Donuts company has announced it has sold several premium domains in the .news gTLD. The rights to the domain names science.news, food.news, health.news, medicine.news, pollution.news, cancer.news and climate.news have been acquired by the company WebSeed. The value of the transaction has not been disclosed but is supposedly worth hundreds of thousands dollars. WebSeed has already acquired the rights to vaccines.news, nutrients.news, menshealth.news and a number of other domain names from Donuts. It seems that this is good ‘news’ for the latter's registry and the .news domain – all the more so as active sites have been launched on many purchased domains.
But in fact, this may not be an occasion to celebrate. It appears that the man behind WebSeed is Mike Adams, who is known for creating the controversial site Natural News, dubbed an "empire of misinformation" in the United States. Adams is known as an avid supporter of various conspiracy theories, alternative remedies, and other ideas that lack scientific support. His site regularly posts articles claiming, for instance, that white condensation trails left in the sky by high-flying aircraft consist of chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed by a “world government.” The site vaccines.news has posted the information that “over the last decade the measles vaccine has killed more people than measles,” while medicine.news claims that “vaccines target blacks for depopulation” as they contain substances that cause infertility in black women.
There is no point in commenting on this other than to state that the purveyor of misinformation has acquired more channels and that the reputation of the .news domain could be seriously affected. Donuts cannot be blamed: it has neither the right nor the opportunity to control the contents of the sites in its domain zones unless the content is illegal. The overall situation, however, is sad. As Domain Incite author Kevin Murphy ironically noted, “Imagine a fox buying up all the good .henhouse domains. It's a bit like that.”
