This Website Is Breeding Ground For Online Hate, With Links To US & New Zealand Mass Shootings

When New Zealand experienced one of the world's most horrific mass shooting incidents in March, the source of the hate-speech that spurred the attack was traced back to 8chan.

Now, it looks like someone is finally taking stock of the message board and its connection with spreading online hate with real-world repercussions.

The background

For those of you that don't know, 8chan is an anonymous message board that started in 2013. It was a spinoff of another message board 4chan, that began to overflow with hate speech and vitriol when it launched in the mid-2000s. When the site began cracking down on misogynists and harassers during the Gamergate controversy of 2014, most of those users spewing filth shifted to the less-moderated 8chan.

Thanks to its anonymity and "anything goes" attitude, 8chan has become a breeding ground for racists, islamophobes, trolls, hackers, and occasionally even child porn posters. It's connection has also been traced to various murders and mass shootings, with the perpetrators usually being applauded on the site for their actions.

A vigil for the victims of the El Paso shooting - Reuters

Over the years 8chan's owners, Jim Watkins and his son Ron, have refused to take action to crack down on the violence and harassment birthed on the site. They've repeatedly insisted that the point of 8chan is no moderation and no "censorship", regardless of how others point out it translates to real world violence and more.

Now, Cloudflare is stepping in.

So we gonna do something or what?

If you don't know, they're an Internet service that offers companies server networks to reduce latencies, as well as helping mitigate DDoS attacks. They serve more than 12 million websites around the world. And now, they're kicking 8chan off their network.

Cloudflare's action comes hot on the heels of the white nationalist shooting in El Paso, Texas over the weekend that saw 20 people killed. Again, there was an 8chan connect, with a white supremacist rant posted to the site by the killer shortly before the attack.

Reuters

The owners of 8chan have been notified that they're being tossed aside, meaning that hackers with a grudge against them could very well end up DDoSing the site. It's not clear if 8chan has yet managed to find security coverage yet with a different provider.

"While removing 8chan from our network takes heat off of us, it does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online," Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, wrote in a blog post Sunday night. "It does nothing to address why mass shootings occur."

"In taking this action we've solved our own problem, but we haven't solved the Internet's."

Meanwhile, the founder of 8chan has applauded Cloudflare's decision. Fredrick Brennan, who left the site in 2016, has also been calling for the site to be de-platformed. "Shut the site down," he told the New York Times, in an interview. "Whenever I hear about a mass shooting, I say, 'All right, we have to research if there's an 8chan connection."

This isn't the first time Cloudflare has removed a hate speech website from its platform either. Before this they kicked Daily Stormer to the curb, a well-known neo-Nazi white supremacist website that often and repeatedly both denied the Holocaust and promoted targeted harassment and violence against Jews and people of colour. Unfortunately, the website remains online because another company stepped in to replace the services Cloudflare was denying them.

"Unfortunately the action we take today won't fix hate online," Prince wrote. "It will almost certainly not even remove 8chan from the Internet. But it is the right thing to do."