Social Network Gab.com being threatened by GoDaddy: 24 hours to transfer or suspension

domainguy50 · Oct 29, 2018

backstory: Gab is a social network alternative to twitter. their selling point is free speech (all speech is welcome, including what you believe might be hate speech.) which is basically is the first amendment. no unlawful material is allowed, but virtually any speech is. recently they purchased the "gab com" domain for $220k.

this site is very controversial as a result, with mainstream media outlets claiming it is popular with nazi and anti-semite messages. the site has 800,000 users and has experienced modest growth recently so it really isnt all bad hate speech. regardless, those disgusting messages on the site by some users are also lawful no matter how distasteful they are. as a result of these media attacks, (and the recent revelation that the synagogue shooter in pittsburgh yesterday had an active gab profile) gab is being unfairly targeted by smear campaigns online reporting the site as "a hate speech site" via email to gab's service providers.

gabs host (microsoft) revoked its contract with gab a few months ago

gabs payment providers (paypal and stripe) just revoked their services

just a few minutes ago, godaddy has said they will stop working with gab:
(i cant post the image or link idk why)
"BREAKING: Godaddy is threatening to suspend our domain (which is worth six figures) if we do not transfer to a new provider by tomorrow. This is madness."

the complexity of the situation is compounded by the fact that Gab is on a payment plan to fully own the domain since they recently purchased it. the broker/escrow agent control this which makes it even more difficult for the company to transfer to a new registrar by EOD tomorrow.

I understand that Godaddy is a private business and its clauses may allow it to do this, but this seems extreme overreaction. "24 hours to transfer or else" is a very menacing way of doing business.

-if you were in charge of gab what would you do? create your own payment processor, host, and DNS? they got deplatformed quickly... i guess they could try to get an offshore Hosting company or invest in native hosting.

-what is the most "free speech" friendly DNS provider there is?

-is it fair for internet infrastructure companies to de-platform a small upstart social network because of controversial speech? or should companies like DNS and hosting should be regulated and allow any customer as long as it is lawful content being hosted.

offthehandle · Apr 8, 2019

Rob Monster said:
In case not aware, Epik.com is the Infowars registrar as well.

Show attachment 114983

It is actually a Forever registration.

I have never met or spoken to AJ but have dealt with his head of IT.

I saw that article today and it felt it was applicable for this thread. More critical thinkers need to speak up.

That’s great that free speech is being advocated by Epik, no matter how vulgar, abnormal, discourteous, rude or strange it is. I have my own self censoring and personal “channel changer”. I dont listen to his (Alex) stuff, nor even looked at Gab and don’t really care what objectional material is discussed. But I do focus on all these news stories about censoring, and it isn’t the same country I grew up in. I am not encouraged with the current hyper sensitivity and politically correct mess, and unlike those weak minded people who advocate Govt regulation and crushing anybody with objectionable ideas, theories or views. We are in a really strange time now where silencing people is an everyday practice.

offthehandle · Apr 8, 2019

Here we go with more censoring. Here’s another wild card today. The Nanny State is moving fast. The UK is now the world safety regulator? Lol. I guess the UK thinks they can regulate the USA corporations and Worldwide users? So the US still part of their colony? They meanwhile cannot figure out more important things their own Citizens voted for like Brexit, now this.

Individual Countries should do their own censoring at their own expense, on their own soil and whatever firewalls, physically located there. These US multinationals companies should divest themselves into pieces where they choose to do business and apply laws regionally as the UK can babysit their own citizens from “harm”, and not the entire world.
...

“The UK government is taking a hard line when it comes to online safety, appointing what it claims is the world's first independent regulator to keep social media companies in check.

Companies that fail to live up to requirements will face huge fines, with senior directors who are proven to have been negligent of their responsibilities being held personally liable. They may also find access to their sites blocked.

