Apparently, Gab (the Twitter for Trolls) has now been given five days by its domain registrar to transfer its domain due to it violating the registrar’s terms of service. Whether that is Google related or Vox related or just the CEO making a sufficient noise about themselves that somebody went and had a look at how much racial vilification there is on the site, it’s hard to say [ETA it may have been directly connected to a particular vicious anti-Semitic post]. The registrar is based in Melbourne and hence Australian law applies – in particular, section 18C of the Racial Discrimination act (see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-01/what-is-section-18c-and-why-do-some-politicians-want-it-changed/7806240 )
The bad news is that this probably means more Nazi trolls heading back to Twitter.
I think I saw VD claiming he’d sent the registrar some screenshots? If so I’m sure he’ll be claiming victory at any moment.
Anyway, this is sufficiently damaging that VDs “I’m not against Gab, I’m just teaching them a valuable lesson” claim looks pretty hollow.
He has since said that they won’t exist in a years time and for once I think he might be right. They haven’t planned well at all and haven’t thought any of this through. Google are hardly going to struggle to convince a judge that a company whose own domain registrar won’t host them should be allowed on Google’s own shop.
Ah, there’s the victory-claiming and told-you-so from VD right on cue.
It’ll be interesting to see if Gab manage to find a new home – iirc Stormfront skipped between a few providers before falling. (Although in the case of gab it’s a matter of their domain reg rather than their provider I think? Presumably they’re big enough to be their own hosting?)
No doubt VD considers this a big win in terms of being the biggest fish in a small pond, but I think he’s damaged himself long-term by making the whole pond smaller. OTOH he can go back to whining about Twitter and shadow bans etc, which going to get tedious in a hurry.
(I now wonder if suing google was an alt-marketing play to distract from these internal troubles – if so it was too little too late)
Yeah, there will be a lot of ill-will and disillusionment about this. Until a couple of weeks ago the Scrappy-Doos all wereclaiming Gab was the bees-knees and Vox was some kind of avuncular benefactor. Now they are being very quiet about the whole thing…
I’m not sure where to put this so I’ll stick it here. I’m curious whether you’ve been following the spin-off turmoil going on in medieval studies at the moment. The alt-right-Nazi-whites supremacist-Chr Dominionist crowd apparently has appropriated the Middle Ages and medievalness as part of their identity (not surprisingly) but now this field of academic enquiry has become embroiled in this same violent, race-infected battle going on in sci fi (and by some of the same actors). The current flashpoint is a U of Chicago scholar Rachel Fulton Brown, who has been contributing to Breitbart and pumping up MY’s profile, attacking the scholarship of an untenured POC at Vassar Dorothy Kim whose research details the multi-ethnic, multi-religious nature of medieval Europe. It’s gotten pretty ugly, with the latter getting death threats etc.
For reading in between screaming sessions, I do not recommend taking along the recent article by political scientist Bruce Gilley “The Case for Colonialism” published in the current issue of Third World Quarterly in which he plays fast and loose with historical facts (Haiti didn’t have a “significant colonial history”, huh??!) to make an argument in favor of the West recolonizing the world. He also is anging for a gig with Breitbart now because academia is so intolerant.
I googled the names and yeah, screaming into an empty room seems like the best choice.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that anything to do with the alt-right becomes fractally weird, but the Milo-apologist, Breitbart column-writing professor goes into my “you couldn’t make it up” list.
(Haiti didn’t have a “significant colonial history”, huh??!)
That could come as quite a surprise to Michaëlle Jean, who used to be the Governor-General of Canada, and who was a Haitian refugee from the Duvalier regime. (Canada has also led a lot of the relief efforts in Haiti over the years.)
Heck, I’ve heard claims that one of the major pushes to the British abolitionist movement in the early 1800s was basically to screw the French when Napoleon re-established slavery and attempted to crack down on the ongoing revolution in Haiti.
It’s like… what, that’s just fractally wrong. You cannot talk about the history of Haiti without acknowledging both the Spanish and French colonization and the ensuing revolution.
I wasn’t aware of Rachel Fulton Brown – the Middle Ages stuff we’ve seen of from the SF alt-right (e.g. John C Wright in particular but also the focus on Thomas Aquinas).
//It’s gotten pretty ugly, with the latter getting death threats etc.//
If the alt-right are involved then that’s what happens. Nasty stuff.
There’s enough overlap in personnel with the sci fi stuff that I thought you might be interested. RFB’s blog is quite something, advocating a very — what’s the current euphemism? — “muscular” form of Christianity and reading of its role in human society.
Apparently the entire editorial board of the Third World Quarterly resigned today because of the editorial malpractice involved in publishing the Gilley article. Peer reviews had rejected it for being one-sided and vastly understating or not acknowledging of the millions of deaths and destruction in colonized regions, but it was published anyway as “an opinion piece.” No doubt the right-wing will see this resignation and demands for the article’s retraction as the “left”‘s intolerance, rejection of free speech and demand for lockstep groupthink.
Given these two kerfuffles, along with the disinviting of Chelsea Manning from Harvard while they keep Spicey as a visiting fellow, the Koch’s takeover of econ and poli sci depts… and the ongoing neo-liberal assault on the humanities and tenure and academia and students (ie: debt) in general, it’s most annoying to hear people yammer on about universities as left-wing factories.
