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Then the deplatformers came for Dan Bongino

Then the deplatformers came for Dan Bongino

Outbrain advertising service cuts off Dan’s websites.

https://youtu.be/tSQIbWgkVxs

We are quickly moving towards two internet universes, one controlled by liberal and leftist tech giants, the other controlled by upstart conservative services providing a refuge for deplatformed, demonetized, and throttled conservatives.

This emerging decoupling is wholly a product of deplatforming of non-leftists at Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. We recently covered how WordPress.com cut off The Conservative Treehouse while Mailchimp cut off the Northern Virginia Tea Party. We covered the development in Prepare for the Great Decoupling – Deplatforming moves downstream to WordPress.com and Mailchimp.

Demonitization is a subset of deplatforming, a way to deprive creators of an income stream from a platform. Another form of demonetization is cutting advertisers off from generating revenue at a website, TV, or radio show. That has been the preferred method for Media Matters and others in attacking Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other conservative media.

Dan Bongino is a big name in emerging conservative media, and a longtime friend of Legal Insurrection. We covered his political races dating back to 2012 from his earlier life, and have watched as his media career took off with his podcast, Bongino.com, The Bongino Report, and regular appearances on Fox News.

Politico ran a hit piece this morning about Dan, portraying him as someone who burst on the scene by peddling post-election conspiracy theories, Dan Bongino leads the MAGA field in stolen-election messaging:

Bongino — a former police officer and Secret Service agent who was a latecomer to the talk-show world — is the surprise leader in the far-right media sweepstakes set off by Trump’s refusal to concede the election. While the president’s chances of clinging to power remain wafer thin, the prospect of a new conspiracy theory that could dominate right-wing discourse for four years is not being ignored by the pundits, podcasters and mini-moguls who populate MAGA-world.

Only ignorant or malicious liberal journalists could not know that Dan’s star has been rising for years, particularly this year. To attribute his success to post-election posturing is deceptive and false. But I suspected something else was up regarding the focus of the Politico article on election contests — that is an excuse being used by social media giants to ban or restrict many people who question how the election was conducted and the vote count.

Maybe it was coincidence, but today Dan also revealed that Dan and his entities have been demonetized by Outbrain, a large online advertising system which allows publishers to place links to their articles on other websites. When you see boxed links to articles at other websites, it’s usually advertising and Outbrain is one of the largest players.

Dan tweeted today:

The tech tyrants strike again. They’re doubling down on their war on speech. Here’s an email from the tyrants at .
@Outbrain who canceled services on our websites for spurious reasons.If you’re running a conservative website, you’ve been warned about Outbrain.More on my show today

https://twitter.com/dbongino/status/1329067226255810565

Matt Polumbo adds at Bongino.com:

Outbrain is a platform that publishers can use to display ads on their websites – including this one… formally.

This morning Dan got an email from Outbrain, informing us that they’d no longer be allowing us to use their platform. “It has come to our attention that some of the content on one or more of the domains associated with your account are in violation of the terms of our agreement” Outbrain says, without specifying what was violated.

Bizarrely, this email comes from their “anti-fraud team”…. who allege no fraud….

While we have [no[ idea whatsoever what content of ours supposedly violated their terms of service, and we can only speculate that it’s for purely ideological reasons, it would be yet the millionth time this has happened to conservatives.

Outbrain is free to clarify what policy was violated – though it’s a bit odd they didn’t do so in the first place.

Coincidence that this came as Politico tried to marginalize Dan? Do you believe in coincidences?

It appears that questioning Joe Biden’s “victory” is now grounds to get you banned on the ground of undermining trust in elections.

https://twitter.com/TheLastRefuge2/status/1329136521165873155

Under that standard, almost every major Democrat and leftist Twitter account should be banned for undermining trust in Trump’s 2016 election. But of course, that’s not how it works.

My best guess is that Outbrain demonetizing the Bongino media entities was not a high-level corporate decision. In all likelihood, one or more woke youngsters in positions of power at Outbrain made that decision. The question is, will it stick.

Prepare to decouple.

