Gaming communications company Discord says they’re shutting down “alt-right” servers on their network, after users of the online network discovered members of white supremacist groups were using Discord’s services to coordinate their protests.
Discord is a free messaging and voice chat app that gamers around the world use to coordinate efforts and share tactics. But, the company discovered Monday, members of alt-right organizations across the country were using Discord’s servers to facilitate a planned demonstration outside a memorial for Heather Heyer, the woman who was killed during Saturday’s Charlottesville melee.
The company responded immediately, investigating and then shutting down the “altright.com”-linked server on their network, and issuing a statement confirming that the white supremacists had been booted.
Discord was built to bring people together through a love of gaming and our mission is to connect positive communities who share this appreciation. We unequivocally condemn white supremacy, neonazism, or any other group, term, ideology that is based on these beliefs. They are not welcome on Discord. While we don’t read people’s private servers our Terms of Service explicitly forbid harassment, threatening messages, or calls to violence. When hatred like this violates our community standards we act swiftly to take servers down and ban individual users. The public server linked to AltRight.com that violated those terms was shut down along with several other public groups and accounts fostering bad actors on Discord. We will continue to be aggressive to ensure that Discord exists for the community we set out to support – gamers.
Immediately, Discord began receiving questions as to whether it would perform similar excommunications for any Antifa or leftist organization on its servers – and whether it was booting the alt-right as part of an ideological agenda.
Although Discord couldn’t point to specific examples of enforcing its terms of service against radical “anti-fascists,” they did note that if users see evidence of leftists collaborating on violent protests inside the program, Discord will investigate and potentially shut those accounts down, too.
Of course, Discord isn’t the first tech company to level a ban on the alt-right following the weekend’s violent clashes. GoDaddy revoked hosting for the white supremacist website, the Daily Stormer, and Google domains booted the same site from its domain registry. Sites like AirBnB have also said their renters reserve the right to deny housing to anyone booking an apartment to attend an out-of-town rally (though its not super clear how they’d be able to tell).
via Daily Wire
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/1TJbF1r