UPDATE 1: After being kicked out of Cloudflare, 8chan went with Bitmitigate who rents Voxility’s servers.
UPDATE 2: Voxility has just cut access to Epik’s services taking down Bitmitigate and companies it hosts including 8chan and Daily Stormer
UPDATE 3: 8chan is now on ZeroNet, a decentralized and open-source web-like network of peer-to-peer users
This past Saturday there was a deadly domestic terrorist attack in an El Paso Wallmart that resulted in the deaths of close to 20 people. The mass shooting was linked to a white nationalist rant on 8chan’s messaging board that got praise by 8chan users who referred to the terrorist as “our guy”. They even praised the number of casualties as a result of the mass shooting.
There have been constant calls for the site to be shut down ever since the New Zealand Christchurch Mosque Massacre and the Poway Synagogue shooting in California early this year. On Sunday, 8chan founder, Fredrick Brennan who has since distanced himself from the website, called for the site to be shut down saying it wasn’t doing the world any good.
8chan is now owned and run by former US Army veteran, Jim Watkins who allegedly resides in the Philippines.
Google kicked out 8chan out of its search results
I am thankful that Google has unlisted the message board where these white supremacists are posting their manifestos: https://t.co/uBwWxhEd8s
With a networked press, we all must adjust to the availability of information. I wish cable news would do the same.
— Joan Donovan, PhD (@BostonJoan) August 4, 2019
Cloudflare was first reluctant to boot out 8chan
cloudflare's argument seems viable only in a perfect world where visibility for law enforcement would help identify some of the people who're plotting and cheering on terrorism. but LE doesn't seem to be all over it and whatever current monitoring they're doing isn't working https://t.co/xemNQf328w
— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel) August 4, 2019
Early this morning, Matthew Prince, Cloudflare CEO said in a blog post that they were ditching offering their services to 8chan.
which isn't to say they shouldn't have done it. truly dunno what the right long-term course of action is. makes sense to make communities that incubate terror incredibly hard to reach to reduce radicalization. but to say this is a principled decision by Cloudflare is disingenuous
— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel) August 5, 2019
Incredibly difficult call https://t.co/wgrD8JVQNa
— Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) August 5, 2019
Thank you so much @CloudFlare. Finally this nightmare might have an end. I just want to go back to making my fonts in peace and not have to worry about getting phone calls from CNN/New York Times every time a mass shooting happens. They could have prevented this and chose not to.
— Fredrick Brennan (@HW_BEAT_THAT) August 5, 2019
Although shutting access to Cloudflare including its DDoS services is a welcome move, critics argue that more need to be done than just shutting down these far-right extremists websites as more would pop pup.
Ryan captures the futility of shutting down 8chan. I think we should make things miserable and difficult as possible for white nationalists terrorits online. But the solution will have to be so much bigger than just relying on web hosters to stamp it out https://t.co/9r2DWCZeVe pic.twitter.com/yIxKZUUbGr
— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel) August 4, 2019
The 8chan ban by Cloudflare begins tonight at midnight and raises an interesting discussion.
There's a big, interesting debate here about which layers of the internet should be responsible for banning extreme content. Everyone (mostly) agrees ISPs like Comcast shouldn't. Everyone (mostly) agrees social networks like Facebook should. Cloudflare is somewhere in the middle.
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) August 5, 2019
The shootings will never stop until one US political party abandons its opposition to real gun control – or, is roundly defeated at the state and national level. It will go on and on and on. The violence is the result of too many guns.
— Jason Pontin (@jason_pontin) August 4, 2019
When will our country’s elected officials wake up and see that the rhetoric of our leaders is costing lives, that our gun laws are costing lives, that allowing white supremecy to persist is costing lives. This must end.
— Aaron Levie (@levie) August 4, 2019
Looks like 8chan might resort to BitMitigate just like white supremacists site Daily Stormer which Cloudflare revoked their license in 2017.
Expect some minutes of downtime in the coming hour as we switch over to @bitmitigate.
— Ron (@CodeMonkeyZ) August 5, 2019
BitMitigate is a non discriminatory provider of DDoS protection that operates in the fullest consistency to free speech.
— BitMitigate (@bitmitigate) August 22, 2017