The new measures, designed to make the internet a safer place, were announced jointly by the Home Office and Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The introduction of the regulator is the central recommendation of the highly anticipated government white paper, published early Monday morning in the UK.”

https://www.cnet.com/news/uk-to-keep-social-networks-in-check-with-internet-safety-regulator/

Rob Monster · Apr 8, 2019

offthehandle said:
Here we go with more censoring. Here’s another wild card today. The Nanny State is moving fast. The UK is now the world safety regulator?

offthehandle · Apr 8, 2019

I don’t agree with either person here on this brand new video and debate, but at least raise up some of the issues.

Bernard Wright · Apr 8, 2019

To those who haven’t yet recognized the looming threat that this thread, and other recent threads, describe: this is what free speech advocates are trying to prevent from arriving in your hometown. History teaches us that the below example is only the beginning.

Rob Monster · Apr 8, 2019

Bernard Wright said:
To those who haven’t yet recognized the looming threat that this thread, and other recent threads, describe: this is what free speech advocates are trying to prevent from arriving in your hometown. History teaches us that the below example is only the beginning.

That's pretty crazy. Yes, China is a police-state. If you do not self-censor, they pick you up. There's your evidence. Read this article:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09...el-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278

It is Orwell, and will be obligatory for all Chinese citizens within 12 months. If you think this cannot go global, you have "normalcy bias". Don't feel bad. Most people do.

So, protect your God-given right free speech everywhere. And while you're at it, consider the possibility that the battle is a spiritual one and that the stakes are eternal.

offthehandle · Apr 8, 2019

http://domainincite.com/24118-stringent-new-online-censorship-law-could-affect-domain-companies

The proposed 100 page “Online Harms” Whitepaper referenced above from the UK is also linked from the above her:

https://assets.publishing.service.g...data/file/793360/Online_Harms_White_Paper.pdf

Rob Monster · Apr 8, 2019

offthehandle said:
http://domainincite.com/24118-stringent-new-online-censorship-law-could-affect-domain-companies

The proposed 100 page “Online Harms” Whitepaper referenced above from the UK is also linked from the above her:

https://assets.publishing.service.g...data/file/793360/Online_Harms_White_Paper.pdf

Nice find, and a good reference.

I have had a few discussions with Kevin Murphy lately. We may not see eye to eye on some things but I appreciate that he is based in the UK and that he is reporting on these issues.

He most certainly does not view these developments through spiritual eyes do, but he is a capable investigative reporter and a diligent connector of dots!

The argument being made by the polcymakers is that because some people are stupid, we should treat everyone as if they are stupid. The logical fallacy is obvious.

Kate · Apr 8, 2019

Fortunately we have a great bunch of freedom fighters there who are working hard for us.

Rob Monster · Apr 8, 2019

Kate said:
Fortunately we have a great bunch of freedom fighters there who are working hard for us.

Thanks @Kate. Curious to know who is on your list of folks that are on the vanguard at ICANN in these various committees.

Kate · Apr 8, 2019

My comment was meant to be ironic.
But if you're talking about Icann I have always considered @GeorgeK a shepherd of our community.
I also think ICA is doing useful work with limited resources.

Rob Monster · Apr 8, 2019

Kate said:
My comment was meant to be ironic.
But if you're talking about Icann I have always considered @GeorgeK a shepherd of our community.
I also think ICA is doing useful work with limited resources.

Thanks Kate. I was wondering where you were going there!

The folks with backbone, intellect and reasonable mastery of ICANN alphabet soup are unsung heroes. I count Reg Levy from Tucows as being one of those. However, the list is really not that long AFAIK!

We'll know soon enough whether Phil Corwin will be a force for good at Verisign, or if he sold out for a comfortable retirement and a health plan.

If what I observed in Kobe for the RDAP proceedings, I think we all have our jobs cut out for us. The idea that approved RDAP users could anonymously pierce through privacy proxy veil at-will is concerning.

offthehandle · Apr 8, 2019

Kate said:
My comment was meant to be ironic.
But if you're talking about Icann I have always considered @GeorgeK a shepherd of our community.
I also think ICA is doing useful work with limited resources.

