8kun

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8kun
"The infinitely expanding imageboard" (2013–2016)
“The Darkest Reaches of the Internet” (2016–2019)
“Embrace Infamy” (2016–2019)
“Speak freely - legally.” (Since 2019)
Imageboard
languages English , Spanish and 20 others
operator NT Technology
editorial staff Fredrick Brennan
Registration No
programming language PHP
On-line October 2013 (currently online)
https://8kun.top/

8kun, until November 2019 8chan , also called Infinitechan or Infinitychan (partly spelling ∞chan ), is an imageboard . It is made up of user-created forums on various topics.

In particular, users of the politically incorrect (/ pol /) forum can be classified as right-wing extremists after research by bellingcat.com .

According to research of the time , “a lot of nationalist , racist , anti-Semitic and misogynistic content is distributed” on 8kun , but the website is not limited to hateful content - it is also an incubator for “numerous memes .”

Site usage

8kun is designed so that a "forum owner" takes over the moderation. To own a board, it must either be created or claimed if the board has been inactive for more than a week. The board can be moderated at will, it just must not be made impossible or quasi-impossible to use it. The owner of the board has the option to add more volunteers as moderators for his forum.

Global moderators also work voluntarily and have delete rights on all boards. Your job is only to review the global 8chan rule, which prohibits illegal content in the United States . Boards are not blocked or deleted unless they are specifically designed to distribute illegal content. In April 2018, 8chan was ranked 3889 among the most visited websites in the world. The site advertises with the slogan "The darkest corners of the Internet" and, according to the site operator James Watkins, has no problem with "that white supremacists communicate on 8chan".

8kun based since April 2017 developed by the 8kun administrator Watkins software OpenIB , a more secure version of the original software infinity .

history

8chan was founded in October 2013 by software developer Fredrick Brennan, who currently (August 2019) lives in the Philippines , also known under his pseudonyms Hotwheels and Copypaste . He had previously worked as an administrator for the similar site Wizardchan, which is aimed at virgin , depressed men. He left after it was revealed that he had lost his own virginity. Brennan, who described the development of the imageboard 4chan as authoritarian, described 8chan as a “ freedom of expression- friendly” alternative and stated that he originally got the idea for the website during a psychedelic mushroom trip . Brennan himself developed a spin-off from the imageboard software vichan called infinity , which allows all users to create their own boards.

Logo from 8chan

When 4chan banned all discussion of the Gamergate affair in September 2014 , a large number of users migrated to 8chan, which then became an organizational center of the Gamergate movement. This process made the site much more well known, which was also reflected in the fact that it had to change hosting provider five times in September alone . US military veteran James Watkins' firm NT Technology eventually offered Brennan to host 8chan for as long as it would share 60% of the site's profits . Brennan accepted this offer as he did not believe that 8chan would ever make a profit.

After many people complained to the responsible domain name registrar internet.bs that 8chan was hosting child pornography , the site (8chan.co) was taken offline in January 2015. Shortly afterwards, 8chan switched to the domain 8ch.net, which also belongs to James Watkins. After a short legal dispute, the old domain was also returned to 8chan. However, it was decided to use 8ch.net permanently as the main address, as a .net domain was expected to show greater respect for property rights.

In 2015, Google briefly stopped showing search results for "8ch.net" and "site: 8ch.net" due to "suspected content about child abuse ".

Since 2016 the site 8chan no longer runs Brennan, but James Watkins, who is also the owner of 5channel . Brennan stayed with Watkins' company Race Queen until December 2018, where he worked for 5channel, among others. The administrative oversight of 8chan has since been held by Watkins' son Ronald, known on the site as Codemonkey .

After the site had been unavailable for a long time, the administration announced on October 7, 2019 that it would go online again in the near future under the name 8kun . On November 2, 2019, the site was then opened under the new name, but only with a small part of the boards. Also / pol / was not among the first transferred boards. However, it was announced that more boards would be migrated in the future.

On October 16, 2019, an interview was published in the online newspaper ZEIT ONLINE in which the founder of the Imageboard stated that he regretted its founding.

controversy

Shortly before the terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch in March 2019, the following text was published on the sub-forum / pol /: “I will attack the invaders and I will stream the attack live on Facebook.” The post was also published on the Facebook The page of the assassin Brenton Tarrant , on which the announced video later appeared, and linked to a 73-page manifesto. Forum members made bets about whether a new perpetrator could manage to beat the Christchurch high score (number of dead in the attack).

One person was killed and three other people of Jewish faith were injured in the attack on a synagogue in Poway on April 29, 2019, allegedly by 19-year-old John Earnest from San Diego. Here, too, a pamphlet under his name was published on 8chan shortly before the crime. The thread was deleted shortly afterwards.

Published according to various media Patrick Crusius, the suspected assassins of the terrorist attack of El Paso on 3 August 2019 one hour before his assassination / pol / his four-page pamphlet The Inconvenient Truth (German: The Inconvenient Truth ), in which he announced his assassination . In it, he described, among other things, his hatred of racial mixing and suggested dividing the United States into different areas for different races. His act was a "response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas".

Matthew Prince, managing director of the IT security service provider Cloudflare , announced that he will no longer protect the 8chan website from cyber attacks, as "8chan has repeatedly proven that it is a cesspool for hate". The site was then taken offline by the administrators in order to prepare for the switch to the similar provider Bitmitigate, which also took over the right-wing extremist blog The Daily Stormer after it was dropped by Cloudflare. 8chan also switched the domain name registrar from Tucows to Epik, the parent company Bitmitigates. Shortly after the site was back online, Internet service provider Voxility, whose server Bitmitigate uses to offer its services, announced its collaboration with the company, which made 8chan unreachable again, along with other Bitmitigate customers, including The Daily Stormer. Epik also announced on August 6, 2019 that it would not work with 8chan, but Bitmitigate contradicted this in a tweet.

