run away! run away!

But I wouldn’t read too much into the statement on their About page welcoming people to their family. It may be poor sales copy, but I don’t find the statement prejudicial. I know a lot of dysfunctional families, and we know who gets to be the parents here with all of the control.

In your reply, you said, “I’m not sure what the problem is with DH’s About page.”

I mention their About Us page because one statement especially strikes me, “We’re looking forward to welcoming you to our family!â€?

The basis of humanity to many is that we group together. Doing this, we are able to better survive, reproduce, evolve and protect each other. Many believe the family is that primary group.

It looks strange that someone would ask you to join their “family” but not offer that basic human protection. Protection against harm. Support for your safety. An enviroment that encourages your growth.

Since this is the US and the mighty dollar has a voice, I ask you to consider if you want your website and files with a company that openly does not discourage racism. I don’t know if Dreamhost has any people of color working for them. If I worked for a company and found out they had a policy to not have a policy about racial hate statements, I’d have an ethical conflict of the soul. That’s me.

Thank you for your response. I googled and found your experience with Dreamhost and wanted to comment.

I did make a request by email as follows:
================================
Dreamhost and SBC Global Support,

I ask that you urgently review this customer’s website and take action.

I would appreciate an update response by Monday 4/9/2007 regarding this website. I find websites like this discouraging because there is already so much hate in american homes there is no need to bring it to the internet which should be a place of education and discovery. I am black and Jewish. I know this hate firsthand.

Lastly, I ask that Dreamhost to consider amending it’s TOS to include racial bigotry and other statements of hate towards collective “groups” of people. It is my personal belief that groups that come together for something are stronger than ones established against something. It feels good to read TOS’s that specifically says it will not tolerate hate statements.
================================

Their response was:
Apr 5, 2007 2:30 PM

Hello,

> Dreamhost and SBC Global Support,

>

> I ask that you urgently review this customer’s website and take action.

>

> I would like a response by Monday regarding this website. I find websites

Thank you for writing. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that as a web hosting
service provider we do not censor or otherwise assert editorial control
over the content of the sites that we host - even those that we may (as
is the case here) find personally abhorrent.

Jeff,
=======================
and:
=======================
Apr 8, 2007 2:53 PM
Thank you for writing. DreamHost has a policy of not censoring or otherwise exerting editorial control over the content that our customers or their associates/visitors may place online, unless that content is explicitly illegal. Likewise, we do not condone or endorse anything our customers may place online. We host many websites that each of us individually may personally degree with, or perhaps even find completely reprehensible, but as a company we recognize each individual’s right to free speech as guaranteed by the 1st amendment to the United States constitution.

As mentioned before, we will certainly remove any content from our servers that violates US law. This includes child pornography, copyrighted material (explicit violations such as DVD/CD rips as well as material whose copyright status is made clear after a formal DMCA complaint), and anything ordered to be taken offline by a court of law whose jurisdiction applies to DreamHost’s location.

- Karl F., Abuse Coordinator

========================

I think it is unacceptable to not include racial bigotry, which usually leads to real or imagined threats in TOS (Terms of Service).

I don’t support racism, but I’m not sure what the problem is with DH’s About page. And I think it’s probably unfair to expect them to police the content of all their sites, though if you take the time to complain to them, I’d be disappointed if they didn’t respond.

The About Us page is a joke to anyone who is not white. http://www.dreamhost.com/aboutus.html
“providing solid web hosting”
“Believe us, there’s plenty of those in the hosting industry already and you probably don’t want to get mixed up with them.”
“We’re looking forward to welcoming you to our family!”

Why would I host with them? So my site about helping others, reducing pollution for future generations and websites dedicated towards peaceful hospice solutions for the elderly can be hosted on the same server with racists preaching hate about blacks, jews, arab and people of mexican heritage?

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/DREAMHOST_ANNOUNCES_GoDreamDaddyHost
[URL deleted by UB: I’m not going to give them a link.]
[URL deleted by UB: I’m not going to give them a link.]

