By Yoree Koh and Jack Nicas
Google on Monday said it canceled the website-hosting
registration for the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, hours after
GoDaddy Inc. told the site it needed to find a new host.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., said it canceled Daily
Stormer's registration because the site violated its policies
against inciting violence. A spokesman declined to specify what
content on the site violated the policy.
Daily Stormer for years has posted hateful content criticizing
Jewish and nonwhite people. On Sunday, the site ridiculed Heather
Heyer, the 32-year-old woman who was killed Saturday while
protesting a white nationalist rally, kicking off a string of
web-service companies trying to sever ties or distance themselves
from the site.
Late Sunday evening, GoDaddy said on Twitter it had given Daily
Stormer 24 hours to find a new web host. The company said it
generally doesn't take action on complaints that would involve
censorship of content, but that given the recent events in
Charlottesville, the Daily Stormer article violated its terms of
service by "promoting, encouraging, or otherwise engaging in
violence against any person."
Daily Stormer didn't respond to a request for comment.
Extremist groups increasingly use the internet to spread their
message and gather recruits, forcing tech companies to grapple with
how to handle such activity, trying to maintain a tricky balance of
protecting free speech without hosting hateful content.
Several hours after Google pulled the website registration, a
YouTube spokeswoman said the video site had also terminated Daily
Stormer's YouTube channel because of hate-speech violations.
Facebook Inc. said it removes links to Daily Stormer shared on
Facebook -- unless the caption clearly condemns the content in the
post -- because the site often praises hate crimes. The company
said it relies on users to flag the posts to remove them. Facebook
said it initially allowed an event listing for the Unite the Right
white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., but pulled the
listing shortly before the rally when it became clear the event
could result in violence.
On Monday, Daily Stormer registered its site with Google via an
automated process shortly before 11 a.m. ET. About three hours
later, Google said it had canceled the registration, and that it
may take up to 48 hours to take effect, adding that it isn't the
hosting provider. Without a website registration, a site will
appear offline to visitors. To use its web address
dailystormer.com, the site will now have to find one of the
thousands of accredited companies to register the site.
It isn't clear who now is hosting the Daily Stormer site.
Companies whose web services were used by Daily Stormer distanced
themselves from the site, particularly as they took heat from
social-media users trying to unearth the host.
Toronto-based Tucows Inc. denied ever giving a home to the site.
Michael Goldstein, vice president of marketing at Tucows, said
Daily Stormer used its so-called contact-privacy service, which
blocks a site's domain information to the public.
The site "violated our terms of service and we no longer need to
provide that service to that domain," Mr. Goldstein said.
In a tweet, GoDaddy pointed to San Francisco-based
content-delivery network Cloudflare Inc. as hosting provider.
Cloudflare said it isn't the host, though it appears to provide
services that mask the true host's identity, according to
Whois.com, which allows users to search for website domain
registrations and hosting providers.
"Cloudflare is aware of the concerns that have been raised over
some sites that have used our network," the company said in a
prepared statement.
Cloudflare said it cooperates with law enforcement but declined
to comment on who is hosting the Daily Stormer site, citing company
policy. Its website says the company will provide contact
information for the hosting provider if an abuse report is found to
be legitimate.
The moves by Google and GoDaddy to crack down on the far-right
website come in the wake of violent clashes in Virginia between
white nationalists and counter-protesters, and they could signal
increasing hurdles to maintaining a presence online. The Southern
Poverty Law Center called on GoDaddy to pull technical support from
two other sites.
The online campaign against Daily Stormer caught fire Sunday
evening after Amy Siskind, president of the progressive-activist
group New Agenda, pointed out the Daily Stormer article to hundreds
of thousands of followers on social media.
"People were torn whether we should be giving it the light of
day," Ms. Siskind said. But "there's a certain human boundary that
was crossed."
She sent a tweet and wrote a Facebook post urging GoDaddy to
boot the site, and pushed others to write to the company. GoDaddy's
announcement it was severing ties with Daily Stormer came in a
reply to a tweet from Ms. Siskind.
Ms. Siskind said she doesn't have a long-term plan to get other
extremist websites shut down, but will continue to call for Daily
Stormer to be removed from web-hosting services.
--Ben Kesling and Deepa Seetharaman contributed to this
article.
Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 14, 2017 21:33 ET (01:33 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Feb 2024 to Mar 2024
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2023 to Mar 2024