6 ms·

Another neo-Nazi site, Stormfront, is shut down

51 points by featherverse 9y ago

to_bpr 9y ago
I've no interest in, or support for, Stormfront, its members or its message but I absolutely do not support this and other recent actions from members of our industry. The constant censorship and de-platforming is one thing, the support from otherwise intelligent and rational people (such as those on HN) for these actions is another, and vastly more worrying, thing entirely. It's unfortunate to see society rapidly devolving to a far more basic, ignorance driven tribal culture driven by identity politics. Time to go down to the Winchester, have a pint and wait for this all to blow over from a safe distance.
- 0x8BADF00D 9y ago
  https://i.stack.imgur.com/5MaQm.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/5MaQm.png Web 2.0 will become a stale walled garden with increasingly throttled traffic. OTOH, Web 3.0 will flourish.
0x8BADF00D 9y ago
Mixed feelings about this. It sets a bad precedent IMO, but the positive aspect is Web 2.0 will soon be dead. Bring on Web 3.0, a decentralized, censorship-resistant platform.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  It would be tragic if, as the rest of society has ignored the issue for years, privacy tech gets its next real foothold with hate groups. It would be far more tragic if the general public started associating privacy tech with hate groups, if using Tor became akin to wearing a pointed white hood.
utternerd 9y ago
If this stands as-is, it could set a precedent enabling registrars to hijack domains, which is frightening. Netsol absolutely has the right to no longer provide them DNS and/or registration, but they cannot simply place the domain on hold indefinitely due to their own capriciousness. How is it acceptable to let a corporation arbitrarily decide, after taking your money, that they no longer wish to provide you with that service AND block your ability to use what you paid for?
codezero 9y ago
I lost a domain I owned for 17 years because I was unemployed when renewal came up and missed the email. My sympathies for storefront are not strong. Domains are no more concrete than a street address you don't own it. The sooner you realize this the better. If you have a better system, present it. Registrars could give a fuck about you. You are a monetary item. If you don't produce they will find a way to make your domain produce.
featherverse 9y ago
I am no fan of stormfront.org or any other racist organization, but this is not acceptable. When a person registers a domain name, they become the owners of that domain name. It does not belong to the registrar they hired to procure it, and they are not "leasing" the name from the registrar. A lease would suggest that the registrar owned the domain name prior to registration, which is not the case. And if you extrapolate, it suggests that some entity owns all unclaimed domain names de-facto, which is also not the case. When you purchase a domain name, that does not award the registrar the status of "Actual Owner" of that domain. They are providing a technical service, nothing more. ICANN should probably get involved and punish Network Solutions for this action. Network Solutions might be within their rights to choose to no longer 'host' the domain name themselves, but in that case they must be obligated to arrange for a transfer to a different registrar. What they are not allowed to do is simply steal the domain name from it's actual owner because they disagree with the content of the owner's website, thus preventing a transfer. It is important that we do not allow corporations to steal control or property from the open internet by using these politically charged circumstances as their theater of operation.
- steanne 9y ago
  if they became the owners, they wouldn't have to re-up every period of time.
  - jackfraser 9y ago
    You own the name; the service of actually pointing that name to some nameservers, and maintaining secure control over it, is what you're paying for. I could see a registrar telling you they don't want to do business with you any more; they should have to give you some time to transfer it out. However, it's still a dangerous precedent that people on all sides of the political spectrum would do well to heed as a warning of censorship to come.
    - jakelazaroff 9y ago
      > You own the name; the service of actually pointing that name to some nameservers, and maintaining secure control over it, is what you're paying for. If that were the case, letting it expire would result in it just being dead rather than available for others to register.
olliej 9y ago
Ugh, I don’t have a problem with saying that you no longer want to broadcast details, but I don’t think you should get to park. I say this with a wife that they actively advocate murdering (it’s weird that everyone focuses just on the white supremacy and not the literal “we must kill the Jews” horror). So as much as I hate them and all those people that wish that the USA (and England, etc) lost ww2 I still don’t think you get to take over their domain.
- aiyodev 9y ago
  That's an important observation. If people were free to read their website, it wouldn't be easy to forget how repugnant they are. People are starting to forget the past because it's being censored. And when we forget the past, we repeat it.
  - heartbreak 9y ago
    Stormfront helped organize and promote an event in Charlottesville, Virginia that saw a man they radicalized use his car as a weapon injuring 35 people and killing Heather Heyer. Let’s play the video of that, juxtaposed with their editor’s comments supporting it, on loop at their newly parked domain. That accomplishes the goal of demonstrating how repugnant their ideas are without a company having to give them a platform to radicalize more people.
    - patrickg_zill 9y ago