Except as set forth below, Go Daddy may also cancel Your use of the Services, after thirty (30) days, if You are using the Services, as determined by Go Daddy in its sole discretion, in association with spam or morally objectionable activities. Morally objectionable activities will include, but not be limited to: activities designed to defame, embarrass, harm, abuse, threaten, slander or harass third parties; activities prohibited by the laws of the United States and/or foreign territories in which You conduct business; activities designed to encourage unlawful behavior by others, such as hate crimes, terrorism and child pornography; activities that are tortuous, vulgar, obscene, invasive of the privacy of a third party, racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable;

Thanks for your fast reply!

I’m with AN Hosting now, and I’ve been very satisfied.

I read somewhere on you site that you moved from GoDaddy to DreamHost. I’m currently with GoDaddy, and have no major problems, but im not falling on love with them either.

Why did you leave GoDaddy???

Dreamhost is terrible. They are very nice people that work there (and I always had quick customer service responses) but I’d rather have nasty people and a site that works. We’ve been having problems on and off for about three months now. Every time there’s a problem they take care of it— temporarily (usually a server reboot. Though once they moved our site to a new server, that worked for about 2 weeks). Our site is down at least once a week. we have a very very simple site that we rarely make changes to, no bells and whistles. Even if you are just hosting a 5 page informational site, think again.

You’re also right that it’s possible to have vastly different experiences with the same hosting company depending on what server you’re on. The real issue is how a company responds when you have problems.

I still have that Teddy Bear (it’s a cat toy now), but I still shake my head every time I think about my experience with DreamHost. They couldn’t do me the courtesy of giving me a call when I had some problems, but I got flowers a couple days after I flamed them publicly.

There’s a happy ending for everyone, though. I’ve since sent numerous people their way (see below) and made a little pocket change from it. It more than pays for my hosting at AN Hosting, where I’ve been much happier.

Note: If you still want to try DreamHost—and some people swear by them (and some people swear at them)—click here. Use the code FUTUROSITY and you’ll even get a $50 discount! But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Upstart Blogger is hosted by AN Hosting. Host 10 domains, with 49 GB disk space, 999 GB transfer, a free domain for life, Ruby on Rails support, 24/7 phone/email support, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and a 30 day money back guarantee—all for only $6.95 a month!

Things like Dreamhost’s CPU limits tend to piss people off who get burned by it, but they don’t realize those limits are protecting them from abuse by dozens of other users on their same machine. Site5 for instance, doesn’t limit CPU usage, and as a result, one server I’m on is constantly having load issues, and tech support can do nothing about it. Just because you don’t understand why WordPress and a bunch of shitty plugins takes too much CPU doesn’t mean you should be allowed to overload the server for everyone else.

Now I agree that Dreamhost has some support issues from time to time, but I really believe that could happen anywhere. At work we use Hostopia which recently got Netcraft’s highest availability rating. This made me laugh out loud because we’ve been dealing overloaded database issues with them for months and they never get resolved. They run a stripped down Linux installation where even basic utilities are completely unavailable. No top, no uptime, not even ssh or scp. Shell sessions are hard-booted after one hour, so you could be in the middle of tarring an archive or some installation and your process is just kill -9′ed. You’d think with all the restrictions they could keep their servers running well, but they can’t. When there’s problems you can call them on the phone, but it ain’t worth shit if they can’t fix your problem.

I’ve been with Dreamhost 5 years and over that time they’ve been more reliable and made better improvements than any other shared host I’ve tried. If you want to cut the variables out of the equation you need to go dedicated. I have a Rackspace server, and so far I gotta say their support is second to none.

Terri at dreamhost can suck on a toilet bowl brush.

The biggest selling point for me is the amount of technical knowledge that the dreamhost staff seem to have, and the fact that they embrace some really cool technologies (svn, RoR, much more…)