InternetNZ says sorry for “institutional racism”

New Zealand ccTLD registry InternetNZ has apologized for its “institutional racism” following a probe instigated by its reaction to a YouTube video last year that incited violence against Māori citizens.

“We acknowledge that InternetNZ has institutional racism built into our culture and structures. These systems, and the way people have acted within them, have caused harm to Te Ao Māori,” the company said in a statement last week.

“We unreservedly apologise for the harm to Te Ao Māori [the Māori world],” it added. “We know that from here, it is our actions that will right these wrongs.”

The apology follows the publication of a report into current and historical structural racism at the company by Māori language advocate Hana O’Regan, commissioned by the InternetNZ Council last year.

The review was ordered after two council members, both Māori women, resigned in protest at InternetNZ’s inaction when a masked individual reportedly uploaded a video to YouTube encouraging the massacre of Māori people.

It seems many believed InternetNZ should have publicly condemned the video, which stayed online for more than a day, as well as used its political clout to encourage YouTube to delete it.

The company apologized a few days later, saying it had not wanted to inadvertently draw attention to the video, perhaps inflaming matters, but said that was with hindsight the wrong call.

O’Regan’s report is more wide-ranging than the 2021 incident, however, delving back into InternetNZ’s roots in the mid-1990s and finding long-term resistance to the asks of the Māori people.

Māori had to struggle to get the second-level domain maori.nz created, while geek.nz sailed through approval, the report says. There was also resistance to enabling internationalized domain names, which would allow the macro diacritic used in the Māori language, it says.

The report also criticized InternetNZ’s decision-making structure as failing to embrace Māori cultural practices, and its membership for failing to be sufficiently diverse.

The company says it has in the last year or so appointed a C-level Māori cultural advisor and created a committee to advise on Māori matters. It is also working on a “comprehensive action plan” it intends to publish early next year.

The 35-page report can be found here (pdf). It’s written for a domestic audience, so if you’re not Kiwi, you’ll probably need Google Translate to follow it. And if you’re an American conservative, it’ll probably pop all your aneurysms at once.

I was wrong, rejected “racist” web site didn’t go to Epik

Vdare.com, the domain for a US-based right-wing news blog that was jettisoned from Network Solutions last week under a cloud of racism allegations, did not, as expected, wind up at Epik.

Rather, Whois records reveal that the domain is now under the wing of PublicDomainRegistry.com, a unit of Endurance, having been transferred at the weekend.

Perhaps ironically, PDR is based in India, where white supremacy has been out of style for many decades. How very patriotic.

Unlike NetSol, PDR does not have an explicit ban on racist content in its acceptable use policy.

But Vdare’s editors think there’s a risk they’ll be moved on again, regardless, writing:

The number of ICANN accredited registrars has shrunk significantly in recent years as a result of consolidation. Many consumer-level registrars are not independent, but repackage services from larger companies. These larger companies are increasingly Woke. So while an individual registrar retailer may claim a freedom of speech mission-oriented corporate value, they operate solely at the pleasure of their supply chain.

In other words, we don’t know how long we’ll be tolerated by the new registrar either.

NetSol ejected Vdare earlier this month under pressure from civil rights groups in the wake of the reemergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and worldwide anti-racism protests.

Vdare in unapologetically anti-immigration and has described its role as to “defend the interests of American whites”, which has led to allegations of a white supremacist agenda.

I’d predicted that its domain would be welcomed by Epik, which has built up a bit of a reputation for working with domains kicked out of other registrars.

But when you’re wrong, you’re wrong, and I was wrong, at least for now.

Does ICANN have a race problem?

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, pretty much every corporation and institution in the US, and many elsewhere, have felt the need to make statements or enact changes in order to show how non-racist they are, and it seems ICANN is now no exception.

The org issued a statement from CEO Göran Marby late last week in which he denounced racism and said ICANN was committed to establishing a set of “guiding principles” to govern “diversity and inclusion”.

I found the statement rather odd. Does ICANN have a racism problem that needs addressing?

I don’t think it does. At least, I’ve never even heard so much as a rumor about such behavior, never mind a confirmed case.

I’ve been scratching my head to think of any examples of ICANN being accused of racism, and the only one I can come up with is a minor controversy 10 years ago when an early draft of the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook banned “terrorism”.

Some Muslim community members complained that the word could be perceived as “racist” and it was eventually removed.

Around the same time, a handful of community members (as well as yours truly) were accused by the head of unsuccessful .africa applicant DotConnectAfrica of being part of a racist conspiracy against the company, but to the best of my recollection we never invited ICANN staff to our meetings.

But that’s basically it.

