[capableweb]

Could you share something damning instead of referring people to search, as we probably will find different information.

As far as I can tell, Epik focused on hosting and DNS management for marginalized/excluded groups on the internet, so naturally they attract a lot of groups. Not sure why that'd be bad though.

Things like this also makes me actually like the company more:

> Pharmaceutical watchdog website LegitScript reported in 2018 that they had alerted Epik to the sale of illegal drugs and counterfeit medications on websites registered by Epik, and that Epik had refused to act upon the information without a court order

That's exactly how I want my hosting company to act, and any that don't are actively fragile.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company)

[qeternity]

I agree with you about Epik’s stance, although I believe they’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

Rob Monster for instance has expressed support for the KKK and claimed that the Christchurch shooting was a hoax.

I’ll defend with my life his right to say abhorrent things. But that also means I get to express myself and call him a bad dude.

[oefrha]

Sure, this dude sound like nuts from comments describing him here (I can’t even be bothered to look this shit up myself) and I’m glad I dodged a bullet. However, the private info of all their customers from their inception are allegedly exposed; and lots of people here seem to be cheering the hackers on.

Does this mean we need — actually, needed — to do research on the political standings of every founder, CEO, CXO of every service we use? And somehow predict they won’t do abhorrent things in the future even if they appeared harmless at the time? Otherwise we deserve it when we get doxxed for being a customer of a disgraced person?

I believe the answer is no, that’s unreasonable. These hackers are just criminals illegally doxxing a huge number of people. They don’t deserve cheers. I hope everyone of them gets arrested, which is highly unlikely.

(This is really not a direct response to your comment; not saying you were cheering them on.)

[qeternity]

> These hackers are just criminals illegally doxxing a huge number of people. They don’t deserve cheers.

Fully agree. First and foremost the rule of law must be blind. However, spectators need not be similarly blind.

I am not cheering on the hackers. I am merely accepting the Newtonian forces at work here. I doubt that there are many (any?) Epik customers who I would consider good people (there’s simply no logical reason to host with them otherwise). That doesn’t mean they aren’t entitled to their rights, under the law.

But it does mean that I definitely don’t sympathize with them like I might someone else. Much like I wouldn’t sympathize with a drug lord who gets robbed by a rival drug lord. A crime is a crime, and the law should be applied accordingly.

Buuut I am only human. And I only have so much sympathy.

[ryantgtg]

Naw there’s a ton of fine and good people using their services.

For example, I inherited a domain 12 years ago using it. At one point I tried to move to my personal host, but my personal host has bad DNS features and I couldn’t get my site configured. I was able to move it back (panicked I just went back to the service that I knew worked). And then I was stuck in a six month period where I couldn’t transfer it again. And then life happened and it’s three years later.

That might not fit into your logical conceptions of how people make choices. But I think it’s very very safe to assume that many customers are upstanding people.

[pure_simplicity]

> I doubt that there are many (any?) Epik customers who I would consider good people (there’s simply no logical reason to host with them otherwise)

This is an incredibly shortsighted / insular perspective. We live in a world where conservative orthodox Jews (e.g. Ben Shapiro) are called Nazi's and conservative Black folks (Larry Elder) are being called white supremacists, simply for being conservative. Likewise, progressives and other left leaning individuals that dare utter criticism of the left are met with the milder insult of being called conservative (e.g. Tim Pool, Glenn Greenwald, Bill Maher). People are deliberately shifting the overton window to a ridiculous degree and the scary thing is that they are getting away with it.

I can imagine a lot of regular conservatives worry about censorship and may find Epik to be a safer bet than, say, Google who blocks pro-life ads [1]. I can understand that maybe from your perspective (assuming you're left leaning) you are not aware of how hostile society has become to mainstream conservatism, but you should try to see things from the perspective of a regular conservative who sees prominent mainstream conservatives being slandered, lied about, and cancelled all around them.

Aside from that, Epik did have a few differentiating features like offering single purchase lifetime Domain ownership that I haven't seen elsewhere, which by itself could be sufficient motivation for people to host with them, without the necessarily knowing anything about potential controversy surrounding the business.

[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/google-blocks-ad-for-s...

[coredog64]

GoDaddy is actively shitty with a cancerous internal culture, but I guess that’s okay as long as they don’t host Nazis.

[lelandfe]

Remember when a guy murdered 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue? When it was revealed the shooter had posted about it on Gab beforehand, every service powering the social network pulled the plug. Epik was who brought them back online.[0]

The hero of hate speech is not exactly a sterling reputation to have.

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/how-right-wing-social-media-site...

[qeternity]

I actually agree with the comment above: good speech doesn’t usually need defending…it’s almost always bad speech that does. But then again, I tend to side with free speech maximalists.

Rob Monster and crew are bad people because they actually believe this rhetoric, that’s why they defend it. They aren’t taking on a noble cause of defending free speech. They are defending speech with which they agree, and tends to be pretty shitty…that’s why they’re bad.

I don’t think they should be forced to stop, in fact I really hope the 1A is never diluted to that level. But the 1A cuts both ways: we get to sit back and talk about how awful Rob Monster is.

[quantumwannabe]

So you believe that Facebook should be shut down because the Christchurch shooter livestreamed his crime there?

[fortyseven]

Sigh. Facebook would not be a willing participant in this situation.

[pure_simplicity]

What makes you think Gab is any different from Facebook in this regard (referring to the platforms' role in the examples of violence in the ancestor comments)? Gab wasn't created to host illegal content, but to allow all strictly legal content. Neither Facebook nor Gab is willingly participating in anything that is published on their platform, because they are platforms, not publishers.