The popular voice chat platform Discord has shut down several of their servers and accounts that were associated with the alt-right violations of the terms and service. The company announced the decision via Twitter and emphasized that it was due to it being “about positivity and inclusivity. Not hate. Not violence.” However, this was soon followed by the platform being accused of censorship and political bias, and the assumption that the accounts in question were banned due to violating the terms and service agreement, some arguments made by those displeased with the platform’s decision, is that since Discord tolerated the accounts for as long as they did, Discord supported the ideologies in question.
Hate speech, threats, racism, or any other controversial ideology, belief, or speech has been a problem with online chat platforms for years due to people usually never having to confront the person that they say these things too as well as believing that what they say is protected under their right to “free speech.” Discord had this to say in regards to their decision and as a response to the accusations of their toleration of the ideologies in question, “We unequivocally condemn white supremacy, neonazism, or any other group, term, ideology that is based on these beliefs. They are not welcome on Discord. While we don’t read people’s private servers our Terms of Service explicitly forbid harassment, threatening messages, or calls to violence…The public server linked to AltRight.com that violated [the ToS] was shut down along with several other public groups and accounts fostering bad actors on Discord.”
Discord is also encouraging people to report other hate speech and abuse to their website (email abuse at discordapp.com with details) and they will be investigated and dealt with. Hate speech and the like have been flooding the internet lately due to the terrible events occurring in Charlottesville and is unwelcome on many platform and different companies have been finding ways of combating it and removing it and the people spreading it from their websites. GoDaddy revoked neo-Nazie website Daily Stormer’s hosting and Google kicked it off the domain registry today for violating the ToS violations. These kinds of speech and ideologies will not be tolerated by the these companies nor anyone else who knows that, that kind of speech is wrong and companies, platforms, and people will continue to do their part to fight against it until it is no more.