Charlottesville attack puts a spotlight on online hate

On August 11th and 12th, the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally marked a turning point in modern American politics, where far-right groups felt empowered to gather and openly support white supremacy. The event ended with the alleged murder of protester Heather Heyer.

The rally also marked a turning point for the internet. A central rallying point for the white nationalist “alt-right,” the Daily Stormer website was scrubbed from multiple platforms after mocking Heyer’s death. In quick succession, tech companies that long preserved a reputation for neutrality became quick to ban and condemn hate groups, even ones that had operated openly through their services for years.

The neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer briefly returned to the web today, using a new URL and a string of new hosts to dodge the bans that took it off the internet last week. The site reappeared this morning at the address Punishedstormer.com, apparently using Dreamhost as both a host and DNS provider.

Shortly after the new site became public, Anonymous groups began a denial-of-service attack against it, targeting the Dreamhost DNS infrastructure that makes the site accessible to the rest of the web. The result was nearly two hours of intermittent downtime for the countless sites using Dreamhost’s DNS infrastructure. Dreamhost announced the problems had been just before 3:30pm ET.

After the August 12th hate rally in Charlottesville, online platforms that have long tolerated or ignored white supremacists are very publicly kicking them off. The crackdown spans a broad range of sites and apps, some of which are household names, like Uber, Facebook, and Spotify. But some of the most notable companies to purge their ranks are those we don’t often consider: the web hosts, domain registrars, and other services that you need to put a website on the internet. Over the past week, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, and Google — to name a few — have been playing hot potato with the major neo-Nazi news site Daily Stormer, taking it offline several times as it’s moved around the internet.

After being booted from Namecheap over the weekend, the Daily Stormer’s status remains uncertain. But the white nationalist alt-right movement has experience running a “shadow economy” of sympathetic platforms, including crowdfunding sites like Rootbocks and social networks like Gab. Now, some have started discussing alternatives for basic web services too. Entrepreneur Pax Dickinson, a former Business Insider CTO who recently founded far-right crowdfunding site CounterFund, called for a “full-blown Amazon-style infrastructure company” amid the bans. But running a series of independent services that are immune to outside political pressure is far harder and less rewarding than replacing GoFundMe or Twitter. In 2017, is it possible to build what is essentially a functioning, effective, alternative internet?

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an e-mail to company employees, stating his disagreement with President Donald Trump’s comments concerning the violence in Charlottesville. He indicated that Apple will make a $2 million donation to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, and said that users would soon be able to donate directly to the SPLC through iTunes. That feature has just gone live.

A new page appears on the iTunes desktop and mobile storefronts, and can be found under the New Music, Hot Tracks, and Recent Releases sections. Users can donate in $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, and $200 increments.

Neo-nazi news site Daily Stormer will need to find another host after Namecheap announced on Sunday that it will not host the site. The hate site was registered with the company on Friday after being kicked off of GoDaddy, Google Domains, and a Russian registrar earlier this week before being shut down by each.

On Friday, the company’s Twitter account began replying to users about the registration, saying its legal and abuse department was “already looking into it.”

Crowdfunding platform GoFundMe says it has raised more than $800,000 for the victims of violence stemming from the Charlottesville, Virginia rally this past weekend, according to The Washington Post. The money has been raised for the medical expenses of counter-protestors who were injured by white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups who were marching in the “Unite the Right” event dedicated to preserving a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The rally resulted in the death of one woman, Heather Heyer, and injuries to dozens of other counter-protestors.

One victim, 46-year-old Tyler Magill, suffered a stroke as a result of a physical attack from a white nationalist participate and is expected to need speech therapy and other forms of physical rehabilitation. GoFundMe says more than 2,600 donors contributed $100,000 to Magill’s campaign in just a single day. “We’re privileged to see how generous the GoFundMe community is each and every day,” GoFundMe CEO Rob Solomon told The Washington Post. “When tragedy strikes, they are ready to open their hearts — and their wallets — to people in need.”

Uber sent a message to drivers and company employees earlier today condemning the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia and pledging to ban white supremacists and other members of hate groups from its platform. “There is simply no place for this type of bigotry, discrimination, and hate,” Regional General Manager Meghan Verena Joyce wrote in a message that was posted publicly on Twitter by New York Times journalist Mike Isaac.

