GoDaddy removed the auction for RapeKids.com on their platform today. Lance @tldn had tweeted @WtfDomains with a link to the auction, @DNUpdate retweeted it with a message and Noah Plumb who has the super cool handle of @no took care of the situation.
That’s not right. We took it down and are looking into how it happened so it doesn’t happen again. Thanks for keeping us in check
— Noah Plumb ? (@no) June 29, 2017
The domain has been registered since 2000. The registrant resides in China.
The domain is listed for sale on Sedo with a buy it now of $95.
I actually reported it to them very early yesterday morning.
I also reported “GasTheJews.com” from a few weeks ago.
I have not received a reply for reporting “RapeKids.com”, but this is the reply I received from “GasTheJews”:
“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We’ve informed the appropriate parties here so further action may be taken accordingly. As you’ve mentioned, we do have many filters in place, but technology is never infallible. We appreciate your understanding.”
I did ask for further details and what the actual policies were (and whether they were at Registrar, Registry or ICANN level). I unfortunately did not get any further reply from GoDaddy to share with you.
There is a longer more interesting discussion on the subject here which I definitely suggest checking out:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/blatantly-racist-domains.1020858/
The real interesting question is whether or not laws on hate speech or making threats can/should be applied to the text of a domain name. I’m thinking yes .. but then you get more complicated issues like what jurisdiction does it fall under? Who enforces the rules and what sort of penalties are involved? What happens to the domain?
See something? Say something! Marketplaces won’t necessarily detect these automatically. Glad it was noticed.
Yeah .. to be honest I think it’s pretty hard for large market places to catch them all. In theory they should be responsible .. but as users we certainly can help. Given the huge number of domains I have actually gone through at GoDaddy, I’m actually surprised at how few such domains I’ve crossed.
That being said, while I could certainly see a domain like “GasTheJews” passing through their filters because there is no single keyword/term that sets off an alarm, the word “Rape” should have set off some notice at GoDaddy to at least do a manual check. They told me they have multiple filters .. I certainly can understand how “Gas” or separately “Jews” were not on the filter list, I really think “Rape” should have set something off that would have had someone give it a double check (because there are plenty of potential domains that contain “Rape” like “StopRape.com” that should indeed be allowed.
Automatic detection of topic / intent / meaning behind a domain name is even less accurate than automatic appraisal of its market value.
In order to catch 50% of the offending domains, they’d need to generate a list of 95% false positives. Even then, most of the flagged domains wouldn’t warrant being banned. They might be offensive, but they might arguably be protected as free speech.
And then each registrar or marketplace would need to assign somebody the daily task of reviewing these lists. Possible at a big company like GoDaddy. Not feasible elswhere. And that 1 person’s subjective judgment isn’t perfect. They’d fail to notice things. They’d be too prudish or too lenient, depending on who you ask.
And they’d only speak 1 language. Horrible things are said in every language. So now we’d need multilingual staffing to review such lists.
Altogether, it’s always going to be an incomplete and inefficient process. We all depend on crowd sourcing to detect the really egregious domains.
Very good news!