Neo-Nazi site being dumped by Google and GoDaddy because of race riots in Virginia
Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer tried moved its domain registration to Google after hosting firm GoDaddy said it would sever ties with the site that promoted Saturday’s deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A “whois” search of internet domains on Monday listed Alphabet Inc’s Google as registrar for The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website associated with the alt-right movement.
Google said it is cancelling the registration of The Daily Stormer for violating its terms of service, after it posted an article mocking the woman who was run over and killed at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. The site was briefly down on Monday.
But after a short time it was back up, including a post from the website’s publisher, Andrew Anglin, who said he had retaken control of the site. The site claimed it was briefly controlled by a member of the “Anonymous” group of hackers.
The article about Heather Heyer criticises her appearance, that she had no children, and that she couldn’t move fast enough to avoid the charging car.
The 32-year-old Heyer died after a car police said was driven by James Alex Fields Jnr rammed into a crowd of counter-protesters.
GoDaddy said on Sunday via Twitter that it had given The Daily Stormer 24 hours to move its domain to another provider, saying it had violated the company’s terms of service.”
GoDaddy has previously come under sharp criticism for hosting The Daily Stormer and other sites that spread hate.
The company decided to boot the site on Sunday out of fear that it could be used to incite further violence after the events in Charlottesville, including the death of Heyer, who was fatally struck by a car driven by a man with white nationalist views.
“With the violence that occurred over the weekend, the company believed this site could incite additional violence,” said the person who was not authorised to publicly discuss the matter.
The hosting company’s rules of conduct ban using its services in a manner that “promotes, encourages or engages in terrorism, violence against people, animals or property.”
Scottsdale, Arizona-based GoDaddy, is one of the largest US internet services firms with some 6,000 employees.
