As we go into a historic election season, we see big tech platforms such as Facebook and Google censoring opinions they don’t like. Is your website prepared should big tech decide to censor your opinions?
Now, more than ever it is important to own your data and have control over your own website. If your website is not hosted on an open platform, you are at the whims of someone else. If your business is reliant solely on Facebook and Google for traffic, these big tech platforms can cut off your business solely at their whim, for any reason or for no reason at all.
This article will discuss the many ways that a website is beholden to big tech and ways that you can mitigate the risk of big tech censorship for your website.
Censorship Risk #1: Closed, Proprietary Platforms
Any platform that prevents data portability is a closed, proprietary platform susceptible to censorship. At the worst level, platforms like Facebook and Google actively censor and suppress speech they do not like. If your business is relying on a Facebook Page or Google My Business listing for your sole source of traffic, these can be gone in an instant, either due to an act of censorship or an algorithm adjustment that puts you at the bottom of the list.
However, even if you have a website, where you host your website matters. If you’re using a platform like Squarespace or Wix, you’re locked into a proprietary platform. There’s no way to easily move your data from one host to another. If Squarespace decides they don’t like your speech, well, you’re done and your only option is to rebuild your site, from scratch, somewhere else.
To be truly free of censorship you are better off using an open platform like WordPress, which is customizable and portable. With WordPress, if one host censors you, simply move your data to a new WordPress install on a new host.
However, even open platforms like WordPress can have their faults. The WordPress CMS receives updates and plugin installs from WordPress.org, which in recent weeks has been exposed to be less open than previously thought. Due to a feud between the companies Automattic and WP Engine, the WordPress.org plugin repository has blocked users of WP Engine from receiving WordPress updates and plugin installations.
The best part of WordPress, however, is that it is an open platform, so that even when there is censorship, there’s a way around it. The folks at WP Engine figured out how to self-update WordPress for users hosted on their web hosting and members of the WordPress community are actively working on alternative update methods to bypass the WordPress.org servers and receive updates from third party sources. At least with an open source platform like WordPress, censorship can be routed around and bypassed by the community at large.
Open platforms like WordPress also allow for maximum customization which means they can be made even more censorship resistant. For instance, here at Your Right Website we use the Bedrock framework for WordPress, which bypasses the default WordPress update mechanisms and servers entirely and uses an alternate method of installing WordPress updates and plugins.
This type of flexibility is something you would never see with Squarespace or Wix. If these platforms decide to block you, well, you’re blocked. Open systems like WordPress show that even if there is censorship, even censorship coming from the people who make the software, because of the software’s inherent open nature it can be mitigated and keep you online, no matter what or where you host.
Censorship Risk #2: Unfriendly Web Hosts
Even if you host your website with an open source platform like WordPress, you can still be subject to censorship by your web host. Sure, you can always move to another host, but you shouldn’t have to. That’s why where you host matters. When you build a website with us we host your website on a free-speech friendly host. The host that we use is MediaServe and they are a self-proclaimed free speech host. We love our friends at MediaServe, they make web hosting easy.
Other free speech and conservative friendly hosts include LiberationTek and Smartway Hosting. It’s important to host your website with a host who will stand for your right to free speech. Many cloud based hosts use Amazon, Google or Microsoft for their cloud servers, so even if the host doesn’t want to censor you, they may be beholden to another entity that owns the servers. With smaller conservative and free speech hosts, they often own their own servers and are not beholden to big tech for their back end infrastructure.
Censorship Risk #3: Third Party Content Providers
Even if your website is running an open source content management system on a free-speech friendly host, there are still ways that big tech can censor you if you are using their infrastructure for your website. Third party assets like Google Fonts as well as CDN delivered scripts, such as Javascript, can potentially be disabled at will to break your website. Or, big tech may leave these assets enabled but use them to track your visitors across the web.
For the best results, it is recommended that you move as many assets as possible to your local server. Instead of letting Google load your fonts, install your Google fonts locally so your users never connect to Google’s servers. Move all your Javascript to your server instead of using a CDN. Use a locally hosted analytics option like Matomo to track your users instead of Google Analytics. Everything you move to your local server is one less thing that big tech can use to track your users. Plus, when everything is hosted on your own server you suddenly become immune to CDN outages that occur when big platforms like Google and Amazon run into server troubles.
Moving your site assets to your local server will keep you online and keep your users safe from tracking by big tech.
Censorship Risk #4: Domain Registrars
So, you’ve built the most censorship resistant site you can, however chances are there’s still a risk. Every site needs a domain name, like yourrightwebsite.com. You have to buy this domain from what’s called a domain registrar. There are some domain registrars that are better than others. In my experience, mitigating censorship at the domain registrar level is probably the hardest area to plan for, since for the most part domain registrars are neutral, until they’re not.
One domain registrar that is known for their free speech philosophy is Epik, however I am hesitant to recommend them as a registrar due to a hack they had a while back that resulted in a lot of customer data being breached. If you have your domain with a free speech domain registrar, the very fact that they are defending free speech makes them a target for hackers and others who wish to do them harm and can put your data in the line of fire.
Sometimes it may be better to get your domain from a standard domain registrar like Namecheap that may have better security or be less of a target, simply because for the most part, domain registrars are pretty neutral on taking a stand about the contents of a domain. While domain registrars can and do occasionally block or ban a domain, these events are pretty rare and you can always transfer the domain name to a more friendly registrar should an issue arise.
Whether you choose a free speech or standard domain registrar is up to you, as there are pros and cons to each of these approaches.
Is any website truly immune to all censorship?
Unfortunately, even if your website is running on an open source content management system, on a free speech friendly host, with a free speech friendly domain registrar, the potential for censorship still exists. The website can be censored at the Internet Service Provider level, the Domain Name Service (DNS) level or even at a nationwide level if the censorship comes from the government. However, for the majority of websites, the biggest threats to censorship come from the very providers that provide services to the website.
Censorship is something that doesn’t affect you, until it does. It would be my hope that web hosts and service providers would not censor based on political viewpoints, however actions by big tech platforms like Facebook and Google have shown that large providers can and do censor based on political viewpoint. With the election looming large on the horizon, who gains the White House for the next four years will have a large impact on whether speech remains free or if censorship efforts ramp up.
Many prominent Democrats have called for additional censorship and even removal of the First Amendment in order to combat misinformation and hate-speech. If Democrats win the White House in the 2024 election, expect to see censorship efforts ramped up against any speech they deem as a threat to their power. Unfortunately I don’t have a good solution to prevent government censorship, other than vote against it every chance you get.
Here’s hoping for a free and fair election in 2024 and a protected First Amendment in 2025. Get out there and vote!
Until next time,
Brandon