Proud Boys websites kicked off web host, Google Cloud

Following what was described years of lobbying, Google has intervened this week with one among its clients to have web sites for the Proud Boys far-right extremist group moved off its cloud platform.

Google’s resolution got here after intense lobbying from Coloration Of Change, one of many largest racial justice organizations within the US.

“Google’s current actions to dam the Proud Boys web site and on-line retailer is a welcome response to persistent calls for from Coloration Of Change and our allies,” mentioned Coloration of Change President Rashad Robinson.

“Following years of strain, the corporate efficiently obtained a Google Cloud Companies buyer internet hosting the Proud Boys’ web site to take away the violent hate group’s on-line pages. This progress is vital, however now we name on Google’s friends to observe swimsuit.”

“After a heads up from Coloration of Change, we notified one among our customers–a web site hoster–who then took motion. The web sites in query weren’t Google Cloud clients,” a Google spokesperson instructed ZDNet in the present day.

However the Proud Boys web sites have not been offline for lengthy. The official website and on-line retailer had been moved to a brand new internet host on Thursday.

In accordance with knowledge from RiskIQ’s Passive Complete platform, the group’s web sites at the moment are hosted by German webhosting supplier 1&1 IONOS.

Google is simply the most recent tech firm to clean its fingers of the group. Proud Boys have been a pariah amongst tech corporations because the summer season of 2018, when the group deliberate to arrange a brand new Unite the Proper rally in Washington, DC. A yr prior, in June 2017, a lady was killed on the Unite the Proper in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Twitter banned Proud Boys accounts in August 2018; adopted by Fb in October. PayPal additionally canceled Proud Boys accounts in February 2019.

The FBI designated Proud Boys as an extremist group as a result of their far-right agenda, inclination to make use of violence, and help for white supremacy.

Earlier this week, LGBTQ teams flooded Proud Boys hashtags on Twitter with photographs and messages in help of the homosexual and trans communities, drowning out far-right extremist propaganda often broadcast by group members and sympathizers.

Article up to date with assertion from Google.