8chan, the controversial website that encourages its users to 鈥渆mbrace infamy,鈥� went offline Monday after its network and security provider, Cloudflare, terminated service after reports that the El Paso gunman posted a 鈥榤anifesto鈥� to the site just before the shooting.
8chan is an online forum containing mostly image and message boards, where users can communicate anonymously and share content in a barely-moderated setting.
鈥淲e just sent notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time,鈥� wrote Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince in a . 鈥淭he rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit.鈥�
Prince referenced that 鈥渢his is not an isolated incident,鈥� where a shooter has posted about their crimes prior to the act. Both the Poway synagogue shooter and the Christchurch mosque shooter posted on the site before their respective acts of violence 鈥� the latter referenced in the El Paso shooter鈥檚 uploaded 鈥榤anifesto.鈥�
Prince wrote that the company 鈥渄id not take this decision lightly鈥� as they 鈥渇eel incredibly uncomfortable about playing the role of content arbiter,鈥� but they 鈥渄raw the line at platforms that demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design.鈥�
鈥�8chan has crossed that line,鈥� wrote Prince.
This is the second time that Cloudflare has terminated a site due to their content. In 2017 the company removed neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer from its services.
Frederick Brennan, the creator of 8chan but no longer affiliated with the website, welcomed Cloudflare鈥檚 decision in a tweet, writing; 鈥淔inally this nightmare might have an end鈥hey could have prevented this and chose not to.鈥�
On the official 8chan they acknowledged Cloudflare鈥檚 decision, and said that there 鈥渕ay be some downtime in the next 24-48 hours.鈥�
One of 8chans administrators that the site will be back online as soon as they migrate to a new service provider, but that has proved no easy feat.
After being terminated from Cloudflare, 8chan was picked up by BitMitigate - which was acquired by company Epik earlier this year, .
Epik, which is another network and security provider, is perhaps known best for working with far-right friendly site Gab.com.
A researcher from Stanford Monday that BitMitigate/Epik would effectively be hosted by another company, Voxility, from whom they rent servers and other services from.
Voxility in turn completely removed them from their network.
鈥淗ate speech is totally against our policy,鈥� said VP of business development Maria Sirbu in an email to CTVNews.ca Monday. 鈥淲e are a registered telco that provides services to identifiable resellers and as soon as we were notified on the content hosted by Epik/BitMitigate 鈥� we proceeded with completely removing the reseller from Voxility network.鈥�
鈥淭his is a firm stand from our team and we will not reinstall services for this reseller.鈥�
Sirbu went on to say that in addition to their actions with Epik/BitMitigate, they have been 鈥渃utting access鈥� for several IP addresses related to the neo-nazi site The Daily Stormer 鈥渙ver the last two weeks.鈥�
For its part, the that they would give BitMitigate 鈥渢ime to find a solution [to] their peering problem鈥� but would explore other options if the problems persist.
On Tuesday, Epik/BitMitigate saying that they would no longer be providing services for 8chan due to "concern of inadequate enforcement and the elevated possibility of violent radicalization on the platform."
