The shooting in the American town of El Paso last Saturday, which claimed the lives of 20 people in a supermarket also effected the domain industry. According to Domain Incite, the popular forum 8chan suddenly changed its domain registrar. The fact is that it was 8chan where killer Patrick Crusius posted his “manifesto” less than half an hour before he opened fire on people at the supermarket.
The forum had previously been heavily criticized for providing a platform for hate speech and child pornography. Until yesterday, Tucows was the registrar of 8chan.net. But since the morning of August 5, the management was moved to Epik. At the moment, it is not known whether Tucows refused to deal with 8chan, or whether the transit was initiated by the forum administrators. But still, the choice of the new registrar is quite obvious. Epik has a very dubious reputation. For example, it “sheltered” Gab.com (a kind of Twitter analogue for users blocked on Twitter for extremist statements), after GoDaddy refused to run this domain. In March of this year, Epik CEO Rob Monster expressed doubts about the authenticity of a video of a terrorist attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, where 50 people were killed during shooting. At the same time, Monster assures that he does not support extremism at all, but merely provides his clients with a platform that fully ensures freedom of speech.
