White Supremacists Built a Website to Doxx Interracial Couples — and It’s Going to Be Hard to Take Down

Allison and her fiancé have a shared public Instagram account that they use to give their followers a glimpse into their life together in Chicago, often alongside the hashtags #love and #interracialcouple.

{snip}

On May 5, Allison, whose real name is being withheld for her safety, received a strange DM. It was from a woman she didn’t know, who informed her that she was on a disturbing website that was compiling information about white women in interracial relationships.

When she went to the website, she found her name, photos, and social media handles under the label “traitors.”

{snip}

The website names, shames, and effectively promotes violence against interracial couples and families — and it’s been circulated in some of the darkest corners of the internet, including in neo-Nazi Discord servers and accelerationist Telegram channels.

{snip}

The website was created in April but was taken offline after their initial hosting provider cut ties with them. They then found a home with one of Russia’s largest domain registrars, R01. VICE News contacted R01 on Tuesday to ask whether the site violated their policies. An hour later, the site was taken offline, but as of Wednesday morning it was back up. Tatiana Agafonova, a spokesperson for R01, wrote in an email that the company would “diligently render its services to customers” unless a court rules otherwise or they’re contacted by law enforcement.

The owner of the website shields their identity and location through Cloudflare, a U.S.-based security company that protects customers from DDoS attacks (attempts to crash a website by overwhelming it with data). VICE News contacted Cloudflare to ask how this particular website squared with their policies. They declined to comment on individual websites but directed us to their blog from February 2019, where they “address complaints about content.” Their bottom line was that Cloudflare is a security company, and content moderation isn’t really their responsibility.

Cloudflare has made some exceptions in the past, however. {snip} Cloudflare diverged from its long-standing policy to remain content-neutral when it decided to terminate services for the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, after it mocked the death of Heather Heyer, who was killed when a neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of protesters during the rally. “This was my decision,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Gizmodo at the time. “This is not Cloudflare’s general policy now, going forward.”

Cloudflare again took action after a white supremacist targeted Latinos in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso in August 2019. The alleged shooter had shared his manifesto on 8chan, an imageboard site known for its links to far-right terrorists. Cloudflare decided to sever ties with 8chan. Prince said they “reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible, but we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design.”

{snip}

The website in question uses the same strategy, which seems to be carefully crafted in an effort to shield the owner from liability. The owner even explicitly states on the site that they do not encourage violence — all they’re doing is listing names and social media accounts as part of a database of “white women who have an interest in black men.” One section is titled “toll paid,” and it lists women who have been in interracial relationships, and had something horrible happen to them, like death or injury.

{snip}

The owner of the website claims that the “toll paid” section is intended to catalog incidents where white women are victims of black violence, and isn’t an incitement.

{snip}

About a quarter of the approximately 80 women targeted by the site as “traitors” were already internet famous as models or influencers. {snip}

But for the majority of the women on the site, like Allison, who works for the city of Chicago, this is the first time they’ve been targeted as part of a mass harassment campaign. {snip}

{snip}