Building your own Alt-Right centered Platform
What do you do when you’re getting kicked out of other social media platforms? If you’re a firm believer of the alt-right then you just go ahead and build your own platform. Following the clashes in Charlottesville between white nationalists and protesters, different platforms are beginning to distance themselves from these nationalistic supporters. Crowdfunding sites such as Patreon and GoFundMe have started to shut down fundraisers for far-right causes, while online payment services like Apple Pay and Paypal have started cutting off services to white nationalists and merchants who specialize in selling items that promote racism, such as clothing that bear Nazi symbols.
To fill this new need for sourcing sites they being the neo-Nazi entrpreneurs are beginning to construct their own crowdfunding sites. Most of these sites give a basis as to why they decided to come up with their own platforms. While almost all stated that they’re banding together for their freedom of speech and to fight cencorsism, however with such platform names like Counter.Fund(Currently the domain is up for grabs), Goyfundme (Site has been replaced), and as well as Hatreon suggest that they have an alternative reason besides the fight for freedom of speech.
Simply building a site is not enough to be able to host and fix all of the problems of the alt-right. One such issue that they’re running into is the problem with finding credit card processors that are even comfortable working with them. Hate-funding sites have had to find new credit card processors, simply because mainstream companies such as banks and credit card companies don not want to be associated with these types of individuals.
According to the SPLC or the Southern Poverty Law Center, it all comes down to how many people are willing to pay up and support these crowd funding sites.Goyfundme for example just like GoFundMe is one such site that is slowly gaining traction with the white nationalist. The actual site is currently down for maintenance, one of its main popular people pleaser angles is it does not endorse or promote the political ideologies of its fundraisers it is only a free platform for all to use. Since the site itself is down there are no projects currently up and available however before the site went down, some of the more popular projects included” The Unite the Right Defense fund” and the “Occult Nationalism Sticker Pack”
On top of being kicked off of most of these popular sites the far-right movement is running into another problem that is keeping them from being able to build their own platforms. Domain registrars such as GoDaddy that sell addresses that point web users toward a site are making it increasingly difficult for hate speech supporters to build their new brands. However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for such sites to find registrars to actually endorse their sites simply because as before their ideologies are simply too crazy to be able to be supported.
When it comes to this new version of the far-right internet, we can rest assured that as of right now it’s still just a jumbled mess that is struggling to even establish itself as a credible source or platform for users. Sites such as WrongThink (alt-Facebook), PewTube ((alt-YouTube), Voat (alt-Reddit, Infogalactic (alt-Wikipedia) are all prime examples of what could be done but thankfully are just ghost towns of what could have been. New York Times reporter Kevin Roose dove deeper into these platforms and what he found was more of a beginning structure of a site without the actual inhabitants.
While these sites do inspire some aspect of fear from their Nazi sympathizing imagery, and bigoted messages most again are known to be mere ghost towns of few active users. Gab which was said to have been twitters rival has since become one of those sites that boasted 300,000 plus registered user following while again not having much of a platform to boast for such a large number of users. During its prelaunch the site was able to crowdfund roughly $1 million dollars to fund the platform, along with the large sum of investment cash they were also able to source out another roughly 100 Silicon Valley engineers to help build the actual platform.
As of late the site seems to be held together by the few remaining active users who are still holding onto hope that the site will again rise up and be able to outperform Twitter. However, following the censorship drama where moderators of the site removed a post that mocked Heather Heyer, the activist killed during the Charlottesville protest it seems like the site itself isn’t consistent with its “free speech” platform that it built itself on. I was able to make a Gab account quite easily actually and found my experience on the site to be just what I had suspected. While like other platforms that are sub-pages for different areas of interest the vast majority of content came from hate fueled users. Overall the need to worry over alr-right platforms is still there, however they are still far away from the cohesive platforms that are needed to actually rival the current internet landscape.
