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Republican digital operators are worried for themselves and their customers after big tech companies cracked down on prominent conservative websites and organizations.
Why is this important: Amazon’s decision to remove the popular conservative social media site Talk from its hosting services, and the Twitter suspensions of President Trump and tens of thousands of his supporters, raise concerns among right-wing segments online. ‘be themselves “exhausted”.
What’s up: A handful of conservative digital professionals huddled virtually this week on a mailing list they share. The tone was disheartened as they tried, in a series of emails sent to Axios, to figure out how to stay on the safe side of tech industry standards.
Between the lines: The crackdowns have mainly focused on platforms where conspiracy theories have proliferated since Trump’s electoral loss and, in some cases, where violence on Capitol Hill last week has been fomented, encouraged and celebrated.
- But the digital strategists on that mailing list were confident they could soon find themselves caught up in a seemingly looming wave of online censorship.
- They see them as arbitrary and politically motivated.
- “What is the threshold for knowing if a project is likely to be started and stopped?” Colorado GOP quarterback Allen Fuller asked. “Obviously, fomenting insurgency and violence is pretty clear … but the line from there is not.”
- “It’s just a matter of where the left wants to draw the line and they have no idea as to when that line is and don’t seem to care,” wrote Thomas Peters, the founder and CEO of the peer-to-peer text messaging software company RumbleUp.
Driving the news: Trump’s permanent suspension from Twitter was seismic on Friday. But it was far from the only platform to exile it.
- His supporters have flocked to rival social media platforms for his political brand. The most popular of these, Talking, has been suspended by Amazon’s AWS cloud service and is now suing.
- GoDaddy launched the web’s most popular gun forum, AR15.com, on Tuesday from its domain registration system. The company told Axios it discovered content on the site “that encouraged and encouraged violence.”
For some conservatives, the answer is to remain as technologically autonomous as possible.
- Tom Elliott, a former radio producer who founded the television and video cut-off service Grabien, said his decision to build his own digital infrastructure behind the company was paying off.
- “I have specifically avoided outsourcing the functionality to outside technology vendors who have shown a willingness to be used on behalf of sessions to fight for ‘social justice’,” Elliott said in an email to Axios.
Editor’s Note: This piece has been updated with mailing list information, having been inadvertently cut during the editing process.
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