The Daily - Shutting Down 8chan

Episode Date: August 6, 2019

At least three mass shootings this year — including one in El Paso — have been announced in advance on the online message board 8chan, often accompanied by racist writings. We look at the battle over shutting down the site. Guests: Kevin Roose, who writes about technology for The New York Times, spoke with Fredrick Brennan, the founder of 8chan. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:Fredrick Brennan started 8chan as a free speech utopia. But the site became known as something else: a megaphone for mass shooters, and a recruiting platform for violent white nationalists.Several tech providers pulled support for 8chan, temporarily taking the site offline. The decision to do so was not a straightforward one for the security company Cloudflare.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. For the third time this year, a mass shooter has posted his manifesto on HM. The battle over whether to shut the site down. over whether to shut the site down. It's Tuesday, August 6th. The Christchurch shooter's specific part of the internet that he came from was a message board called 8chan, and specifically a chunk of 8chan called SlashPoll.

called 8chan, and specifically a chunk of 8chan called Slash Poll. The suspected gunman in Poway posted praise for 8chan just before the shooting, saying, I've only been lurking for a year and a half, yet what I've learned here is priceless. It's been an honor. We're back with the breaking news, a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas at the Cielo Vista Mall. Minutes before the shooting in El Paso, Texas, the suspect posted his racist anti-immigrant manifesto to the online message board 8chan. Posted a manifesto on the website 8chan moments before the shooting. He posted that hate was his motive on 8chan. 8chan claims they deleted the post nine minutes after it was published,

but other calls to violence remain. Kevin Roos, it feels noteworthy that we now routinely turn to our technology columnist, you, after every mass shooting. But tell me where your head went after the news broke this weekend of this shooting in Texas. I immediately thought about Frederick Brennan. He's the founder of 8chan, and he was sort of a vocal defender of this community for a long time, and then recently has been expressing some real misgivings about it. And he was explicitly calling for the

site to be shut down. So I wanted to talk to him about that. So I looked him up. I got in touch. He agreed to talk. He would Skype with me from his home in the Philippines. So after getting up on Sunday morning, I went to my computer and I called him on Skype. Hey, sorry about the delay on that. Yeah, no problem. How are you? I'm good. I can only talk for like 20 minutes, so you should put your important questions first, just saying. That's fine. Kevin, he seemed very happy to hear from you.

Yeah, this was probably not the best part of his day. You know, it's just really annoying to keep and look it's like people's lives were affected in ways that are much more serious than how my life is affected by when this happens again and again and again but at the same time it's like every single time one of these shootings happens and there is an 8chan connection, I'm always just dragged into it. I got the sense that one of the reasons that he is calling for 8chan to be taken down is that it would make his life a lot easier. He wouldn't have to be involved in explaining 8chan every time there's a mass shooting that involves the site. He wouldn't have to field calls from the media. He could kind of

move on with his life and not have this part of his past come up every time it's implicated in one of these mass shootings. You know, as soon as this happened and I saw the original articles that said maybe the shooter posted on 4chan or 8chan, you know, it wasn't clear in the beginning. Well, I just very quickly, you know, just opened up a few sites and I was very easily able to determine that it was legitimate. He said that he always has kind of the same routine. Whenever there's a mass shooting, he sort of has to go research whether there's an 8chan connection. And I probably would have done that much faster, but just due to time zones, it was a Sunday, so I was at church instead of doing that research. And I decided that was more important than staying here and dealing with it right away. He told me that he got up, saw this news, and sort of instead of going through his normal routine of doing all of his research to figure out whether there was an 8chan connection,

he went to church. He sounded like a lot of us. He understands that there's a pattern now. Right. I mean, at the same time, do you feel a sense of frustration with Jim that he won't take you to the site? Yes, I really do. Kevin, who is Jim? Jim is Jim Watkins, who's the current owner of 8chan.

And he's the guy who, you know, if he wanted to, could take the site down. Could do what Frederick wants. Exactly, but he doesn't want to. And I just don't... I've tried to understand so many times why he keeps it going, and I just don't get it. You know, two days ago... And what's the story of these two guys? understand so many times why he keeps it going. And I just don't get it. You know, two days ago.