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Comments

Colonel Travis | November 18, 2020 at 6:40 pm

I remember before 2016, people I know, who are not leftists, wondered if Trump was going to throw journalists in jail for disagreeing with him, sue newspapers, that he was going to shred the First Amendment, etc. Why did they say this? Because they heard this on TV or read it somewhere, propagated by leftists and/or NeverTrumper goofballs.

It is the left that silences speech, that demands you submit to them or else you cannot participate in whatever it controls. Right now, it controls too much. What’s happening via Big Tech is scary as hell. And our government simply doesn’t care. They’re complicit. This tyranny continue to spread because no one is stopping it.

    Actually they said it because he openly said that he would like the libel laws loosened so he could sue reporters more easily, not understanding that the only way to do so would be to either pass a constitutional amendment or persuade the supreme court that its precedent is in error. The reporter trade obviously made a huge deal of this, as if it were a crime merely to suggest such a thing. (Oddly enough they make no such objection when a politician criticizes some other supreme court interpretation of the constitution. Unless it’s about abortion or transsexuals or something; those are sacrosanct too.)

      randian in reply to Milhouse. | November 18, 2020 at 10:18 pm

      The Supreme Court ruling that essentially made libel and slander of public figures consequence-free needs to be shredded.

        notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to randian. | November 19, 2020 at 1:36 am

        USMC VET Parler USMCMIL03 ??
        @USMCMIL03
        ·
        Nov 17
        Here are Fox ratings losses on Monday over 2 weeks:

        Cavuto -52%

        Baier -46%

        McCallum -45%

        Ingraham -45%

        Fox and Friends -45%

        Hannity -39%

        Carlson -33%

        The Fall of Fox: “Morning Joe” Beats Fox and Friends for the First Time in 19 Years as the Paul Ryan Era of Fox News Is In Full Effect
        —Ace of Spades

        Ibib.

        The reality of this hit me when I read this comment posted in Monday’s rant:

        449…There are people all over the world praying for President Trump’s triumph because they know that if he succeeds, America succeeds and so does their nation or their fight for freedom. Christians in Nigeria pray for our President because he’s the only world leader who stood up for them. There were lots of foreign press at the Million MAGA March on Saturday in DC. It was always the same: one guy with a phone and a mic and one other guy with a camera recording, but these duos were everywhere and from just about every country. They may not be the major networks, because the major networks are in on the scam, but these journalists were there to get the real news out to their audience. There were many groups from China showing their support for Trump. They know he’s their only hope in defeating the CCP.

        As important for us as it is to win now, and winning is our only option, it is just as important to the free world, and around the world, those who value freedom are watching and know the score and support our President Trump.

        Posted by: RondinellaMamma at November 16, 2020 12:17 PM (8/7u2)
        Progressives constantly bray about how big supporters they are of the poor and marginalized, but you never hear them say one word on behalf of Nigerian Christians who are being terrorized, driven from their homes, and even murdered for their faith. Or any Christians, really. Nor, for that matter, have I ever heard them complain about the hundreds of thousands of Uighur muslims that have been forced into concentration camps by the CCP. Indeed, progressives (and Joe Biden) look like they’re BFFs with the CCP. The entire Biden family will grow fat with Chinese cash should Sleepy Joe get elected.

        And I can’t imagine being a small business owner and seeing the BLM/Antifa scum that have burned down their livelihoods welcomed and embraced by the White House. It was bad enough when the mayors of Seattle and Portland ran interference for them, but this would be a whole new level of corruption.

        This is why I am praying fervently that the fraudulent election will not stand. Our MSM gleefully reports European polls that indicate that snooty Eurotrash look at Trump with the same disdain and contempt as our snooty elites do, big surprise there, but I have seen photos of of huge pro-Trump rallies in Britain and India that indicate that those polls aren’t the whole story.

        Someone is going to have to counter the CCP, and it won’t be Biden, because he’ll be in bed with them. The Democrat Party has become the party of the super-rich, and that’s who will benefit most under a Biden administration.