Well, did you see what just happened?

https://www.namepros.com/threads/my-new-blog-at-freespeech-com-and-icann-threatens-my-participation-rights.1131028

Rob Monster · Apr 8, 2019

Rob Monster said:
That's pretty crazy. Yes, China is a police-state. If you do not self-censor, they pick you up. There's your evidence. Read this article:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09...el-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278

It is Orwell, and will be obligatory for all Chinese citizens within 12 months. If you think this cannot go global, you have "normalcy bias". Don't feel bad. Most people do.

So, protect your God-given right free speech everywhere. And while you're at it, consider the possibility that the battle is a spiritual one and that the stakes are eternal.

Is this Orwellian enough? This is in today's South China Morning Post. It is all out in the open so that everyone understands the rules.

https://www.scmp.com/video/scmp-originals/3004485/inside-chinese-internet-censorship-centre

Post the wrong stuff, and lose your right to post. The British empire, aka the Commonwealth of Nations, is clearly heading in that direction.

Bernard Wright · Apr 10, 2019

I found this Federalist podcast episode interesting. It features United States FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and the discussion is relevant to some of the issues being discussed on NP. It's a little less than an hour long.

https://www.podcastone.com/episodewidget?episodeID=0647fb26-54c9-4b27-92c7-f317dc5ca852&logo=true

offthehandle · Apr 12, 2019

The EU continues in leading the charge with central voice control with its anti Free Speech crusade. All the Nanny State regulations, intrusive laws, and baby sitting of the weak minded needing “protection”. I expect this to accellerate faster and faster.

The positive side is these regulatioins need to be exposed and encourage people to #deletefacebook off social media onto their own blog websites, so someone with marketing sense should welcome such as a new business opportunity to promote doman name sales and hosting of end user friendly instant websites (wordpress isnt the answer for the average person) to avoid being registered and blacklisted.

The expotential growth of social media was solely based on super simplicity and that it requires very low skills to create accounts and post whatever.
....

“Unfortunately there have been an increasing number of clear violations, denigrations and humiliations online in the past under the cover of anonymity.

That's why we need a framework for more responsibility online," Chancellor Sebastian Kurz wrote on Twitter.

The new law would take effect in 2020 and would make it mandatory for platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to register their users, said Gernot Bluemel, minister in charge of EU affairs, art, culture and media.

It would be up to the platforms themselves to decide the form of registration, but authorities would be able to access users' identities in case of hate postings or on suspicion of other laws being broken, he said.

"The online space should not be a space without laws," Bluemel told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting, adding that Austria aimed to set a precedent for other countries in the matter.

French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this year caused controversy by suggesting a ban on anonymous postings on social media.”

https://www.thelocal.at/20190410/austria-mulls-user-registration-for-online-platforms

Rob Monster · Apr 12, 2019

offthehandle said:
The EU continues in leading the charge with central voice control with its anti Free Speech crusade. All the Nanny State regulations, intrusive laws, and baby sitting of the weak minded needing “protection”. I expect this to accelerate faster and faster.

If anyone needed conclusive proof that the world of free speech has changed, Julian Assange's arrest on April 11 at the Ecuadorian embassy after nearly 7 years of safe harbor would be a clue. One can debate whether Assange or Snowden are their own persons, versus controlled opposition. However, regardless of their actual allegiance, what seems clear is the overt change in climate. Censorship is no longer subtle. I hope folks are paying attention because the digital world is changing very rapidly.

offthehandle · Apr 23, 2019

Here we go again, the EU and the French over reach.

First they steal a 20 year old domain name France.com, now this madness. It's not like Archive.org is even used by the general public often, but I could be wrong.

Few US people I would imagine care about or even go to .FR French websites, or even read care to learn or French so if the French want to visit English websites- use a VPN. Archive.org should simply block all IP addresses and their website access, let them police their own citizens.

