PrudeHost

For about a year and half now, I’ve adored BlueHost, a relatively popular web-hosting company. They provided quality, reliable service for a fair price. And though they lag a bit behind competitors in specs, I would have recommended them to somebody looking for basic web hosting (especially a beginner).

I assume you’ve noticed the past-tense. Yesterday, this love-affair with BlueHost ended. Yesterday was when I read — or rather, was preached to by — a post on BlueHost CEO Matt Heaton’s weblog.

Adult hosting…

As many hosts try and find their niche in the marketplace many hosts have chosen to cater to the adult/porn hosting community. As adult content is estimated to be be as much as 50% of the internet traffic you can’t blame them right? WRONG!

Bluehost does not and will not tolerate adult material of any kind on our servers. Sometimes profit comes second and personal responsibility and ethics come first. I am not telling other hosts to not provide adult hosting services, but I wish that they would come to that conclusion on their own.

Adult material hurts people in so many ways that I won’t even argue the point here. Aside from my own beliefs about why it is wrong, I don’t think that any clear thinking individual would argue for the merits of porn. It is a business that I will never practice or enable through our network.

If many of the other hosting services out there didn’t make it so easy for this type of material to be so readily available maybe the problem wouldn’t be so severe. I would suggest to other hosting companies out there that service this market to reconsider what you think is important in life. Is this really the type of thing you want to peddle to the community? The hosting providers are just as guilty and the content providers in my opinion.

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, and it finally came out now. I am sorry if anyone is offended, but I am not sorry for my position. I will stick to my guns on what I believe in and this is something that I firmly believe in.

I’ve been long aware of BlueHost’s policies, but never really thought twice about them: neither I nor those to whom I’d recommended the hosting planned to host porn. I’d always assumed the policy had to do with liability or something of the like, but I find this explanation of the policy absolutely abhorrent.

“[P]ersonal responsibility and ethics come first],” Heaton writes. But where might these ethics bring us? Is denouncing the Iraq invasion in violation of Theaton’s “personal responsibility and ethics”? What about a site with a directory of abortion clinics? His imposing his bigotry in the realm of porn unveiles what could be a frighteningly slippery slope. Before I go on, I should quote the exact (though exceptionally vague) text from the terms of service:

No pornographic, adult content, anything related to human sexuality, or links to such material allowed.

So… no hosting or links to hosting of “anything related to human sexuality.” I might also note that nowhere in this terms of service is their any mention of restricting content that is grotesquely violent. I might be a tad whacky, but I guess I consider pictures of a bloody, mutilated human body more troubling to society than a link to a humorous (albeit juvenile) observation of Gatorade bottles.

Bottom line: Heaton is within his rights to impose this sort of perverse zealotry on his customers. Likewise, his customers are within their rights to leave. Customers: exercise that right. And I sincerely apologize to those to whom I recommended this service.

P.S.: Interesting article on Slate claiming that porn access helps reduce rape (and, likewise, violent movies reduce violent crimes). Interesting.
P.P.S.: And if you’re as disgusted by this as I hope you are and are looking for a new host, check out DreamHost (where this weblog is hosted currently). And if you’re wondering about their policies on the matter at hand, their only restriction is that you not use referral/discount codes if you intend on running a pornographic site (though they do say “pornographic” not “anything related to human sexuality” *cough*).

This entry was posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 at 23:54 and is filed under Opinion, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the XML feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “PrudeHost”

  1. At 06:59 on Dec.7 ’06, Markus said:


    Hi Man!

    I’m the guy who brought up the TOS in Matt’s blog comments. Thanks for this great post and especially to the link to DreamHost. I was looking for a replacement for some time now with similar features than BlueHost and Dreamhost sounds like it (I especially like the employee owned part).

    I fully understand limiting adult material, it’s a type of business which you simply can’t host for $7.95 as it’s high bandwidth and high trouble. Even many credit card processors don’t want to go there for practical reasons. But the “no sexual” is highly ridiculous.

    Markus

    #