        MattMusson in reply to randian. | November 19, 2020 at 9:02 am

        Big Tech has no qualms about kicking a man who has Cancer.

          notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to MattMusson. | November 19, 2020 at 12:34 pm

          http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=391343

          Monopolies Google, FaceBook, and Twitter Are Coordinating Their Censorship and Ban Policies
          —Ace
          One of the actions that a monopoly can take that will get it prosecuted for anti-trust violation is secret coordination with other monopolies to price-fix or otherwise rig the marketplace.

          Monopolies acting in concert to determine what may be said, and which parties are allowed to win the White House, is obviously that sort of acting in concert.

          Josh Hawley grilled Zuckerberg about whether FaceBook engages in this sort of illegal market-rigging…….

          …….
          Update: Over the weekend, Twitter hate-mobs attacked a Star Wars voice actor over his Parler account. They threatened his career and claimed he was a racist until he deleted the Parler account.

          Question: Given that Twitter is a monopoly, and is a huge censor, doesn’t twitter’s permissiveness about hate-mobs using Twitter to cripple Twitter’s main competitor raise anti-trust flags?

          It’s not like Twitter can plead Free Speech. They can’t say “We allow users to say whatever they want.” They don’t. They’re absurdly controlling cenors.

          And yet they allow Twitter wolf-packs to intimidate people away from using Twitter’s competitor Parler.

          Interesting. Legally interesting, I think.

      Barry Soetoro in reply to Milhouse. | November 19, 2020 at 1:55 am

      Per natural law, malicious lies cannot be protected or tolerated. Yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater with no evidence of any fire is an obvious example that everyone accepts. Making demonstrably false claims in a sales pitch is another widely accepted example.

      As long as our society affords cover and protection for liars we are vulnerable and dysfunctional.

      ConradCA in reply to Milhouse. | November 19, 2020 at 4:53 am

      It would be reasonable to require professional news people to conform to professional standards. Standards like having more then 1 source for a story, verifying a story by check for supporting information and giving the person a story is about the opportunity to foment. When professional reports fail to follow standards their victims can sue for malpractice even if they are public figures.

        Milhouse in reply to ConradCA. | November 19, 2020 at 4:31 pm

        Require them how? By force of law? That would be unreasonable because the first amendment prohibits it.

        DaveGinOly in reply to ConradCA. | November 19, 2020 at 10:14 pm

        Verifying their stories? How? Would Huffpost verify a story by consulting the WaPo? Or could the NYT verify a story by checking in with Snopes?

      Colonel Travis in reply to Milhouse. | November 19, 2020 at 5:04 am

      Yes, and why did he say that? Because he wanted to silence critics? Nope. My background is journalism, I had no problem with what he said because:

      1.) Trump wasn’t running for king and he couldn’t do that without a Congress that was never gonna assist, because there’s not a single, federal libel law in existence.
      1a.) Trump has been, is and will always be a NYC BS artist. He says stuff, which people think is more important than what he does.
      2.) He understood the difference between legit criticism and irresponsible poison that will destroy a country built on freedom and liberty. We are seeing the consequences of that now. The media cannot go to hell fast enough, as far as I’m concerned.

      Trump doesn’t just tolerate dissent, sometimes he actually relishes it. The left, on the other hand, has a history since its beginning that contrarian views are to be stamped out.

        He said it because he would like to silence critics, and he may have imagined he could do that, or could get Congress to. Of course it was an empty threat, or rather a futile wish, but the fact that he expressed this wish is why the reporting trade started accusing him of being a would-be censor. Because they’re very defensive about their so-called “privileges”, knowing that they’re mostly built on sand and hokum.

          Barry in reply to Milhouse. | November 19, 2020 at 5:01 pm

          The only “imagining” going on is in the pea brains of the fevered Trump haters.

          And some have substituted pee for pea.

        DaveGinOly in reply to Colonel Travis. | November 19, 2020 at 10:17 pm

        “1a.) Trump has been, is and will always be a NYC BS artist. He says stuff, which people think is more important than what he does.”