The message goes on to say that Uber will “act swiftly and decisively to uphold our Community Guidelines, including our policy against discrimination of any kind — that includes banning people from the app.” This is Uber’s first official message on the violence perpetuated by white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups in Charlottesville. It is not, however, the company’s first instance of action against those affiliated with the “Unite the Rally” event.

In recent days, web services and platforms have rushed to drop any clients tied to hate groups or other extremists, hoping to cut any apparent links to the white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Apple Pay and PayPal have changed policies to stop payments to white nationalist groups, Facebook has stepped up anti-violence enforcement, and the notorious neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer has been kicked off the internet entirely, unable to secure a registrar.

At the same time, the rush to clean up platforms has raised new questions about the appropriate tactics for censoring content — and answers have been hard to find. Even where companies have taken aggressive steps, the response has often been thrown together, ignoring entire categories of hate groups. Efforts have been dogged by conflicting policies or inconsistent enforcement, leaving large swaths of white nationalist content untouched.

Much like politicians, tech company CEOs are nowadays expected to take a position on the big social issues facing their country, and Apple boss Tim Cook has been the latest to join the fray with an email sent to all global employees of the company on Wednesday night, which was obtained by Recode. In the email, Cook provides a strong response to the violence on display in Charlottesville over the weekend, and he goes on to make an unequivocal call about who was in the wrong.

“I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights,” writes Cook. Like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Cook doesn’t explicitly address another issue that arose before Charlottesville — namely the memo that was circulated inside Google suggesting biological differences explain why there are more men than women in tech — but he seems to be talking about it in the same breath as he denounced the Nazis of Charlottesville. He underscores equal treatment of all people as fundamental to his own morality and that of Apple, which is expressed through its products and actions.

Apple has disabled its payments system on websites that sell white supremacist and Nazi-themed merchandise, according to a report from BuzzFeed News. The move, which follows the violent white nationalist attacks in Charlottesville, Virginia this past weekend that left one counter-protestor dead, means three websites that peddle in “White Pride” t-shirts and accessories with Nazi logos can no longer process payments through Apple Pay.

The websites, including AmericanVikings.com and VinlandClothing.com (the third site, called Behold Barbarity, has already gone offline), were found to be in violation of Apple’s “acceptable use guidelines.” Those rules prohibit use of Apple Pay in a way that promotes “hate, violence, or intolerance based on race, age, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.” The owner of AmericanVikings, a “pro-white” man named Brien James, told BuzzFeed he was unaware of the Apple Pay integration in the first place and didn’t seem too upset with the decision.

Squarespace says it will begin dropping some websites from its service, apparently following in the footsteps of several tech companies that have distanced themselves from organizations that produce racist and white supremacist content.

“In light of recent events, we have made the decision to remove a group of sites from our platform,” a Squarespace spokesperson told The Verge. “We have given the site owners 48 hours’ notice.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke his silence today regarding the violent attacks in Charlottesville, VA this past weekend and the ongoing conversation around hosting hate groups online. In a message posted on Facebook, Zuckerberg said the company is “watching the situation closely and will take down threats of physical harm,” noting that more neo-Nazi and white supremacist rallies are planned. “We won’t always be perfect, but you have my commitment that we’ll keep working to make Facebook a place where everyone can feel safe,” Zuckerberg wrote. Later on, in a more strongly worded tone, Zuckerberg said, “It’s a disgrace that we still need to say that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are wrong — as if this is somehow not obvious.”

Facebook has always had policies against hate speech and violent threats, but it has sometimes been slow to remove posts that include them. This latest pledge indicates the company is taking criticisms about how quickly it responds to reports of hate speech and threats of violence more seriously. Zuckerberg’s message, which came four days after the “Unite the Right” that rally left counter-protestor Heather Heyes dead and many others injured, arrived later than some other prominent chief executives. The rallies drew more calls for unity from the corporate world after a series of perplexing remarks blaming “both sides” from President Trump, in a move that ultimately emboldened white supremacists.

This afternoon, the Russian relaunch of Daily Stormer disappeared, just as the original site disappeared on Tuesday. With that disappearance, the web’s most notorious neo-Nazi website was no longer available anywhere on the conventional web.