And what's the story of these two guys? So the story of 8chan goes back to 2013. And explaining it well sort of requires explaining this whole kind of internet underbelly. So just bear with me, there's going to be some weird stuff here. So Frederick Brennan, you know, was sort of a known figure in this kind of internet underworld. He was a longtime user of 4chan, the sort of bigger, older, more established site. He was briefly the administrator of a message board for adult male virgins, which he then had to resign, he said, because he was no longer a virgin. He was involved in a lot of other sort of internet communities. And then in 2013, he said that he was high on psychedelic mushrooms. And he got an idea for a website called Infinite

Chan. And Infinite Chan, he thought would be sort of like the ultimate free speech, anything goes version of 4chan. It would be 4chan with even fewer guardrails. And it would be a site that would allow sort of anyone to kind of not only go to this free speech utopia, but to create their own versions of it. It would kind of be any number of anonymous, free-for-all message boards. And he called it Infinite Chan. He uses the infinity symbol, which is, you know, sort of the sideways eight. Thus 8chan. Hard to type that.

So people just start calling it 8chan. So the site is not all that popular at first. It's pretty small. Nobody really knows about it. And then in 2014, 8chan kind of gets a lucky break because a bunch of guys sort of affiliated with a movement called Gamergate, which was a kind of reactionary movement of gamers who were upset about sort of social justice warriors like destroying video games who had gotten kicked off of 4chan, they needed a new place to go where there were fewer rules, where they could post whatever they

wanted, where they wouldn't be censored or moderated in any way. And so they found 8chan. 8chan became kind of the unofficial home of Gamergate. It sounds like from the very beginning, 8chan is a home to kind of those who nobody else wants to house. The worst of the worst. Exactly. 8chan becomes kind of like the quarantine zone of the internet.

8chan has sort of hosted the largest group of QAnon supporters. In cells, various other sort of internet communities that aren't really allowed or encouraged to congregate on other sites, they often set up shop on 8chan. It's kind of the platform of last resort. So how does Jim Watkins come to this picture? So Jim Watkins is a 50 something army veteran who has been living in the Philippines for a number of years. He's kind of a libertarian, free speech, you know, absolutist guy. And he finds out about 8chan from his son. And it sort

of strikes him as an interesting project. And he contacts Frederick and basically offers to get involved. So Jim has been sort of around technology for a while. His big successful project before 8chan was he ran an Asian porn site. He made some money from that and then formed a technology company. So he had a couple things that Frederick needed. He had money, he had some tech expertise, and he was willing to get involved. and he was willing to get involved. So at this point, the two key figures in this site, already designed to be a free speech haven,

are an internet troll who didn't think the last site he was on was free enough, and the founder of a porn site. Correct. In 2014, Frederick decides to actually move to the Philippines to work with Jim on 8chan. So he leaves New York, he moves to the Philippines, and they start working together on building 8chan into something bigger and better. We'll be right back. So where do things go wrong in this partnership?

So I'm not exactly sure what happened between Frederick and Jim, but at some point there was a rift. They had disagreements. They sort of had a falling out. And last year, they formally split. Frederick left Jim's company, no longer has anything to do with 8chan. And that sort of coincides with the rise of these mass shootings. And so Frederick then starts this kind of public campaign against Jim and 8chan. And he becomes one of the most vocal critics of the site and of its ownership. And he moved to the Philippines to work with Jim, but he stayed there. He never moved back. So he still lives in the Philippines,

actually quite close to Jim. And they're not really speaking, but he's now become this kind of prominent thorn in Jim's side as he tries to run 8chan. It's funny because, like, okay, on my way to church, I pass by where he lives. So it's like always when I pass by there, it's like, oh. Because I have a very, let's just say, it's like a very noticeable car.

