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What's going on with Epik and Rob Monster?

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I'm catching the tail end of this, seems to be some kind of controversy...

https://domaingang.com/domain-news/rob-monster-off-twitter-after-christchurch-massacre-controversy/

Must be something odd to evoke this type of a response from one of our members.

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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
@oldtimer - I think those are all sage words.

Thank you for the compliment,

I admire your strong belief in your faith and I know that you have people of different race, religion, and gender working at your company that you get along with fine at a professional level, I like to know if I were a black pastor would I be welcomed in your home not for business, but for doing worship and bible study.
 
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Good point. Two entirely different things that rarely go hand in hand.

I'm with Rob on this one. It's been pretty well established that penalizing abortion in Poland simply pushed it underground or (for the better situated) abroad. There is really no way to know if there has been any drop in the number of abortions, or perhaps increase thereof, because there are no reliable statistics (never mind the official ones, which have nothing to do with reality). My point is the same as Rob's: sweeping garbage under the carpet does not a clean house make. On the contrary, things are more likely as not to grow and ferment there, out of sight, with no one in the mainstream the wiser. Until the rot eats through the carpet and... somebody gets himself an automatic rifle and vents his quietly accumulated frustrations on innocent people in a mosque. Or a catholic church. Or a public school.

Narrative is not the problem. Unwelcome and dangerous narratives are pushed upon us by various governments every day, or haven't you noticed? One good example in the US is the narrative about "dirty, criminal, rapist latinos invading good, clean America" and how America will not survive this unless there is the wall. In Poland, the PIS goverment is hard at work winning hearts and minds (read: votes!) with classic scare tactic narrative about "dirty, criminal, terrorist migrants, most of them bringing with them dangerous diseases" and how they are the only ones in the 1,000+ year history of Poland who are ready, willing and able to stop this "invation". Rob has already mentioned the "Social Credit Score" system in China, but not living in China, he wasn't subject to the accompanying propaganda campaign, narrative about how successful and good for the People this system is and how it will be expanded. Back to the US: how about the narratives being pushed by more than one candidate running for President about the need for major wealth redistribution, how else, by taxing the hell out of the rich, so as to allow, who else, the government to more fairly distribute the wealth amongst the People...

I'm just picking and choosing. There are many other such dangerous ideas and narratives pushed upon us every single day. I'm really concerned about these, government sanctioned or likely to be sanctioned and implemented in the near future, narratives. Compared to this, marginalized right wing, or left wing extremists, foaming at their mouths are of no concern whatsoever. By all means, allow them to vent, to try and push their narratives upon us, giving the "Five Eyes" a better chance to invigilate them and forestall tragic incidents like the one in Christchurch. Instead of scrambling to save their collective incompetent asses by pushing for new legislation to further curtail peoples' freedoms :banghead:

Why are you talking about Poland so much?
 
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Probably I am not going to make any friends (again), but I have a problem with the current posturing of Epik as a warrior for free speech.

The way I see it it has never been about free speech. I see a two-fold objective:

  1. alt-right propaganda under the guise of free speech, and conspiracy theories in general
  2. to promote Epik products and services
I know Rob is going to strongly disagree, but 2) is hard to disprove.
To be clear, I welcome and support commercial entities that embrace values and try to make the world a better place. But I have a problem with debasement of values. There is a disconnect what Epik says and what Epik does.

If Epik had chosen to support people who are truly dedicated to free speech, upholding civil liberties and against censorship, etc then I would look at Epik differently today. Epik is the proverbial lost sheep.

Finally, when it comes to liberating technology Epik is not offering anything special or revolutionary. Take the VPN service: it's just Openvpn repackaged with a bit of marketing. Epik is a commercial provider and hoster among many others. Not some kind of maverick or disrupter.

People who want to circumvent censorship can for example use Tor, I2P or other platforms and go underground. There is plenty of free software solutions to protect your privacy like PGP that has been available for a very long time.
Freedom-minded individuals have not waited for a savior like Epik.

In fact, the numerous private corporations that have donated to any of those open-source projects have contributed more to freedom and free speech than Epik ever will. The company has made poor decisions due to poor judgment, and needs realignment.

@Kate

thank you for exposing yourself to so much critism

I support what you say
 
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I want to talk about Epik the registrar not Rob for a little bit. They have some features helpful for domainers that nobody else has..

that is true
that why its not an easy decision to choose another registrar

In the performance tab you get estibots valuation for free .

that is a very questionable "advantage" and mostly it's disadvantage

..how many Whois searches have been performed on your name in the past 6 months. There are likely other pluses for domainers I haven’t noticed yet.

that is a very usefull feature
but I was never sure what time frame it relates to
and how they can come up with such a value
and if the search was done by robots or human

They offer an $8.49 renewal for NameProers which is lower than most.

at clouflare it's a permanet $8.03 USD incl Ican fees

They offer a free of commission sale venue if the domain is at Epik. .

thats a very nice feature
I have sold a name that way - thank you Rob

on the other hand you are bound to their lander
which eventually is not sales optimized
at least it didn't perform extraordinarily
and wasn't modified since I joined

They offer instant transfers out if you decide to leave or sell your name.

that's as good as it should be

They offer loans.

they never answered to my 1 loan request
and as its pending, I can't add another one

Epik the registrar shows me they are one of the most domainer friendly registrars out there.

they are helpful and supportive as it can be
nobody has ever complained about that
 
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Why are you talking about Poland so much?
Well, I can throw in examples from Russia, Germany, Hungary, Hong Kong, probably a few other countries, if it will make you feel any better :xf.wink:
 
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Well, I can throw in examples from Russia, Germany, Hungary, Hong Kong, probably a few other countries, if it will make you feel any better :xf.wink:

No. That’s okay. But thank you.
 