        True dat.
        Trump has been using this to his advantage during his presidency by saying outrageous things that get 24/7 coverage, while he does something controversial (by the Left’s estimation) while the outrage mob’s attention is on his latest tweet.

    Dan Bongino is already “de-coupling” by buying into Parler and Rumble. Here is todays show on Rumble. It’s free.

    https://rumble.com/vb81xh-ep.-1396-what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-the-vote-in-michigan-the-dan-bongin.html

.
For email, is it advisable to get an account at ProtonMail?

Come on over to Gab.

Sundowner wins we will go down that rabbit hole so fast it won’t be anyway to get out.

Half of the country, at least, is moderate/conservative. Therefore there has to be a sufficient number of people – fiance, marketing, engineering, etc. – to pool our resources and quickly spin up our own ISPs, hosting services, advertising vehicles, payment processors, and anything else that’s needed.

We need folks to put their heads together and make this happen.

    drednicolson in reply to WestRock. | November 18, 2020 at 8:48 pm

    Up to and including creating a second internet (Conservanet?), if need be.

    daniel_ream in reply to WestRock. | November 18, 2020 at 9:20 pm

    I’m a DevOps/Cloud Engineer specialized in hybrid architectures, which is a fancy way of saying that I can write enough code in an afternoon to deploy the same web site across seven different public cloud providers and bare metal hosts, with failover and geo-replication. Let Big tech deplatform it, no one will even notice.

    And I won’t lift a finger to help any such conservative movement unless and until everyone spouting this “we need to shred the First Amendment and get rid of s.230” bollocks is disavowed and driven out of the Big Tent.

      artichoke in reply to daniel_ream. | November 18, 2020 at 9:24 pm

      There are others who can write code who will also be willing to punish those who abuse s.230. Sorry to see you go, goodbye.

        daniel_ream in reply to artichoke. | November 18, 2020 at 9:40 pm

        There really aren’t. The Internet software field is monolithically left-wing, and that’s conservatives’ own fault. You don’t like s.230? Well, that’s your own damn legislation, written and passed at the behest of a Republican-controlled house to keep that nasty, nasty p*rn off the Internet. And then there’s the various attempts to use the nebulous threats of kiddie p*rn and terrorism to force ISPs to install government monitoring and tracing hardware without the knowledge of user in their data centers.

        Conservatives have hated the Internet since the day they realized it gave practical unlimited freedom of speech to everyone with access to it and they’ve tried to suppress it ever since.

        Is it any wonder that sector of the economy hates you?

          WestRock in reply to daniel_ream. | November 19, 2020 at 5:21 am

          Bullshit

          healthguyfsu in reply to daniel_ream. | November 19, 2020 at 1:56 pm

          It makes sense. I mean Al Gore did invent it.

          Milhouse in reply to daniel_ream. | November 19, 2020 at 4:37 pm

          Westrock, it’s not bullshit, it’s true. Many of us were there when it happened, and know who was pushing it and why. They didn’t make any secret of it.

          DaveGinOly in reply to daniel_ream. | November 19, 2020 at 10:31 pm

          I have to agree. Congress started the ball rolling on the banning of internet content by threatening to hold platforms responsible for what is posted on them by content providers. It was at that time that platforms promised to police the content they carried in order to avoid the intercession of government.

          Up until that time, Facebook, for instance, allowed users to mark content they found offensive, not so that it could be removed, but so that they would be steered away from similar content in the future. This allowed content to stay on the platform for others to see for themselves, rather than removing it for being “offensive.”
          This changed when government intimidated the platforms into policing themselves. That’s when they started de-platforming “offensive” content, and changed their systems so that users could label content “offensive,” not to be steered away from it, but so that it could be removed.

          That horse is out of the barn now. If tomorrow Congress passed a bill holding platforms innocent for the actions of content providers, and making the providers solely responsible for their content, platforms would continue to de-platform because they have discovered the political power this affords them. And they can smugly claim that they were pressured into the behavior by conservatives in Congress.

      InEssence in reply to daniel_ream. | November 18, 2020 at 9:53 pm

      I’m in this area as well, and your claims are not real. You will have to try to fool someone on another site.

