8chan

8chan(or infinitechan,fullchan et cetera), now known as 8kun was a message board in the style of various imageboards such as 4chan, launched in 2013. The site claimed to remove content only when it violated United States federal law, justifying this policy as the exercise of free speech. When it was launched, it gained prominence among Gamergate supporters in August 2014 when their fondness for doxxing got too much even for 4chan to put up with.

You can also call it "Möbius strip chan" or the "two dragons having sex chan", but they don't quite roll off the tongue as well.
Frogs, clowns and swastikas
Alt-right
Chuds
Rebuilding the Reich, one meme at a time
Buzzwords and dogwhistles
v - t - e
“”Shut the site down. 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.
—Fredrick Brennan, the goddamn founder of the site.[1]

8chan was founded by Fredrick Brennan, who is nicknamed "Hotwheels" because he is a wheelchair user, due to severely disabling osteogenesis imperfectaFile:Wikipedia's W.svg (brittle bone disease). Brennan had the idea for 8chan as a result of being high on psychedelic mushrooms, to no one's surprise. In May 2016, however, Brennan, who regretted the site's creation, stepped down from leading the site and passed his position to 2ch engineer Ron Watkins, and the latter's father, Jim Watkins.[2], who subsequently proceeded to turn the site into the type of environment that QAnon would be able to grow and fester in.[3]

In the wake of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, with the former having connections to 8chan, Cloudflare, after having tolerated rancid sites in the name of free speech, was finally fed up with its bullshit and pulled the plug on 8chan.[note 1][4] Similar to what happened with The Daily Stormer (who was also dropped by Cloudflare on August 16, 2017), another DDOS mitigation service, Epik / Bitmitigate (a company that currently also protects other terrorist-enabling sites such as Gab and whose CEO is infamous for attempting to spread the Christchurch shooting video on Twitter),[5][6] took over, temporarily allowing the rancid dumpster fire known as 8chan to continue to smolder on.[7] Shortly after, the company Epik was renting servers from, Voxility, also quickly got tired of the bullshit and booted both 8chan and the Daily Stormer off their network (and thus, off the clearnet).[8][9]

Despite the efforts of Jim Watkins, 8Chan has had difficulty finding a host willing to deal with the toxicity. Even Kiwi Farms wants nothing to do with them.[10] Attempts to re-brand the site as "8kun" and relaunch the site, including (ironically, for a site founded on "freedom of speech") an attempt to use cloud computing services in China (of all places...), and another attempt to utilize a Russian "bulletproof" host mostly known for ransomware, phishing websites, and other cybercriminal activity, repeatedly failed. This is in part due to due to the efforts of original founder Mr. Brennan actively informing would-be hosts what a toxic shithole 8chan is.[11][12] [13]

After the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot, 8Chan is slated to be permanently knocked offline from the clearnet, with the site going "Tor only soon".[14]

Background

8chan began as an alternative to 4chan, the proud shithole of the Internet. It boasts having only strictly illegal content being removed in order to protect its posters' "freedom of speech". The site allows content forbidden on 4chan, such as raiding boards and doxing, and its policies on child porn can charitably be defined as "loose". It also allows questionable types of porn such as lolicon[note 2] and photographs of barely-clothed children in sexual poses.

8chan's administrators have considered moving their hosting to PRQ.se,[15] a hosting service whose customers have included The Pirate Bay, WikiLeaks, and NAMBLA of all people.[16]

Brennan has also written for The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi news site, in favor of eugenics, blaming the lack of a eugenics program in the US for his disability.[17] He says that when he contacted the Daily Stormer asking for an interview, they suggested he just write an article for them.[18] Defending his contribution on Reddit, Brennan insisted that he is not a neo-Nazi or a white nationalist; he merely considers the Stormer the right-wing equivalent of such "far-left" publications as The Huffington Post or The Daily Dot, although he does indeed support eugenics. He also stated that "building hype around my business is my job, especially when we are strapped for cash and can't advertise directly".[19] It is possible he does not realize that these are not the sort of Nazis that have boxes and boxes of gold.

