Cancel Culture Hits The 2A Community! - How it Impacts NJGF

[Maksim 1,497]

Good day and I hope this email finds you well.

On our chat I have had a number of questions regarding what's going on and I wanted to send out a note to reassure you.

If you are not aware, since the "election" social media companies have been hard at work silencing those they simply do not agree with.  Twitter has banned over 70,000 accounts and FaceBook is purging posts that have key terms like "Stop the steal."

Today, the purge hit the firearms community and a site that pretty much everyone is familiar with, AR15.com.

 

Unfortunately, this is not surprising and anyone in the domain community has known for some time that GoDaddy is Anti-Gun and Anti Freedom of Speech.

So while I am irritated that GoDaddy took these actions with AR15.com, I am more surprised that it was somehow a shock to someone who should have known better.  AR15.com was registered at GoDaddy, and far more disturbing, is still having it's website hosted on Amazon's AWS.

Just last night, Amazon chose to cut off services to Parler, which ran on the very same Amazon Web Services' cloud computing platform.

How Does this Impact NJGF and How Are We Exposed?

Since DAY 1, over 12 years ago, being at the mercy of anti-gun companies has been a concern of mine.  As such, the domain has ALWAYS been registered and managed at either an offshore web registrar, Internet.bs, registered in the Bahamas, or, and for the last few years, at Epik.com, a registrar owned by a Freedom loving, CEO Rob Monster, someone I have come to known fairly well over the prior few years.

Before Gab.com, Parler.com and now AR15.com found Epik.com, we have been using them for NJGunForums.com registration along with many other domains in my firearms portfolio.

The company is strongly in support of the First and Second Amendments and I do not have any concerns there.  In either case, if there is trouble on the horizon, the next step would be to register the domain at an offshore registrar.

Hosting wise, there is a weeeeeee bit more exposure.

NJGF is hosted on a dedicated server, with a host we have used for the last 8 years or so.  I have had multiple discussions with the host over the years regarding firearms and they are completely okay with the firearms community.  More than that, we are not on a "cloud" hosting platform where the data is all over the place, the data is on a server, backed up to two drivers.

We DO use Amazon for cheap backup storage however, however an outage there, would have no impact on the community.

As a backup, I maintain a number of backup hosts offshore as well, currently Norway, a country that values internet freedom, and will look into adding a second in either Switzerland or Bulgaria.

In the event the current host would have an issue with the firearms community, it would take a few hours to transition to an offshore hosting account.

Many people have asked about what they can do, and why we have "Premier Memberships" on the forum, this is why.

Bottom Line

While I am deeply concerned about the "cancel culture," I am not concerned about being in the position that AR15.com is today, and what many other firearms communities may find themselves in tomorrow.  For the last 10 years,  these concerns were top of mind and it is why we block traffic from most of Asia, and have the domain registered and servers hosted where we do.

If you want to support the community and help with the additional backup servers, please consider becoming a Premier Member.  You can do that here...  https://www.njgunforums.com/forum/index.php?/store/category/1-premier-membership/

If you have domains left over at GoDaddy, and want to tell them to pound sand, I highly recommend Epik.com, and it is where I have the vast majority of my domains registered, please use our link, http://slav.li/epik

Thanks!

-Maks

 

 

[oldguysrule649 276]

Maks,  very reassuring. Thank you for the write-up.

regards,  Art

[Kevin125 3,683]

Well done.  There’s nothing like being prepared.

[Displaced Texan 6,230]

Thanks Maks. 

[JohnnyB 3,062]

Thank you Maks!

[silverado427 4,814]

 Thanks Maks. 

[jm1827 232]

Thank you sir!

[always_an_eagle 80]

Thank you Mak for your insight! I am glad to know that these anti gun companies can't silence our signal.

[siderman 800]

Outstanding forethought Maks. You'd make a good finanancial planner  . I too have gotten out of NJ and am purging everything that has to do with it but  this forum is different and better than NJ and although I am distancing from it it still deserves my support and will be Premiering soon again. 

[45Doll 2,477]

Well done Maks. I shall Premier again today.

Somehow that slipped through the cracks of my life.

[PK90 3,359]

Now if only we can get NJGF and its members to stop promoting and using Anti-Gun PayPal. 

[Malsua 1,324]

 

Just for what it's worth, you should publish the current IP of home page in case they shut down the DNS entry.

While I see that 173.249.158.15 is the current IP, there's clearly some redirecting going on after DNS resolves it since I can't get here on the IP alone.

 

 

 

[The_Matrix 73]

the war has begun.

[FXDX 266]

11 hours ago, Maksim said:

f you want to support the community and help with the additional backup servers, please consider becoming a Premier Member.  You can do that here...  https://www.njgunforums.com/forum/index.php?/store/category/1-premier-membership/

this 

 

[siderman 800]

1 hour ago, PK90 said:

Now if only we can get NJGF and its members to stop promoting and using Anti-Gun PayPal. 

Yup. Tried to renew with credit card but couldn't get away from PayPal. Will try again later.

[45Doll 2,477]

I couldn't get around PayPal either.

[Sniper 5,198]

14 hours ago, Maksim said:

If you have domains left over at GoDaddy, and want to tell them to pound sand, I highly recommend Epik.com,

Apparently, the CEO of Parler reads your posts here. I just saw, they signed up with Epik to host their site.

[Sota 1,126]

I moved 28 domains last night off of godaddy.  fuck 'em.

[Bklynracer 759]

You must be a good chess player. 5 steps ahead, Well done.

 Thank you looking ahead and bring prepared. 

[Bklynracer 759]

12 hours ago, PK90 said:

Now if only we can get NJGF and its members to stop promoting and using Anti-Gun PayPal. 

If you stop using Paypal, really won't matter, what are you going to use Venmo, or the other one from one of the banks? Credit cards? Anything bank related, they are all connected and sell Anti.

Cash in the only 2a friendly form of payment. Or back to the old days Gold & Silver.