      Sonnys Mom in reply to daniel_ream. | November 19, 2020 at 2:26 am

      You may be an “expert” at generating code, but clearly the free exchange of ideas is a concept beyond your pay grade.

      Then may the yoke about your neck bring few welts, for it seems to fit you well.

    We could start by sharing instructions on how to block outbrain.com from our browsers with adblock or something like that; anyone knows how to do that?

      daniel_ream in reply to Ulises. | November 18, 2020 at 9:45 pm

      There are two ways you can do that. Install an extension to your browser that allows ad blocking – I use uBlock Origin, but there are tons – and enter outbrain.com in the blacklist. There may be some digging required to find all of the necessary URLs as ad networks often use content distribution networks and other edge servers to deliver the ads, and they may not be hosted under “outbrain.com”. That said, most ad blocking extensions come with a default blacklist that includes the major ad networks anyway, so you may not have to do anything.

      The more severe approach is to modify your home gateway/router to redirect all requests to “outbrain.com” (or its edge servers) to 127.0.0.1. This prevents the traffic to outbrain from ever leaving your home network.

        What about filter lists? I understand that this is kind of like a central repository maintained by volunteers that you can subscribe to and they do the filtering for you. So we create one with outbrain and all the other leftists that engage in censorship and make sure to spread the message far and wide that we can hit them in their bottom line if they are going to take sides.

      Sonnys Mom in reply to Ulises. | November 19, 2020 at 2:27 am

      Download the Brave app.

      GaryGimp in reply to Ulises. | November 19, 2020 at 12:59 pm

      I use Firefox with a the “No Script” add-on with outbrain.com blocked. Another solution which has been mentioned is the “Brave” browser, founded by the former Mozilla/FireFox chief who was fired after he donated to the wrong candidate. Brave has a built-in add-blocker.

    randian in reply to WestRock. | November 18, 2020 at 10:22 pm

    Nice, but not sufficient. Go ahead and start your own payment processor or gateway. Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and Amex are under no compulsion to do business with you, so if they choose to enforce the leftist line against you, and increasingly their doing exactly that, your investment in the company is kaput. Mastercard in particular is guilty of ordering a cutoff of payments to disfavored individuals. They are perfectly happy with payment gateways like CCBill, whose major customer base is online porn.

      dmacleo in reply to randian. | November 19, 2020 at 9:54 am

      multi millions $$ needed up front just o even start to do this.

      GaryGimp in reply to randian. | November 19, 2020 at 1:00 pm

      How do you suggest to get this off the ground and operational? any ideas? What’s your plan based on your idea?

      DaveGinOly in reply to randian. | November 19, 2020 at 10:34 pm

      A few years ago didn’t a group of banks attempt to cut gun manufacturers off from credit, and didn’t the threat of lawsuits put an end to that nonsense? In particular, I remember Barrett starting up a credit source just for gun companies. Don’t know if that’s even still in operation.

Free State Paul | November 18, 2020 at 7:00 pm

Professor Jacobson:

Will Legal Insurrection be covering the allegations being made against the Dominion voting machines being made by Rudi Giuliani, Sidney Powell and now L. Lin Wood?

I would love to hear your opinion.

What would happen if the law allowed people to sue companies for alleging violations of their terms of service improperly? Meaning without citing any specific violation or when violations cited turned out to be false?

Probably not much, since suing somebody like Google is tilting at an enormous windmill.

But maybe it would be a start.

    Milhouse in reply to irv. | November 18, 2020 at 7:23 pm

    As far as I know the law does allow such suits, but those TOS are usually so vague that it would be easy for them to point to something that can be seen as a violation when viewed in the light most favorable to the defendant, as it would have to be.

      daniel_ream in reply to Milhouse. | November 18, 2020 at 9:30 pm

      I’ve worked for VARs for over 25 years and one thing everyone in that space knows: have a backup plan if the company you’re parasiting off of goes belly-up or gets acquired or otherwise terminates your business relationship.