As of March 2019, Mr. Brennan is really sorry about the demon spawn he created. Whoops.[20][21]

Google delisted 8ch.net on August 12, 2015 due to "suspected child abuse content".[22] Fans of 8chan blamed anyone except themselves.[23] More recently, the archive.is website archiving service blocked all links to 8chan due to an overwhelming amount of child pornography being contained within them. However, this was shortly reverted.[24]

There have been a few times when 8chan was reported to the FBI, but until recently, the FBI didn't list them as a potential threat.[25] The FBI did, however, issue a search warrant on 8Chan's headquarters in April 2019 due to terrorism and hate crime incidents (the Chabad of Poway terrorist attack as well as arson at the Dar-ul-Arqam Mosque and Islamic Center) linked to /pol/.[26] After the El Paso shootings, the United States Congress likewise got tired of the bullshit and demanded that Jim Watkins testify to the House Homeland Security Committee about the proliferation of extremist content on 8Chan.[27]

Notable boards

Considering that anybody can make a board on 8chan, there are definitely some ge(r)ms out there for those willing to trawl through the nearly endless (and ever-expanding) list of boards.

/v/

/gg/ /gamergate/ /gamergatehq/ /v/ have the gathering places for the Gamergate mob.

/cow/
“”Retards deserve and solely exist to be bullied and anyone who says otherwise is a bleeding-heart retard
—anonymous /cow/ poster[28]

A doxing/cyberstalking board similar to /baphomet/ and /b/. Usually just the stalking of YouTube celebrities, though like /baphomet/, it occasionally organizes raids. Comes from the chan term "lolcow", usually referring to someone too vain or too stupid to realize they're being baited into going crazy on the Internet (i.e. "milked for lolz").

/pol/

/pol/: The "Politically Incorrect" board, home to white nationalists, neo-Nazis, alt-righters, red pillers, self-described fascists and neoreactionaries most of whom originally came to 8chan with the "exodus" for Gamergate. When 4chan's admin spammed the local and original /pol/ as part of a joke, many posters "migrated" to 8chan. Despite 8chan's supposed support for free speech, alternate viewpoints are liable to being removed. In 2019, the board became infamous for a series of mass shootings linked to white nationalists associated with the board.

/leftypol/

/leftypol/: The leftist and almost as toxic version of 4chan/8chan's rightist /pol/. A radical leftist board that discusses and promotes revolutionary socialism, including Marxism, Communism, Leninism, Stalinism ("Marxism-Leninism"), democratic socialism, Communalism, Strasserism (Nazism with a socialist working class bent), anarchism, and anarcho-communism. Anti-identity politics. A splinter board, /leftpol/, has emerged after people grew tired of the Stalinist board owner's increasingly authoritarian actions such as banning threads about Rojava and word filtering controversial terms like "Red Fascism". The majority of anarchists and anti-authoritarians now reside over at /leftpol/ rather than /leftypol/ due to this.

/namibia/

/namibia/: Dedicated to a rather outlandish plot by white supremacists to colonize… well… Namibia. To put it shortly, they believe that Namibia is a wild lawless space for their great white hunter selves to colonize and create a nation based on the alleged "values" of National Socialism. Though this may sound like the typical anon plot, they actually have sent scouting parties and are attempting to get their "New Rhodesia" under the guise of a charity.

/fatpeoplehate/

/fatpeoplehate/: Created after Redditors "left" in "droves" after the banning of the /r/FatPeopleHate subreddit due to the site's new anti-harassment guidelines. They were shortly driven out by 8chan's existing userbase in a raid fashion. This is another example of Reddit naïvely bigging up the Chan boards as their mega-cool best friend, when in reality they all despise Reddit with little to no exception.

/qanons/
See the main article on this topic: QAnon

/qanons/: Incredibly bizzare cult centred around a troll originating on /pol/ who can supposedly tell the future. See QAnon for further details.