      Fields, the driver, is Jewish I thought? Where are you going to stop... will you turn off all the Berkeley Antifa domains also (whatever they are), since they directly radicalized Eric Clanton and his 7 assaults with a deadly weapon in 1 day, four of which he is currently charged with? Or is 4 counts of assault with a deadly weapon not enough, and the bar should be set at say, 10? Or is only murder, justification? What if Fields pleads to criminal negligence causing death, a lesser charge - will you give stormfront back their domain?
      - Buge 9y ago
DINKDINK 9y ago
The problems in these people's lives, that caused them to turn to hate and aggression, will not be solved attempting to excommunicate them. In fact, I suspect it will exacerbate them.
- markdown 9y ago
  I disagree. Having a place to go where likeminded people encourage you to do bad shit isn't a good thing. Stormfront was an echo-chamber of hate that normalised their members evil thoughts and actions.
  - flukus 9y ago
    If you think it's an echo chamber now then wait until they have their own video streaming sites, twitter clones, etc. Then wait for people who are conservatives, alt-righters, or anyone else that's no longer PC enough to start sharing these spaces because they've been chased off mainstream sites. It's the best recruitment tool stormfront could hope for.
    - markdown 9y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is. Stormfront was their home base. > Then wait for people who are conservatives, alt-righters, or anyone else that's no longer PC enough to start sharing these spaces because they've been chased off mainstream sites. That's what just happened. They were chased off all mainstream sites and could only spew their hatred on SF. Then that got taken away from them.
      - pandaman 9y ago
        Stormfront was somebody's home base but not everyone's or even significant fraction of so-called "alt-right". In terms you hopefully understand it is as same as saying slashdot is the home base of "computer geeks".
    - pandaman 9y ago
      One could say, that shutting down containment sites will be extremely painful.
gok 9y ago
Sounds about right. Registrars have been taking down jihadist forums for a very long time merely for discussing violence; white nationalists must have realized they were living on borrowed time. The article makes it sound like the Southern Poverty Law Center's findings were key in Network Solutions' decision. I wonder if the same will apply to other groups the SPLC tracks as hate groups. The Nation of Islam's domain remains with Network Solutions.
userbinator 9y ago
I've always considered extremists as "canaries" --- you may not agree with any of their views, but their existence serves as a "buffer" of sorts, to show where the current boundaries are. Thus, when they disappear, what is next considered extremist will gradually edge closer to normalcy. In denouncing racism and other forms of extremism, we have to be careful not to turn society into a heavily normalised monoculture that, ironically, many of these extremist groups are themselves proponents of.
- Frondo 9y ago
  Sorry, but this is nonsense. Eliminating racism doesn't turn society into a monoculture--it permits lots of different cultures to coexist without threat of violence. The world would be better off in every way without racism (except for those who directly benefit from racism--but fuck those guys.)
  - sigstoat 9y ago
    taking away their domain names doesn't eliminate racism. all those stormfront folks are just as racist as they were yesterday. and now it is harder to keep an eye on them.
  - Buge 9y ago
    Yes, absolutely we should try to eliminate racism and society would be better off in every way. But there are many methods to eliminate racism. Do we want to persecute them and turn them into martyrs? Or do we want to educate them and change their minds?
  - jstanley 9y ago
    Yes, it would, but the way to get rid of racism isn't to take down the websites of racists. OP is right, racist websites can be viewed a lot like a canary in a coalmine. That this canary has been killed implies the air might be getting unsafe to breathe.
- featherverse 9y ago
  > I've always considered extremists as "canaries" --- you may not agree with any of their views, but their existence serves as a "buffer" of sorts This is a really great analogy, it also shows when big brother is starting to over-reach it's authority.
lsmarigo 9y ago
This is encouraging and a step in the right direction. We've let the internet become the a terrifying hate indoctrination tool and this is just the tip of the iceberg. It took a person driving through a crowd of protesters to wake people up. Racist thoughts are common as a function of biology, in regular society we have checks against it growing to insidious levels. Online it's been open season for the hate groups to take advantage of modern marketing tactics to recruit and spread hate with alarming efficiency leading to violence.
jstanley 9y ago
I'm not sure why this article has been flagged. I hope it's not an attempt to censor information about censorship.
defkev 9y ago
Using the moral high ground to justify intellectual censorship...
LyndsySimon 9y ago
Are there any existing registrars out there that have a policy of non-intervention on the basis of legal content?
featherverse 9y ago
I question the reasoning for changing the 'title' of this submission. The article title which is what it was altered to match, is vague. The actual meat of the story is the action that Network Solutions took. The heading now is unclear, who shut it down? Was it the host? The registrar? How does changing the title from a detailed summary to something vague and politically charged benefit the HN community or the dissemination of worthwhile information. The original title was, approximately, "Network Solutions disables and parks the stormfront.org domain".

