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So I'm gonna guess if one was hosted with HostSolutions in the past, my customer information is in the hands of the nazi host now?
Yes! And they are going to hunt you down and then they'll say in-cre-di-ble things that don't match your view of the world. Things like "everybody has the right to his own opinions and views - even you".
thanks for the link. It truly reflect how much big is this Epik scam.
Had there been that notorious Cyber Bunker (which was raided and closed), today, Epik and Rob Monster would have bought it straight way to run black-hat, underground business!
It's good, PayPal, Godaddy and other have ended ties with Epik. No one would like to be associated with such notorious registrar/hosting.
You like financial institutions deciding who is a "good" web host?
Thats why my terrahost vps dropped down in performance 🥲
Unlikely, you got a VPS, performance always changes, since mostly nothing is dedicated to you.
Problem is not freedom of speech. The real problem is that Epik has never ever been about freedom of speech, but as @LTniger said:
They've been clear about that from the start. Sad news indeed if @terrahost has been totally aquired by epik.
Well, that's not the business they are in. They follow a line similar to the one of a loved "free speech" host very active on LET who advertise as the right place for nazis and far right groups, while clearly saying he wishes "free helicopter rides" for those in the other side of the political spectrum... Not the best providers to host with if your speech isn't the kind speech they want to promote OR if you value free speech and consider that "everybody has the right to his own opinions and views" IMO.
They might say the sentence you mention. It doesn't mean that they actually mean it. That's just marketing BS.
Edit: of course if they change their mind and become real free speech hosts, great! But it seems unlikely given their past actions.
I do not do business with hosts which have a record of, or likely to have security breaches. Having done business with them pre-acquisition, this is the only reason I will be steering clear of terrahost in light of their new owners.
Honestly, if even financial institutions won't take you, you're poison.
I would generally agree, but in Epik's case, it's more to do with the negative media attention, than it is to do with Epik violating any actual (written) policies of theirs. Put simply, it pays not to have them as a client. Whereas having them as a client just opens them to negative media attention.
But yeah, if they're generating that much negative attention, and making various media outlets say that you still continue to do business with them in spite of them allegedly watching widely banned material during team meetings (opens you to all sorts of liabilities as an employer), associating with known extreme nationalists (can be argued that it's a personal relationship), or ignoring reports (illegal), etc. It's going to have more of a negative effect on your business, even if the client isn't generating chargebacks. So dropping them is the only sane choice that you can make, even if some say that it's caving to external pressure.
Some could call it legitimizing of the SJW culture, and being denied the right to a fair and thorough review, but it's not something you can use as an argument since the ToS covers them, as they can deny you services for any reason whatsoever.
Define far right.
Its a weasel term that could mean anything. When you define it though you get into lawsuit territory to say something is which it is not. The most you could say is in your opinion Epik is far right what ever that means since you haven't defined it.
Indeed; labeling the entire company and/or its CEO as far-right (at most) because they provide services to alleged nationalists would be defamatory, since neither party was proven to have done anything illegal by state and/or federal authorities, nor have they personally proclaimed something that could be 100% proven as being far-right or racist.
Far be it from me to defend Epik, but they are not far-right. They are opportunists and capitalists, and they would provide services to anyone, as long as it won't get them in any trouble. Which is fine, but they obviously have certain issues, and there's a thin line between a legal operation, and something like CyberBunker, and they're quickly falling into the latter due to their subsidiaries.
My impression is that the goal of the company isn't to "provide services to anyone, as long as it won't get them in any trouble" but to be a safe haven for far-right websites that might be/have been banned by other registrars/hosts because of their content (hate speech, holocaust denial, etc.).
If I'm wrong and they are just another capitalist company with a strong emphasis on free speech, that would treat any customer the same, even if they were not spreading far-right stuff, great.
That being said, many elements would indicate that the company has been created for the sole purpose of making it possible for neo-nazi and white supremacist websites to stay online. That's not with no reason that they end up hosting most of the right-wing sites that have been banned elsewhere, even though they don't advertise as the perfect host for these (see for example the list on their wikipedia page). They don't need to affirm their political position as clearly as Fran or Njalla for it to be perfectly clear (Rob Monster has been pretty clear on twitter several times, though).
Edit: maybe they now want to widen their activities and start being a real hosting / registrar company, and that's why they bought @terrahost. They might be trying to become an potentially interesting host for anyone . This would make much more sense from a capitalist POV. But so far, it really does seem that Rob Monster is focusing on a very specific type of customers.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/01/18/epik-domain-registrar-keeping-extremist-websites-online/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rob-monster-epik-gab-neo-nazi_n_5c17bb29e4b05d7e5d846f72
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-proportions
https://www.adl.org/blog/the-infrastructure-of-hate-epik-hosts-extremist-groups
So what? Wasn't that, freedom of speech, one of the things that made the USA great?
That being said, many elements would indicate that many companies have been created for the sole purpose of making it possible for woke, left, "liberal" websites to stay online - strangely you seem to see no problem with those.
Well noted, I'm not fond of holocaust denial or racism, but that's not what it's about, no matter how hard certain groups try to paint it that way. What it's about is that everybody should be free to speak their mind, no matter whether you or I or anyone agree with what they say.
Plus I have a very nice surprise for you: you are not forced to go to their web sites, you are totally free to ignore them.
