[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.