ShtThreadKillYourslf
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This is a TL ; DR type of thread article/thread so I'll just post and highlight the pertinent parts
Basically due to criticism, backlash, and autistic rage the site is on it's last leg, due to fringe extremist ideologies acted out in real life. Cloudflare is no longer supporting the platform, which opens it to ddos attacks.
Fredrick Brennan was getting ready for church at his home in the Philippines when the news of a mass shooting in El Paso arrived. His response was immediate and instinctive.
“Whenever I hear about a mass shooting, I say, ‘All right, we have to research if there’s an 8chan connection,’” he said about the online message board he started in 2013.
It didn’t take him long to find one.
Moments before the El Paso shooting on Saturday, a four-page message whose author identified himself as the gunman appeared on 8chan. The person who posted the message encouraged his “brothers” on the site to spread the contents far and wide.
In recent months, 8chan has become a go-to resource for violent extremists. At least three mass shootings this year — including the mosque killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the synagogue shooting in Poway, Calif. — have been announced in advance on the site, often accompanied by racist writings that seem engineered to go viral on the internet.
Mr. Brennan started the online message board as a free speech utopia. But now, 8chan is known as something else: a megaphone for mass shooters, and a recruiting platform for violent white nationalists.
And it has become a focal point for those seeking to disrupt the pathways of online extremism. On Sunday, critics characterized the site as a breeding ground for violence, and lobbied the site’s service providers to get it taken down. One of those providers, Cloudflare, a service that protects websites against cyberattacks, said it would stop working with 8chan on Sunday night. And Mr. Brennan, who stopped working with the site’s current owner last year, called for it to be taken offline before it leads to further violence.
“Shut the site down,” Mr. Brennan said in an interview. “It’s not doing the world any good. It’s a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there. And you know what? It’s a negative to them, too. They just don’t realize it.”
Mr. Brennan, who has claimed that he got the idea for 8chan while on psychedelic mushrooms, set out to create what he called a free speech alternative to 4chan, a better-known online message board. He was upset that 4chan had become too restrictive, and he envisioned a site where any legal speech would be welcome, no matter how toxic.
The site remained on the fringes until 2014, when some supporters of GamerGate — a loose reactionary collection of anti-feminist video gamers — flocked to 8chan after being kicked off 4chan.
One of these providers, the security company Cloudflare, initially indicated on Sunday that it would not cut off 8chan’s access to its network. But later in the day, Cloudflare said it would ban the site after all, depriving Mr. Watkins of a critical tool for keeping the site online.
Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s chief executive, said the decision to shut off 8chan’s protections was made after determining that the site had allowed an environment of violent extremism to fester, and that 8chan ignored complaints about violent content in a way that larger platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have not.
“We’ve seen a pattern where this lawless community has demonstrated its ability to create real harm and real damage,” Mr. Prince said of 8chan. “If we see a bad thing in the world and we can help get in front of it, we have some obligation to do that.”
www.nytimes.com
Basically due to criticism, backlash, and autistic rage the site is on it's last leg, due to fringe extremist ideologies acted out in real life. Cloudflare is no longer supporting the platform, which opens it to ddos attacks.
Fredrick Brennan was getting ready for church at his home in the Philippines when the news of a mass shooting in El Paso arrived. His response was immediate and instinctive.
“Whenever I hear about a mass shooting, I say, ‘All right, we have to research if there’s an 8chan connection,’” he said about the online message board he started in 2013.
It didn’t take him long to find one.
Moments before the El Paso shooting on Saturday, a four-page message whose author identified himself as the gunman appeared on 8chan. The person who posted the message encouraged his “brothers” on the site to spread the contents far and wide.
In recent months, 8chan has become a go-to resource for violent extremists. At least three mass shootings this year — including the mosque killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the synagogue shooting in Poway, Calif. — have been announced in advance on the site, often accompanied by racist writings that seem engineered to go viral on the internet.
Mr. Brennan started the online message board as a free speech utopia. But now, 8chan is known as something else: a megaphone for mass shooters, and a recruiting platform for violent white nationalists.
And it has become a focal point for those seeking to disrupt the pathways of online extremism. On Sunday, critics characterized the site as a breeding ground for violence, and lobbied the site’s service providers to get it taken down. One of those providers, Cloudflare, a service that protects websites against cyberattacks, said it would stop working with 8chan on Sunday night. And Mr. Brennan, who stopped working with the site’s current owner last year, called for it to be taken offline before it leads to further violence.
“Shut the site down,” Mr. Brennan said in an interview. “It’s not doing the world any good. It’s a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there. And you know what? It’s a negative to them, too. They just don’t realize it.”
Mr. Brennan, who has claimed that he got the idea for 8chan while on psychedelic mushrooms, set out to create what he called a free speech alternative to 4chan, a better-known online message board. He was upset that 4chan had become too restrictive, and he envisioned a site where any legal speech would be welcome, no matter how toxic.
The site remained on the fringes until 2014, when some supporters of GamerGate — a loose reactionary collection of anti-feminist video gamers — flocked to 8chan after being kicked off 4chan.
One of these providers, the security company Cloudflare, initially indicated on Sunday that it would not cut off 8chan’s access to its network. But later in the day, Cloudflare said it would ban the site after all, depriving Mr. Watkins of a critical tool for keeping the site online.
Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s chief executive, said the decision to shut off 8chan’s protections was made after determining that the site had allowed an environment of violent extremism to fester, and that 8chan ignored complaints about violent content in a way that larger platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have not.
“We’ve seen a pattern where this lawless community has demonstrated its ability to create real harm and real damage,” Mr. Prince said of 8chan. “If we see a bad thing in the world and we can help get in front of it, we have some obligation to do that.”
‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says the Creator of 8chan, a Megaphone for Gunmen (Published 2019)
The site is a venue for extremists to test out ideas, share violent literature, and cheer on the perpetrators of mass killings.