/baphomet/

One of the more infamous boards is called /baphomet/ (named for the demon Baphomet, of course), a "hacking" and raiding board dedicated to the spirit of old 4chan /b/. /baphomet/ streamlines the most extreme and disturbing forms of harassment for which user of 8chan are notorious for, such as gathering personal information of the site's targets and coordinating SWATing efforts.[29] The board is also replete with grotesque images of abuse of humans and animals, the sole purpose of which is to disgust outsiders and thus deter spying on the board's operations. Initial targets were those who worked to report the child porn on 8chan to the authorities, though many of the current targets are the same people Gamergate has been targeting for months. Gamergaters off the board will deny that it's part of their movement, while simultaneously cautioning against provoking /baphomet/ in a way that totally isn't a threat.

On February 9, 2015, /baphomet/ underwent a total history wipe after it was revealed that the board's moderator Benjamin Biddix had posted the mailing address, phone number, and Social Security number for Katherine Forrest, the federal judge who presided over the the Silk Road black market case. Biddix had allegedly been selling dox to fund his attempt to leave the United States for Shanghai.[30] His Tor site was then seized by multiple national and international law enforcement agencies.[31]

Terrorism linked to 8chan /pol/

When compared to other media outlets (mainstream or fringe) 8chan /pol/ has a lengthy record of aiding and abetting terrorism targeting minorities (Muslims, Jews, Mestizos/Hispanics and non-Whites):

  • On April 27, 2019, another terrorist named John T. Earnest of San Diego/Rancho Pensaquitos, California preceded to post on 8chan's /pol/ an open letter blaming Jews for "the meticulously planned genocide of the European race" and other ills before his attack on a synagogue in Poway, California killing one (an elderly Jewish woman named Lori Gilbert-Kaye) and injuring three (Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, Almog Peretz and Noya Dahan). Once again, riotous glee erupted. (Followed by false flag conspiracy theories, as some posters are slowly realizing that this sort of thing makes "the Party Van" take notice...)[35][36][37]
  • On August 4, 2019, yet another terrorist, Patrick Crusius of Allen, Texas posted yet another hate-filled manifesto to 8chan titled The Inconvenient Truth just before attacking a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 people and injuring 24.[38] As usual, Crusius' manifesto is a racist white nationalist rant this time concerning fear of Hispanics/Mestizos and it was motivated by a supposed "Hispanic invasion of Texas" as well as "simply trying to defend my country from ethnic and cultural replacement brought on by an invasion" (tell that to the Native Americans, honey). Much like the Poway, California synagogue shooting perpetrator John T. Earnest, Patrick Crusius praised Brenton Harrison Tarrant the perpetrator of the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shootings and his manifesto The Great Replacement. 19 of the 22 deceased victims in the shooting had Spanish names either from the United States or Mexico (with the exceptions of 2 Americans and 1 German). Once again, /pol/ erupts into the usual gleeful joy, but there is increasing worry across all boards that "the Party Van" will shut the site down. Even the site's original founder, Frederick Brennan, called for the site to be shut down after this incident.[39][40][41][42][43][44]

Meet the new 8Chan, same as the old 8Chan

After initially rejecting hosting arrangements, Russian company VDSina agreed to take on hosting the "rebranded" controversial imageboard.[45][46] This arrangement didn't last long; VDSina cut service to 8Kun shortly after CBS NewsFile:Wikipedia's W.svg contacted them in early November 2019.[47] A few days later, a company called VanwaTech agreed to host the site. [48] (VanwaTech is also the host of the Daily Stormer as of November 2020, [49] and in late 2020 / early 2021 also hosted several websites devoted to fake news about unfounded fraud conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 U.S. presidential election. [50])

On January 2, 2020, 8Chan's rebranded site 8Kun was... sort of... up and running. It was still a mere shadow of the former site, with some bugs still being worked out,[51] a few of the most controversial boards (/pol/ and /leftypol/) conspicuously missing,[52] and a few new boards with similarities to previous boards (such as /pnd/ which essentially is /pol/ in disguise). 8Kun largely shifted to focusing on the QAnon movement, as 8Kun still was the home of the "official" Q drops from the "spokesperson" of the conspiracy theory. [53]

