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8chan Offline After Web Companies Pull Services

By Jonathan Levinson

Published August 5, 2019 at 11:30 PM EDT

In the past four months, three people have posted racist, anti-immigrant manifestos to 8chan before carrying out mass shootings, including the perpetrator of this weekend's shooting in El Paso, Texas.

The internet forum 8chan went offline Sunday after San Francisco-based security company Cloudflare announced it would no longer provide services for the site.

8chan is an online forum popular among white supremacists, neo-nazis and misogynist groups called incels. The most vitriolic is the /pol/ board, a political forum where users often encourage acts of violence.

Writing about 8chan for Bellingcat in April, author Robert Evans said, “the overarching goal of /pol/, held by most of its members, is to radicalize their fellow anons to ‘real-life effortposting,’ i.e. acts of violence in the physical world.”

A screenshot of 8ch.net on Aug. 5, 2019 before the site went down as captured by the Wayback Machine.

In the past four months, three people have posted racist, anti-immigrant manifestos to the site before carrying out mass shootings: In Christchurch, New Zealand, Poway, California and most recently this weekend’s shooting in El Paso, Texas.

After Cloudflare dropped 8chan, the site moved to Seattle-based firm Epik and briefly went back online, replaying a nearly identical chain of events from two years ago.

We just sent notice we are terminating service for 8chan. There comes a time when enough is enough. But this isn't the end. We need to have a broader conversation about addressing the root causes of hate online. https://t.co/ZsctDpswM5
— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) August 5, 2019

In August 2017, Cloudflare stopped providing services to the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer. At the time, a company called BitMitigate stepped in to provide services. Epik has since acquired BitMitigate.

But things are playing out a little differently this time. As of Monday, Epik also found itself in hot water. Epik leases servers from a company called Voxility, which announced they would no longer do business with Epik.

In a public statement, Epik CEO Rob Monster said, “Our services fill the ever growing need for a neutral service provider that will not terminate accounts based on arbitrary reasoning or political pressure.”

The Daily Stormer and 8chan websites are both currently down.

Guns & America is a public media reporting project on the role of guns in American life.