Again the idiocy of the pathetic wimp nation of France and EU chumps are now attempting to control what Archive.org collects. It seems a stretch that US Courts would allow jurisdiction, but in the crazy new world it would not surprise me a cave-in somehow. Like the 24 hours notice GAB was given to leave, the French push it even more stupid- as if like 1 hour is even possible. Disgusting bullshit from the French/EU. Most commerce occurs in the US, therefore the US should dictate policy and shove it down the throat of the rest of the world. Censor your citizens. They have no definition I can see yet either of what is "terrorism.", it's difficult enough to debate free speech with anyone.

"The European Parliament is set to vote on legislation that would require websites that host user-generated content to take down material reported as terrorist content within one hour. We have some examples of current notices sent to the Internet Archive that we think illustrate very well why this requirement would be harmful to the free sharing of information and freedom of speech that the European Union pledges to safeguard.

In the past week, the Internet Archive has received a series of email notices from French Internet Referral Unit (French IRU) falsely identifying hundreds of URLs on archive.org as “terrorist propaganda”. At least one of these mistaken URLs was also identified as terrorist content in a separate take down notice sent under the authority of the French government’s L’Office Central de Lutte contre la Criminalité liée aux Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (OCLCTIC).

The one-hour requirement essentially means that we would need to take reported URLs down automatically and do our best to review them after the fact.

It would be bad enough if the mistaken URLs in these examples were for a set of relatively obscure items on our site, but the French IRU’s lists include some of the most visited pages on archive.org and materials that obviously have high scholarly and research value. See a summary below with specific examples."

https://blog.archive.org/2019/04/10...an-550-archive-org-urls-as-terrorist-content/

Rob Monster · Apr 23, 2019

offthehandle said:
Here we go again, the EU and the French over reach.

First they steal a 20 year old domain name France.com, now this madness. It's not like Archive.org is even used by the general public often, but I could be wrong.

Few US people I would imagine care about or even go to .FR French websites, or even read care to learn or French so if the French want to visit English websites- use a VPN. Archive.org should simply block all IP addresses and their website access, let them police their own citizens.

Again the idiocy of the pathetic wimp nation of France and EU chumps are now attempting to control what Archive.org collects. It seems a stretch that US Courts would allow jurisdiction, but in the crazy new world it would not surprise me a cave-in somehow. Like the 24 hours notice GAB was given to leave, the French push it even more stupid- as if like 1 hour is even possible. Disgusting bullsh*t from the French/EU. Most commerce occurs in the US, therefore the US should dictate policy and shove it down the throat of the rest of the world. Censor your citizens. They have no definition I can see yet either of what is "terrorism.", it's difficult enough to debate free speech with anyone.

"The European Parliament is set to vote on legislation that would require websites that host user-generated content to take down material reported as terrorist content within one hour. We have some examples of current notices sent to the Internet Archive that we think illustrate very well why this requirement would be harmful to the free sharing of information and freedom of speech that the European Union pledges to safeguard.

In the past week, the Internet Archive has received a series of email notices from French Internet Referral Unit (French IRU) falsely identifying hundreds of URLs on archive.org as “terrorist propaganda”. At least one of these mistaken URLs was also identified as terrorist content in a separate take down notice sent under the authority of the French government’s L’Office Central de Lutte contre la Criminalité liée aux Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (OCLCTIC).

The one-hour requirement essentially means that we would need to take reported URLs down automatically and do our best to review them after the fact.

It would be bad enough if the mistaken URLs in these examples were for a set of relatively obscure items on our site, but the French IRU’s lists include some of the most visited pages on archive.org and materials that obviously have high scholarly and research value. See a summary below with specific examples."

https://blog.archive.org/2019/04/10...an-550-archive-org-urls-as-terrorist-content/

Archive.org is quite remarkable. I don't understand the economic model, but there are many times that it has helped people a ton, e.g. if a host goes down, e.g. Alpnames recently, and people had no backup of their website content. It happens more often than you think as we are routinely re-constructing websites for customers where there was some dispute with some stakeholder. Archive.org saved the day.

