Tag Archives: Housing

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Two Harvard University freshmen have launched a website designed to connect people fleeing Ukraine to those in safer countries willing to take them in — and it’s generating offers of help and housing worldwide.

Moved by the plight of Ukrainian refugees desperate to escape Russian bombardment across the former Soviet republic, Marco Burstein, 18, of Los Angeles, and Avi Schiffman, 19, of Seattle, used their coding skills to create UkraineTakeShelter.com over three frenzied days in early March.

Since then, more than 18,000 prospective hosts have signed up on the site to offer assistance to refugees seeking matches with hosts in their preferred or convenient locations. On a recent day, Burstein and Schiffman logged 800,000 users.

“We’ve heard all sorts of…

By RODRIQUE NGOWI, Associated Press

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Two Harvard University freshmen have launched a website designed to connect people fleeing Ukraine to those in safer countries willing to take them in — and it’s generating offers of help and housing worldwide.

Moved by the plight of Ukrainian refugees desperate to escape Russian bombardment across the former Soviet republic, Marco Burstein, 18, of Los Angeles, and Avi Schiffman, 19, of Seattle, used their coding skills to create UkraineTakeShelter.com over three frenzied days in early March.

Since then, more than 18,000 prospective hosts have signed up on the site to offer assistance to refugees seeking matches with hosts in their preferred or convenient locations….

After the Capitol insurrection, major social media and web hosting platforms which provide the tools for them to stay online, like Amazon Web Services, made strong efforts to eradicate domestic violent extremists and conspiracy groups like QAnon from their platforms. AWS removed far-right social media space Parler from its services, causing it to go temporarily offline. 

Since then, many of these far-right groups have jumped to online spaces like Gab. These alternative hosting companies hold terms of service that allow hate speech and other unfavorable content to flourish on their platforms. 

The most well-known of these alternative hosting sites is Epik, backed by CEO Rob Monster, who…