      I remember a few years back, Facebook kept deplatforming Steven Crowder’s ads for his podcast. He promptly turned around and sued them for breach of contract because he’d paid for ad placement and that meant a real contract, real money had changed hands, and real damages were mounting. After the third such lawsuit Facebook left him alone for good.

      If nothing else, I hope the current social media/ad-supported revenue fiasco is teaching soi-disant conservatives some basic lessons on how to run a goddamn business.

        InEssence in reply to daniel_ream. | November 18, 2020 at 9:58 pm

        You’re all talk no walk. What makes you think conservatives do not know how to run a business? They do it all the time. It doesn’t mean that liberals won’t ruin their business by bringing politics into a business environment.

          Milhouse in reply to InEssence. | November 19, 2020 at 4:43 pm

          He just said what makes him think it. The fact that they base their business models on something that their enemies can take away at any moment, without recourse. He pointed out how Crowder is a businessman and made sure he had a real contract, which they could not violate with impunity, and so they stopped harassing him.

        WestRock in reply to daniel_ream. | November 19, 2020 at 5:32 am

        If your software has as many logic errors as your absolutes that claiming you should consider another profession. Perhaps more people become conservatives after becoming business owners because of their increased exposure to all things regulation/finance/purchasing/taxation, etc. Anyone who thinks they know everything and are beyond reproach know nothing.

          Milhouse in reply to WestRock. | November 19, 2020 at 4:45 pm

          And yet they find themselves in their current situation because they made the basic error of assuming their ideological enemies would forever allow them to use their resources, so they didn’t need a contract.

    Lucifer Morningstar in reply to irv. | November 19, 2020 at 8:49 am

    Doesn’t work that way because companies like Outbrain, Facebook, and Twitter and the rest reserve the right to change their TOS for any reason, at any time, to whatever they want and then bind you to those new terms of service by using legally dubious phrases such as, “Continued use of our service indicates you accept these terms. If you do not accept the new TOS then stop using the service.” And you also give up your rights to sue (individually or class action) with arbitration clauses that favor the company and not you.

    In other words, you’re screwed from the minute you click the “Accept” button to sign up for the service and there’s not a darn thing you can do about it.

      There are limits to that. TOS can’t break the law themselves in so modifying their services. If they break the law, then you haven’t forfeited your right to sue and if they try to force you to break the law or deny a Constitutional right, then you also have the right to sue. Happens all the time.

    DaveGinOly in reply to irv. | November 19, 2020 at 10:37 pm

    What about tortious interference? If the platform can’t back up its claim of “TOS violation,” they could be on the hook for a lot of money in the case of some of the entities they’re de-platforming (who are making a goodly amount of coin from their content, so suffer serious monetary damage when de-platformed).

Hopefully in the next 4 years, a rival platform become profitable and prevalent.

One of my favorite channels (doughnut operator) has 6 figures in revenue from ads, which means Goolagle is probably getting a factor 10 fold from his content.

Odd how a platform can have legal benefits as if a common carrier yet retain the ability to refuse customers as if a pizza… uh, bakery, err, wedding venue, ummm. … OK, what public-facing biz routinely refuses clients?
Brothel?

    Milhouse in reply to beagleEar. | November 18, 2020 at 9:21 pm

    Sigh. This ignorance again.

    No, they do NOT “have legal benefits as if a common carrier”. Anyone claiming this is automatically disqualified from commenting on the subject, because they’ve shown that they don’t know the most basic facts.

    And any business has the right to refuse customers for any reason they like, except those specifically prohibited by law. In most of the USA there is no law prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of political opinion.

      artichoke in reply to Milhouse. | November 18, 2020 at 9:27 pm

      Section 230 is either common carrier benefits or a lot like it. Or if I am wrong, tell us clearly what basic facts I am missing, because others have a similar impression.

        daniel_ream in reply to artichoke. | November 18, 2020 at 9:31 pm

        Read the damn legislation yourself. It is publicly available and as unambiguous as “shall not be infringed”. Stop listening to Prager, Crowder, and the rest of Conservative, Inc. and just read the damn law.

