What Is the "MFFAM" Policy?
nearlyfreespeech.net103 points by Tomte 2 days ago
103 points by Tomte 2 days ago
Nearly free speech for me is one of those services still (excellently) run by nerds.
Its no-frills, functional UI reminds me of the old internet before services and sites began coalescing into bigger, faceless, soulless monoliths. I didn’t know about this policy before today, but now I love them even more.
If you’re looking for a place to host your next project or domain, I can’t recommend them enough!
I put NFS is the same category as Tarsnap.
While I love the aesthetic and mission, I long ago moved away because the UX is just so obtuse and pricing unpredictable.
As NFS say, they're a service for smart people and while I hesitate to call myself smart, whatever neurons I do have are better spent thinking about my family than obscure service offerings.
> the UX is just so obtuse and pricing unpredictable
Could you explain that in a bit more detail ? I used both OVH, Google Cloud and NFS to host small websites. With OVH and Google, even for small things like setting up DNS I’d get lost in a hellish kafkian maze of help pages, wheras the NFS FAQ is the best one I’ve see. I have yet to find an issue it doesn’t cover. Pricing-wise, I’ve found it pretty transparent, and overall, dirt-cheap.
+1 to nfs. I use them for my static site/blog since 2013, and think I haven’t touched the control panel for at least 5 years and perhaps even longer (apart from topping up some $ to the account), and it’s been working great. I haven’t updated my site for a long time and for a while I even forgot where it’s hosted, and everything still working fine without intervention.
They are great, but the speeds are sometimes atrocious. Too bad to even host my completely static personal site, because potential employers would have to wait up to 10 seconds for it to load. And ftp connections often fail completely. Bummer, really
This relies on an EA adjacent market fallacy where we can resolve all moral action down to funding actors of various moral alignments - there's no reason to believe that the end utility (or whatever metric) of the action is linear w.r.t amount of cash moved.
Garage band EvilWebsite.com is going to appreciate that 5$ way more than the SPLC or whatever.
This isn't to say that the policy is strictly bad, I just worry that it reinforces pretty negative patterns. Carbon offsets barely work, and that's an actual market - bigotry offsets are a dark line to walk.
(edit - misread the policy; it's not about matching cash flows through the service to offending websites, it's donating profits from offending costumers. That seems more consistent to me.)
Although I agree with you that there's no reason to expect an equal dollar amount to produce a balanced outcome, I disagree completely with the conclusion. The paying party is a random website saying an offensive opinion, and the receiving party is a professional activist organization designed to turn dollars into utility. Why would you figure that the former is exerting more influence per dollar?
Maybe its unfair pessimism, but I definitely believe that Kiwifarms (ex) is way more efficient at turning money into targeted hate than - say - the Trevor Project is at countering it.
I guess my sense is that if you actually want to counter this kind of harm, you have to do so on a fundamentally structural level, and the host in question is the structural enabler.
I think a major part of this policy is that the hosting site does not want to (and does not want to be seen to) _profit_ from what they consider to be repugnant customers. It's not a bigotry offset policy: It's a self-modulation to preserve the integrity of their principles all the way to the end.
Oh shit I totally misread the policy - I interpreted "payments to such accounts" to mean donations etc. made through channels that the host supported. As written, it's not really an offset, and really just a way to wash hands, which honestly I probably support more.
That's funny, I made the same mistake on my first reading. I had to slow down and go back over it!
Thank you. I used to fancy MFFAM for it’s seeming cleverness. But tobacco taxing basically does the same. And you could literally pave a road with its residue of good intentions. We’d all be hosting CSAM and pour the revenue into government programmes, but we don’t, because we know it to be more effective to prevent damage than trying to fix it afterwards.
Even if it doesn't do much from an economy perspective, the simple idea that the offending websites are paying for a cause they are against may have an effect.
Imagine you have a website about Vim and you realize you are paying for the promotion of Emacs.
I don’t agree, the FAQ answer doesn’t relate « moral alignment » to monetary value. I think it simply states that advocating for free speech doesn’t mean falling into relativism, assigning the same value to all positions and endorsing the most extreme ones. Pretty refreshing in the current context.
They hope to offset some sort of imperative burden (presumably moral) of hosting onerous content by countermanding the effect of hosting that content with paired monetary support of its adversary. My consideration is that pairing effect there is extremely weak - maybe so weak that the policy is on net dubios.
Where's the fallacy? They set no expectations on fully offsetting. It's a compromise.
This is kinda neat.
> 2. The recipient organization is as opposite (and hopefully as offensive) as possible to the site operator that funded the donation.
This is vulnerable to "false flag" abuse, from faux-morons.
> 1. The recipient organization does share our values.
This partly mitigates that risk.
Faux-morons can still generate more funds for recipients chosen by the site, and/or hurt the profitability of the site, but at least it's for causes within the values of the site.
Wouldn't faux-morons be better off just giving the money to their target charities? Why set up a website pushing the agenda they don't support, and pay to do that, in order to get some of that money they pay be siphoned away to causes they do support?
(Sorry I said "site", which was confusing; I meant nearlyfreespeech.net.)