In October 2020, 8Kun briefly was offline when the DDOSFile:Wikipedia's W.svg protection service they were using, CNServers, discovered that they were protecting one of the largest centers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and consequently gave them the boot. 8Kun came back online by switching their DDOS protection to a Russia based service called ddos-guard.net, a service that also provides DDOS protection to (among other sites) several phishingFile:Wikipedia's W.svg sites, domains tied to cybercrime services and forums, the official website of Hamas, and a website called "HKLeaks" which has been used to dox members of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement.File:Wikipedia's W.svg [50][54]

The 2020 U.S. presidential election brought further disruption to the site. On 8Kun, "Q" had predicted Donald Trump would win by a landslide. Instead, Joe Biden won the election, shaking the faith of many a QAnon devotee. [55] Since that time, the number of "Q drops" posted on 8Kun have declined considerably. [56] In addition, Ron Watkins, who had long served as 8kun's administrator, announced his resignation shortly after the election took place. [57]

As of early 2021 the site is running, with a few embers of life here and there, but with an uncertain long-term future.

gollark: https://tenor.com/view/rotating-banana-meme-rotating-banana-banana-faster-faster-and-faster-gif-18265963
gollark: How the apiocryoforms does this work?!
gollark: That seems plausible.
gollark: Alternatively, the one above is just going to be current position - width I think?
gollark: Then just generate adjacent x/y coordinates and map them back to memory location.

See also

Notes
  1. Cloudflare has a free speech absolutist as a top operator and has staunchly supported these sites in the name of freeze peach. Prior to El Paso, this was amid ongoing concerns that those sites led to violence. It's appalling that it took not one but SEVERAL terrorist incidents fueled by 8chan to have this site change its mind (see "Terrorism linked to /pol/"). In the meantime, it supports literal terrorist sites.
  2. The term lolicon refers to anime/cartoon media featuring sexualized or sexually-explicit depictions of prepubescent girls (the male version is called "Shotacon"). It derives from a Japanese portmanteau of the phrase "Lolita complex", although on 8chan, it is sometimes used as a dog whistle for real child pornography.