        Milhouse in reply to artichoke. | November 19, 2020 at 4:50 pm

        No, section 230 is nothing even remotely similar to “common carrier benefits”, and anyone who tells you it is (1) has no idea what those so-called “benefits” are, and (2) has never read section 230. Read it yourself; it’s not very long and is written in fairly plain English.

        If you’ve read it and don’t understand something I can explain it, but right now you seem to be under a mass of misconceptions that I can’t even begin to tackle until I know what they are.

        Seriously, if you have specific questions, email me and I’ll try to answer them.

      Voyager in reply to Milhouse. | November 19, 2020 at 11:55 am

      The problem is, once you have accepted being silenced for your views, you have accepted being silenced for your views.

      Why should anyone allow you to post to their forums, if you do not agree with them absolutely, and what happens to the intent of the 1st Ammendment if that is the standard?

      Does arguing that you should be silenced add real value to this debate?

        Milhouse in reply to Voyager. | November 19, 2020 at 4:54 pm

        You have “the intent of the first amendment” exactly backwards. Nobody ever has to allow anyone to post to their forums. Far from giving people a right to post to other people’s forums, the first amendment actually guarantees the forum owners’ right to exclude people from doing so. What you’re complaining about is the freedom of speech, and what you want to impose is the opposite.

Could someone at Legal Insurrection report on web hosts and other services that do not discriminate against conservatives?

That would interest many, many of your readers — including me, of course.

W4econtinue to marginalize ourselves by ceding them this power. I do not use their social media and I never have. It’s easy to see that they exploit their users that they are the products. O

This is an amazing opportunity to conservative techies who have dreamed of becoming billionaires.

Get to it!!!!!!!!!

“We are quickly moving towards two internet universes…”

I don’t think that will last for long. Once conservatives are relegated to the second universe, it will be shut down completely. I believe the medium-term plan for progressives probably includes internet “kill-switches” that can be aimed only at the conservative internet.

Conservatives I guess will have to build their own completely separate internet, infrastructure and all. That’s going to require lots of capital. I doubt banks or many investors would be able or willing to cross the progressives to provide the capital, as they would then be closed down as well.

    artichoke in reply to james h. | November 18, 2020 at 9:29 pm

    It would be easier, I’d guess, to subvert their attempts at internet kill switches. Have we ever seen anything like that work? The internet is designed to route around problems i.e. to prevent that working.

I find this concerning.
I hope Professor Jacobson can find an alternate.
We ain’t long for here.

What I like best about this site, is the patience everyone has for people who don’t understand things as well as they do. Maybe teaching instead of chastising would be better for the cause. Particularly now, as we are in trying times. We all bring something. Just say’n.

    DSHornet in reply to rayc. | November 19, 2020 at 12:07 am

    Except for daniel_ream, wherever he came from – not that I’ve been here for a long time but today is the first I’ve seen him. He does have a bit of an attitude, doesn’t he? Arrogant @$$.
    .

      Milhouse in reply to DSHornet. | November 19, 2020 at 4:56 pm

      If today’s the first time you’ve seen him then you haven’t been paying attention. And he knows exactly what he’s talking about. He knows his subject from the inside, and you should listen and learn instead of thinking you know better.

As predicted, cancel culture loves the Burden / Harass administration.

Why don’t they have to bake the cake?

    Milhouse in reply to BillyHW. | November 19, 2020 at 4:58 pm

    Because nobody has to bake a cake they don’t want to, with certain limited exceptions specifically provided by law. If you bake cakes for the general public, then you have the right to turn down any customer you like, for any reason you like, except where there is a specific law that says you can’t.

      DaveGinOly in reply to Milhouse. | November 19, 2020 at 11:06 pm

      Businesses are licensed by the state. If the state can’t discriminate against a couple because they’re gay, they can’t license and entity and then delegate to that entity a power that it (the state) does not have.

      Businesses are also licensed for the benefit of the communities they serve, by making their goods and services available to the community. That means everyone in the community that is able to pay and is legally qualified to request the goods or services provided by the business (this would not include, for instance, convicted felons who are not able to purchase firearms or minors attempting to buy cigarettes).