I'm not certain, but I read the following part to probably mean that nearlyfreespeech.net donates their own estimated profit from providing service to the morons in question:
> When we find a repugnant site on our service, we mark the account. We receive reports about all payments to such accounts, and we take a portion of that money larger than the amount of estimated profit and we donate it to the best organization we can find.
Yes, but their estimated profit is less than the revenue from providing the service, so the morons have still spent more than their target gets.
Thanks, I missed that. (I stupidly commented while waking up.)
Someone trying to abuse this policy might have additional reasons to false-flag, but I no longer think that that angle on policy abuse is a significant risk.
Their own estimated profit comes from the entity that hosts the content, right? So if I want to trick them into supporting a charity, I open an account, give nearlyfreespeech x$, they make x-y$ profit, and then give that to a charity. I've just lost y$ on that transaction, compared to just giving it to the charity directly.
“The best organization in any given case meets two criteria:
1. The recipient organization does share our values. 2. The recipient organization is as opposite (and hopefully as offensive) as possible to the site operator that funded the donation.”
This seems flawed on so many fronts. This is likely just donating money to your own favorite causes. And if they are not causes that you have already vetted, how do you know that organization you found is not worse than the one you’re trying to punish? It would take a good deal of research to figure this out.
What percentage of the values of the organization need to meet your values? Virtually no organization perfectly matches the values for anyone.
Furthermore, who is “our”? Does everyone in your company or organization have the same exact values?
This happens all the time outside of webhosting. The products you buy to eat, be clothed, and be sheltered are produced by companies that may lobby for laws against your values. As one has a choice to not use this webhosting provider, one also has a choice in what to buy with the aforementioned products required for survival--that is, if that choice hasn't been taken away by a legal monopoly situation (e.g. ISPs), industry consolidation, regulatory capture, etc.
Did you all noticed the hash?
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#BecauseFuckNazisThatsWhy
Honestly that’s just embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for them in the way I’d be embarrassed for someone still injecting “Nope, Chuck Testa!” or “an arrow to the knee!” in human conversations in 2025. Oh wow, an internet crusader who especially hates “Nazis”. How unique and cool. I wonder if the writer also courageously boasts about “punching Nazis”, both in combat and even “in the street”.
If only I could be so brave (rather I am a mewling coward who dares not insult the mighty Nazi global hoarde, and certainly not publicly! They might throw me in one of their odious concentration camps!)
In principle you are right, but for some reason there are people who are vocally offended/displeased by the "fuck nazis" slogan. That's weird to me, because as you say this should be uncontroversial and yet here we are having this conversation.
I think this is because this is not actually about the words itself. Similarly, everyone agrees that black lives matter[1], but that words imply a certain political alignment that the person you're talking with may not subscribe. Similarly, by saying "fuck nazis" you will get reactions from people who, in principle, don't like literal nazis too, but feel targeted by that sentence anyway.
Sorry for my rambling thoughts.
[1] as in, nobody sane would unironically agree with "black lives don't matter"
Stands for "Morons Funding the Fight Against Morons"
They take profits from a flagged subscriber (loosely defined as one they find "repugnant") and donate it to whatever organization they can find which is most anathemic to the offender.
I used to volunteer for a NGO that sends books to Prisoners across the penitentiaries . We sent out thousands per month . We had a code called BBG for books containing Boobs, Butts and Genitalia. Sadly this means manga comics and Biology textbooks are not allowed or ripped to rid of those contents
I don't really get the point, it'd make more sense to just not host these people than to take their money and turn around and donate it to someone else.
The amount of money made from those sites (and spent for good) is surely infinitesimal to the bad they do by spreading hate. Much better to just not host the content. I don’t believe in slippery slope nonsense, it’s easy to know what sort of speech is about harming other people and no I don’t believe in publishing that.
A hosting service is not a publisher. They don’t want to restrict speech, but still want to punish hateful sites, and this is the compromise they came up with.
> it’s easy to know what sort of speech is about harming other people
Is it? If you just mean explicit "lets go kill <group>" messages, then sure. But, we also have:
- People who think the existence of trans people is harming children
- People who think alternative medical practices like homeopathy is harming people
- People who think vaccines are harming people
- People who think 5G towers are harming people
- People who think discussing methods of suicide is harming people
- People who think abortion is harming peopleOne of these is not like the others
I think if you ask enough people, you will find people will have differing answers on which one(s) are different than the others. I intentionally included both things I agree with and disagree with.
I worry that this policy contributes to the overall polarization by amplifying the loudest most extreme voices on both sides of an issue.
[flagged]
"Which includes the people who run this site."
How so? They're publishing things on their service they disagree with, so they clearly believe in free speech for people they disagree with.
"are clearly against free speech such as ADL and SPLC"
This is not clear to me. The SPLC has never taken any steps to criminalize speech or advocate for government censorship, as far as I can tell. In fact, it is just exercising its own right to free speech when it critiques what it perceives as others' harmful speech. That's the whole point of free speech, you counteract speech you don't like with speech you do like.
Of course, you are also just engaging in free speech when you accuse them of being against free speech, and I also just engage in free speech when I disagree with you, so it's all good :-)
I remember a few years ago SPLC smeared a public figure I support not for anything they actually said, but for speaking at an event that somebody else that SPLC doesn't like was speaking at.
