{"id":6002,"date":"2019-01-22T22:54:53","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T02:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=6002"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:52:28","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:52:28","slug":"pa-attorney-general-subpoenas-alt-right-friendly-social-media-sites-newest-domain-provider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/pa-attorney-general-subpoenas-alt-right-friendly-social-media-sites-newest-domain-provider\/","title":{"rendered":"PA Attorney General Subpoenas Alt-Right Friendly Social Media Site\u2019s Newest Domain Provider"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pennsylvania Attorney General, Josh\nShapiro, recently subpoenaed<\/a>\nthe new domain provider of the controversial social media site Gab. The\nsubpoena requests that Epik, a Seattle-based company, provide \u201cany and all\ndocuments which are related in any way to Gab.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n

Gab, a social media site popular with the\nalt-right for its stance on \u201cfree\nspeech<\/a>,\u201d has found itself at the center of controversy yet again. This\ntime, however, one perpetrator of hate speech on the site turned his violent\nwords into violent actions when, after posting on Gab, he followed through on his\nthreats, attacking and murdering worshipers during Shabbat morning services at\nthe Tree of Life Synagogue on October 27, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n

Following the mass-shooting in Pittsburg, the gunman\u2019s online presence<\/a> revealed that he frequently posted violent, antisemitic, anti-immigrant rants on Gab, and that his most recent Gab post indicated that he was going to perpetrate a violent hate crime immanently. <\/p>\n\n\n

…one perpetrator of hate speech on the site turned his violent words into violent actions when, after posting on Gab, he followed through on his threats, attacking and murdering worshipers… <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\u00a0Following the mass-shooting in Pittsburg, the gunman\u2019s online presence<\/a> revealed that he frequently posted violent, antisemitic, anti-immigrant rants on Gab, and that his most recent Gab post indicated that he was going to perpetrate a violent hate crime immanently. <\/p>\n\n\n

Considering the horror of the attack at\nthe Tree of Life Synagogue, it\u2019s not surprising that Gab quickly found itself\nforced offline when its domain provider, GoDaddy, severed\nties<\/a> with the company. It\u2019s also unsurprising that many other companies\nworking with the site chose to do the same thing (Paypal, Stripe, Joyent,\nShopify, and Medium). What is surprising, however, is that within a week, this hate\nspeech riddled start-up, known in the tech world as a haven for white\nnationalists (a 2016 Wired\narticle<\/a> referred to the site as \u201can artifact from a dystopian universe\nwhere the alt-right completely took over Twitter\u201d), managed to find a new\ndomain provider<\/a> and is now up and running again. <\/p>\n\n\n

Gab CEO and founder, Andrew Torba, is of\nthe opinion that his social media platform has been unfairly and\n\u201csystematically\u201d targeted<\/a>\nin the wake of the mass shooting. He seems to accept no\nresponsibility<\/a> whatsoever for the content of his site, claiming not to see\nthe gunman\u2019s final post (or previous\nposts<\/a> that clearly threaten synagogues affiliated with the Hebrew Immigrant\nAid Society) as an actual threat of harm. <\/p>\n\n\n

The thing is, this isn\u2019t the first time\nGab\u2019s repugnant content has run afoul of tech-company ethics. Earlier this year,\na neo-Nazi who ran for the U.S.\nSenate<\/a> \u201ctwice posted calls for physically harming Jews.\u201d A Washington Post\narticle points out that despite assurances from Gab that threats are taken\nseriously, these posts were only removed following a warning from Microsoft\nthat the domain would be banned from their platform (it should be noted that\nGab still technically didn\u2019t remove them, the user agreed to remove them himself).\n<\/p>\n\n\n

Earlier still, Google\nknocked Gab out of the Android app store<\/a>, citing its content and unenforced\nmoderation policies. Gab also lost its domain provider prior to GoDaddy in 2017\nbecause of posts that degraded a Charlottesville protest victim. Aussie tech\ncompany, Instra<\/a>,\nthreatened to cancel Gab\u2019s domain if the posts weren\u2019t deleted. Although Gab\ndid delete the posts, ultimately Instra terminated Gab anyway, explaining that the\nsite\u2019s content offended \u201cAustralian federal and state discrimination laws,\nwhich prohibit public vilification on the basis of race, religion, or ethnic\norigin.\u201d In a somewhat ironic twist, those responsible for the posts that resulted\nin Instra\u2019s termination of Gab were the same neo-Nazis linked to another site\nthat had just lost its domain with GoDaddy. GoDaddy then picked up Gab as a\nclient. <\/p>\n\n\n

While the attorney general\u2019s office has\nnot yet clarified why it subpoenaed Epik, the move does have some legal\nscholars scratching their heads<\/a>. Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University,\ntold Arstechnica that 1) the antisemitic posts in question are likely protected\nby the First Amendment, and 2) neither Gab nor its domain provider would be\nliable for the content posted by the domestic terrorist who perpetrated the\nTree of Life attack because of protections under federal law. Beyond this,\nGoldman suggests that this tactic could lead to First Amendment issues,\ncomparing the present situation to an injunction granted in 2015 against a\nsheriff who tried to get third parties to drop Backpage as a customer for\nallegedly profiting from the sex trafficking of minors. <\/p>\n\n\n

Others argue that these extremist groups\nand domestic terrorists will soon move\ncompletely to the dark web<\/a> if they are ousted from social media platforms,\nso we should ask ourselves whether it\u2019s better for hate speech to be \u201cout in\nthe open, or hidden from view\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n

For now though, as long as companies like Gab persist in lax monitoring practices, and no thought is given to intervening in acts of domestic terrorism, it\u2019s safe to say that by allowing this to continue we are normalizing intolerance, bigotry, and violence. We are accomplishing nothing but the potential indoctrination of angry and impressionable followers. No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, hate speech should not be tolerated, promoted, or protected, and it certainly should not be given a platform. We have seen time and time again that violent words all too frequently become violent actions. <\/p>\n\n\n

Suzanne Zelenka, 12 November 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pennsylvania Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, recently subpoenaed the new domain provider of the controversial social media site Gab. The subpoena requests that Epik, a Seattle-based company, provide \u201cany and all documents which are related in any way to Gab.\u201d Gab, a social media site popular with the alt-right for its stance on \u201cfree speech,\u201d has …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6002"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6876,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6002\/revisions\/6876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}