References
  1. Roose, Kevin (Aug. 4, 2019) 8chan is a Megaphone for Gunmen. 'Shut the Site Down,' Says Its Creator. New York Times. Retrieved August 4, 2019.
  2. https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/8chan/
  3. ABC News, The men behind QAnon
  4. Prince, Matthew. (August 5, 2019) Terminating Service for 8Chan. Cloudflare. Retrieved August 4, 2019.
  5. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rob-monster-epik-gab-neo-nazi_n_5c17bb29e4b05d7e5d846f72
  6. https://www.inquisitr.com/5346497/tech-ceo-link-to-new-zealand-mass-shooting-video-twitter/
  7. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/network-provider-cloudflare-drop-8chan-after-el-paso-shooting-n1039151/
  8. https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/5/20754943/8chan-epik-offline-voxility-service-cutoff-hate-speech-ban
  9. https://www.cnet.com/news/8chan-owner-says-site-will-stay-down-until-he-talks-with-congress/
  10. https://archive.fo/GnRy6
  11. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5yb44/8chan-is-back-from-the-internet-grave-and-it-has-a-new-name
  12. https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/8chan-founder-site-fight/
  13. "8Chan gets back online and is promptly forced off again", Ars Technica, November 5, 2019
  14. @fr_brennan: BREAKING: because of an anonymous tip via email I can confirm that @LimTheNick has failed to keep 8kun online during the latest onslaught of deplatforming. The platform will be going Tor only "soon"., Twitter (note: LimTheNick is the CEO of VanwaTech, the provider providing hosting to 8kun.)
  15. "@infinitechan", 19 December 2014
  16. "PRQ, Web Host For WikiLeaks And Once For The Pirate Bay, Raided By Swedish Police", Andy Greenberg, Forbes
  17. https://archive.today/ftgkC
  18. https://archive.today/NMGM9
  19. http://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2qlpst/hotwheels_gets_invited_to_write_an_article_on/cn79uo2
  20. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/22/chan-looks-like-terrorist-recruiting-site-after-new-zealand-shooting-should-government-treat-it-like-one/?utm_term=.cd3187c7c97b
  21. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/03/christchurch-terror-attack-8chan-founder-expresses-regret.html
  22. https://archive.is/I1arZ
  23. https://i.imgur.com/e37Nmdp.png https://i.imgur.com/1nRNmGS.png
  24. http://archive.is/2oVG4
  25. https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi-files-on-8chan-21967/
  26. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.casd.626722/gov.uscourts.casd.626722.1.0.pdf
  27. https://www.cnet.com/news/8chan-owner-says-site-will-stay-down-until-he-talks-with-congress/
  28. http://archive.fo/XdVDV#selection-13099.0-13099.103
  29. Zoe Quinn, GG's Public Enemy #1, has the details.
  30. Sam Machkovech, "Notorious 8chan "subboard" has history wiped after federal judge's doxing", Ars Technica
  31. @Cernowatch, "Benji links to illegal Tor pastebin with CC#, SSNs. This is what we found. (Note the district who issued the order~)", Twitter (archive)
  32. What is 8chan, and why did the New Zealand shooter use it to announce himself to the world?
  33. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/rest-of-world/2019/03/15/shitposting-inspirational-terrorism-and-the-christchurch-mosque-massacre/
  34. https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/8chan-christchurch-mosque-shooter-gamergate/
  35. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/poway-synagogue-shooting-8chan-white-supremacist-828647
  36. https://www.businessinsider.com/ignore-poway-synagogue-shooter-manifesto-pay-attention-to-8chan-pol-2019-4
  37. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/8chan-canary/
  38. https://abcnews.go.com/US/death-toll-rises-22-el-paso-shooting-victims/story?id=64780680
  39. https://www.inquisitr.com/5563424/mass-shooting-walmart-el-paso-texas/
  40. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigators-reasonably-confident-texas-suspect-left-anti-immigrant-screed-tipped-n1039031
  41. https://8ch.net/pol/res/13566886.html
  42. https://8ch.net/b2/res/627276.html
  43. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/technology/8chan-shooting-manifesto.html
  44. The El Paso Shooting and the Gamification of Terror. bellingcat.com, 4 August 2019.
  45. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1194699258752057344.html
  46. https://twitter.com/HW_BEAT_THAT/status/1207283293902655489
  47. "8chan sputters back to life with new name" by Graham Kates, CBS News, 2019 November 4
  48. "8chan back online under the name 8kun: Founder of local software company VanwaTech appears to play role in re-emergence of website" by Anthony Macuk, Columbian, 2019 November 7
  49. urlscan.io record of dailystormer.su, 2020 November 9th, archived on 2021 Jan 5
  50. "Hamas May Be Threat to 8chan, QAnon Online" by Brian Krebs, KrebsOnSecurity, 2021 Jan 05
  51. https://twitter.com/HW_BEAT_THAT/status/1212647557068808192
  52. http://boards.4channel.org/his/thread/7830812#q7830812
  53. "New study on QAnon concludes two different people wrote Q's posts" by Matt Binder, Mashable.com, 2020 December 16
  54. "QAnon-Conspiracy Forum 8kun Back Online With Help From Russian Internet Firm" by Siladitya Ray, Forbes, 2020 October 19
  55. "QAnon Lost and Confused After Trump’s Election Showing" by Will Sommer, Daily Beast, 2020 November 7
  56. Archive of 8kun Q posts hosted at qanon.pub, archived on 2021 Jan 6
  57. "QAnon’s Home 8kun Is Imploding—and Q Has Gone Silent" by \Kelly Weill, Daily Beast, 2020 November 12
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