Rackspace has not suspended any of its customers
San Antonio cloud-computing company Rackspace Technology Inc. has not shut down any websites with content that supported the violence at the Capitol last week or are planning additional attacks.
The company said its customers adhere to its “acceptable use” policy.
Several tech companies have blocked President Donald Trump from social media as well declining service to the Parler social media platform for violating terms of service agreements. Amazon removed Parler from its web hosting services on Sunday.
Publicly traded Rackspace has a “strategic collaboration agreement” with Amazon Web Services, but according to Rackspace spokewoman Natalie Silva, Parler is not a customer.
Google called Parler an “ongoing and urgent public safety threat.”
Trump supporters and civil liberties advocates see the cyber “blockade” as a free-speech issue.
Rackspace “requires that our customers adhere to our Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits customers engaging in, fostering, soliciting or promoting illegal, abusive or irresponsible behavior,” Silva said. “We can confirm there have not been any suspensions or terminations related to the offensive content section of our Acceptable Use Policy in the past several months.”
She did not address whether the company hosts or provides services to other platforms that could publish content that violates its acceptable use policy, or if Rackspace is taking any action against such sites.
Multiple Twitter users have asked Rackspace about its apparent hosting of Rileysfarm.com after the owner, James Patrick Riley of California, posted images and messages about participating in the Capitol riot.
Rackspace hasn’t responded to
these Tweets, and Silva declined to comment on this specific case, citing “strict confidentiality clauses.”
She added: “Rackspace Technology reviews and investigates all potential violations of our Acceptable Use Policy and strictly enforces our agreements.”
With Parler unavailable, many people are turning to other sites such as Telegram, Gab, Mewe, Rumble, Dlive or American Media Periscope.
According to Silva, Rackspace reviewed the public Domain Name System records for these websites and confirmed it does not host any of those sites or social media apps.
“Rackspace is probably not going to have too much in the area of questionable content, because I
think they’re different from, say, public cloud services that are pretty obviously widespread, very cost-effective and feature rich platforms,” said Philbert Shih, managing director of Toronto-based Structure Research, a consulting firm that analyzes the internet infrastructure market. “Rackspace is definitely more targeted in the terms of the customers they serve. … They serve less on the content side and less social media.”
Rackspace helps customers manage multiple cloud-computing networks simultaneously to reduce downtime and provide more storage and computing power.
According to Shih, organizations spreading conspiracy theories and dangerous rhetoric likely won’t pay the premiums that Rackspace charges.
“Frankly, I think (these groups) are going to have a tough time finding a home,” he said. “It would probably have to dig far and deep
or create something that’s more customized … some more customized infrastructure.”
They’ll likely end up on obscure service providers in foreign countries with lighter regulations or on mass public providers like Amazon Web Services or Azure where it might take the companies time to determine if the new users are violating policies, Shih said.
He said that the crackdowns are a product of the political environment and service providers trying to get away from content deemed toxic — and bad for business.
“I’m a little bit of a skeptic in that sense,” he said. “I don’t think this is altruism or anything. I think it’s business.”
The Communications Decency Act protects internet service providers from legal ramifications of both content that third parties post online and punitive actions ISPS take against customers, according to Max Kilger, director of
the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Data Analytics Program.
“For the most part, (courts have) upheld the Communications Decency Act and protected the internet service providers,” he said.
Kilger said social media posts will help law enforcement catch people who broke the law during the rioting.
“A lot of people wanted to document ‘I’m in the Capitol building, we’re taking back our government and so on and so forth,’ and then posting that information on social media services,” he said. “That was probably not a really very smart idea.”
One problem with people migrating to alternative sites is conversations that were occurring in the open are now more hidden, Kilger said.
“There’s costs and benefits,” he said. “The benefit is, I guess, to the more general population is not
having these ideas spread, but the cost, of course, is basically you’re driving these individuals to more difficult to monitor services such as Telegraph, where it’s encrypted and it’s much more difficult to intercept and analyze what’s going on.”
Google, AWS and other service providers are private companies, and they can decide to host certain accounts, he said.
“They’re also able to say, ‘I am not sure I really liked a bad post that suggested violence, and I’m going to take it down and I’m going to close your account,’” Kilger said. “And it’s perfectly legal to do that.”