Technology Companies Reaction to Charlottesville Protests

The white supremacist event in Charlottesville changed a lot of things. Even before the supremacists gathered in the small city, Facebook took an action of deleting the Unite Right group. This is the Facebook page that was used to organize the protests. This happened the night before the protests began. As for the planners, they didn’t give up as they resulted to other platforms to make the protests a success. When a counter protestor by the name Heather Heyer was killed, internet companies around the country decided to take action. For instance, Facebook decided to ban several groups completely. In a report by CNBC, some of the groups that were banned by Facebook include the White Nationalists United as well as Right Wing Death Squad. Reddit also decided to ban a number of accounts such as Physical Removal. This is a group that tried to justify the killing of the lady referring to it as morally justified. Twitter was also not left behind as it suspended some few people from its platform. The Politically Incorrect forum is one of the most notable users that was suspended by Twitter. Discord was also not left behind after some users had suggested disrupting the funeral of Heyer. The platform reacted by blocking all users who had contributed towards the discussion of disrupting the funeral.

The disruption did not stop at social media as it continued to other internet services. For instance, the Daily Stormer was banned by GoDaddy who happened to be their domain registrar and hosting company. This is the neo-Nazi website that was responsible for planning these deadly protests. Some few hours later, the website lost its access to SendGrid as it was shut down by Google. On its part, PayPal reacted by denying services to the Richard Spenser organization meaning that money to fund more protests was cut short. Airbnb later reacted by suspending some accounts related to some customers who were attending the event in Charlottesville. The company later released a statement condemning the protests mentioning that there is no place for hatred, racism, and violence on this earth. In three days, music associated to white supremacists had been removed by Spotify from their libraries. All these internet companies demonstrated to the whole world that they would not condone bigotry and hatred. These are services that are accessed by all stakeholders including corporations, citizens, lobbyists, media and politicians, a sign that their action and message was felt far and wide.