8chan
8kun, previously called 8chan, Infinitechan or Infinitychan, is an imageboard website composed of user-created message boards. An owner moderates each board, with minimal interaction from site administration. The site has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, racism, antisemitism, hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings. The site has been known to host child pornography; as a result, it was filtered out from Google Search in 2015. Several of the site's boards played an active role in the Gamergate harassment campaign, encouraging Gamergate affiliates to frequent 8chan after 4chan banned the topic. 8chan is the origin and main center of activity of the discredited QAnon conspiracy theory.
Shortly before the 2019 El Paso shooting, a four-page message justifying the attack was posted to the site, and police have stated that they are "reasonably confident" it was posted by the perpetrator. In the aftermath of the back-to-back mass shootings on August 3 in El Paso and August 4 in Dayton, Ohio, respectively, the site was taken off clearnet on August 5, 2019, when network infrastructure provider Cloudflare stopped providing their content delivery network service. Voxility, a web services company that had been renting servers to Epik, the site's new domain registrar, as well as Epik's CDN provider subsidiary BitMitigate, also terminated service. After several attempts to return to clearnet were ultimately stymied by providers denying service to 8chan, the site returned to clearnet as 8kun in November 2019 through a Russian hosting provider.
History
8chan was created in October 2013 by computer programmer Fredrick Brennan. Brennan created the website after observing what he perceived to be rapidly escalating surveillance and a loss of free speech on the Internet. Brennan, who considered the imageboard 4chan to have grown into authoritarianism, described 8chan as a "free-speech-friendly" alternative, and originally conceptualized the site while experiencing a psychedelic mushrooms trip.No experience or programming knowledge is necessary for users to create their own boards. Since as early as March 2014, its FAQ has stated only one rule that is to be globally enforced: "Do not post, request, or link to any content illegal in the United States of America. Do not create boards with the sole purpose of posting or spreading such content." Brennan claimed that, while he found some of the content posted by users to be "reprehensible", he felt personally obligated to uphold the site's integrity by tolerating discussion he did not necessarily support regardless of his moral stance.
Brennan agreed to partner 8chan with the Japanese message board 2chan, and subsequently relocated to the Philippines in October 2014.
In January 2015, the site changed its domain after multiple people filed reports complaining to 8chan's registrar that the message board hosted child pornography. Despite subsequently regaining the original domain, the site remained at the new domain with the old domain redirecting to it.
Numerous bugs in the Infinity software led to the funding and development of a successor platform dubbed "Infinity Next". After a several-month-long testing period, a migration to the new software was attempted in December 2015, but failed. In January 2016, development was halted, and the main developer, Joshua Moon, was fired by Brennan. Brennan himself officially resigned in July 2016, turning the site over to its owner, Jim Watkins and his son, Ron Watkins. He cited the failure of the "Infinity Next" project and disillusionment with what 8chan had become as reasons.
August 2019 removal from clearnet
Following the [|three shootings in 2019] in which the perpetrators of each used 8chan as a platform to spread their manifesto, there was increased pressure on those providing 8chan's Internet services to terminate their support.Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, initially defended his firm's technological support of 8chan on August 3, 2019, the day of the El Paso shooting: "What happened in El Paso today is abhorrent in every possible way, and it's ugly, and I hate that there's any association between us and that... For us the question is which is the worse evil?"
However, by the next day, August 4, with increasing press attention, Cloudflare changed its position, and rescinded its support for 8chan effective midnight August 5 Pacific Time, potentially leaving the site open for denial of service attacks. Prince stated: "Unfortunately the action we take today won't fix hate online ... It will almost certainly not even remove 8chan from the Internet. But it is the right thing to do." Prince wrote on the Cloudflare Blog:
Brennan, the creator of 8chan, ceased being the owner of the platform in 2015 and stopped working for the website in 2018. He stated on August 4, 2019, that 8chan should be shut down, and subsequently thanked Cloudflare for its decision to pull support for 8chan.