51 points by featherverse 9y ago

I've no interest in, or support for, Stormfront, its members or its message but I absolutely do not support this and other recent actions from members of our industry. The constant censorship and de-platforming is one thing, the support from otherwise intelligent and rational people (such as those on HN) for these actions is another, and vastly more worrying, thing entirely. It's unfortunate to see society rapidly devolving to a far more basic, ignorance driven tribal culture driven by identity politics. Time to go down to the Winchester, have a pint and wait for this all to blow over from a safe distance.

0x8BADF00D 9y ago
https://i.stack.imgur.com/5MaQm.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/5MaQm.png Web 2.0 will become a stale walled garden with increasingly throttled traffic. OTOH, Web 3.0 will flourish.

0x8BADF00D 9y ago

Mixed feelings about this. It sets a bad precedent IMO, but the positive aspect is Web 2.0 will soon be dead. Bring on Web 3.0, a decentralized, censorship-resistant platform.

forapurpose 9y ago
It would be tragic if, as the rest of society has ignored the issue for years, privacy tech gets its next real foothold with hate groups. It would be far more tragic if the general public started associating privacy tech with hate groups, if using Tor became akin to wearing a pointed white hood.

utternerd 9y ago

If this stands as-is, it could set a precedent enabling registrars to hijack domains, which is frightening. Netsol absolutely has the right to no longer provide them DNS and/or registration, but they cannot simply place the domain on hold indefinitely due to their own capriciousness. How is it acceptable to let a corporation arbitrarily decide, after taking your money, that they no longer wish to provide you with that service AND block your ability to use what you paid for?

codezero 9y ago

I lost a domain I owned for 17 years because I was unemployed when renewal came up and missed the email. My sympathies for storefront are not strong. Domains are no more concrete than a street address you don't own it. The sooner you realize this the better. If you have a better system, present it. Registrars could give a fuck about you. You are a monetary item. If you don't produce they will find a way to make your domain produce.

featherverse 9y ago

I am no fan of stormfront.org or any other racist organization, but this is not acceptable. When a person registers a domain name, they become the owners of that domain name. It does not belong to the registrar they hired to procure it, and they are not "leasing" the name from the registrar. A lease would suggest that the registrar owned the domain name prior to registration, which is not the case. And if you extrapolate, it suggests that some entity owns all unclaimed domain names de-facto, which is also not the case. When you purchase a domain name, that does not award the registrar the status of "Actual Owner" of that domain. They are providing a technical service, nothing more. ICANN should probably get involved and punish Network Solutions for this action. Network Solutions might be within their rights to choose to no longer 'host' the domain name themselves, but in that case they must be obligated to arrange for a transfer to a different registrar. What they are not allowed to do is simply steal the domain name from it's actual owner because they disagree with the content of the owner's website, thus preventing a transfer. It is important that we do not allow corporations to steal control or property from the open internet by using these politically charged circumstances as their theater of operation.

steanne 9y ago
if they became the owners, they wouldn't have to re-up every period of time.
- jackfraser 9y ago
  You own the name; the service of actually pointing that name to some nameservers, and maintaining secure control over it, is what you're paying for. I could see a registrar telling you they don't want to do business with you any more; they should have to give you some time to transfer it out. However, it's still a dangerous precedent that people on all sides of the political spectrum would do well to heed as a warning of censorship to come.
  - jakelazaroff 9y ago
    > You own the name; the service of actually pointing that name to some nameservers, and maintaining secure control over it, is what you're paying for. If that were the case, letting it expire would result in it just being dead rather than available for others to register.

olliej 9y ago

Ugh, I don’t have a problem with saying that you no longer want to broadcast details, but I don’t think you should get to park. I say this with a wife that they actively advocate murdering (it’s weird that everyone focuses just on the white supremacy and not the literal “we must kill the Jews” horror). So as much as I hate them and all those people that wish that the USA (and England, etc) lost ww2 I still don’t think you get to take over their domain.

aiyodev 9y ago
That's an important observation. If people were free to read their website, it wouldn't be easy to forget how repugnant they are. People are starting to forget the past because it's being censored. And when we forget the past, we repeat it.
- heartbreak 9y ago
  Stormfront helped organize and promote an event in Charlottesville, Virginia that saw a man they radicalized use his car as a weapon injuring 35 people and killing Heather Heyer. Let’s play the video of that, juxtaposed with their editor’s comments supporting it, on loop at their newly parked domain. That accomplishes the goal of demonstrating how repugnant their ideas are without a company having to give them a platform to radicalize more people.
  - patrickg_zill 9y ago
    Fields, the driver, is Jewish I thought? Where are you going to stop... will you turn off all the Berkeley Antifa domains also (whatever they are), since they directly radicalized Eric Clanton and his 7 assaults with a deadly weapon in 1 day, four of which he is currently charged with? Or is 4 counts of assault with a deadly weapon not enough, and the bar should be set at say, 10? Or is only murder, justification? What if Fields pleads to criminal negligence causing death, a lesser charge - will you give stormfront back their domain?
    - Buge 9y ago