The site operator James Watkins, who runs a pig farm in the Philippines, was summoned for questioning in connection with the events of El Paso by Bennie Thompson , chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the US Congress . In this survey, he should explain how he and his employees prevent the spread of hatred on his platform. Furthermore, the police in the Philippines have started investigations, with Jim Watkins at the center. The survey in front of the US Congress took place behind closed doors on September 5, 2019. Watkins explained how 8chan works and assured them that the site would delete illegal content as soon as possible and work with the law, but would continue to allow legal hate speech . He also promised new functions on the site to prevent illegal content.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b 8kun: Welcome to 8kun. Speak freely - legally. In: 8kun.net. May 5, 2019, accessed May 5, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Julia Carri Wong: 8chan: the far-right website linked to the rise in hate crimes (English), August 5, 2019, on The Guardian . Retrieved August 5
  3. ↑ Ignore The Poway Synagogue Shooter's Manifesto: Pay Attention To 8chan's / pol / Board. April 28, 2019, accessed August 5, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Eike Kühl: Where white terrorists post , August 5, 2019, on Die Zeit . Retrieved August 8, 2019
  5. ↑ a b c d e FAQ - 8kun ( English ) Retrieved on April 20, 2019.
  6. ↑ Internet Traffic of 8chan . In: Alexa Internet . Retrieved April 20, 2019.
  7. ↑ El Paso Massacre. Where did the hate manifesto come from? This is what the 8chan operator says on August 6, 2019, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved August 9, 2019
  8. ↑ Don Caldwell: Q&A with Fredrick Brennan of 8chan. In: KnowYourMeme. Cheezburger Network, October 9, 2014, accessed on August 6, 2019 .
  9. ^ Adrian Chen: Gamergate Supporters Partied at a Strip Club This Weekend. In: New York Magazine. New York Media LLC, October 27, 2014, accessed August 6, 2019 .
  10. ↑ a b Who owns 8kun? In: 8kun. NT Technology, accessed October 27, 2019 .
  11. ^ Caitlin Dewey: This is what happens when you create an online community without any rules. In: The Washington Post. January 13, 2015, accessed April 24, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Sam Machkovech: 8CHAN-hosted content Disappears from Google searches [Updated]. In: Ars Technica. Condé Nast, August 17, 2015, accessed August 13, 2019 .
  13. ↑ What is 8chan, the internet's most dangerous message board? , dated March 15, 2019. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
  14. ↑ Ignacio Martinez: 8chan is attempting to relaunch and rebrand — but it may already be doomed. In: The Daily Dot. The Daily Dot, October 8, 2019, accessed October 10, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Martin Holland: Infamous online forum 8chan back under a new name. In: Heise Online. HeiseMedien, November 4, 2019, accessed on November 4, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Amanda Yeo: 8chan returns with a new name and a reminder not to do illegal stuff. In: Mashable. Mashable, Inc., November 4, 2019, accessed November 4, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Josa Mania-Schlegel: Fredrick Brennan: "I regret having founded 8chan" . In: The time . October 16, 2019, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed October 19, 2019]).
  18. ↑ Simon Hurtz: Radicalized on the net, streamed on Facebook. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. March 15, 2019, accessed April 24, 2019 .
  19. ↑ a b Die Welt : The largest forum for mass murderers and their followers remains offline , August 5, 2019
  20. ↑ Ben Collins, Andrew Blankstein: Anti-Semitic open letter posted online under name of Chabad synagogue shooting suspect , April 28, 2019, on National Broadcasting Corporation US. Retrieved August 5, 2019
  21. ↑ The El Paso Shooting and the Gamification of Terror , August 4, 2019, on Bellingcat. Retrieved August 5, 2019
  22. ^ After reports the El Paso shooter posted a manifesto, 8chan went dark. But is it gone for good? , dated August 6, 2019, on American Broadcasting Company . Retrieved on August 6, 2019
  23. ^ Matthew Prince: Terminating Service for 8Chan. In: Cloudflare. Cloudflare, Inc., August 5, 2019, accessed August 6, 2019 .
  24. ↑ Jona Spreter: Online portal "8chan" largely offline , from August 5, 2019, on Die Zeit . Retrieved August 5, 2019
  25. ↑ Rob Monster: Epik draws line on Acceptable Use | Epic blog. In: Epic Blog. Epik, August 6, 2019, accessed August 8, 2019 .
  26. ↑ BitMitigate: BitMitigate. In: @bitmitigate. Twitter, August 7, 2019, accessed August 8, 2019 .
  27. ^ Daniel Dillman: Right Terror. Forum for racists and neo-Nazis: White terrorists post on 8Chan , August 7, 2019, on Frankfurter Rundschau . accessed on August 9, 2019
  28. ↑ Jake Maxwell Watts: Police Launch 8chan Probe in Philippines, Where Owner, Founder Live (English), August 8, 2019, on Wall Street Journal . Retrieved August 9, 2019
  29. ↑ David Shepardson: 8chan owner vows changes in House testimony over links to mass shootings. In: Reuters. Thomson Reuters, September 5, 2019, accessed September 7, 2019 .