But for some weird reason you seem to think that acting like in a fascist dictatorship and to suppress them and to ignore and deny their basic rights is the right way to go.
Exactly.
Never said that. Not surprising to see you try to distort what I was saying, sadly.
Which ones? Care to make a list of companies that clearly focus on this kind of websites (other than Njalla)?
We'll see during the next year what Epik's goal are with this acquisition anyway... (if that's indeed an acquisition, from @terrahost's message it seems like they're still totally independent from Rob).
I know what you mean, but I've known of and used Epik in the past, before they were notorious.
Apart from the high emphasis on Christianity from its CEO, there was nothing you could use to say that they were different from any other registrar. CEO's personal beliefs, at least in Epik's instance did not play a role on what was allowed, and wasn't allowed, as long as it was legal.
We get to the point where it's a little bit difficult for any company providing services to third-parties if they want to keep the lights on. External pressure works 99.9% of the time, and if you don't publicly submit and re-affirm your stance on something as horrible as Holocaust denial, Nationalism, etc. you might be labeled a supporter of the said groups and/or their activities, solely because you didn't firmly and publicly disassociated yourself from them.
If you want to be a neutral party, and/or only provide services and leave it up to the state and federal authorities to deal with those problems, and let you know what to do in case of something illegal, then you would in fact have to refrain from making emotional decisions.
But as said before, 99.9% will submit out of fear and cave in to external pressure. I would personally do the same, because you can't exactly continue fighting the good fight if almost every financial institution ceases to do business with you.
The only way to save yourself in that instance would be to get external funding like Epik did.
Otherwise, you would go down, and the said client(s) would find another company, either someone young and foolish, not understanding the ways of the world, or someone who will can them the first opportunity they get and keep their money.
To summarize, I think that Epik just wants to capitalize on the fact that they won't cave in to external pressure as long as there's nothing blatantly and obviously illegal. But I don't think they share the same beliefs as their clients. They will simply take any client they can get.
News sells better if you sensationalize it, and I think because of the CEO's personal religious beliefs, and not suspending those clients as soon as the article is out is what gives them that bad reputation.
@pbx
IF I really misunderstood you, I apologize.
Let's go straight to the core: Hitler actually was red (national-socialists) and so was their flag. Extremism of any kind is harmful, and a society should think hard about its level of tolerance for extremism of any kind. So it's actually not even of much significance whether the Nazis were far right or far left; what is of significance is that they were extremist.
As it so happens the USA has made its decision a long, long time ago and they decided that free speech is a high ranking basic right but extremist actions are not.
Frankly, I for one think that that decision was a good and wise one. One very major reason being that oppressing free speech does not change the mind of the oppressed, quite the contrary; secondly, ask any state security agent, knowing what people think is much better and safer than people thinking certain things but nobody knowing it.
Finally and IMO about most importantly: I don't care whether brutal oppression comes with "good and nice" far left music or with "bad and ugly" far right music in the background. You are either for freedom or for oppression, simple as that. For me the difference between "good left hate-speech fighters" and "evil right Nazis" is marginal. BOTH are out to deny freedom and BOTH use dictatorial means.
Free Speech and Far Right seems to be much of one and the same these days. Seeing how leftist politicians in the US are calling for more censorship and control these days, seeing how White House are collaborating with social media platforms (according to Jen Psaki) to combat what they see as misinformation, reading articles from liberal Phds about how China was right all the time in their censorship, well..we've soon ended up in a place where free speech and far right are one and the same.
What brings you to this conclusion? How would you even prove this?
Anyone can go register a domain or get hosting at Epik.
They wont bend to the woke mob though.
Right, they can. But the ones we hear about often have strange similarities. Most hosts and registrars have had their fair share of controversial content, and the kind of stuff they are linked to goes in all "political" directions. They (the provider) appear neutral as they just follow the law of the land and aren't too noisy about their happiness to provide a safe heaven for customer x or y... They do their job, and that's all. That's doesn't seem to be the case here. But maybe that's not voluntary and @TWC's hypothesis is the right one. This is totally possible. Future will tell.
I tried to ask some questions about Epik in Terrahost's slack, but it got deleted.
I guess the "freedom of speech" bullshit does not apply to everybody.
Post ss
That's my question with this kind of right wing networks. Free speech? Great! Made by and for fascists only... That's a totally different project.
Let's hope that terrahost doesn't fall into this kind of crap.
I did not take any screenshots while posting it, and it is now deleted so there is nothing to screenshot.
as long as there are far-left hosting companies why shouldn't be far-right hosting companies, too at the market? the balance of the mad and confused must be given. fascists are both sides in their own way.
For me it has nothing to do with right or left or free speech or even politics, I just think that Rob Monster as a person is a giant asshole and I will not buy anything that might put some money in his pocket.
Host whatever you want, I could not care less, but act like an idiot and I will not do business with you.
I respect your opinion
They can be in the market. Some people can be sad that they absorb terrahost. Maybe that's not the case, though. Well likely know more at some point.
Being at it and here ...
@terrahost, you wanted to make a statement "later"? It increasingly seems that your later actually means "next monday (TM)".
So, how much of terrahost is owned or will soon be owned by Epik and/or Rob "the idiot" Monster?