Kotaku Senior Editor Alyssa Mercante celebrated the fact that Wix had taken down Smash JT’s website and its Kotaku Detected page, but since the site has now been restored she now claims it helps her.
Alyssa Mercante via Smash JT YouTube
After Wix shut the website down earlier this week following a mass flagging campaign led by Second Wind Editor-in-Chief Nick Calandra, Mercante celebrated, “Oop! Website not detected! Huge shoutout to Nick Calandra who reached out to Wix about this site and consistently followed up. Clearly they agree that he was engaging in targeted harassment, among other things.”
She added, “This is a great precedent, a great sign that there are people and places on the internet who know targeted harassment and cyberbullying when they see it!”
Alyssa Mercante on X
However, Smash JT indicated he had contacted Wix and hoped to have the site restored and the issue resolved. He said, “I am currently awaiting response from Wix, but I’m not holding my breath on it anytime soon because, first off, it’s Memorial Day in the U.S. It’s a holiday even though people are saying Wix is an Israeli company. I don’t know who these people are, how to really contact anyone directly, it’s a very disorganized system.”
However, he added, “I’m hopeful that level-headedness prevails in this and that they look at the situation as a big misunderstanding because, again, there is nothing that I did illegal here and nothing against any terms of service. This is simply a way for the left to silence the right.”
The site has since been restored with Smash JT stating, “The later correspondence I got with Wix, they said the information that I provided to them was investigated and that they cleared me of any wrongdoing and they have approved the website of going back up.”
He also indicated that he plans to move the site away from Wix despite it being restored, “I am going to be migrating it and backing it up and duplicating it now. Don’t worry about that.”
With the website restored, Mercante is singing a different tune. She posted to X, “You can keep your website it helps me.”
Alyssa Mercante on X
What do you make of Mercante’s drastic change in tune?
NEXT: Kotaku Senior Editor Alyssa Mercante Threatens Legal Action Against YouTuber Smash JT