I've since noticed a number of times that SPLC has aimed their justice cannon at undeserving (imo) individuals. Not saying everything they do is tainted, but I certainly now take everything I see from them with a grain of salt.
Everything anyone says should be taken with a grain of salt; blind trust is never a good idea.
Having said that, this has nothing to do with the Southern Poverty Law Center's stance on free speech. Rather, you're pointing out an instance where they made use of their right to free speech to criticise somebody, and now you're making use of your right to free speech to criticise them.
There's people that for some reason think "free speech" means speech free from consequences. To them anyone trying to impose consequences for their speech or tell others their speech deserves consequences is engaging in censorship.
I don't know if the GP is a member of this group but it does read that way.
the other side of the pendulum is the people that for some reason think "free speech" means harmful speech. To them anyone who wants free speech must be trying to escape consequences their speech deserves.
Ironic since the ADL is a staunch defender of Israel, a country whose leader is wanted for crimes against humanity.
That a country's government is guilty of somethihg is unrelated as to whether that country "deserves" to exist, and super-duper unrelated to how people sharing the ethnicity of that country's citizens should be treated.
In other words, Jews in other countries have nothing to do with Israel and nobody should harrass them for what Israel's doing... nor harrass them just because they're Jewish (which is sadly still common)
I am glad you can make that distinction, but the ADL demonstrably does not. Criticism of Israel’s government and policy is conflated with antisemitism. It’s infuriating.
> Doesn't it defeat the purpose to fund organizations that are clearly against free speech such as ADL and SPLC, when you are claiming to defend free speech?
They're absolving themselves of the ethical "bad feels" of hosting content they disagree with.
If you host a Nazi website full of antisemitism, they'll donate to the ADL as a counter.
If you host a white supremacist website, they'll donate to the SPLC.
They're thinking of this as a form of equivalent exchange. If you put bad energy into the universe, they'll take your money and pay the groups that oppose you as a form of balance.
The reason they host these horrible websites is that they believe free speech is more of a moral high ground than turning these customers away.
> Why even bother to piss off users you don't like? For pretending rights?
Free speech is vital. You should defend the speech of people you find abhorrent (racists, Nazis, atheists, gays, whatever), because if the political pendulum swings and the machinery, will, or precedent to censor is present, you'll be the one silenced.
Before the internet, conservatives frequently censored topics they disliked. Atheism, LGBT content, porn, certain political discourse -- pretty much anything that the religiously pious people of the 80's and 90's would detest -- were censored from the airwaves, found unsuitable to publish, and pushed out of the zeitgeist.
From around 2014 to 2024 it was the exact opposite. Questioning liberal policies you got caught by social media dragnets - content was deboosted or removed, people were banned. Questioning the origins of Covid, talking about DEI policies, etc.
And now the pendulum is swinging back again. We're in for more of the same from the other side.
We should stop building tools for censorship and instead enable individuals to control the content they consume. We should be able to individually (or as a group) opt into blocking certain people and content. We should be able to tweak our algorithms. But we should always be immune to having our speech immediately deleted from the internet for going against whatever the current power may be.
Freedom of speech for thee means freedom of speech for me.
And freedom of speech does not mean -- and has never meant -- freedom from consequences. The minute you open your mouth your peers will judge you.
Is it a good strategy though? Quasi-uncritically hosting stuff won't help when the pendulum leaves the comfort zone.
Note, people throwing a hissy fit about having too many or not enough dicks, pronouns, blackface photos of teenagers on the internet is waaaay inside, whereas people advocating for forced deportation is not exactly.
That said, I agree with erring on the side of less censorship, and especially with the desire for having more client-driven filtering capabilities.
Haloy
Sounds kinda terrible to me. If you don't want to host content, don't. I fully support that decision.
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.
"But don't pretend to be free speech defenders"
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.
As a matter of principle, nearlyfreespeech does not want to censor other entities' free speech. They explain why here: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#TheLongGame
NearlyFreeSpeech is a hosting service, not a publisher. They do not (necessarily) endorse the content on the sites they host.
>But don't pretend to be free speech defenders
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.
> Does donating to a charity they support make them not free speech defenders
The policy is not so innocent. It's not just good charities they support, it's charities that have a belief opposite your own, if they disagree.
Let's say you were really(and rightly) against pineapple on pizza. And you find a host saying they're OK with anything, have at it. So you make one.
Little do you know, they are taking your money and donating to those pineapple on pizza places.
Yes, it's contrived. Still, in some professions this would be outright illegal. I'm not saying it should be, but that it shouldn't be lauded, either.
"It's not just good charities they support"
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.
> 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.
If you pay someone, they have a right to do whatever they want with the money, which includes donating it to any charity they like.
> The policy is not so innocent.
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.
Which? I can't imagine one.
> Still, in some professions this would be outright illegal.
What professions are you thinking of?
'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.
They are effectively not pretending. They defend free speech by hosting shit that they explicitly do not like.
Then they use their own freedom to support speech that counters the shit they find offensive.
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.