No, even though FR is run on its own servers, it has to be hosted somewhere. Using "whois," you see that FR is hosted by GKG.net. Shutting down FR is as simple as that company saying "You're outta here!"
I hope Mr. Robinson has contingency plans in place to move FR to another hosting company if that happens.
But what if all such companies are run by insane leftists and de-host every site they don't like? This suppression of first amendment speech is really getting worrisome. Whoever would have foreseen the day that the big tech oligarchs would silence and ban the President of the USA?
And it could get far worse...conservative sites could be banned by the DNS registrars.
GKG.NET, INC. was founded in 1993. In late 1994 GKG.NET, INC. entered the Internet business as Global Knowledge Group (GKG) taking immediate advantage of the expanding Internet commerce of the World Wide Web.GKG was designed to provide complete Electronic Business (e-business) and Internet solutions to companies who prefer a single source for all their needs. Between 1994 and 1996 GKG's main thrust was research and development, both on the technical side and the marketing side. By late 1996, only two years after inception, GKG entered the commercial market providing a full portfolio of products and service solutions to organizations such as Texas A&M University, Airtouch, and Cellular One.
By early 1999, GKG achieved a stable base of loyal and satisfied customers in the e-business arena providing total solutions in the web site development, hosting, domain registration and network services.
The company has developed a new and exciting opportunity that will enhance and complete the scope of the company's business. The company was the 7th accredited and 13th operational domain registrar, registering the tld's .com , .net and .org. and now has thousands of customers in hundreds of countries.
Our Mission Statement:
To continue to develop and build GKG into the premier Internet Solutions company that equally values its customers, shareholders and employees by emphasizing excellence in service, corporate integrity, technical expertise and long-term vision as part of our corporate experience.Founders:
Paul Marvin, CEO
Taylor Marvin, CTO
If Jim Robinson was worried about losing his host, this thread would be the first thing to go.
Until this cartel is broken up by Congress or the courts, the future of free speech are browser based forums like this, which are immune to app store blackouts, and foreign country server hosting, which are immune to US communist pressure tactics.
It would be great if platforms like WhatsApp created their own free exchange forum. The big tech app stores would not be able to block it since its use without impacting hundreds of millions of people worldwide. There is no collateral impact to banning Parler.
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/
Odd pricing system but they won’t ban you for your beliefs.
There are others, many offshore; https://hacker10.com/other-computing/list-of-free-speech-and-offshore-hosting-companies/