4 ms·

Anyone who has ever taken a look around on AR15.com will know that more than a few threats against political figures were made on there on a pretty regular basi

Anyone who has ever taken a look around on AR15.com will know that more than a few threats against political figures were made on there on a pretty regular basis. I own an AR so I can say that I actually lurked there this past fall. Given what we saw on Wednesday I'm not surprised a lot of tech companies are now seeking to wash their hands of anything that can be tied back to them. Although I'm not sure how GoDaddy thought this was gonna work out for them. Maybe they figured it would repair their image across the "rest" of tech and get them more business? They're traditionally pretty scammy so I'm not really sure if/when they grew a "conscience".

jandrewrogers 6y ago
Unless something has dramatically changed in recent years (I doubt it), AR15.com is widely regarded as one of the preeminent firearm enthusiast forums on the Internet. It caters to people across the political spectrum and a wide range of niche firearm interests. IIRC, it is actually owned by industry companies, which have an interest in keeping it relatively non-political.
- ascendantlogic 6y ago
  > Unless something has dramatically changed in recent years (I doubt it) I can point out one thing that changed in the last 4 years, and it is our President and the atmosphere of vitriol and gaslighting he has created. Most of these companies were fine to tolerate this on their services when it was just speech, but now that speech has translated into actual violent action it's a different ballgame.
  - DisjointedHunt 6y ago
    Mate, we had Madonna giving a speech about wanting to shoot the president. A play on broadway enacting a fantasy of Trump being stabbed, Julius Caesar style by masked men. Another hollywood personality posting an image of her enacting a mock beheading, complete with blood. Don't preach about "Threats" and "Violence". If you are in tech, you are intelligent enough to use logic and not emotion.
    - DisjointedHunt 6y ago
      I love how, instead of substantive debate to refute those points above, you choose to downvote. Take a deep breath, buddy and stop being so emotionally unhinged by the sight of the "Good" side pushing policies that you would disagree with were it to come from any other entity
      - tomhoward 6y ago
        Aside from it being explicitly against the HN guidelines to complain about downvotes, it's not possible for a commenter to downvote replies to their own comments, so your accusation is false.
        DisjointedHunt 6y ago
        Ah, i didn't know that. I apologize.
    - andrewflnr 6y ago
      > but now that speech has translated into actual violent action it's a different ballgame. Logic recognizes that emotion has real power.
    - plugger 6y ago
      Those examples can all be considered performance art and are protected. Erecting a gallow outside of the Capitol with a mob of angry rioters chanting about hanging Pence isn't really comparable. Those threats should be considered real, not performance art. It's not entertainment, it's real. Pull your head in mate.
      - copperwater69 6y ago
        You can google "antifa guillotine" or "blm guillotine" and see the same thing but against trump/bezos/unpopular governor
        6y ago
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    Trump has been one of the most censored individual in recent history, with his messages reaching the masses being distorted, redacted, misrepresented and counterattacked by routinely baseless "anonymous sources close to the matter" from the media. Funny you pin the climate of vitriol exclusively on him Now I'm not saying he's been the perfect president, but the media rode the controversy all the way in for views, multiplying the nature of the issue. Wow, donvoted within a minute, and they say Reddit has bots.
- arfposting 6y ago
  The tech forums have always been pretty good resources, and even in GD there are plenty of people I admire, including most of the old hands. swingset, subnet, DK-Prof, Aimless, Miami JBT, and Zhukov to name a few. But it ain't all sunshine and rainbows, and reading GD in the past 2 months wouldn't give anybody a very good impression of "firearm enthusiasts". Credit where it's due: unlike, say, TheDonald or even r/conservative, it is a free speech zone. I don't recall them banning anybody for expressing a political opinion. If you were left-leaning you would definitely get dogpiled by commenters calling you an idiot or a shill, so you probably wouldn't hang around very long, but that's just what happens when the community is 95+% right wing, and maybe 50+% what you might call far right wing. You would not be censored just for going against the herd. It's been moderated much more strictly in recent days, including moving most political discussion to a separate, paid-members-only board, but it still takes like 10 clicks around GD to find a post where somebody suggests it might've been good if some Democrats in congress died that day. Subtle and not-so-subtle race replacement conspiracy theory rears its ugly head now and then in GD too. If you're GoDaddy, looking at what happened and what type of rhetoric led to it, I can see why you'd want to distance yourself ASAP. It's not the call I would've made if I ran a DNS registrar, but I'm not going to pretend there's nothing there to justify it.
- King-Aaron 6y ago
  > It caters to people across the political spectrum and a wide range of niche firearm interests. Including those who support and partake in domestic terrorism, I suppose.

