Nicholas Lim (entrepreneur)

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Nicholas Lim
Born1997or1998(age 25–26) [1]
Occupation(s)Entrepreneur, software developer

Nicholas Lim (born 1997or1998) is a technology entrepreneur and software developer based in Vancouver, Washington. [1] [2] Lim and his companies provide services to alt-tech, far-right and neo-Nazi websites, such as The Daily Stormer , a neo-Nazi message board website, 8chan, the home of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, and Kiwi Farms, a harassment [3] [4] [1] [5] and anti-trans [6] forum. In 2017, Lim founded BitMitigate, a website security company which in 2019 was acquired by Epik, [5] an America based registrar and hosting company [7] [8] [9] company. In 2019 he founded VanwaTech, a webhosting and website security company. [1]

Contents

Career

One of Lim's early projects was OrcaTech, a service he says was intended to be used by website owners to test their websites' abilities to withstand distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The website was also able to be used to levy DDoS attacks against others; Lim said he never investigated whether it was used in harmful ways. [1]

After dropping out of college, Lim founded BitMitigate in 2017 in Vancouver, Washington, when he was nineteen years old. [10] [5] The company provided website security services, including protection from DDoS attacks. [5] Beginning in August 2017, BitMitigate provided security services to The Daily Stormer , a neo-Nazi website which had just been denied service by Cloudflare after publishing an article mocking Heather Heyer, the victim of a vehicle ramming attack at the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia earlier that month. [1] [5] Lim contacted The Daily Stormer's founder, Andrew Anglin, after hearing he was having trouble staying online, and offered him free use of BitMitigate's services. [1] Lim told ProPublica in August 2017 that he thought offering services to The Daily Stormer "would really get my service out there". [10] [11] In 2018, Lim began to be mentored by Rob Monster, the founder and CEO of the web services company Epik. [1]

BitMitigate was still providing services to The Daily Stormer in February 2019, when they were acquired by Epik. As a result of the acquisition, Lim became Epik's chief technology officer. [5] By that time, both BitMitigate and Epik had become known for servicing far-right and neo-Nazi websites which had been denied service by other internet services providers. [5] Monster said in a 2021 interview with NPR that when Epik discovered they were providing services to The Daily Stormer, they stopped doing so. Monster said that Epik's connection to the site was "regrettable", and that "the greatest cost of acquiring BitMitigate was not the amount of cash that we paid to buy the technology, but the entanglement." [12] In August 2019, BitMitigate began providing services to 8chan, an imageboard forum that is home to the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory and which has been linked to multiple mass shootings. [1] BitMitigate took 8chan as a customer shortly after the forum was dropped by Cloudflare following three mass shootings (Christchurch, New Zealand, in March; Poway, California, in April; El Paso, Texas, in August) in which the perpetrators each used 8chan to spread extremist messages. [13] [14] BitMitigate's decision to provide services to 8chan resulted in Voxility, a web services company that had been renting servers to BitMitigate and Epik, terminating their relationship with both companies. [14] This brought 8chan back offline, as well as some other Epik customers, and Monster decided to stop providing services to 8chan shortly afterwards. [15] [16]

VanwaTech

In approximately August 2019, Lim left Epik and announced that he had created VanwaTech, a web hosting and website security company also based in Vancouver, Washington. Through VanwaTech, Lim again began providing services to The Daily Stormer and to 8chan. [1] [17] According to Lim, he remained a partial owner of Epik after his departure as CTO. [17] Jim Watkins, who owns 8chan, is also reportedly involved in VanwaTech. [18]

On September 6, 2022, Lim confirmed that VanwaTech had begun providing CDN services to the forum Kiwi Farms, a site previously dropped by Cloudflare and DDoS-Guard following protests related to the doxxing and harassment of Clara Sorrenti. Lim stated, "We maintain a firm commitment to our role as a neutral provider of internet services and not an internet censor." [19]

Views

Lim has said that his choices to provide services to far-right clients who have been denied services by other internet providers are not based in support of their views, but a "maximalist" belief in freedom of speech. Lim has said that he believes restrictions on online speech are a greater danger to the United States than extremist violence, and that "we are one foot away from Nineteen Eighty-Four ". [1]

