I finally got my website set up like I want it: Freely hosted blog (this site) with my books and a matching Git project with the Markdown source of my books. Seems easy, right? Well let me tell you what I had to go through to get it
Years ago, my books were hosted on GitHub. Markdown versions of my book texts, changes tracked through source control, safely hosted. I was in heaven, right? But then GitHub decided to mark my materials as inappropriate for sharing on their service, and my account was frozen. I was unable to share my documents. I was unable to even edit my documents through GitHub, so GitHub's policies made them useless to me
Why is that? My documents are legal under the free speech statutes of my country. So why am I not able to share legal documents on a service like GitHub? Because GitHub has selected content policies that are more narrow than the content policies of one of the countries it serves: the good ole (formerly free) USofA. What the fuck?
GitHub isn't the only company that does this. I was kicked off of WattPad (a story sharing site) for sharing materials that were legal by the definition of my country—but did not meet the more narrow criteria of WattPad's allowable speech. I was similarly kicked off of Google Docs—I shared material that their automated system flagged (or some individual user flagged) as inappropriate—and my materials were no longer sharable on Google
I'm not the most middle of the road writer. I'm much nearer the edges of whatever road we're talking about. But make no mistake: my speech is a critical part of what the First Amendment was designed to protect—the speech that bumps right up against the edge of the rules. If you don't protect speech at the edges, then the edges shrink around you, and eventually there is no free speech at all
As it becomes truer that the only way to share documents is electronically, and as all the electronic document sharing companies adopt restrictive speech policies, it makes it so that the right to freedom of speech is gate kept by those companies—their policies, along with their monopolies, restricts what speech is actually sharable by people (and disregards the citizens' rights as protected by the First Amendment)
Free speech is in existential danger in my country. When the president attacks journalists, we see free speech going away. When he removes funding from students who support Palestine, that's our free speech going away. Our president attempts to silence the court jesters, even, for telling the wrong joke! That is our free speech going away
There is no reason for Google to adopt a sharing policy that is any less permissive than the First Amendment. Ditto WattPad, GitHub, and any other American service. To adopt a more restrictive policy is to succumb to the same impinging forces that Trump employs when he restricts free speech to less than what the First Amendment allows. Is Google Docs an American document sharing system? Hardly. Americans are afforded rights of free speech. Google denies them those rights—that's anti American
In my small case, to share my documents freely, I have had to go outside my country for blog hosting (Mataroa—hosted in Finland) and Git hosting (Insomnia 24/7—hosted in the Netherlands). Those services (and those countries) are completely amenable to serving my books. Their yardstick for whether to host material is simply: is it legal? Wow. If it's legal, I can show it. Not like here in the US, where it's more that if this material is possibly offensive, I can't show it
Get real, people: being offended—being disturbed—is part of learning. If you're never disturbed, you're never surprised. And if you're never surprised, you're not learning anything
And get super real, people: a website serving a book that is guarded by content warnings is not doing you any harm—even if it offends the fuck out of you. It isn't stopping you from practicing your religion. It isn't damaging your children. It's just free speech, allowing itself to be read by those who want to read it. Your blocking those types of speech—legal speech—is nothing less than criminal, whether you're Google or GitHub or whoever who think you are
In this matter, it's United States: -3. Finland and The Netherlands +2
My country fails on the subject of free speech
You made me go outside my country to host my books
Try again, America