ICANN already has diversity baked into its power hierarchies. Members of the board of directors and other committees have to be geographically diverse, which will usually lead to racial diversity, for example.

A great many of its senior leaders have been (at least under some definitions) “people of color”. There doesn’t appear to be a glass ceiling.

It’s also got its Expected Standards of Behavior, a system of codified politeness used in community interactions, which explicitly forbids racial discrimination.

The broader community is global, has no ethnic majority, and is self-selecting. Anyone with the means can show up to a public meeting, dial into a remote meeting, or join a working group, regardless of race or origin.

Statistics show that whenever an ICANN meeting is held in Africa or Asia, the largest groupings of participants are African or Asian.

Of course, maybe with such diversity comes problems. There are words that are considered offensive in some parts of the world that are perfectly acceptable in others, for example, but I’ve never heard of any instances of this kind of culture clash.

But is there actual racism going on at ICANN HQ? Marby’s post says:

We will open a facilitated dialogue to support our employees, to ensure that racial bias and discrimination, or bias of any kind, have no place in our workforce. We need to be comfortable having uncomfortable conversations so that we can address the unconscious and conscious ways in which systemic racism is perpetuated. We need to listen more to Black people and people of color to learn about how these issues impact them each and every day. And we need to continue to take meaningful actions to address inequality.

That suggests that either ICANN is aware of some sort of systemic racial bias among its staff, or that it wants to hunt it down and snuff it out before it becomes a bigger issue.

Or they could just be empty words designed to pay lip service to this stuff.

Web.com is kicking out a racist web site. How long before it winds up at Epik?

An American news site for white nationalists says it’s been given its goose-stepping orders by Web.com unit Network Solutions, and it’s looking for a new registrar.

VDare, named after Virginia Dare, a semi-mythological American folk hero, has been publishing anti-immigration material on vdare.com under NetSol’s wing for 20 years, but the site claims the registrar has given it 10 days, until June 25, to GTFO.

According to the site, NetSol told VDare that it was in violation of its acceptable use policy and “we consider your continued use of our services a serious issue and risk to our business and corporate reputation”.

That seems plausible, given how corporate America is currently bending over backwards to prove that they support the Black Lives Matter movement.

The move seems to have come due to pressure from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a campaigning group that persuaded NetSol to dump racist forum Stormfront as a customer a few years ago (it found its new home at Tucows).

The Committee has reportedly written to NetSol twice recently, urging the company to cut Vdare loose.

Vdare says it’s looking for a new registrar, but has also obtained a .onion domain in case it needs to retreat to the “Dark Web”. The .onion space is only accessible to users of the Tor browser.

Anyone care to place a bet on how long it will be before vdare.com winds up at Epik?

Should Epik be banned from NamesCon as racism debate spills over into domain industry?

Should GoDaddy-owned domain conference NamesCon ban the controversial registrar Epik from its conferences, after a day in which the domaining fraternity descended into a race row?

The fight kicked off last night when Epik director and noted domain investor Braden Pollock announced he was quitting the board over ideological differences with CEO Rob Monster.

Since @robmonster and I don't share the same ideology it's time he and I part company. I don't agree with the direction of @EpikDotCom so I've decided to resign my Board seat, effective immediately.

— Braden Pollock (@BradenPollock) June 10, 2020

Pollock did not explain his exact reasons for quitting, but the assumption among domainers on Twitter and elsewhere, perhaps due to heightened race awareness during the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, was that it was race-related.

Pollock’s wife is the civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom, who is currently representing victims of police violence during the BLM protests.

Monster is a conspiracy theorist and Bible-bashing Christian who has been accused over the years of racism, antisemitism, and worse.

Even if Monster is not a racist (and plenty of his associates, even his critics, believe he is not), Epik is certainly friendly to racist registrants.

It caused controversy in March last year by publicly offering to host gab.com, the Twitter clone most often used by right-wing refugees escaping Twitter’s ban hammer.

It also took the domain business of 8chan, a forum site frequented by racists, though it refused to actually host the site.

The registrar is also very popular with domainers, due to its low price and domainer-friendly services.

Before long, Pollock’s tweet had spawned a thread of domainers expressing support for either Pollock or Monster, as well as casually throwing accusations of racism at each other.

Pretty much the same thing was going on over on NamePros and Facebook.

Epik all but confirmed that race was at the center of the disagreement by tweeting out the names of a couple dozen employees, whom I can only assume are not white, with the hashtag #diversity.

Monster himself posted a short video in which he appeared to denounce racism.