Camestros Felapton 
17 responses to “More on Troll v Troll”
I think I saw VD claiming he’d sent the registrar some screenshots? If so I’m sure he’ll be claiming victory at any moment.
Anyway, this is sufficiently damaging that VDs “I’m not against Gab, I’m just teaching them a valuable lesson” claim looks pretty hollow.
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He has since said that they won’t exist in a years time and for once I think he might be right. They haven’t planned well at all and haven’t thought any of this through. Google are hardly going to struggle to convince a judge that a company whose own domain registrar won’t host them should be allowed on Google’s own shop.
LikeLike
Ah, there’s the victory-claiming and told-you-so from VD right on cue.
It’ll be interesting to see if Gab manage to find a new home – iirc Stormfront skipped between a few providers before falling. (Although in the case of gab it’s a matter of their domain reg rather than their provider I think? Presumably they’re big enough to be their own hosting?)
No doubt VD considers this a big win in terms of being the biggest fish in a small pond, but I think he’s damaged himself long-term by making the whole pond smaller. OTOH he can go back to whining about Twitter and shadow bans etc, which going to get tedious in a hurry.
(I now wonder if suing google was an alt-marketing play to distract from these internal troubles – if so it was too little too late)
LikeLike
Yeah, there will be a lot of ill-will and disillusionment about this. Until a couple of weeks ago the Scrappy-Doos all wereclaiming Gab was the bees-knees and Vox was some kind of avuncular benefactor. Now they are being very quiet about the whole thing…
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What’s that saying about stopped clocks? Because this is exactly the situation it was made for.
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I’m not sure where to put this so I’ll stick it here. I’m curious whether you’ve been following the spin-off turmoil going on in medieval studies at the moment. The alt-right-Nazi-whites supremacist-Chr Dominionist crowd apparently has appropriated the Middle Ages and medievalness as part of their identity (not surprisingly) but now this field of academic enquiry has become embroiled in this same violent, race-infected battle going on in sci fi (and by some of the same actors). The current flashpoint is a U of Chicago scholar Rachel Fulton Brown, who has been contributing to Breitbart and pumping up MY’s profile, attacking the scholarship of an untenured POC at Vassar Dorothy Kim whose research details the multi-ethnic, multi-religious nature of medieval Europe. It’s gotten pretty ugly, with the latter getting death threats etc.
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Ummm
Ummm
Wut?
I’m not sure whether to ask for more details or just go scream into an empty room.
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For reading in between screaming sessions, I do not recommend taking along the recent article by political scientist Bruce Gilley “The Case for Colonialism” published in the current issue of Third World Quarterly in which he plays fast and loose with historical facts (Haiti didn’t have a “significant colonial history”, huh??!) to make an argument in favor of the West recolonizing the world. He also is anging for a gig with Breitbart now because academia is so intolerant.
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//(Haiti didn’t have a “significant colonial history”, huh??!)//
Wow – that’s just…wow
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I googled the names and yeah, screaming into an empty room seems like the best choice.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that anything to do with the alt-right becomes fractally weird, but the Milo-apologist, Breitbart column-writing professor goes into my “you couldn’t make it up” list.
LikeLike
That could come as quite a surprise to Michaëlle Jean, who used to be the Governor-General of Canada, and who was a Haitian refugee from the Duvalier regime. (Canada has also led a lot of the relief efforts in Haiti over the years.)
Heck, I’ve heard claims that one of the major pushes to the British abolitionist movement in the early 1800s was basically to screw the French when Napoleon re-established slavery and attempted to crack down on the ongoing revolution in Haiti.
It’s like… what, that’s just fractally wrong. You cannot talk about the history of Haiti without acknowledging both the Spanish and French colonization and the ensuing revolution.
LikeLike
I wasn’t aware of Rachel Fulton Brown – the Middle Ages stuff we’ve seen of from the SF alt-right (e.g. John C Wright in particular but also the focus on Thomas Aquinas).
//It’s gotten pretty ugly, with the latter getting death threats etc.//
If the alt-right are involved then that’s what happens. Nasty stuff.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There’s enough overlap in personnel with the sci fi stuff that I thought you might be interested. RFB’s blog is quite something, advocating a very — what’s the current euphemism? — “muscular” form of Christianity and reading of its role in human society.
Apparently the entire editorial board of the Third World Quarterly resigned today because of the editorial malpractice involved in publishing the Gilley article. Peer reviews had rejected it for being one-sided and vastly understating or not acknowledging of the millions of deaths and destruction in colonized regions, but it was published anyway as “an opinion piece.” No doubt the right-wing will see this resignation and demands for the article’s retraction as the “left”‘s intolerance, rejection of free speech and demand for lockstep groupthink.
Given these two kerfuffles, along with the disinviting of Chelsea Manning from Harvard while they keep Spicey as a visiting fellow, the Koch’s takeover of econ and poli sci depts… and the ongoing neo-liberal assault on the humanities and tenure and academia and students (ie: debt) in general, it’s most annoying to hear people yammer on about universities as left-wing factories.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This sounds a lot like climatology back in the 2000’s.
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Current affairs question of the day: Onion or Not Onion? Can’t really tell anymore! 🙂
“Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What’s Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions”
http://www.theonion.com/article/historians-politely-remind-nation-to-check-whats-h-26183
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🙂
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@KR:
Try a ‘masculine’ form of Christianity. Usually with the church as bride.
With all the implications of ‘toxic masculinity’ already in place.
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