[ekiru]

Epik started hosting Gab in 2018 (introducing "free speech" as a part of their marketing allegedly following the Gab move [1][2]) and BitChute and 8chan in 2019 [3] (although they stopped hosting 8chan [4] after some of their own upstream providers cut them off or threatened to do so; they may have continued to provide DNS, but I haven't tried to verify this since providing services to the far right on the down low wouldn't count as part of their marketing).

External criticism from prominent publications and organizations of Epik for its hosting of far-right sites also dates back at least as far as early 2019 [5][6].

HN search provides a story about Epik hosting Gab [7] as the highest popularity story result for "Epik" in the date range Jan 8th 2018 to Dec 30th 2019 (HN search is weird about date ranges and wouldn't let me do 1st to 31st) [8]. The front page of that search result has 5 other stories that are not just incorrectly matching on the word "Epic" or companies named "Epic", one of which is about Epik's "forever domains" service and got 3 points and 2 comments. One is about 8chan getting kicked off its previous provider and mentions them moving to Epik (it appears to be the same article as my [3]), but the comments mostly does not talk about Epik. The other articles are all about Epik hosting Gab or far-right sites but received few upvotes and comments.

In the first page of results for the corresponding search for comments [9] I can find 1 comment from 'sadris talking about Epik's low pricing, 1 comment from 'boultonmark on a non-Gab story describing Epik as seeming to be "the go to company for criminals online", 2 hiring posts from somebody who happens to have epik in their username near the bottom, and two comments using the word "epic" at the bottom. The 14 by my count other comments are all about Epik hosting Gab and/or either hosting or not hosting 8chan.

[1]: The SPLC article below [5] says this is the timing, but the Wayback machine[2] doesn't have frequent enough captures of their twitter account for me to verify the timing to more precisely than between

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190119014600/https://twitter.c... has "Protector of responsible Free Speech." in their bio, tweets calling for popular Youtube channels (including Jordan Peterson) to move to BitChute, and referring to itself as "Alt-tech", which afaict is a term coined to refer specifically to technology providers that alt-right sites & people have moved to as a result of bans or moderation policies on more mainstream providers.

[3]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/5/20754943/8chan-epik-offlin...

[4]: https://www.epik.com/blog/epik-draws-line-on-acceptable-use....

[5]: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-...

[6]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-fou...

[7]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18383947

[8]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577750400&dateRange=custom&...

[9]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577750400&dateRange=custom&...

[lrae]

Thanks for substantiating my point and doing the research.

The HN community - or even just small parts of it - did not go hard on Epik nor Rob Monster >12 months ago and mention all the horrible things about them, and it was not as commonly known as some currently make it out to be - not even in the thread about them welcoming Gab, nor the one about them not hosting 8chan.

[ekiru]

You're welcome, but I don't think the information/citations I provided do substantiate your point at all. They show that Epik did market itself to right wing sites and individuals (and specifically the alt-right) as early as January 2019 (around 32 months ago),

Your claim upthread was:

> Even the threads here on HN from back then where epik gets mentioned don't mention that stuff.

but the HN search links demonstrate that the threads here on HN from back then where Epik gets mentioned are almost all specifically about that stuff! Not all of that discussion was opposed to Epik, but that wasn't the claim you took issue with.

As to your Google Trends link, yes, Gab has never been an especially popular website, and it was not as frequently searched for then as in the period immediately after Donald Trump's twitter account was suspended, but your trends link shows that the Epik coverage (and the only HN thread about Epik to get any traction in 2018 or 2019) coincided with the most searches Gab ever got (as a result of coverage related to the Tree of Life synagogue shooting) prior to Trump's twitter suspension, and was about three times as much as it gets nowadays. It was only exceeded during the week of January 10th through 16th of this year. Epik itself, of course, has never been as frequently searched for as even Gab ( https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=... ).

[lrae]

> but the HN search links demonstrate that the threads here on HN from back then where Epik gets mentioned are almost all specifically about that stuff! Not all of that discussion was opposed to Epik, but that wasn't the claim you took issue with.

Yes it was? That's why I said threads - not posts. Threads include the discussion, not just the articles. And like you showed, even the big discussions did not have people mention how bad of a person Rob Monster is or that Epik is that right-leaning instead of just really free-speech.

In every second about a (big) company on HN, folk here mention how bad that company or some execs are - because it is common knowledge / opinion. And it's always one of the top comment threads in the thread.

Rob Monster and Epik being that right-leaning and not just "really free-speech", and also (Christian) nut jobs - was not common knowledge at that point. Which was my initial point "upthread upthread", that Epik had 100% a boat load of users that were just there for cheap domain prices and that did not know about it and were not there to support any of this. And thus are not guilty by association (and even deserve to be in that leak), like some in this thread claim.