DINKDINK 9y ago

The problems in these people's lives, that caused them to turn to hate and aggression, will not be solved attempting to excommunicate them. In fact, I suspect it will exacerbate them.

markdown 9y ago
I disagree. Having a place to go where likeminded people encourage you to do bad shit isn't a good thing. Stormfront was an echo-chamber of hate that normalised their members evil thoughts and actions.
- flukus 9y ago
  If you think it's an echo chamber now then wait until they have their own video streaming sites, twitter clones, etc. Then wait for people who are conservatives, alt-righters, or anyone else that's no longer PC enough to start sharing these spaces because they've been chased off mainstream sites. It's the best recruitment tool stormfront could hope for.
  - markdown 9y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is. Stormfront was their home base. > Then wait for people who are conservatives, alt-righters, or anyone else that's no longer PC enough to start sharing these spaces because they've been chased off mainstream sites. That's what just happened. They were chased off all mainstream sites and could only spew their hatred on SF. Then that got taken away from them.
    - pandaman 9y ago
      Stormfront was somebody's home base but not everyone's or even significant fraction of so-called "alt-right". In terms you hopefully understand it is as same as saying slashdot is the home base of "computer geeks".
  - pandaman 9y ago
    One could say, that shutting down containment sites will be extremely painful.

gok 9y ago

Sounds about right. Registrars have been taking down jihadist forums for a very long time merely for discussing violence; white nationalists must have realized they were living on borrowed time. The article makes it sound like the Southern Poverty Law Center's findings were key in Network Solutions' decision. I wonder if the same will apply to other groups the SPLC tracks as hate groups. The Nation of Islam's domain remains with Network Solutions.

userbinator 9y ago

I've always considered extremists as "canaries" --- you may not agree with any of their views, but their existence serves as a "buffer" of sorts, to show where the current boundaries are. Thus, when they disappear, what is next considered extremist will gradually edge closer to normalcy. In denouncing racism and other forms of extremism, we have to be careful not to turn society into a heavily normalised monoculture that, ironically, many of these extremist groups are themselves proponents of.

Frondo 9y ago
Sorry, but this is nonsense. Eliminating racism doesn't turn society into a monoculture--it permits lots of different cultures to coexist without threat of violence. The world would be better off in every way without racism (except for those who directly benefit from racism--but fuck those guys.)
- sigstoat 9y ago
  taking away their domain names doesn't eliminate racism. all those stormfront folks are just as racist as they were yesterday. and now it is harder to keep an eye on them.
- Buge 9y ago
  Yes, absolutely we should try to eliminate racism and society would be better off in every way. But there are many methods to eliminate racism. Do we want to persecute them and turn them into martyrs? Or do we want to educate them and change their minds?
- jstanley 9y ago
  Yes, it would, but the way to get rid of racism isn't to take down the websites of racists. OP is right, racist websites can be viewed a lot like a canary in a coalmine. That this canary has been killed implies the air might be getting unsafe to breathe.
featherverse 9y ago
> I've always considered extremists as "canaries" --- you may not agree with any of their views, but their existence serves as a "buffer" of sorts This is a really great analogy, it also shows when big brother is starting to over-reach it's authority.

lsmarigo 9y ago

This is encouraging and a step in the right direction. We've let the internet become the a terrifying hate indoctrination tool and this is just the tip of the iceberg. It took a person driving through a crowd of protesters to wake people up. Racist thoughts are common as a function of biology, in regular society we have checks against it growing to insidious levels. Online it's been open season for the hate groups to take advantage of modern marketing tactics to recruit and spread hate with alarming efficiency leading to violence.

jstanley 9y ago

I'm not sure why this article has been flagged. I hope it's not an attempt to censor information about censorship.

defkev 9y ago

Using the moral high ground to justify intellectual censorship...

LyndsySimon 9y ago

Are there any existing registrars out there that have a policy of non-intervention on the basis of legal content?

featherverse 9y ago

I question the reasoning for changing the 'title' of this submission. The article title which is what it was altered to match, is vague. The actual meat of the story is the action that Network Solutions took. The heading now is unclear, who shut it down? Was it the host? The registrar? How does changing the title from a detailed summary to something vague and politically charged benefit the HN community or the dissemination of worthwhile information. The original title was, approximately, "Network Solutions disables and parks the stormfront.org domain".