Web hosting company evicts white supremacist “news site” after Charlottesville attack
The First Amendment gives Americans the right to free speech without retaliation by the government. But every so often we’re reminded that the First Amendment does not give people immunity to consequences from their fellow Americans. And so after the white supremacist terror attack in Charlottesville, a major web hosting company has decided to evict a white supremacist “news site” from its servers.
In response to complaints filed by a number of Twitters users, including political pundits Amy Siskind and Tea Pain among others, GoDaddy posted the following tweet on Sunday night: “We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service.” (link). GoDaddy has not specifically stated how the site was in violation of its rules. But it may have something to do with the vicious and slur-filled headline that it posted about Heather Heyer after she was murdered by a white supremacist this weekend.
The Daily Stormer posted an article over the weekend with a headline which disgustingly said “Heather Heyer: woman killed in road rage incident was a fat, childless 32-year-old slut.” And that seemed to be enough to prompt GoDaddy to take action. Every website is hosted by a web hosting company of some type or other. This means that if the people running Daily Stormer want their site to remain active, they’ll have to find some other company that’s willing to host the trash they churn out.
Those who support Donald Trump and white supremacists will likely claim that their free speech rights are being violated by this move. But again, that represents a total misunderstanding of what the First Amendment says and does not say. GoDaddy has every right to refuse to continue hosting a website that’s in violation of its terms of service.