William Turton and Joshua Brustein writing in Bloomberg Businessweek said of Lim's defense of his extremist clientele, "At best, his apolitical framing comes across as naive; at worst, as preposterous gaslighting". [1]

In an April 2021 interview, Lim expressed intent to pivot in some ways away from serving predominantly extremist organizations, and instead to focus on providing services to pornographic websites." [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">QAnon</span> American conspiracy theory and political movement

QAnon is a far-right American political conspiracy theory and political movement which originated in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as "Q". Those claims have been relayed and developed by online communities and influencers. Their core belief is that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic child molesters are operating a global child sex trafficking ring which conspired against Donald Trump. QAnon has direct roots in Pizzagate, an Internet conspiracy theory that appeared one year earlier, but also incorporates elements of many other theories. QAnon has been described as a cult.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parler</span> American alt-tech social networking service

Parler is a now-closed American alt-tech social networking service associated with conservatives. Launched in August 2018, Parler marketed itself as a free speech-focused and unbiased alternative to mainstream social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Journalists described Parler as an alt-tech alternative to Twitter, with its users including those banned from mainstream social networks or who oppose their moderation policies.

An imageboard is a type of Internet forum that focuses on the posting of images, often alongside text and discussion. The first imageboards were created in Japan as an extension of the textboard concept. These sites later inspired the creation of a number of English-language imageboards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cloudflare</span> American technology company

Cloudflare, Inc. is an American company that provides content delivery network services, cloud cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and ICANN-accredited domain registration services. Cloudflare's headquarters are in San Francisco, California. According to The Hill, Cloudflare is used by more than 20 percent of the Internet for its web security services, as of 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">8chan</span> Imageboard website

8kun, previously called 8chan, Infinitechan or Infinitychan, is an imageboard website composed of user-created message boards. An owner moderates each board, with minimal interaction from site administration. The site has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, racism and antisemitism, hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings. The site has been known to host child pornography; as a result, it was filtered out from Google Search in 2015. Several of the site's boards played an active role in the Gamergate harassment campaign, encouraging Gamergate affiliates to frequent 8chan after 4chan banned the topic. 8chan is the home of the discredited QAnon conspiracy theory.

Voat Inc was an American alt-tech news aggregator and social networking service where registered community members could submit content such as text posts and direct links. Registered users could then vote on these submissions. Content entries were organized by areas of interest called "subverses". The website was widely described as a Reddit clone and a hub for the alt-right. Voat CEO Justin Chastain made an announcement on December 22, 2020 that Voat would shut down. The site was shut down on December 25, 2020.

The Daily Stormer is an American far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial commentary and message board website that advocates for a second genocide of Jews. It is part of the alt-right movement. Its editor, Andrew Anglin, founded the outlet on July 4, 2013, as a faster-paced replacement for his previous website Total Fascism, which had focused on his own long-form essays on fascism, race, and antisemitic conspiracy theories. In contrast, The Daily Stormer relies heavily on quoted material with exaggerated headlines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gab (social network)</span> American alt-tech social media service

Gab is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service known for its far-right userbase. Widely described as a haven for neo-Nazis, racists, white supremacists, white nationalists, antisemites, the alt-right, supporters of Donald Trump, conservatives, right-libertarians, and believers in conspiracy theories such as QAnon, Gab has attracted users and groups who have been banned from other social media platforms and users seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms. Founded in 2016 and launched publicly in May 2017, Gab claims to promote free speech, individual liberty, the "free flow of information online", and Christian values. Researchers and journalists have characterized these assertions as an obfuscation of its extremist ecosystem. Antisemitism is prominent in the site's content and the company itself has engaged in antisemitic commentary. Gab CEO Andrew Torba has promoted the white genocide conspiracy theory. Gab is based in Pennsylvania.

