GoDaddy booted one of the biggest gun site and forum AR15.com because of certain content on AR15.com last Monday. In the following two days, AR15.com posted a tweet that the site was back.
A statement from GoDaddy
AR15.com has been family owned and operated since 1996. Juan Avilla, the co-founder and president of AR15.com said that it remained unclear specifically what content allegedly violated the registrar’s terms of services in his tweet.
GoDaddy released a statement explaining why GoDaddy suspended services to AR15.com:
“Why did GoDaddy suspend services to AR15.com?
On January 8, we received a complaint regarding certain content on AR15.com. Per our policy, our team investigated the content in question and confirmed it violated our terms of service because it incited violence. On that same day, we notified AR15.com that they had 24 hours to remove the content, or their domain name would be suspended. AR15.com responded that the content had been removed, yet when we checked to confirm, the site showed the content still live. Accordingly, we suspended services on January 11.
Although we informed AR15.com they had 24 hours to take action, we actually provided them with 53 hours to remove the content. Again, because the content was not removed, we followed our terms of service and suspended services to AR15.com.
Does GoDaddy plan to take the same action with other gun sites?
GoDaddy supports a free and open Internet. We do not take action on complaints that would constitute censorship of content that represents the exercise of freedom of speech and expression on the Internet. In instances where a site goes beyond the mere exercise of these freedoms, however, and crosses over to promoting, encouraging, or otherwise engaging in violence, as was the case with AR15.com, we will take action.”