Illegal? Probably. Wrong or immoral? lol no

> Isn’t this illegal and a wrong thing to do. (?)

  The pseudonymous hacker [...] deleted the servers of WhiteDate, WhiteChild, and WhiteDeal in real time at the end of a talk at the annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. 

  As of this writing, WhiteDate, which Hoffmann described as a “Tinder for Nazis”; WhiteChild, a site that claimed to match white supremacists’ sperm and egg donors; and WhiteDeal, a sort-of Taskrabbit-esque labor marketplace for racists, are all offline.

  Root, Hoffmann, and Fuchs claim to have identified the real identity of the websites’ administrator as a woman from Germany. 

There's likely a hacking crime of some nature here, but it's reasonably certain a German website administrator could face charges for running a Nazi aligned and themed website in Germany.

> I’d think if the sites are based in the US and the owners decided to take action, they could force this activist to be extradited and face punishment.

US based content owners have had mixed success forcing hackers to be extradited and face punishment in the US.

Many ransomware gangs are still operating, Anna's Archive is still up, ThePirateBay continues to defy Hollywood.

Sure, some hackers are caught and dragged through courts. Many are not. Enough to make your statement questionable.

I would not bet on a US jury being willing to convict for this, especially not one empaneled by a DC/NYC federal court. A mistrial would be far more likely. (Jury nullification has entered the chat.)

It's probably illegal. It's not wrong though. I'm not generally a fan of vigilante justice, but with the rise of fascism lately it's better to act sooner than later.

This isn't just an ideology, but a movement that kills people. I can't see how you can value "actual IP" more than human lives.

Illegal? Maybe. Wrong? Lol, no.

The site, and the extended media presence are full of hardcore racist statements not protected under the German constitution, not considered legal expressions of free speech here. If you have seen the talk, you'd know the site/owner has been investigated by the German inland intelligence agency (Verfassungsschutz), but due to incompetence they only got the wrong person fired... In fact, the "Q&A" intro to the deletion bit, references the executive's inaction.

Some information disclosure is also evidently in the public interest. For example the AfD representatives found are additional evidence for anti-constitutional sentiments within the AfD. This is highly relevant for a possible party prohibition process (which has an extremely high legal threshold).

After all, the website security was hilariously bad. (I suspect the members' IQ scores may have been largely self-diagnosed...) From what I've gathered the publicized data has been somewhat anonymized. The victims of this hack should be rather happy the original data got nuked.

Also good luck extraditing the activist. It's pretty clear the pink power ranger on stage is a borrowed body, and/or, I presume, the voice heard is AI or borrowed recording, as well. OpSec seems alright. But you know, these days, the president of the United States may personally order the NSA and navy seals to snatch the Martha Root off the streets to uphold the holy rule of law and freedom of speech/expression...

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Yes. And do so with haste, and maximum identification of the person behind the mask.

Justice follows the law, not the whims of hacktivism.

Honestly, to me the only thing that differentiates Western white supremacists and similar fascist-adjacent groups from Middle Eastern extreme fundamentalists is that the latter had enough power to exercise total control over entire nations, shaping them to their whims. But this is just an outcome of circumstance, if the far-rightists are allowed to reshape a country to their liking (which we are increasingly allowing to happen) the results wouldn't be so different.

I'm definitely curious why so many people simultaneously hold the viewpoints where the second group has it coming for them and rightfully deserve to be bulldozed out of existence, but the first should be treated with understanding and compassion.

I think most of them suffer from deeply rooted insecurity. Like, consider: you're BAD at stuff. You know, in your heart of hearts, that you're the bottom of the barrel.

You can accept that, or you can get swept up into an ideology that says "the subgroup I'm in is better than all the other subgroups", and then, WOW! You're automatically better than most other people without having to do anything!

It's also terrifying. Look at the average competence their group displays on a daily basis, and now consider how far they've been able to get just with this level of knowledge and curiosity. Far-rightists rule the world and are continuing to become ever more powerful. Now imagine what happens if among their masses appears an actually scarily intelligent figure. If they're already able to exert so much power, that intelligent figure would probably be able to make us all suffer for the rest of our lives.

Why? Lol