HACKER Q&A
📣 tmaly

Pro free speech domain registrars?


What are some great pro free speech registrars that independent journalists could use to help ensure their website is not taken down for being critical of Western governments?


  👤 hayst4ck Accepted Answer ✓
I have to admit, my initial response to your question was incredibly hostile. Almost everyone I respect says that free speech is being abused and we have to be more responsible about how we use it by using it to speak truth to power while everyone I don't respect at all (trump, elon, etc.) abuses free speech like it's a weapon and shield to sieze power while protecting them from consequences.

The most "free speech" lip service sites (parler) ended up moving to "free speech" platforms for which their digital neighbors were quite literally stormfront.

Do you have real examples of western governments taking down independent journalists using free speech to speak truth to power? Because that would do a lot to win me over.

Are you looking for privacy or are you looking for non take-down-ability or are you looking to promote a message?

The government barely has to "silence" people because the governments work on behalf of money, for which media is also beholden. I think it's hard to get a message out without the support of billionaire owned media enterprises.


👤 version_five
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28361320

There was this discussion... some suggestion that iceland is one of the freer ones, and looking at wikipedia it seems some unpalatable websites were hosted there, which imo is the best way to see if a registrar is not going the take your stuff down.


👤 DoItToMe81
Avoid Gandhi, Porkbun, Namecheap, Google and GoDaddy. They will arbitrarily seize your domain if enough people report it.

Njalla is good as long as your site is not openly racist and does not cater to racists. If I trust anyone to protect people from western overreach, it's the Pirate Bay founders.

EasyDNS has a history of being decent but has had an openly right wing slant for the last few years, which could translate into how they handle complaints for domains owned by the "other side". They successfully fought against British takedown requests and protected their client's info. I do not know if they would be legally empowered to fight against a US request.

NearlyFreeSpeech has hosted many controversial domains in the past and I've never seen them take one down, unless it was breaking the law. But they have posts about Jan 6th that indicate they will co-operate with law enforcmement if asked. Does this translate to legal but unwanted speech? I don't know.



👤 joecondha
Not a domain registrar but if you're looking for an all in one free speech way to publish check out Bison Relay.