GoDaddy Severs Ties With Daily Stormer After Charlottesville Article
The headline to an article posted on Sunday at The Daily Stormer called Ms. Heyer “fat” and “childless.”
Ben Butler, the director of GoDaddy’s digital crimes unit, said in a statement
that the company generally did not take action that would constitute censorship.
GoDaddy Inc., the web hosting company, severed ties with The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi
and white supremacy website, after the site posted an article mocking Heather D. Heyer, the 32-year-old woman who was killed when a man drove into a crowd during a rally of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday.
“Given The Daily Stormer’s latest article comes on the immediate heels of a violent act, we believe this
type of article could incite additional violence, which violates our terms of service,” he said.
Dan C. Race, a GoDaddy spokesman, said in an email on Monday that his company had given the site 24 hours to find another domain provider.
“In instances where a site goes beyond the mere exercise of these freedoms, however,
and crosses over to promoting, encouraging, or otherwise engaging in violence against any person, we will take action,” he said.
The company had been asked in a report in July in The Daily Beast why it did not take action against the site,
even after Daily Stormer had published an article promising to “track down” the relatives of CNN staffers.
“While we detest the sentiment of such sites, we support a free and open internet and, similar to the principles of free speech,
that sometimes means allowing such tasteless, ignorant content,” he said.