      If a bakery makes wedding cakes for this couple here, that means they must make a wedding cake for that couple over there. If a bakery makes wedding cakes, they must make them for everyone who requests one, who is legally qualified to purchase one, and who can pay for it (with only practicality permitting them to refuse – e.g., they already have too many orders or have run out of ingredients). As a creature of the state, they can’t deny their goods or services to anyone that the state doesn’t authorize them to refuse.

      A local PNW talk show host uses what I think is a specious argument to support denying a gay couple a wedding cake. He posits, that in the current legal environment, he should be able to take a pig to a Muslim butcher and insist, because the Muslim butchers animals for others, that the Muslim butcher the pig for him. He argues that it would be an affront to the Muslim’s religion to require him to butcher a pig, and that the state would be out of line to require him to do so, in the same way the state is out of line requiring a “Christian” bakery to make a cake for gay wedding. (Does the state really license “Christian” bakeries? I thought it just licensed “bakeries.”) I would argue this talk show host is wrong. The Muslim butcher can refuse to butcher the pig because he doesn’t butcher pigs for anyone. And this is how a bakery can refuse anyone a wedding cake – don’t make them at all for anyone.

“We are quickly moving towards two internet universes, one controlled by liberal and leftist tech giants, the other controlled by upstart conservative services providing a refuge for deplatformed, demonetized, and throttled conservatives.”

Nostalgia. Everybody here remember FM radio vs. AM radio?

Lucifer Morningstar | November 19, 2020 at 8:33 am

Bizarrely, this email comes from their “anti-fraud team”…. who allege no fraud….

Oh, but it’s not just the “anti-fraud team” it’s the Compliance and anti-fraud team. And Bongino obviously didn’t comply with their demands/TOS that nobody question the 2020 presidential elections nor their outcome. And therefore he was removed from Outbrain’s platform. Of course, it’s all a load of bullshite. But there you go and here we are.

Not that it really matters to me. I have Outbrain blocked using the HOSTS file so I never see their idiotic nonsense in any case. And that makes surfing the web so much nicer.

“(to the extant [sic] available)”?

Smart people right there.

freespeechfanatic | November 19, 2020 at 9:26 am

“Undermining trust in elections.” Hilarious. More of the Law of Leftist Projection. That is, whatever they accuse you of doing, they have done, are doing or plan on doing.

The Leftists are being characteristically hypocritical and authoritarian, but Mr Bongino’s on-air conduct has made him an easy target. I listen to his show every day, and think well of his analyses, but his incessant, childish, gratuitous attacks on liberals are inexcusable. I can’t find much fault with anyone for pulling their advertising from his show.

Time to deplatform outbrain dot com on every router I control.

Local DNS rule to resolve it to 0.0.0.0.

Do that, or add it to your ad blocker’s filter list.

The Conservative Treehouse, has been de-platformed. They were told by their hosting company they have until 12/2 to move.

This is how they work. They 1/2-way couldn’t mess with us while DJT was in office.

They ONLY WAY THEY CAN SUCCEED in the future – IS TO TOTALLY SILENCE US.

Look for this site too, to come under fire in the future. ANYONE WHO QUESTIONS THE AGENDA – WILL BE SILENCED.

Rick

    Milhouse in reply to RSConsulting. | November 19, 2020 at 5:00 pm

    There are hundreds of hosting companies. They can easily find one that suits them, and this time make sure they have a contract that can’t be terminated at will.

      DaveGinOly in reply to Milhouse. | November 19, 2020 at 11:14 pm

      The thing is that for a web site to lose its host is almost a nothing burger, an inconvenience at worst. Sites that are de-platformed retain their domain names, they just have to move that domain to another server. If this site were de-platformed tomorrow, I could visit it again as soon as an new host was engaged, which could happen in a matter of minutes – hours at most. My link to the site will work no matter where the site resides or who is hosting. It’s not like all my links to conservative sites will suddenly break, and I’ll lose contact with them.