BitChute is an alt-tech video hosting service launched by Ray Vahey in January 2017. It describes itself as offering freedom of speech, while the service is known for hosting far-right individuals, conspiracy theorists, and hate speech. Some creators who use BitChute have been banned from YouTube; some others crosspost content to both platforms or post more extreme content only to BitChute. Before its deprecation, BitChute claimed to use peer-to-peer WebTorrent technology for video distribution, though this was disputed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kiwi Farms</span> Web forum

Kiwi Farms, formerly known as CWCki Forums, is a web forum that facilitates the discussion and harassment of online figures and communities. Their targets are often subject to organized group trolling and stalking, as well as doxxing and real-life harassment. These actions have tied Kiwi Farms to the suicides of three people targeted by members of the forum.

Epik is an American domain registrar and web hosting company known for providing services to alt-tech websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist materials. It has been described as a "safehaven for the extreme right" because of its willingness to provide services to far-right websites that have been denied service by other Internet service providers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Monster</span> American technology executive

Robert W. Monster is a Dutch-American technology executive and the founder, former chief executive officer, and current chairman of Epik, a domain registrar and web host known for providing services to websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and extremist content.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DLive</span> Video live streaming service

DLive is an American video live streaming service which was founded in 2017. It was purchased by BitTorrent in 2019. Due to the site' s lax enforcement of prohibited content guidelines, DLive has become a popular alternative to YouTube and Twitch among white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, and other extremists. The site is also used by gamers as an alternative to Twitch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Watkins (businessman)</span> American businessman and the owner of 8chan

James Arthur Watkins is an American businessman, QAnon conspiracy theorist, and the operator of the imageboard website 8chan/8kun and textboard website 5channel. Watkins founded the company N.T. Technology in the 1990s to support a Japanese pornography website he created while he was enlisted in the United States Army. After leaving the Army to focus on the company, Watkins moved to the Philippines. In February 2014, Watkins became the operator of 2channel after he seized it from its creator and original owner, Hiroyuki Nishimura, later renaming it 5channel. He began providing domain and hosting services to 8chan later that year and became the site's official owner and operator by year's end.

Alt-tech are social media platforms and Internet service providers that have become popular among the alt-right, far-right, and others who espouse extremism or fringe theories, often because they employ less stringent content moderation than mainstream platforms. The term "alt-tech" is a portmanteau of "alt-right" and "Big Tech". In the 2010s, some prominent conservatives and their supporters began to use alt-tech platforms because they had been banned from other social media platforms. Alt-tech platforms describe themselves as protectors of free speech and individual liberty, which researchers and journalists have alleged may be a cover for antisemitism and terrorism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DDoS-Guard</span> Russian-owned Internet infrastructure services provider

DDoS-Guard is a Russian Internet infrastructure company which provides DDoS protection and web hosting services. Researchers and journalists have alleged that many of DDoS-Guard's clients are engaged in criminal activity, and investigative reporter Brian Krebs reported in January 2021 that a "vast number" of the websites hosted by DDoS-Guard are "phishing sites and domains tied to cybercrime services or forums online". Some of DDoS-Guard's notable clients have included the Palestinian Islamic militant nationalist movement Hamas, American alt-tech social network Parler, and various groups associated with the Russian state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ron Watkins</span> American conspiracy theorist and imageboard administrator

Ronald Watkins, also known by his online pseudonym CodeMonkeyZ, is an American conspiracy theorist and site administrator of the imageboard website 8kun. He has played a major role in spreading the discredited far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, and has promulgated conspiracy theories that widespread election fraud led to Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. He is the son of Jim Watkins, the owner and operator of 8kun.

<i>Q Into the Storm</i> Television series

Q: Into the Storm is an American documentary television miniseries directed and produced by Cullen Hoback. It explores the QAnon conspiracy theory and the people involved with it. It consisted of six episodes and premiered on HBO on March 21, 2021. The series received mixed reviews, with some critics praising its insight into the conspiracy theory, and others finding it to be overlong and lacking in analysis of the impacts of QAnon. Some reviewers have criticized the series for not following best practices outlined by extremism researchers for reporting on extremism and conspiracy theories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2021 Epik data breach</span> 2021 cybersecurity incident

