OkCupid has banned white supremacist Chris Cantwell from their dating site after a Vice News documentary about the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, featured him expressing his violently racist views.
Gizmodo first learned of OKCupid’s decision from a now-deleted tweet by Vice News social editor Rex Santus.
OkCupid confirmed to Gizmodo that the company had removed Cantwell, with a statement from CEO Elie Seidma: “OkCupid has zero tolerance for racism. We make a lot of decision every day that are tough. Banning Christopher Cantwell was not one of them.”
An OkCupid spokesperson expanded on Seidma’s statement, explaining that “OkCupid will absolutely ban other users who are involved in hate groups. Cantwell violated our terms of service... Not only that, we have asked our users at OkCupid to notify us immediately if they see any individuals who are associated with hate groups.”
As for Cantwell’s violation, the spokesperson referenced the “conduct” section of OkCupid’s terms and conditions, which warns against conduct that “is harmful to the community.” However, the section suggests this warning refers to user activity on the web site. OkCupid said the decision to ban Cantwell was based on his involvement in a hate group.
This decision comes a day after Cloudfare CEO Matthew Prince decided to stop protecting The Daily Stormer from DDoS attacks—not because the neo-Nazi site violated their content-netural policy, but because, as Prince told Gizmodo, the Daily Stormer operators are “assholes.”
OkCupid’s decision also comes a day after a video of Cantwell crying about his possible Charlottesville arrest warrant went viral. Today’s news may be especially disappointing to Cantwell because he likes OkCupid so much that he has blogged about it multiple times on his personal web site.
Cantwell opens a December 2014 blog post titled “8 Online Dating Tips, for the Ladies,” by sharing a bit about his dating history. “I used to meet women from chat rooms, and no matter how many disasters I run into from this habit, I just keep on trying,” he writes. “I’ve met women with fake photos, had false police reports filed against me, been sprayed with breast milk, you name it. It’s a god damn miracle my dick hasn’t fallen off from an STD.”
But he said at the time he mostly used OkCupid and Plenty of Fish, after realizing that “Tinder, HowAboutWe, MeetMe, Zoosk, and a number of other apps [had] more spam than real people on them.”
You can read his post for the full advice, but here are the main tips:
1. Unless you’re here for “casual sex” stop telling me you’re “sick of the games”
2. Your boundaries are complete bullshit
3. If you aren’t interested in sex, I’m not interested in you
4. If you think all men suck, this tells me you have a habit of choosing shitty guys
5. In a photo of you and a friend, I assume you are the ugly one
6. I’m here for you, not your ex boyfriend
7. I’m here for you, not your kids
8. If all I can see is your face – you’re a fat girl
In his blog post “Why I Switched To FireFox and Asked OkCupid for a Refund,” he writes that he was paying to be an A-list subscriber, but after OkCupid asked their users to stop using FireFox because Mozilla’s CEO donated to California’s anti-gay marriage Prop 8 campaign, he didn’t want them to have his money. “I didn’t give money to OkCupid so they could promote the Democratic party and bash open source,” he wrote. “I gave money to OkCupid so I could meet women.”
He’s going to have an even harder time doing that now.