I was doing a little evening reading in my Mexico City apartment when I stumbled onto this post on hacker news:
Dear XXXX,
Unfortunately, due to the Russian regime's war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, we will no longer be providing services to users registered in Russia. While we sympathize that this war may not affect your own views or opinion on the matter, the fact is, your authoritarian government is committing human rights abuses and engaging in war crimes so this is a policy decision we have made and will stand by.
If you hold any top-level domains with us, we ask that you transfer them to another provider by March 6, 2022.
Additionally, and with immediate effect, you will no longer be able to use Namecheap Hosting, EasyWP, and Private Email with a domain provided by another registrar in zones .ru, .xn--p1ai (рф), .by, .xn--90ais (бел), and .su. All websites will resolve to 403 Forbidden, however, you can contact us to assist you with your transfer to another provider.
Customer Support, Namecheap
I think most people can agree that what Russia is doing is terrible, but that's not the point. And clearly so, since this action will have absolutely no impact aside from annoying people who very likely had nothing to do with the invasion (and, per some of the comments in that HN thread, may in fact be using their sites to oppose Russian policy.)
So allow me condense and rephrase Namecheap's statement to make it clearer:
Must virtue signal. No internet for you.
I'm not going to spend any more time bashing Namecheap, if only because a) they don't really matter, and b) they're not alone. How many examples have we seen now of centralized (dare I say "legacy"?) tech companies banning something because it crosses their delicate Silicon Valley sensibilities?
One more reason to take an inventory of the services you use every day and think about how you would respond if they ever did something like this to you. Do you make your living from....
Youtube? Centralized.
Instagram? Centralized.
Twitter? GTFOH.
Hell, even Substack is centralized. And yeah, they say all the right things about respecting free speech, but so did Twitter. Anyone else remember "the free speech wing of the free speech party?"
Now's the time to take control of your destiny again and host your own shit. I can help, more posts to come in the near future.
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