8chan Founder Says 'Shut It Down'

I don't care about 8chan. I've never visited any of the troll message boards, although I don't think they should be regulated by government. Preventive action is key. If it's not 8chan it'll be something else. There's unlimited outlets for shitposting trolls to gather, spew, and foment nihilist racist propaganda.

Following-up, "El Paso Shooting Suspect Posted Online 'Manifesto' Decrying 'Ethnic Replacement' in the U.S. (VIDEO)," and "'Shitposting Nihilist Trolls' and the Lolz of the El Paso Shooting Massacre."

At the New York Times, "8chan Is a Megaphone for Gunmen. ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says Its Creator":

I talked to the founder and former admin of 8chan this morning. He told me he wants the site to be shut down, after being involved in 3 mass shootings this year. https://t.co/tewgBEqYeF

— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) August 4, 2019

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.

Mr. Brennan started the online message board 8chan in 2013, as a spinoff of 4chan, the better-known message board. In its early years, the site was known as an unmoderated free-for-all site populated by anonymous posters, where shocking and offensive humor reigned.

Now, 8chan is known as something else: a megaphone for mass shooters, and a recruiting platform for violent white nationalists. And Mr. Brennan, who stopped working with the site’s current owner last year, is calling for it to be taken offline before it leads to further violence.

Interested in All Things Tech?
The Bits newsletter will keep you updated on the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry.

“Shut the site down,” Mr. Brennan said in an interview on Sunday. “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.”

So far this year, three mass shootings — El Paso, the mosque killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the synagogue shooting in Poway, Calif. — have been announced in advance on 8chan, often accompanied by racist writings that seem engineered to go viral on the internet.

Moments before the El Paso shooting on Saturday, a four-page message whose author identified himself as the suspected shooter appeared on 8chan’s politics board, known as /pol/. The person who posted the message encouraged his 8chan “brothers” to spread its contents far and wide.

Given its repeated involvement in mass shootings, 8chan has become a focal point for those seeking to disrupt the pathways of online extremism.

“8chan is almost like a bulletin board where the worst offenders go to share their terrible ideas,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. “It’s become a sounding board where people share ideas, and where these kinds of ideologies are amplified and expanded on, and ultimately, people are radicalized as a result.”

8chan has been run out of the Philippines by Jim Watkins, a United States Army veteran, since 2015, when Mr. Brennan gave up control of the site.

The site remains nearly completely unmoderated, and its commitment to keeping up even the most violent speech has made it a venue for extremists to test out ideas, share violent literature and cheer on the perpetrators of mass killings. Users on 8chan frequently lionize mass shooters using jokey internet vernacular, referring to their body counts as “high scores” and creating memes praising the killers.

Mr. Brennan, who has a condition known as brittle-bone disease and uses a wheelchair, has tried to distance himself from 8chan and its current owners. In a March interview with The Wall Street Journal, he expressed his regrets over his role in the site’s creation, and warned that the violent culture that had taken root on 8chan’s boards could lead to more mass shootings.

After the El Paso shooting, he seemed resigned to the fact that it had.

“Another 8chan shooting?” he tweeted on Saturday. “Am I ever going to be able to move on with my life?”

Mr. Watkins, who runs 8chan along with his son, Ronald, has remained defiant in the face of criticism, and has resisted calls to moderate or shut down the site. On Sunday, a banner at the top of 8chan’s home page read, “Welcome to 8chan, the Darkest Reaches of the Internet.”

“I’ve tried to understand so many times why he keeps it going, and I just don’t get it,” Mr. Brennan said. “After Christchurch, after the Tree of Life shooting, and now after this shooting, they think this is all really funny.”

Mr. Watkins did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In the early days of 8chan, Mr. Brennan defended the right of 8chan users to post anonymously, without censorship. And he dismissed incidents of harassment or violence by users of the site as the price of being an open forum...