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Sorry, no that was most definitely not how Christianity spread, at least for the first 300 years after Christ. You refer to the Dark Ages after Constantine paganized Christianity and declared Rome to be its center.

The Roman Catholics were Bible-burners. Private ownership of the Bible was forbidden. The Bible was in Latin, interpreted by priests.

The Protestant movement was essentially departure of Bible-believing Christians from the Catholic Church, and the end of the Dark Ages. In effect, anyone could read it.

And in modern times, we have free digital copies of the Bible, effectively fulfilling Daniel 12:4:

But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

If you think we cannot go back to Fahrenheit 451 style book-burning, I think you are mistaken. The censors are essentially book-burners. And that should trouble any liberty-minded person greatly.


@Rob Monster
is there really a need for religious quotes in every 4th post of yours?
 
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I don't intentionally support extremists.

oops
so it happened by chance

how about
" I am so sorry ! "

and maybe:

"it will never happen again"
 
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I have reached out to you privately in the past and you have been evasively hiding behind some pseudonym.

Hi Rob you did not address that to me but to a valued Namepros contributor. In the interests of maintaining a constructive dialogue here I am going to comment.

Namepros does not have a real name policy.

Often internet forums let people have productive discussions anonymously which real life constraints would not allow, and some even on NP have found identifying themselves can attract unwanted and irrelevant attention. So I think we should respect NP members' choice to remain anonymous - if there is a problem with it, let NP admin address it.

Some would argue that the whole reason this thread exists is that the Epik CEO has not separated private and public life, religion, business, politics. Others do choose to keep those separate - people find the dividing lines in different places on privacy and like freedom of speech it throws up challenging issues and dilemmas. You have said you are working to maintain whois privacy - good! In another thread I pointed out that you had published an email you had received and that an email is normally private, but that I did not know if you had received consent to publish it. I don't know if you received Tommy Robinson's consent to publish the fact that you are providing a service to him.

And on the ambiguity of privacy this: Epik is describing itself as "The Swiss Bank of Domains." I had to go to google to work out that Epik is not a Swiss company. Now what does Swiss Bank suggest? Privacy, security, reliability. Well, it used to, and it was known as a place people hid money in numbered accounts, especially to hide it from the taxman. Changes in the law and mass IT leaking have changed that - Swiss banks are way more transparent to the taxman now, and when people jokingly saying someone probably has a Swiss bank account it is a shorthand way of saying they are probably corrupt. So the Swiss Bank slogan could also be heard as "Welcome tax evaders" especially when you suggested here that your Escrow service could be tax free.
 
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@Tia Wood Looks like @Mohammad removed his comments about pornhub. That was not my subject choice. But smart move on his behalf.
 
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And on the ambiguity of privacy this: Epik is describing itself as "The Swiss Bank of Domains." I had to go to google to work out that Epik is not a Swiss company. Now what does Swiss Bank suggest? Privacy, security, reliability. Well, it used to, and it was known as a place people hid money in numbered accounts, especially to hide it from the taxman. Changes in the law and mass IT leaking have changed that - Swiss banks are way more transparent to the taxman now, and when people jokingly saying someone probably has a Swiss bank account it is a shorthand way of saying they are probably corrupt. So the Swiss Bank slogan could also be heard as "Welcome tax evaders" especially when you suggested here that your Escrow service could be tax free.

my old teacher in school always used to say:
"what they claim most in advertising - most of the times that's what they not are ..."

in terms of banks
that's true more often as you would like it to be
 
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@Tia Wood Looks like @Mohammad removed his comments about pornhub. That was not my subject choice. But smart move on his behalf.
That was a complete nonsense post. But he was sorry and asked me and @TheBaldOne to remove his quoted post. We did it as the original post wasnt worth sharing.
 
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This was not addressed to my but:
The rest is your opinion shaped by your bias. I

We keep hearing the word bias. I'm not sure what people mean by it - I would use the word where there is an expectation of objectivity and it is not happening because of someone's beliefs or assumptions or errors or pressures.
 
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That was a complete nonsense post. But he was sorry and asked me and @TheBaldOne to remove his quoted post. We did it as the original post wasnt worth sharing.

Can you blame Rob for thinking that there is a Devil.
 
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Can you blame Rob for thinking that there is a Devil.

What does one and the other have in common? Are you saying that someone’s error in judgement is the Devil?
 
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What does one and the other have in common? Are you saying that someone’s error in judgement is the Devil?

Actually he might see two devils, the one who made the original insult, and the one who made sure to keep the subject alive in two of his posts after everyone elses comments were deleted.
 
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Can you blame Rob for thinking that there is a Devil.
I dont understand context of your reply, Can you elaborate your point, please?
 
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