This is 100% consistent with being a free speech defender. Free speech defenders' position is that speech you don't like should not be fought by censorship, but should instead be fought by speech you do like, which is what what they're funding.
"It makes me feel like the margins are too high all around"
We don't know how the finances work out, for all we know, they take a loss on these accounts when their full effort to handle payment to charities is taken into account.
“Free speech defenders' position is that speech you don't like should not be fought by censorship, but should instead be fought by speech you do like, which is what what they're funding.”
This is where they are wrong. Not doing something you don’t agree with is not censorship, it’s freedom of expression. Publishing things, even when saying they don’t support them is supporting those opinions with extra steps.
"Not doing something you don’t agree with is not censorship, it’s freedom of expression"
It's both. It's not government censorship, so it's not a free speech issue in the legal sense. But private entities can still censor things, because that is part of their free speech, as you point out. nearlyfreespeech's free speech allows them to either allow or censor other entities' free speech on their platform.
I don't quite understand what you're saying. Does donating to a charity they support make them not free speech defenders?
>It makes me feel like the margins are too high all around to even have such a plan.
They didn't say they're donating all the revenue. Just a portion of the revenue that's a bit higher than the profit. So if the margin is 5%, then they might donate 6% of the revenue from that customer.
I'm not sure what you mean by "good charities." They're supporting charities they agree with ("The recipient organization does share our values") to counteract speech that they disagree with. So by definition, these are "good charities" from their point of view.
I'm for free speech, but please don't say stuff like this, in any context. Nobody said the policy was "innocent," whatever you mean by that. The policy is a device that they use in order to make themselves feel better about facilitating the speech of people they dislike. The policy is not intended to create "innocence."
> they are taking your money
No, they're taking their money.
> Still, in some professions this would be outright illegal.
> Little do you know, they are taking your money and donating to those pineapple on pizza places.
I love your analogy, even though I disagree with your conclusions. They publish their MMFAM policy right on their website, so you have fair warning that they may be donating a portion of your payment to those pineapple on pizza places, or other places whose views you disagree with.
I'm not saying it's a perfect policy that every company should mimic, but I think many companies may find this model preferable to applying active viewpoint discrimination to the content they host.
'outright illegal' as in criminal may have been a bit strong there, perhaps 'a legal liability' is a better choice.
Pretty much any profession where one has a duty to their client and has or pretends to have the client's best interest at heart - legal, financial, governmental, medical, etc.
But that doesn't usually extend to your private life, does it? I assume you can be a lawyer for PETA and donate all the money you made from their business to Meat-Eaters International and can say so publicly. You just can't secretly act against their interest in your professional role.
You usually wouldn't either because you want the business relationship to continue, but it'd be news to me that your professional duties would extend so far that you'd have to consider how to spend the money you make from that business.
It's not mutually exclusive.
I work for a web host and there's no way we'd host the kind of stuff NFS host, but dont think that makes me in any way against free speech.
> Sounds kinda terrible to me. If you don't want to host content, don't. I fully support that decision.
To me, it sounded an awful lot like they really want to be paid to host content but are also desperately trying to avoid the negative backlash of hosting it.
To make matters worse, they openly call their paying customers morons.
It would be very hard to take a stance that's worse than this, to be honest.
But don't pretend to be free speech defenders then siphon money to fight your own customer because it makes you feel better.
It makes me feel like the margins are too high all around to even have such a plan. And judging by prices last time I looked, that's about right.