Tucows also terminated its support as 8chan's domain name registrar, making the site difficult to access. In the wake of Cloudflare and Tucows' changes, 8chan switched its domain register to BitMitigate, a division of Epik, a provider that had previously serviced far-right sites like Gab and The Daily Stormer. After 8chan moved to Epik, the company's CEO Rob Monster wrote: "Freedom of speech and expression are fundamental rights in a free society. We enter into a slippery slope when we start to limit speech that makes us uncomfortable." However, Voxility, the company that provided BitMitigate and Epik with its own servers and Internet connectivity, then took steps to stop leasing servers to BitMitigate, taking that site offline, and stated that the intended use of their servers violated their acceptable use policy. Monster changed his decision to provide content hosting to 8chan soon after the company's removal from Voxility, citing concerns that 8chan did not have the ability to adequately moderate content. However, Ars Technica noted that the company had begun providing 8chan with DNS services.
Although the website was unreachable through its usual domain on clearnet, users continued to access the site through its IP address and via its.onion address on the Tor hidden services darknet. Security researcher and terrorism analyst Rita Katz noted that a site claiming to be 8chan had also appeared on ZeroNet, another darkweb network, although an 8chan administrator tweeted that their team was not the one running the site.
On August 6, 2019, the United States House Committee on Homeland Security called 8chan's owner, Jim Watkins, an American living in the Philippines, to testify about the website's efforts to tackle "the proliferation of extremist content, including white supremacist content". On August 11, 2019, Watkins uploaded a YouTube video saying that 8chan had been offline "voluntarily", and that it would go back online after he spoke with the Homeland Security Committee. In early September, Watkins traveled to Washington, D.C. for congressional questioning. In an interview with The Washington Post, Watkins said that 8chan staff were building protections against cyberattacks to replace Cloudflare's services, and that the website could come back online as early as mid-September.
Rebrand to 8kun and return to clearnet
On October 7, 2019, 8chan's official Twitter account and Jim Watkins' YouTube channel released a video that unveiled a new "8kun" logo. In it, a snake forms a shape of number 8 on top of the logo. The "8chan" name was based on the '-chan' suffix used by the imageboards that employ the 2channel-like format, but it was suggested that the new name is a wordplay based on Japanese honorifics; in that case, '-chan' can be interpreted as the one generally used for young children, especially females, while '-kun' suffix is used for younger males in general, or sometimes subordinates in the workplace. On October 9, 2019, 8chan's official Twitter account posted a notification that instructed board owners who wish to migrate to 8kun to send their "shared secrets" to an email address at 8kun.net.Brennan has vocally opposed 8chan's relaunch as 8kun, claiming the effort will not change the reputation previously associated with 8chan, and also citing his troubled relationship with 8chan administrators. Brennan has also suggested that the success of 8kun will depend on the return of "Q" and its followers. The new 8kun domain was registered with Tucows on September 7, 2019, but a spokesperson from Tucows stated that the company was unaware of the situation until the news about 8kun broke out, and that it was looking into the matter. 8kun was set to launch by October 17, 2019, however the attempt failed as British server provider Zare discontinued support. A spokesperson for Zare claimed in a statement to Vice that the team behind 8kun may have provided false details while registering themselves. On October 22, Watkins packed 8chan's servers into a van and transported them to an unknown location. This was later revealed to be in preparation for a move to the network VanwaTech, owned by Nicholas Lim, the founder of BitMitigate. On November 5, 8chan came briefly back online as 8kun by using a bogon IP through Media Land LLC. Media Land LLC is owned by the Russian Alexander "Yalishanda" Volosovyk, who has been described as the "world's biggest 'bulletproof' hosting operator" and is known for enabling cybercriminal activity. 8kun's trouble getting back online continued in the subsequent weeks, with Ron Watkins telling The Wall Street Journal "8chan is on indefinite hiatus" on November 16. 8kun moved to a.top domain on November 16, after the Tucows domain registrar stopped providing services earlier in the month. CNServers, which indirectly provided DDoS protection to VanwaTech via Spartan Host, cut ties in October 2020, taking 8kun briefly offline as a result. VanwaTech subsequently moved to DDoS-Guard, a Russian-owned service provider registered in Scotland.