Namecheap offers free, anonymous anti-Putin/regime hosting

I can imagine if you had employees in Ukraine, people you have a direct connection with, being attacked, dying, having everything taken from them and you are powerless to stop that from happening, you are going to be frantic and emotional and want to do everything in your power to help (or maybe YOU wouldn't, but I don't know you). They decided to do so because they couldn't look their people in the eyes and say we are still taking money from the people doing this to you, please support them so we can continue to make money. It doesn't matter if the people of Russia aren't the enemy, it's who they represent to those you care for, the people you have to look in the eye. As the person running the business they had to make a choice on what was more important to them, their people or their customers in Russia and they made their choice, despite how it could affect their business and the perception of their reliability as a provider.

There have been many comments since then and by the sounds of it, this CEO was at their limit, having been frantic for days, lacking sleep and doing what they could and I cannot fault them for that, only respect it. They aren't acting like a faceless conglomerate who couldn't give a shit who lives or dies, even their own employees, and only seeing the bottom line.

It seemed like many, many comments were made that this was a mistake to turn off access to the Russian people as it's most likely the folks who are anti-regime were the actual customers and that by doing so, they were actually making things worse. This makes a lots of sense and is probably the case, yet I imagine this wasn't necessarily a realization to the CEO during this crises, especially if you aren't from Russia or a similar country. I have to imagine that since the backlash the CEO has had some time to regroup, rest, read the comments and take in all this new information, these new reasons why they were wrong and realize they made an error, despite trying to help. So here we are a day or two later and they've tried to turn around and help the people they wronged with something very potent.

Perhaps you are in Russia and feel wrongly targeted, and I can imagine the entire world is coming down on you and it is also unimaginably awful. It feels like everyone is against this war and angry and no one can target or stop Putin or do anything and those with any power to do anything are trying to do what they can to make it all stop. It is a fear that perhaps Putin knew all along that the world would sanction his own people into chaos and would perhaps drive them to hate everyone else more than him and then he wins. I can't imagine what it's like to have to live there and be anti-regime as it sounds too dangerous to do anything to resist and the world only seems to be punishing those in pain, not the one causing it, yet they have no other recourse or outlet.

Anyway, I would imagine if this hit you hard and you can't see or don't care about the 180 that they made, unfortunately you are probably going to see a lot more of this in the near future and those companies probably won't be as reflective. If you'd rather have a company keep you as a customer at the cost of their employee's lives or sanity, then I guess you have a good measure of what type of company to buy from. CEO's are usually humans (although most don't show it) and humans have the rights to make mistakes and take stands, especially in the time of war. I don't think for a second this CEO is being racist for fun. If you are insulted enough and never want to use them again fine, but at least acknowledge that they tried to learn from and right the mistake or understand where they are coming from.

I empathize with simple Russian people who are impacted by this but the world needs to send a message to Russia. There will be casualties.

You can move your domains or hosting infrastructure. People cannot be replaced.

They're the only ones that can stand up to Putin without (we hope) causing WW3.

As I said yesterday, the people he's terminating in Russia are the engaged ones that read western papers and go to western tech conferences. They're currently putting everything on the line to protest.

I get the anger and frustration, but every move is critical now.