Anonymous is claiming to have conducted an operation it called “Epik Fail,” deriving its eponym from the name of a DNS server called EPIK that happens to be the home of a lot of alleged ‘alt-right’ sites, a phrase that has now almost become synonymous with white nationalism.
Some major sites on this server include Parlor, Gab, and 8chan.
The social media monopolies have successfully filtered opinions to such a degree that anytime any potential competitor creates a platform that alleges to be a ‘free speech platform,’ the first people there will be the ones from the fringe of opinion in current year society. Most of that fringe is inocuous in the sense that it doesn’t produce coerce justification against humans for merely being outside those ‘fringe’ standards.
But also contained within that fringe are the worst of the worst as far as opinions that produce non-consensual assumptions regarding those who don’t fit into the very rigid acceptable range of what it means to be human in the first place. White Supremacists most certainly fit into this worst of the worst kind of category for almost all humans across the political, philosophical, and theological spheres. Race Supremacism in general is one of the worst, most dangerous patterns of assumptions that leads to this subhumanization.
So whenever there exists a platform that is committed to creating a free speech platform in competition with a highly monitored platform, it is easy, was easy, and will always be easy, to label these platforms by whatever group is the worst of the worst to show up on that platform. It’s a brilliant tactic from a strategic perspective, but one which could not be pulled off if you did not own the means of cultural production as this particular factional coalition does, the DNC and those who are at various degrees allies and enablers of the party’s interests.
When you create such a narrow space for ‘acceptable’ opinion, there is no doubt that any platofrm, whether it was created by an actual ‘allt righter’ or a crypto-anarcho-communist, will not end up immediately, more fundamentally, populated by the worst of the worst fhe planet has to offer. The question is, can the platform transition from being a haven for the worst thoughts of humanity to a viable free speech platform populated by a wide-ranging group of opinions, hardly any of which fall into this particular category, or even many other forms of opinioning that more usually lead others to subhumanize their neighbors for their being or thought alone.
Platforms have little chance to get to that transition when the faction with the means of cultural production uses its near-monopolistic powers to pitch to the rank and file of the land a notion that these sites are havens for Nazis and Bigots. As mentioned earlier, due to the circumstance of the times, the monpolostic social media platforms having filtered out a lot of unacceptable opinions from public access, there will be some truth to what these organs of the DNC coalition claim, which will produce, and most likely is producing, a filter for preventing rank and file people for exploring these platforms as alternatives to the monpolistic ones.
The Valley Cabal, as I like to call it, the coalition of Silicon Valley Social Media giants work as an undocumented team to assure near-similar standards regarding filtering of thought on their platforms to assure that together they can effectively preemptively delegitimize any potential competitor willing to expose their weakness, the filter in the first place. The minute you open your doors to the public, actual Nazis and actual Bigots will show up.
What’s a platform to do but to be branded an alt right site before it ever got the chance to prove itself? And the filter remains protected from potential competition, and the big socs of Silocon Valley, the Valley Cabal, also remain protected from competition, meaning the rest of Corporate America will continue to rely on the Valley Cabal, if you will (yes, I’m being a bit tongue in cheek), for ad impressions to sell their products.
And now, these safe havens for the worst of us have now had, allegedly, their private data exposed, and tens of thousands of humans might find themselves on the DNC Coalition’s Dark Web hit lists. The number of actual Nazis and bigots on that list, though, will most likely be significantly less than what Anonymous will alllege, and, if it is legit, and if people start getting economic and/our physical consequences for appearing on these lists, well, there will be mostly innocent victims in the days, weeks, and months to come.
“Alt-right” domain registrar hacked, reportedly deanonymizing domain owners
From boingboing.net
2021-09-17 12:26:47
Rob Beschizza
Excerpt:
Epik, an internet services company that reportedly provided hosting and domain name services to right-wing sites such as Parler, Gab and the recently-infamous Texas abortion snitch site, was hacked this week and customer data leaked.
In a press release on the hack, dubbed Operation EPIK FAIL, Anonymous claimed that it was able to obtain “a decade’s worth” of information, including domain registrations and transfers, account credentials, and emails from an Epik employee.” This dataset is all that’s needed to trace actual ownership and management of the fascist side of the internet that has eluded researchers, activists, and, well, just about everybody,” the release alleges.
