Neo-Nazi Site 'Daily Stormer' Finally Booted Off GoDaddy and Google for Inciting Charlottesville Violence
The Daily Stormer, a Neo-Nazi site, is without a web domain after publishing an obscene article criticizing Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old victim of the recent Charlottesville riots. Heyer was killed after white nationalist James Alex Fields drove into counter-protest crowds, injuring 19 other people.
The Daily Stormer is run by neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin and is, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the "top hate site in America." Its articles are "dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism." GoDaddy gave the site 24 hours to find another domain after receiving word of their grossly insensitive article on Heyer that used "sexist and obscene language," as USA Today reports. Anglin's article on Heyer disparaged her appearance and made vulgar claims about her life.
A tweet on Monday from GoDaddy confirmed their statement: "We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service." GoDaddy decided to boot the site because the article could have potentially incited further violence.
An attempt to move their site to Google was also shut down, according to registration statements found and posted by Twitter users. Google was quicker to remove the domain because it violates their terms of service. President of the New Agenda, Amy Siskind, was quick to tweet to Google, "@Google The Daily Stormer, the neo-Nazi website, is now registered w you after being kicked off @GoDaddy for their hate. Please remove!" A Google spokesman told the Washington Post, “We are cancelling Daily Stormer’s registration with Google Domains for violating our terms of service."
But the most immediately effective reaction so far is from the hacking group Anonymous. Early on Monday, a post claimed that the site was now under the hacking group's control. Some remain skeptical about the post, with a Twitter account linked to the hacking group warning followers that it couldn't confirm the affiliation: "Warning to our followers: We cannot confirm dailystormer was indeed hacked. Remain cautious. #OpDomesticTerrorism #Anonymous."
Here is a screenshot of the Daily Stormer site taken Monday evening that appears to be from Anonymous:
Perhaps what's most shocking is that GoDaddy has even tolerated The Daily Stormer for this long. GoDaddy has faced controversy over the hate site's previous articles, according to The Daily Beast. Ben Butler, the director of GoDaddy's network abuse, told the site in May, "While we detest the sentiment of this site and the article in question, we support First Amendment rights and, similar to the principles of free speech, that sometimes means allowing such tasteless, ignorant content." It took a violent white supremacist riot in order for GoDaddy to remove the "ignorant content" that is directly tied to violent actions.
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