The disappearance came after a decision made at CloudFlare, a content distribution network that Stormer has long used as protection from denial-of-service attacks.

Two White House advisory councils that once included tech leaders like Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick have dissolved, after several members resigned over President Donald Trump’s weak condemnation of white supremacists. A member of the Strategic and Policy Forum told CNBC that it wanted to make a “more significant impact” by disbanding the entire group: “It makes a central point that it’s not going to go forward. It’s done.” Soon after, Trump took credit for shutting down both that group and a separate Manufacturing Council, “rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople.”

The councils’ members came from a range of industries, including several major Silicon Valley companies. Besides Musk and Kalanick, executives from Intel, IBM, and Dell had joined. It’s been controversial from the start — Musk and Kalanick both left months ago — but a major exodus started this week, after Trump issued a vague statement blaming “many sides” for violence at a white supremacist rally that left one woman dead. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich resigned on Monday, saying that politics had “sidelined the important mission of rebuilding America’s manufacturing base.”

A nine-city protest against Google for firing engineer James Damore is being called off after last weekend’s white supremacist rally. “March on Google” organizer Jack Posobiec pushed the event back by “a few weeks” this morning, due to what he called “credible alt-left terrorist threats” and “malicious and false statements” connecting the march with far-right politics.

The March on Google was announced on August 9th, shortly after Google fired Damore for circulating an anti-diversity treatise. But it’s been derailed by the “Unite the Right” rally that took place just a few days later, where a white supremacist allegedly rammed his car through a crowd of protesters, killing one. Organizers have scrambled to disassociate themselves with the event, explicitly promising that it’s nonviolent and unrelated to the white nationalist “alt-right,” but they’ve had trouble avoiding the connection, since Posobiec himself is a former alt-right supporter known for pushing far-right conspiracy theories like Pizzagate. In turn, the March on Google organizers argue that this association puts them in danger of violent retaliation from the “alt-left,” a term Donald Trump used yesterday to condemn anti-racist counter-protesters.

Just one day after the site dropped off the web, the Daily Stormer has reappeared using a Russian domain name. The site became unreachable yesterday after GoDaddy, Google, and a string of other companies dropped the site as a client, leaving it without a registrar. Facebook also took aggressive action against the site, deleting shared versions of an article celebrating the killing of a protestor in Charlottesville.

Still, those efforts don’t seem to have been enough to keep the Daily Stormer off the web entirely. The site reappeared this morning at DailyStormer.ru, with a wildly different design and a significant number of posts apparently missing. Shortly after the takedown, a replica of the site was also set up as a Tor Hidden Service, although that address now points users back to the .ru domain.

Former President Barack Obama’s response to this week’s violence in Charlottesville has become the most liked tweet ever. The tweet, posted late Saturday, was the first in a series of three quoting former South African President Nelson Mandela.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion...” the tweet reads, under a picture of Obama smiling at four children.

This morning, the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer dropped off the internet, the result of sustained campaigning by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups. In the wake of a killing and widespread violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, web services company GoDaddy announced it was dropping the Daily Stormer as a client, leaving the site without a registrar. After a brief stay at Google, the site dropped off the web entirely. As of press time, requests to dailystormer.com are simply timing out, although a replica site has already been established as a Tor Hidden Service.

It’s a quick end to one of the most notorious neo-Nazi sites on the web, and comes as part of a larger push against hate groups across the internet. Yesterday, the chat app Discord announced it was banning an array of alt-right-affiliated channels, and GoFundMe has already begun banning donations in support of an accused murderer in Charlottesville. For years, that kind of ban has been held back by concern over content neutrality and free speech principles, but in the aftermath of public violence by explicitly white supremacist groups, those concerns have less sway than ever before. The result is newfound scrutiny among platforms and service providers, and new questions about what that scrutiny will mean outside of hate groups.

GoFundMe says it’s banning fundraising efforts on behalf of the man who allegedly drove his car into protesters at the recent Charlottesville white supremacist rally. GoFundMe communications director Bobby Whithorne tells Reuters that the platform has removed several fundraising campaigns for James Fields, who is accused of killing anti-racist protester Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. “Those campaigns did not raise any money and they were immediately removed,” he says. Whithorne says that fewer than 10 campaigns had been created so far, and any future efforts will also be shut down, on the grounds of violating GoFundMe’s rules against promoting hate speech and violence.

