How 8chan Anonymous Message Board Was Used By New Zealand Shooter To Spread Hate Online

An gruesome attack in New Zealand yesterday rocked the world, when a gunman entered two separate mosques in the Christchurch area and opened fire on Muslims in prayer, killing 49 of them.

But there's a darker story here rather than just a terrorist engaging in a vendetta.

Reuters

One of the people taken into custody in the wake of the shooting is an Australian, who's also the shooter. Though he's remained unnamed by authorities, he's been theorized to be a man named Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old white male Australian. Since the incident, evidence has emerged that point to him being the shooter, also reportedly an Australian. But reports also indicate this is more than just a delusional racist on a rampage.

Everything indicates Tarrant carefully planned and executed his killing spree, not as simply an ethnic cleansing but, as a way of recruiting followers to the "cause".

To put it more directly, Tarrant used a number of modern-day online marketing tactics to ensure news of his act, and his propaganda, spread as far as possible. First off, he livestreamed the massacre from a bodycam attached to his chest on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. He even posted in advance, hyping the crime like some sort of heinous launch day stream, telling people what he was going to do and where they could watch it.

Brenton Tarrant, in a still from his livestream

To that end Facebook insists it reacted swiftly, taking down the livestream and its footage. They won't say however whether that means they were able to cut it off mid-stream or after. But online comments indicate though they managed to cut the feed in the middle of the stream, it would have been live for at least 15 minutes at that point.

Which brings me to the real culprit that acted as Tarrant's enabler; a message board called 8chan.

Welcome to the open underbelly of the Web

Started in 2013, 8chan is an independent offshoot of another pre-existing message board, 4chan. Here, users could talk about anything, in any fashion they wanted, and remain completely anonymous. As you can expect, since its launch in mid-2000s, 4chan attracted a host of unsavoury users. Racists, islamophobes, trolls, hackers, and more, all congregated where they could spew hate and vile filth with no repercussions. The site is responsible for the birth of a number of racist memes, including Pepe the frog and his ilk.

During the Gamergate movement, later in 2014, 4chan began cracking down on some of these threads for the first time. Not because of what they were saying about women, but because they were doxxing (revealing home addresses to help harassers engage in direct confrontation) female game developers, journalists and the like online.

When that happened, a massive amount of the crowd shifted to 8chan, which boasted almost non-existent moderation (aside from removing illegal material like child pornography to avoid being persecuted by authorities). And thus, a cesspool of the worst racists, extremists, and violent anarchists gathered together under one roof. And that's where Brenton Tarrant reached out to his peers.

A post from Tarrant just before the shooting advertises his upcoming livestream. "I will carry out an attack against the invaders," he writes about the Muslims he was preparing to shoot. Accompanying the link to his livestream was a 73-page manifesto. And sadly, despite being the original links having been taken down, both the video and the propaganda manuscript are easily available online, if you know where to look. They do not belong here, and will not be linked here.

Reuters

Even more telling about 8chan's general nature are the reactions to the post. Of the hundreds replying, perhaps two express dismay at his intentions to murder human beings. The rest either joke about it, goad him on or talk about how cool it was to watch him gun down Muslims in a mosque.

Very rarely do the words 'Muslim', 'immigrant', or even 'people' appear in the massive chain of comments. There's a derogatory slur substitute available for every one. 8chan makes it clear these aren't people being murdered. These are invaders, ni**ers, fa**ots, dogs, pigs, that apparently deserve to die. Many bemoan that, had he planned it better or recruited backup, Tarrant's kill count could have been higher. It's Christmas for the /pol/ thread and Tarrant is Santa fu**ing Claus to them.

Reuters

But that's just 8chan right? Of course his audience of choice approves right? Well the problem is, thanks to Tarrant's grasp of social media culture, his message is easy to spread. Mass shootings are almost always about making a statement, getting attention. Mindless violence doesn't necessarily benefit a terrorist, they want to share their message for others to agree with and join.

In the past, to achieve that, shooters had to count on the media attention, or killing people on live TV. In Tarrant's case, he just plugged into the social media engine. Aside from livestreaming on platforms everyone is on, he ensured that he dropped a lot of common buzzwords racists exchange.

Despite supposedly being Australian, he also references America's Second Amendment (the right to possess arms), and games like Fortnite. Those are designed to provide clues for people to examine, especially in the media, to give the manifesto itself more attention.

Then there's his on-stream quote, "Subscribe to Pewdiepie", referencing the YouTuber's ongoing battle with T-Series that has achieved meme status. Of course, no one could realistically blame Pewdiepie for this event, but it's enough of a goad that he was forced to publicly respond, saying he was "disgusted" his name was mentioned in relation to this massacre.

Just heard news of the devastating reports from New Zealand Christchurch.
I feel absolutely sickened having my name uttered by this person.
My heart and thoughts go out to the victims, families and everyone affected by this tragedy.

¡ª ??¦Ø?????? (@pewdiepie) March 15, 2019

And that's probably what Tarrant wanted. Because now millions of Pewdiepie followers, a majority of whom are likely young kids, will want to see the video of that, will want to know about Tarrant, may even begin to hunt for his manifesto. It's all about keywords.

The New Zealand massacre was livestreamed on Facebook, announced on 8chan, reposted on YouTube, commentated about on Reddit, and mirrored around the world before the tech companies could even react.

¡ª Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) March 15, 2019

It's just another example of how technology can be turned, can be abused, to further the causes of the worst of humanity. And 8chan is full of eager takers ready to lap up Tarrant's propaganda, laughing it up saying "this is how we win".