Alongside a public outcry, the Charlottesville protest has also evoked a strong response from tech companies with regard to their tolerance of white supremacist content on their platforms and the latest addition is Discord, which has shut down several servers which it believes were promoting white supremacist or Neo-Nazi ideas.
It seems that Discord's action was initially provoked by an apparent call for violence on the Daily Stormer Discord. A member on the server allegedly threatened to bring weapons to the funeral of Heather Heyer, a counter-protester at the Charlottesville rally who was killed after someone drove a car into a group of people against the alt-right rally.
The message was reported to Discord by Laura Loomer, a journalist, which precipitated in Discord's immediate shutdown of the Daily Stormer server, alongside one for Altright.com, and other accounts that were "associated with the events in Charlottesville".
Discord CMO Eros Resmini also issued the following statement:
"We unequivocally condemn white supremacy, neonazism, or any other group, term, ideology that is based on these beliefs. They are not welcome on Discord. While we don’t read people’s private servers our Terms of Service explicitly forbid harassment, threatening messages, or calls to violence. . . The public server linked to AltRight.com that violated those terms was shut down along with several other public groups and accounts fostering bad actors on Discord. We will continue to be aggressive to ensure that Discord exists for the community we set out to support - gamers."
Altright.com responded to the removal of their server as indicative of the "war against free speech".
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