service.
It's pretty obviously a response to the Parler incident, so I wouldn't expect them to have the infrastructure actually up and running yet.
this is what we in the cynicism business call "vaporware".
It could be, but I think vaporware requires a certain amount of time to have passed without it turning into something real. I don't think we've met that threshold yet.
Good points have been made about the hosting for rightforge.com - it looks like bargain-basement hosting so if there is anything like what was described in the podcast behind it, there better be a lot more coming to light soon to back it up.
They still have to follow section 230 of the CDA, right? They will need to remove material that is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected".
There is a component to this where they have to have "good faith", but eventually this will go to court.
I'd encourage you to read the CDA again. I suspect some things you think Section 230 requires are actually things Section 230 merely supports companies in doing. See Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberti...
Damn. I just reread the section. You are entirely correct.
This is going to be a haven for hate speech. I’m against it from the start and only solidifies my view that hate speech and free speech need to be mutually exclusive and codified in law in the US.
That would be a 1A trap. Notably, the ACLU takes the position "We should not give the government the power to decide which opinions are hateful, for history has taught us that government is more apt to use this power to prosecute minorities than to protect them"
https://www.aclu.org/other/freedom-expression-aclu-position-...
Times have changed. I’ll take those chances against unchecked spread of hate propaganda on the internet. Besides, nations like Germany have already codified this into law, it wouldn’t be a first foray.
eh, more power to them. Anyone can rent colo and do what they're doing.
Just don't break your providers' terms of services when you're doing so. There's always an upstream vendor.
I'm all for more bulletproof hosting, but political hacks are unlikely to be content-disinterested, especially over the long term. Right out of the gate, they're disingenuously framing a "fight for honest and open debate.". But the latest spate of deplatforming had nothing to do with silencing debate. Rather it was an inevitable response to the Big Lie of "Stop the Steal", a bad-faith rallying cry that resulted in real-world violence - hence even AWS getting involved as S230 only covers civil liability. Meanwhile it seems like the biggest threat to actual conservatives (ie those not trying to destroy our institutions) is coming from the Republican party itself.
If this company is indeed run by the senior editor of the right-wing rag The Federalist, then it is deeply hypocritical. The Federalist is loading scripts from Cloudflare, Taboola, Quantserve, Facebook and others. This site is on SquareSpace.
You can't stand on a soapbox and whine about not being allowed to stand on a soapbox. These people think they're oppressed because they can't make death threats and plot deadly riots on federal property with impunity. Suck it up, put up a reverse proxy and host it on your own hardware. If people can run dark web marketplaces, you can sure as hell complain about the liberals being mean to you on your own hardware.
Did you even listen to the podcast? It is obviously not "run" by Chris Bedford...he mentioned his inability to deal with even simple ID more than once in the podcast.