8chan
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8chan (or infinitechan) is a message board in the style of various imageboards, such as 4chan.
The site claims to remove content only when it violates United States federal law, justifying this policy as the exercise of "free speech". Launched in 2013, it gained prominence among Gamergate supporters in August 2014 when their fondness for doxing got too much even for 4chan to put up with.
8chan was founded by Fredrick Brennan, nicknamed "Hotwheels" because he is a wheelchair user, due to severely disabling osteogenesis imperfecta[wp] (brittle bone disease).
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[edit] Background
8chan began as an alternative to 4chan, proud shithole of the Internet. 8chan boasts having only strictly illegal content being removed, in order to protect its posters' "freedom of speech." The site allows content forbidden on 4chan, such as raiding boards and doxxing. 8chan's policies on child porn can charitably be defined as "loose." The site allows questionable porn such as lolicon,[nb 1] and disturbingly, clothed children in sexual poses.
8chan's adminstrators have considered moving their hosting to PRQ.se,[1] a hosting service whose customers have included The Pirate Bay, WikiLeaks, and NAMBLA of all people.[2]
Brennan has also written for Daily Stormer, the news site of Stormfront, in favour of eugenics, blaming the lack of a eugenics program in the US for his disability.[3] He says that when he contacted the Daily Stormer asking for an interview, they suggested he just write an article for them.[4] Defending his contribution on Reddit, Brennan insisted that he is not a neo-Nazi or white nationalist — he merely considers the Stormer the right-wing equivalent of such "far-left" publications as The Huffington Post or The Daily Dot — although he does indeed support eugenics. He also stated that "building hype around my business is my job, especially when we are strapped for cash and can't advertise directly".[5] It is possible he does not realize that these are not the sort of Nazis that have boxes and boxes of gold.
One of the more infamous boards is called /baphomet/ (named for the demon Baphomet, of course), which streamlines the most extreme and disturbing forms of harassment for which user of 8chan are notorious for, such as gathering personal information of the site's targets and coordinating swatting efforts.[6] The board is also replete with grotesque images of abuse of humans and animals, the sole purpose of which is to disgust outsiders and thus deter spying on the board's operations. Initial targets were those who worked to report the child porn on 8chan to the authorities, though many of the current targets are the same people Gamergate has been targeting for months. Gamergaters off the board will deny that it's part of their movement, while simultaneously cautioning against provoking /baphomet/ in a way that totally isn't a threat.
On February 9, 2015, /baphomet/ underwent a total history wipe after it was revealed that the board's moderator Benjamin Biddix had posted the mailing address, phone number, and Social Security number for Judge Katherine Forrest, the federal judge who presided over the the Silk Road black market case. Biddix had allegedly been selling dox to fund his attempt to leave the United States for Shanghai.[7] His Tor site was then seized by multiple national and international law enforcement agencies.[8]
Google delisted 8ch.net on 12 August 2015 due to "suspected child abuse content".[9] Fans of 8chan blamed anyone except themselves.[10]
More recently, the archive.is website archiving service had blocked all links to 8chan due to an overwhelming amount of child pornography being contained within them. However, this was shortly reverted, likely due to the sensible realization that the mass illegal child pornography spam being posted and archived was the action of a bot rather than actual users. Surprise! [11] [12]
[edit] Notable boards
Considering that anybody can make a board on 8chan, there are definitely some gems out there for those willing to trawl through the nearly endless (and ever-expanding) list of boards.
- /baphomet/
- A "hacking" and raiding board dedicated to the spirit of old 4chan /b/ filled with dox dumps.
- /bane/
- A board dedicated to baneposting, i.e. discussion of the plane scene from the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises. Its users have developed an elaborate mythology based upon humorous analysis of the three-minute scene. The phenomenon has grown to the point that it has its own wiki, including a comparison of the uncanny similarities between baneposting and the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 [13].
/gg//gamergate//gamergatehq/- The gathering place for the Gamergate mob as of writing.
- /cow/
- A doxing/cyberstalking board similar to /baphomet/ and /b/. Usually just the stalking of YouTube celebrities, though like /baphomet/, it occasionally organizes raids. Comes from the chan term "lolcow," usually referring to someone too vain or too stupid to realize they're being baited into going crazy on the Internet.
- /fringe/
- The brainchild of one Smiley, a believer in a variety of woo practices whose most notable belief is that of the "Green pill" addition to MRA "theory" which is basically you becoming a dollar-store Ascended Master with a tinfoil hat. This is hardly the first chan Smiley's appeared on, what with his posts on 4chan's /x/ and his very own Fringechan.
- /tulpa/
- A board dedicated to discussing tulpas, a Buddhist concept involving a mentally-created embodied consciousness.
- /pol/
- The "Politically Incorrect" board, home to neoreactionaries, neo-Nazis, and red pillers, most of whom originally came to 8chan with the "exodus" for Gamergate. When 4chan's admin spammed the local and original /pol/ as part of a joke, many posters "migrated" to 8chan. There's also an alternate National Bolshevik/Marxist/Radical Leftist /leftypol/ and the even worse /polpol/.
- /namibia/
- Dedicated to a rather outlandish plot by white supremacists to colonize... well... Namibia. To put it shortly, they believe that Namibia is a wild lawless space for their great white hunter selves to colonize and create a nation based on the alleged "values" of National Socialism. Though this may sound like the typical anon plot, they actually have sent scouting parties and are attempting to get their "New Rhodesia" under the guise of a charity.
- /fatpeoplehate/
- Created after Reddit canned the /r/FatPeopleHate subreddit due to the site's new anti-harassment guidelines.
- /transfags/
- Banned from Reddit for hate speech and brigades. They celebrated the suicide of a Reddit transgender moderator by saying she can't "recruit people into being trans anymore." They celebrated again with "tango down" after a transgender girl committed suicide by jumping in front of a truck. Users expressed sympathy for the driver alongside TERFs on other sites.
- A whole bunch of other boards we're not giving any exposure to
- Child porn. Some of them have been shut down.
[edit] Notes
- ↑ The term lolicon refers to anime/cartoon media featuring sexualized or sexually-explicit depictions of young girls. It derives from a Japanese portmanteau of the phrase "Lolita complex", although on 8chan, it is sometimes used as a dog whistle for real child pornography.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ "@infinitechan", 19 December 2014
- ↑ "PRQ, Web Host For WikiLeaks And Once For The Pirate Bay, Raided By Swedish Police", Andy Greenberg, Forbes
- ↑ https://archive.today/ftgkC
- ↑ https://archive.today/NMGM9
- ↑ http://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2qlpst/hotwheels_gets_invited_to_write_an_article_on/cn79uo2
- ↑ Zoe Quinn, GG's Public Enemy #1, has the details.
- ↑ Sam Machkovech, "Notorious 8chan “subboard” has history wiped after federal judge’s doxing", Ars Technica
- ↑ @Cernowatch, "Benji links to illegal Tor pastebin with CC#, SSNs. This is what we found. (Note the district who issued the order~)", Twitter (archive)
- ↑ https://archive.is/I1arZ
- ↑ https://i.imgur.com/e37Nmdp.png https://i.imgur.com/1nRNmGS.png
- ↑ http://archive.is/2oVG4
- ↑ http://archive.is/loP03
- ↑ http://bane.wikia.com/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525