The Epik data breach occurred in September and October 2021, targeting the American domain registrar and web hosting company Epik. The breach exposed a wide range of information including personal information of customers, domain history and purchase records, credit card information, internal company emails, and records from the company's WHOIS privacy service. More than 15 million unique email addresses were exposed, belonging to customers and to non-customers whose information had been scraped. The attackers responsible for the breach identified themselves as members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous. The attackers released an initial 180 gigabyte dataset on September 13, 2021, though the data appeared to have been exfiltrated in late February of the same year. A second release, this time containing bootable disk images, was made on September 29. A third release on October 4 reportedly contained more bootable disk images and documents belonging to the Texas Republican Party, a customer of Epik's.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aubrey Cottle</span> Webmaster

Aubrey Cottle, also known as Kirtaner or Kirt, is a Canadian website forum administrator who claims to be an early member of the hacktivist group Anonymous. Cottle was involved with Anonymous during the late 2000s and in its resurgence beginning in 2020, in which the group attempted to combat the far-right conspiracy movement QAnon.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Turton, William; Brustein, Joshua (April 14, 2021). "A 23-Year-Old Coder Kept QAnon Online When No One Else Would". Bloomberg Businessweek . Retrieved April 16, 2021.
  2. ↑ Macuk, Anthony (November 7, 2019). "8chan back online under the name 8kun". The Columbian . Retrieved April 16, 2021.
  3. ↑ Goforth, Claire (September 6, 2022). "Kiwi Farms gets back online thanks to the same service that's kept 8kun alive". The Daily Dot . Retrieved September 6, 2022.
  4. ↑ "Hate-filled Kiwi Farms message board finds new home with Southwest Washington tech company". Oregon Public Broadcasting . Retrieved September 7, 2022.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Macuk, Anthony (February 15, 2019). "Epik buys Vancouver-based BitMitigate". The Columbian . Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  6. ↑ Robertson, Adi (September 7, 2022). "Kiwi Farms has been scrubbed from the Internet Archive". The Verge. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
  7. ↑ "Meet Epik, the right wing's best online friend – Fortune" . Retrieved September 13, 2022.
  8. ↑ "How far-right extremist groups face exposure from army of hacktivists | The far right | The Guardian". amp.theguardian.com. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  9. ↑ "Epik is a refuge for the deplatformed far right. Here's why its CEO insists on doing it". CNN. December 9, 2021. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  10. 1 2 Rosenberg, Mike (August 20, 2017). "Why a Washington state man is trying to help neo-Nazis relaunch their website". The Seattle Times . Retrieved April 16, 2021.
  11. ↑ Schwencke, Ken (August 18, 2017). "Spurned by Major Companies, The Daily Stormer Returns to the Web With Help From a Startup". ProPublica . Retrieved April 16, 2021.
  12. ↑ Allyn, Bobby (February 8, 2021). "'Lex Luthor Of The Internet': Meet The Man Keeping Far-Right Websites Alive". NPR . Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  13. ↑ Roose, Kevin (August 4, 2019). "8chan Is a Megaphone for Gunmen. 'Shut the Site Down,' Says Its Creator" . The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on August 5, 2019. Retrieved August 5, 2019.
  14. 1 2 Macuk, Anthony (August 5, 2019). "BitMitigate becomes new security provider for 8chan". The Columbian . Retrieved April 16, 2021.
  15. ↑ Salter, Jim (August 7, 2019). "8chan resurfaces, along with The Daily Stormer and another Nazi site". Ars Technica . Archived from the original on August 19, 2019. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
  16. ↑ Robertson, Adi (August 5, 2019). "8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service". The Verge . Archived from the original on August 8, 2019. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
  17. 1 2 Harwell, Drew; Allam, Hannah; Merrill, Jeremy B.; Timberg, Craig (September 25, 2021). "Fallout begins for far-right trolls who trusted Epik to keep their identities secret". The Washington Post . ISSN   0190-8286. Archived from the original on September 25, 2021. Retrieved September 25, 2021.
  18. ↑ Gilbert, David (September 9, 2022). "QAnon's Jim Watkins Tried to Save Kiwi Farms. Now His Site 8Kun Is Down". Vice News . Retrieved September 9, 2022.
  19. ↑ Goforth, Claire (September 6, 2022). "Kiwi Farms gets back online thanks to the same service that's kept 8kun alive". The Daily Dot . Retrieved September 6, 2022.
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