Racist Daily Stormer moves to Russian domain after losing .com address

[douglas9]

Earlier this week, the infamous hate site the Daily Stormer lost control of the "dailystormer.com" domain after two domain registrars—first GoDaddy, then Google's domain service—refused service to the company. The companies were responding to a social media campaign against the Daily Stormer after a post on the site attacking Heather Heyer, who died in protest-related violence in Charlottesville this weekend.

The decisions of Google and GoDaddy made the site inaccessible on Tuesday. But by Wednesday morning, the Daily Stormer was back online with a new, Russian domain name: "dailystormer.ru." In a post announcing the site's return, editor Andrew Anglin credited Internet troll turned neo-Nazi Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, the Daily Stormer's administrator, for getting the site back up and running.

The Daily Stormer has also set up a .onion address, ensuring that it will be accessible over the censorship-resistant Tor network even if it loses its new domain name.

Anglin argued that the campaign against the site has actually worked in the Daily Stormer's favor. "We’ve been given a massive amount of publicity by the media," Anglin wrote. Anglin posted a traffic chart showing that the site got a massive surge in the hours before it was taken down.

It's an example of the Streisand effect: when efforts to suppress information leads to media attention that actually increases public exposure. Until this week, the Daily Stormer was an obscure site frequented by a small number of hardcore racists. The campaign against the site didn't get it shut down, but it did raise its profile.

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https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/shunned-by-godaddy-and-google-racist-daily-stormer-moves-to-russian-domain/

[douglas9]

1. Russia boots white supremacist website from its internet: report

Russia has booted white supremacist site the Daily Stormer from its internet, according to CNN.
After white nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend, GoDaddy cut ties with the site, prompting it to move to Google's domain service briefly before it was again suspended for violating the terms of service.

It then moved to the dark web briefly, before finding a home with Russia's domain registrar, known as RU-CENTER.

"I should point out that registry is automatic, so RU-CENTER registers thousands of domains per day," Egor Timofeev, a spokesman for the service, told CNN.

Timofeev told CNN that the site was kicked off following a request from Roskomnadzor, Russia's technology and telecommunications regulator.

The site had been accessible through the dailystormer.ru, and a cached version of the site can still be seen through that link.

GoDaddy had shut down the site earlier this week after it had published an article disparaging Heather Heyer, the woman who was killed in Charlotteville on Saturday after, police say, a man linked to white nationalist groups plowed his car into counterprotesters.

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/346932-russia-boots-white-supremacist-website-from-its-internet-report