As for the process of takedown requests, the evidence is ample now that this will apply to a great number of websites. That is what is most troubling about solutions like Trusted Notifier or Registrar of Last Resort whereby you either have compliance or you risk having your domain taken offline at the registry level, or losing the domain entirely to a digital gulag.

This is really why I see the importance of Resilient Domains, as it combines a Forever domain with unlimited VPNs for users to connect to the content. While this lowers a site's Alexa rank, it allows publisher and consumer to engage securely with no practical scope for packet-sniffing as AES-256 cipher is essentially quantum-resistant.

I agree with you that the industrial sanitization of the big social media products will just cause folks to leave. As the web dev tools get better, decentralization should increase. The open question will then be how soon before registrars are required to go through central identity verification to sell someone a domain name. This is the other big reason why I like Forever domains.

MolaRam · Apr 23, 2019

I have not read all of this thread, but I like the comments made by Rob about Epik's protection of free speech. Except that the protection is limited to what they consider free speech?

Rob Monster · Apr 23, 2019

MolaRam said:
I have not read all of this thread, but I like the comments made by Rob about Epik's protection of free speech. Except that the protection is limited to what they consider free speech?

We protect lawful free speech. There are some situations where we don't need to wait for a court decision to know that some content is unlawful, e.g. a site that actively promoted rape.

A challenge with user generated content is that inflammatory content can be posted, and create just cause for a takedown. The key there is being certain that management is actively monitoring and taking action.

As stated elsewhere, we do our best to protect lawful free speech without bias or preference, but also without being coerced or intimidated by those who rely on the court of public opinion.

I am sure most registrars who deal with these cases never thought that this would be a meaningful part of the job. The thought never crossed my mind in 2011 when Epik.com became a registrar.

MolaRam · Apr 23, 2019

Without hijacking the thread too much - what is Epik's Forever registration about? Is it a lump sum paid upfront or is it another name for auto-renewal?

Rob Monster · Apr 23, 2019

MolaRam said:
Without hijacking the thread too much - what is Epik's Forever registration about? Is it a lump sum paid upfront or is it another name for auto-renewal?

The Forever domain is a one-time forever domain purchase, e.g. $399 for .COM. It varies by TLD:

https://www.epik.com/forever/

Epik renews the domain for the maximum period and then renews each year on the anniversary. For people who never intend to drop a domain it is a time savings, stress reduction and long-term cost savings.

The Resilient domain is a Forever domain with BitMitigate enabled, including unlimited user VPNs to connect to the domain securely -- essentially enabling a public domain to work like a VPN.

frank-germany · Apr 23, 2019

free speech?

better be quite sometimes
when you live in Brunei

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/brunei-todesstrafe-homosexuelle-101.html

that is about the state of Brunei
telling the European Union
to be tolerant and to understand their position

as they have that penalty of
stone to death

for homosexuals people
( male I guess )
oh no - I just learned women have same rights in Brunei

and there is no need to be in disgust
as they need 2 men of high moral standing and piety
to verify it

here we have the British source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/22/brunei-defends-stoning-death-gay-sex-letter-eu

(looks like a job for somebody we know..)

Rob Monster · Apr 23, 2019

frank-germany said:
free speech?

better be quite sometimes
when you live in Brunei

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/brunei-todesstrafe-homosexuelle-101.html

that is about the state of Brunei
telling the European Union
to be tolerant and to understand their position

as they have that penalty of
stone to death

for homosexuals people
( male I guess )
oh no - I just learned women have same rights in Brunei

and there is no need to be in disgust
as they need 2 men of high moral standing and piety
to verify it

here we have the British source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/22/brunei-defends-stoning-death-gay-sex-letter-eu

(looks like a job for somebody we know..)

There will be an interesting circumstance if/when historically liberal countries become theocracies, e.g. governed by Sharia Law or Noachide Law. "Anything goes" gets introduced to "capital punishment". To an extent, there is already evidence of vigilante justice based on Sharia Law in some parts of the world that are not formally theocratic. It is definitely a trend to watch.

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