This ban is part of a crackdown on white supremacist content by tech companies, including Google, GoDaddy, Airbnb, and Facebook. It’s also part of GoFundMe’s ongoing attempt to manage unsavory campaigns for people accused of racist crimes. The platform at one point defended a fundraiser for Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, but it later explicitly banned “campaigns in defense of formal charges or claims of heinous crimes,” after a police union used it to raise money for the officers accused of killing Freddie Gray in Baltimore. However, far-right-friendly crowdfunding site Rootbocks currently hosts at least two campaigns related to the Saturday rally, including a general legal defense fund.

Prominent neo-Nazi news site the Daily Stormer has apparently moved to the dark web after being denied domain registration from Google and GoDaddy. The site’s status page tweeted a link to the new site, which can only be accessed through the anonymizing service Tor. (Neo-Nazi troll Andrew “weev” Auernheimer, who is banned from Twitter, also posted the link on Gab.ai.) As Motherboard noted this morning, this means that it no longer has to rely on a major domain registrar, protecting it from a rare online crackdown on white supremacism.

The Stormer’s original registrar, GoDaddy, banned the site yesterday, after it posted an article celebrating the alleged murder of protester Heather Heyer during this weekend’s white supremacist rally. After a plausibly fabricated takeover by hacking collective Anonymous, it then moved briefly to Google Domains, before being kicked off both Domains and YouTube for unspecified terms-of-service violations.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has emailed his leadership team with a memo that references the past week’s events and the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. In a email obtained by Quartz, Nadella says the tragedy at Charlottesville — where a 32-year-old woman was killed after a car rammed into anti-white supremacist protesters — was “horrific.”

“It is an especially important time to continue to be connected with people, and listen and learn from each other’s experiences,” says Nadella, in the memo that references the events of “this past week.” Those events include the firing of former Google employee James Damore, after the engineer published a 10-page “manifesto” condemning Google’s diversity efforts and claiming men are biologically more predisposed to working in the tech industry than women. That event triggered Google CEO Sundar Pichai to send his own memo to Google employees last week.

A blog post attacking a victim of white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, VA over the weekend was shared more than 65,000 times on Facebook — but those posts are disappearing. The company said today that links to the post on the Daily Stormer website violated its community standards and would be removed automatically unless the post included a caption condemning the article or the publication, a haven for Nazis and white supremacists.

The blog post offered a series of personal attacks against Heather Heyer, who died Saturday after she was struck by a car while protesting a gathering of white supremacists. The driver, James Alex Fields Jr., is being held on charges including second-degree murder; 19 other people were injured in the attack.

Discord, a fast-growing free chat service popular among gamers, said today that it had shut down “a number of accounts” following violence instigated by white supremacists over the weekend. The service, which lets users chat with voice and text, was being used by proponents of Nazi ideology both before and after the attacks in Charlottesville, Virginia. “We will continue to take action against Nazi ideology, and all forms of hate,” the company said in a tweet.

Discord declined to state how many servers had been affected, but said it included a mix of old accounts and accounts that were created over the weekend. Among the affected servers was one used by AltRight.com, a white nationalist news site. The site’s homepage includes a prominent link to a Discord chat which is now broken.

Just hours after being dropped by GoDaddy, prominent white nationalist publication The Daily Stormer attempted to find a home at Google. As of press time, the site’s registration info pointed to domains.google.com, indicating the web giant had taken over services as registrar.

Shortly after the switch was noticed, Google announced plans to drop the site. “We are cancelling Daily Stormer’s registration with Google Domains for violating our terms of service,” the company said in a statement. Later in the day, Google also banned The Daily Stormer from YouTube, according to Bloomberg.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich is the latest chief executive to step down from President Donald Trump’s jobs advisory board, and the first among the remaining tech industry leaders to do so following the attacks perpetuated by white supremacists and affiliated groups during a Charlottesville, Virginia rally this past weekend.

“I resigned to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues, including the serious need to address the decline of American manufacturing,” Krzanich wrote in a note posted to Intel’s policy blog this evening. “Politics and political agendas have sidelined the important mission of rebuilding America’s manufacturing base.”