jandrewrogers 6y ago

Unless something has dramatically changed in recent years (I doubt it), AR15.com is widely regarded as one of the preeminent firearm enthusiast forums on the Internet. It caters to people across the political spectrum and a wide range of niche firearm interests. IIRC, it is actually owned by industry companies, which have an interest in keeping it relatively non-political.

ascendantlogic 6y ago
> Unless something has dramatically changed in recent years (I doubt it) I can point out one thing that changed in the last 4 years, and it is our President and the atmosphere of vitriol and gaslighting he has created. Most of these companies were fine to tolerate this on their services when it was just speech, but now that speech has translated into actual violent action it's a different ballgame.
- DisjointedHunt 6y ago
  Mate, we had Madonna giving a speech about wanting to shoot the president. A play on broadway enacting a fantasy of Trump being stabbed, Julius Caesar style by masked men. Another hollywood personality posting an image of her enacting a mock beheading, complete with blood. Don't preach about "Threats" and "Violence". If you are in tech, you are intelligent enough to use logic and not emotion.
  - DisjointedHunt 6y ago
    I love how, instead of substantive debate to refute those points above, you choose to downvote. Take a deep breath, buddy and stop being so emotionally unhinged by the sight of the "Good" side pushing policies that you would disagree with were it to come from any other entity
    - tomhoward 6y ago
      Aside from it being explicitly against the HN guidelines to complain about downvotes, it's not possible for a commenter to downvote replies to their own comments, so your accusation is false.
      - DisjointedHunt 6y ago
        Ah, i didn't know that. I apologize.
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    > but now that speech has translated into actual violent action it's a different ballgame. Logic recognizes that emotion has real power.
  - plugger 6y ago
    Those examples can all be considered performance art and are protected. Erecting a gallow outside of the Capitol with a mob of angry rioters chanting about hanging Pence isn't really comparable. Those threats should be considered real, not performance art. It's not entertainment, it's real. Pull your head in mate.
    - copperwater69 6y ago
      You can google "antifa guillotine" or "blm guillotine" and see the same thing but against trump/bezos/unpopular governor
      - 6y ago
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  Trump has been one of the most censored individual in recent history, with his messages reaching the masses being distorted, redacted, misrepresented and counterattacked by routinely baseless "anonymous sources close to the matter" from the media. Funny you pin the climate of vitriol exclusively on him Now I'm not saying he's been the perfect president, but the media rode the controversy all the way in for views, multiplying the nature of the issue. Wow, donvoted within a minute, and they say Reddit has bots.
arfposting 6y ago
The tech forums have always been pretty good resources, and even in GD there are plenty of people I admire, including most of the old hands. swingset, subnet, DK-Prof, Aimless, Miami JBT, and Zhukov to name a few. But it ain't all sunshine and rainbows, and reading GD in the past 2 months wouldn't give anybody a very good impression of "firearm enthusiasts". Credit where it's due: unlike, say, TheDonald or even r/conservative, it is a free speech zone. I don't recall them banning anybody for expressing a political opinion. If you were left-leaning you would definitely get dogpiled by commenters calling you an idiot or a shill, so you probably wouldn't hang around very long, but that's just what happens when the community is 95+% right wing, and maybe 50+% what you might call far right wing. You would not be censored just for going against the herd. It's been moderated much more strictly in recent days, including moving most political discussion to a separate, paid-members-only board, but it still takes like 10 clicks around GD to find a post where somebody suggests it might've been good if some Democrats in congress died that day. Subtle and not-so-subtle race replacement conspiracy theory rears its ugly head now and then in GD too. If you're GoDaddy, looking at what happened and what type of rhetoric led to it, I can see why you'd want to distance yourself ASAP. It's not the call I would've made if I ran a DNS registrar, but I'm not going to pretend there's nothing there to justify it.
King-Aaron 6y ago
> It caters to people across the political spectrum and a wide range of niche firearm interests. Including those who support and partake in domestic terrorism, I suppose.