Tech’s Swift Reaction To Hate Groups Was Years In The Making

Get the Full StoryAdvocates like the Anti-Defamation League have been cajoling Silicon Valley for years to cut off violent white-supremacist groups.

The sometimes-uncomfortable relationship between online service providers and their more unsavory customers changed in the wake of the Charlottesville tragedy. Companies that don’t take a public stand on the content they carry started to take one, with both GoDaddy and Cloudflare dropping infamous neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer. Others, like PayPal, which had quietly taken one-off actions on hate sites in the past, started dropping customers by the dozens, including American Renaissance, League of the South, VDARE, and Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute and AltRight.com. While tech’s crackdown on violence-inciting white nationalist sites came rapidly following the turmoil in Virginia, it took years of cajoling by activists and advocates to get Silicon Valley ready for action.Read Full Story

Share: