Daily Stormer, the right-wing hate site, has been bouncing around the internet over the last few days.
After being booted by GoDaddy it switched to Google, who took the .com domain name offline. They then switched to using the “dark web” with a .onion domain. However they’ve now got themselves a .ru domain name and are back online on the open internet.
They’re also still using CloudFlare to handle both their DNS, CDN and other security services. CloudFlare’s involvement is intriguing and you can read about both the current situation and its evolution over time here.
Over the last few days any technology company that provides service to Daily Stormer has been getting a severe beating in the media and online, so the domain became a bit of a hot potato. Whether switching the domain to a Russian provider (RU-CENTER) will guarantee that the site can stay online isn’t clear, but applying pressure to a Russian company will be very different.
There’s also a fairly vibrant discussion and debate going on in many circles about the implications of this situation.
In the past groups such as EFF have described companies like Google or GoDaddy taking action without court orders as “shadow regulation“, which has led to some quite heated exchanges in fora such as ICANN meetings.
Is taking the domain offline censorship?
Is free speech under attack?
Many would argue that taking the domain offline was the right thing to do, but others see it as a speech issue.
XKCD sums it up pretty nicely:
