Tuesday, August 15, 2017


Some have been positive, in favor of the victims. Some have been negative, against the perpetrators. Others have been a mix of positive and negative. Then there are opinions that don’t make a lot of sense. One of the confusing opinions was featured on a website entitled “The Daily Stormer” which is a place that posts oftentimes silly articles sympathetic to extreme alt-right and neo nazi people. Rumor has it that the website is fake and controlled opposition that exists for the sole purpose of making the right look bad. Andrew Anglin, the man behind the website, is the subject of countless “exposure” videos on YouTube that attempt to figure out what his actual purpose is.

To get back on track, there was an article on the website about the young woman who died at the rally, 32 year old Heather Heyer. Very insulting things were said about her. A woman by the name of Amy Siskind caught wind of the article. She took a screenshot of the article and sent that in a tweet to The Daily Stormer’s domain registrar, GoDaddy. She asked her 130,000+ subscribers and anyone else to retweet her tweet if they would like for GoDaddy to remove the website. Within 2 hours, GoDaddy responded that The Daily Stormer had 24 hours to move their domain name to another service. Google responded shortly after that and said that The Daily Stormer would not be able to utilize their domain (and probably hosting if available) services either. Their website has effectively been taken down due to one person’s objection to one article.

Many people on social media have been praising the decision. They either think that TDS is fake or that it’s racist cancer. They fail to ask one million dollar question. Where does this leave the rest of us if this precedent has been set? All it took was one person to get a website shut down because one article hurt their feelings. What happens the next time someone’s feelings get hurt due to an article? Is that enough to remove a website? A person’s website has been touted as the last place of refuge. Especially for content creators who may be demonetized or removed from YouTube for controversial videos. Patreon the same way but not quite to the extent of YouTube. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook have also banned people. A website is seen as impenetrable as long as you’re not doing anything illegal. Is that the case any longer?

