In August 2019, one of the most notorious fringe social platforms was taken offline when website infrastructure provider Cloudflare pulled support for the site˳
The platform in question is anonymous discussion board 8chan, also known as Infinitychan˳ The site was linked to mass shootings in New Zealand and the United States, but was only dropped by Cloudflare after the deadly shooting in El Paso, Texas that took place on August 3rd˳
In a post published to the Cloudflare blog, Cloudflare CEO defended his decision to terminate service for 8chan, stating that the suspected terrorist gunman appears to have been inspired by the forum website known as 8chan˳
The Sunday night after the tragic back-to-back mass shootings, 8chan was moved to a new domain host: Washington-based web services provider Epik˳com, a company that calls itself “the Swiss bank of domains” and is also host to Gab˳ 8chan later experienced intermittent outages after ultimately being dropped by Epik and remaining offline for three months˳
During its time offline, the site’s owner Jim Watkins testified to Congress wearing a Q (for QAnon) pin˳ After his congressional testimony, Watkins told The Post the fate of 8chan is “the biggest test for freedom of speech since maybe 1969˳”
What is 8kun?
In November 2019, 8chan returned as “8kun˳” The Verge reports that the site’s new name was announced at the beginning of October before its owners asked existing 8chan board owners to submit requests for their boards to be migrated˳ More than 60 boards were migrated from 8chan to 8kun, but the notorious /pol/ board where the El Paso shooter posted his manifesto was not included in the migration˳
Two days following 8kun’s launch, domain registrar Tucows said N˳T˳ Technology, 8chan/8kun’s parent company, had violated its services agreement, forcing 8kun to go offline again˳
8chan vs 4chan
8chan, which calls itself “the darkest reaches of the Internet” was created as an alternative to 4chan in 2013˳ The bulletin board site garnered attention in mainstream media during the Gamergate controversy and in reference to the QAnon conspiracy˳
Former 4chan users made their way to 8chan after topics such as “Gamergate” were banned from 4chan˳ The site practiced minimal administration, with the responsibility of moderation solely on the owner of each message board˳ This enabled it to become what Cloudflare CEO described as a “cesspool of hate˳” The site’s founder Fredrick Brennan even admits the content on the site is “reprehensible” and decided to finally resign from the company in 2018, after the Christchurch mosque shooting˳
From 8chan to Mainstream
A Storyful analysis found the manifesto connected to the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, had been shared hundreds of times on mainstream platforms, with a potential reach of hundreds of thousands of people˳
The manifesto was posted to 8chan shortly before the shooting began˳ The document, titled The Inconvenient Truth, was attached to a message on the Politically Incorrect 8chan board˳ The hateful post described an “invasion” of Hispanics and cited an effort to “reclaim” the US˳
Mass shootings and Fringe Social Media
The El Paso shooting was not the first time 8chan had been linked to tragedy˳ The Anti-Defamation League has tied the site to a rise in online extremism˳ The Christchurch shooter had posted to 8chan prior to the attack in New Zealand in March 2019˳ And in April 2019, the suspected killer in the Poway, California synagogue shooting posted a hate-filled open letter on 8chan˳
8chan is also not the only fringe platform to be implicated in a temporary ban following a mass shooting˳ Moments before eleven people were shot dead in October 2018 inside a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the shooter had posted his final words of anti-Semitic rage to the two-year-old social media site, Gab˳
