Hate sites test Internet providers
Pressure mounts on tech companies to curb extremism
SAN FRANCISCO - A rise in domestic hate groups — whose vitriol spilled from online forums to the streets of Charlottesville, Va., during a violent weekend protest by white supremacists — is intensifying pressure on GoDaddy, Twitter, Google and others to put a lid on U.S. extremist sites.
Civil libertarians and religious leaders say Saturday’s deadly Charlottesville protest could be a tipping point for technology services to bow to consumer outrage and boot white nationalist and neo-Nazi sites that violate terms of service.
If that happens, it will be a change slow in coming. Many Internet providers and platforms include policies that allow them to drop users for various reasons, including incitement of violence and hate speech.
But they also have cast themselves as forums for the freewheeling debate that has been a hallmark of the Internet, a role that makes them loathe to police the content their users share.
The eviction of neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer by GoDaddy and then Google from their domain servers comes after months of complaints to GoDaddy about the white supremacist site’s content. In November, The Daily Stormer published a list of more than 50 Twitter users who had ex-
pressed fear about the outcome of the 2016 election, urging its readers to “punish” them with a barrage of tweets that would drive them to suicide.
Late Sunday, GoDaddy said it was ditching the site after it published a story using sexist and obscene language to disparage Heather Heyer, the woman who was killed during a counterprotest after the Charlottesville rally. Twitter user Amy Siskind first tweeted at GoDaddy Sunday night, alerting the company to the article. GoDaddy replied to her tweet, writing at 10:24 p.m. that The Daily Stormer
“In our determination, especially given the tragic events in Charlottesville, Dailystormer.com crossed the line and encouraged and promoted violence,” GoDaddy spokeswoman Karen Tillman says.
“Given this latest (Daily Stormer) article comes on the immediate heels of a violent act, we believe this type of article could incite additional violence,” Till- man says.
According to Whois, which displays domain registration information, The Daily Stormer switched its domain host to Google Monday morning. Three hours later, Google said it violated its terms of service and removed it.
Google, which owns YouTube, also banned The Daily Stormer’s YouTube account “due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy prohibiting hate speech.”
“Content on hate sites is up significantly because they were energized by the presidential campaign — it took Charlottesville to bring the public’s attention to them,” says Keegan Hankes, an analyst at Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning group founded to combat racist organizations in the U.S.
“These guys are early adopters of technology and incredibly skilled at spreading their messages online,” Hankes says.
The Daily Stormer derives its name from Der Stürmer, a newspaper that published Nazi propa- ganda. Other web services used by the site — which boasts a “Troll Army” of readers to target journalists and a Jewish woman running for a California congressional seat — were pressured to cut ties with the site.
The Daily Stormer’s email provider, Zoho, said in a tweet it would no longer let the site use its services “in response to inquiries.”
Cloudflare, a network that provides performance and security services used by The Daily Stormer said it is “aware of the concerns” and it finds content on some of these sites “repugnant” but did not say it would stop providing services to the site.
Tech companies say they want to allow the expression of different views while avoiding being a tool for physical harm, a balance that’s made for patchy responses to charges they harbor and enable abuse and violence.
They’ve often exerted stricter enforcement of terms of service after external pressure. Last year, Twitter purged several highprofile Twitter accounts connect- ed to the alt-right on the same day it said it was cracking down on hate speech. Among those banned was white nationalist Richard Spencer. A month later, Twitter reinstated his verified account, claiming the suspension was because he managed multiple accounts with overlapping uses.
This year Twitter took several steps to curb abuse as CEO Jack Dorsey and other execs admitted harassment on the platform had gone too far.
Its policy forbids conduct that “promote(s) violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.”
Earlier this month, YouTube said it was acting more quickly to remove videos with content tied to terrorism or extremism after companies started pulling ads they found attached to ISIS and other videos. It also said it would crack down on videos considered hate speech.