just gonna paste their "find out why?" bit in here lol. my fave part might be the claim that censorship is only censorship when applied to pre-existing information, so since these people can't access the site in the first place, they're not being censored :very-smart:
Isn't blocking entire nations 'racism' or 'xenophobic'?
No. The nations blocked contain individuals of all races. Nations are not races. We block hostile nations because it is the most effective way to stop the abuse coming from their IP space online. “Racism” has absolutely nothing to do with IP addresses or preserving a quality community within CounterSocial. Additionally, any nationals from any of the blocked countries are welcome to participate on the network so long as they are not currently inside a blocked nations borders.
Now seems like a good time to mention that CounterSocial has built in direct one-click translation into over 80 languages.
Surely that's 'nationalistic'?
No. Currently, at the time of writing there are 195 nations on planet earth. We block 7 of them. 'Nationalistic' is defined as "having strong patriotic feelings, especially a belief in ones own countrys superiority." Again, we block 7 of 195 countries. So ask yourself: which country of the remaining 188 countries free to access the site is CounterSocial 'nationalistic' about?
Well then it MUST be 'censorship'? Right???
No. Censorship is defined as the act of redacting or altering ‘unacceptable’ parts of an existing communication. Therefore, “censoring” can only occur to content that has already been written and submitted to our platform. Bad actors are prohibited from creating content on CounterSocial in the first place, therefore blocking hostile nations is not “censorship.
What about my 'free speech'?
Freedom of Speech is a First Amendment right defined in the UNITED STATES Constitution. It guarantees that the U.S. Federal Government cannot infringe on an individual’s right to say whatever they’d like. CounterSocial is not the federal government, therefore it is impossible, by definition, for CounterSocial to be in violation of an individual's 1st Amendment rights to ‘free speech’. Sidenote: the UNITED STATES Constitution is relevant in the United States and to United States citizens, where our servers are based. US 'free speech' law is inapplicable elsewhere.
it's hard to tell - they talk a lot about Fake News & Foreign Influence Ops, and that can go either way. They also talk about accessibility elsewhere on the frontpage, specifically using the term "neurodiverse", which I don't think most rightwingers would do? edit: should specify republican rightwingers lmao, obvs whoever's running this is right wing by any reasonable definition