The rising tide of polarity is a false construct. Current events are a learning laboratory for all of us. For those with #EyesToSee there is unity in compassion, empowerment and love. #Wisdom pic.twitter.com/SnUjqX61ch

— Rob Monster – CEO Epik.com (@robmonster) June 10, 2020

Later today, Epik posted a screenshot of a Facebook comment by NamesCon CEO Soeren von Varchmin, in which he suggested Epik had been banned from the conference, which the company has previously sponsored.

The tweet tagged both GoDaddy and the US Federal Trade Commission.

Who owns @NamesCon? Post winning Best Registrar 2020, @EpikDotCom is in accelerated growth due to the love for our customers, diversity, innovation & the truth of how we maintain business. These attacks are #anticompetitive and hateful, and far from accurate or deserved. pic.twitter.com/RtC0Ygj5HZ

— Epik.com (@EpikDotCom) June 10, 2020

While the von Varchmin comment is genuine, I’m told that he was speaking in a personal capacity and it’s not current GoDaddy policy to ban Epik.

But should it?

Epik will sponsor 8chan’s domain, but will not host its site

Controversial free-speech registrar Epik has said it will take 8chan’s domain name business, but will not provide content delivery services for the site.
In a post entitled “Epik draws line on Acceptable Use”, CEO Rob Monster wrote:

Upon careful consideration of the recent operating history of 8Chan, and in the wake of tragic news in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend, Epik has elected to not provide content delivery services to 8Chan. This is largely due to the concern of inadequate enforcement and the elevated possibility of violent radicalization on the platform.

He wrote that a “principal” of 8chan approached the company about transferring its domain to Epik on Monday.
The domain was in fact transferred, as DI reported shortly after it happened. Monster told DI that he had not actively solicited the site’s business.
While there’s no evidence its previous registrar, Tucows, had any intention of suspending the domain, its denial-of-service protection provider, CloudFlare, has publicly ditched 8chan and accused it of being responsible for the hate that lead to the El Paso shooting on Saturday.
8chan is a wild-west message board largely frequented by people with far-right views on race. It came in for extra scrutiny when it was reported that the El Paso terrorist posted a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto to the site shortly before the attack.
The site’s current owner, Jim Watkins, posted a surreal video to Twitter yesterday claiming, among other things, that the manifesto had in fact been posted by a third party.
Monster wrote that Epik was “reticent” about allowing 8chan to use its BitMitigate service to replace CloudFlare.
Its decision was moot anyway, as during the course of Monday speculation that 8chan would move to BitMitigate caused Epik’s service provider, Voxility, to sever ties with the company.
This caused BitMitigate to “temporarily” stop working for all of its customers, though regular domain registrants were not affected, Epik said.
Monster wrote that Epik will continue to provide services to all customers that publish legal content, but that it reserves the right to deny service in cases where the site’s owner has shown itself incapable of properly moderating user-generated content.
At time of writing, 8ch.net is not resolving at all for me.

After more racist shootings, take one guess which registrar 8chan just switched to

Controversial web forum 8chan has moved its domain name to a new registrar after it was linked to at least one of the two mass shootings that occurred in the US over the weekend.
According to Whois records, it’s just jumped to racist-friendly Epik, having been registered at Tucows since 2003.
The switch appears to have happened in the last few hours. At time of writing, you’re going to get different results depending which Whois server you ping.
Some servers continue to report Tucows as the registrar of record, perhaps using cached data, but Epik’s result looks like this:

8chan is an image/discussion board that describes itself as “the Darkest Reaches of the Internet”. It’s reportedly heavily used by racists, extremists and those with an interest in child pornography.
It was widely linked by the media to the shooting in the border town of El Paso, Texas on Saturday, which claimed the lives of 20 people and left 26 more injured.
The suspect in the case reportedly posted to 8chan a 2,300-word racist “manifesto”, in which he ranted against Latino immigration, just 20 minutes before launching the attack.
This morning, Cloudflare announced that it would no longer provide denial-of-service attack protection for the web site, saying:

The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit.

Google removed the site from its index a few years ago, due to allegations about child abuse material.
At this point, it’s not clear whether Tucows also ejected 8chan, or whether its owners decided to jump ship, perhaps sensing which way the wind is blowing.
Its new home, Epik, calls itself the “Swiss bank” of domain registrars, and has actively courted sites that enable far-right political views.
The registrar openly sought the business of Gab.com, the Twitter clone used largely by those who have been banned by Twitter, after GoDaddy suspended the site’s domain last November.
In March this year, Epik CEO Rob Monster came under fire for publicly doubting the veracity of the video of the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, which killed 50 people.
8chan was also frequented by the perpetrator of that attack, among others.
Epik is described as “cornering the market on websites where hate speech is thriving”, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-racist group.
Monster has said that he does not support the views of extremists, but merely wants to provide a platform where registrants can exercise their rights to free speech.