It's like a very unique color because i had it colored that way yeah it's just very unique so i know that they have probably noticed me driving by before because there's many people in that household you know and he has a driver he has a maid he has a wife he has. So there's probably at any one time somebody looking out the window and seeing, you know, my car. And so he thinks, you know, someone is probably seeing him drive past. It's probably kind of a visual reminder to Jim that Frederick is there in pretty close proximity, giving him a hard time about 8chan. Yes, and you know, another thing about it is they still have that stupid saying on the front of the site, embrace infamy. It's like they think this is funny. proximity, giving him a hard time about 8chan. the Tree of Life shooting. And now after this shooting, it's still there. It's like they think that this is all really funny. Oh, we're infamous.

We're, you know, I don't know. Sorry, I'm just very frustrated. So it sounds like there is more to his desire to get this site shut down than his frustration with the attention that comes to him after these shootings or his grievances with Jim Watkins, that he is genuinely troubled and upset by what's happening on the site.

Yeah, I think he really is disturbed by what has been happening on 8chan. Do you agree with people who say that it's become sort of a haven for terrorist incitement? I mean, certain boards, yes. Yeah. And specifically on a section of this site that's about politics called P.O.L. P.O.L. P.O.L. Yeah, P.O.L. You know, the other news boards also to a degree. But of course, P.O.L. is the biggest one. That's where a lot of these mass shooters have been going. And there's a culture in Paul of kind of celebrating these mass shooters while they're carrying out the mass shootings and

afterward. So, you know, for example, after the synagogue shooting in California earlier this year, there was a thread on Paul that was basically egging this shooter on, and these people were saying they hoped he could beat the high score of the New Zealand shooter, by which he meant killing more people than the New Zealand shooter. I would characterize this as kind of the worst, most vile part of the worst, most vile website. I'm not saying that they caused the shooting, but 8chan is definitely highly implicated in three shootings. And so I think Frederick is really disturbed. And he's not only disturbed that there's this kind of culture

of celebrating mass shooters and lionizing them, he's also disturbed by kind of how 8chan is being used as a kind of archiving service. When potential shooters saw how successful it was to post on 8chan, because in the past, it was like they would post on Facebook only or Twitter only, and the tech companies would suppress it really fast, and there would be no archive. You know what I mean? Like, it would not spread.

You would not be able to find it. And that happened a few times where the manifesto did not become public domain but it's like when they saw oh wow these hn users they're good with computers they love shooters they ripped that um live stream from facebook in like minutes like if he had just posted it on facebook and maybe like read it to like more normal sites i don't think anybody would have ripped it i don't think that would have gotten out there. Just saying, you know, people say the internet is forever, but it's kind of not.

It's kind of not like among normal people, you know. But Kevin, even if Frederick succeeded in getting Jim to take down 8chan, couldn't another site fulfill that role he's describing to you? And wouldn't another website pop up to fulfill that role instantly? Yeah, I mean, we talked about this. I'm not even saying that if 8chan is shut down that this kind of thing would stop. There's obviously a problem in American society that shutting down 8chan is not going to fix

because the society gave rise to 8chan and it'll give rise to something else, right? Like, I'm not politically ignorant enough to think that, oh, we shut down 8chan, it'll give rise to something else, right? Like, I'm not politically ignorant enough to think that, oh, we shut down 8chan, it's all over. Obviously, that's not true. But he does think that if Jim took down 8chan, there wouldn't really be something that popped up to replace it exactly as it is, with the same kind of culture of tolerating and celebrating violence, with the same unmoderated structure.

It wouldn't necessarily totally stop these kind of things from happening, tolerating and celebrating violence with the same unmoderated structure. It wouldn't necessarily totally stop these kind of things from happening, but it wouldn't happen every few months. It would be more rare. I just feel like it would really slow things down if there wasn't a big clear net site that you can just open a browser and type a few numbers and letters and get there. The internet is sort of divided into the clear net and the dark web. So the clear net is sites that you and I visit. Anything that you can get to

in a normal web browser with a normal internet connection is considered to be part of the clear net. The dark web is a different set of websites that you need special tools to access including a browser called Tor. I feel like if it was pushed into Tor it would be harder for people to get to these Chan sites. That would make it much harder to access for the casual person who doesn't want to go through a whole lot of steps to get there.

You know, teenagers would have to learn a bunch of computer stuff, learn about Tor, learn about networking, you know, to be able to access these kind of sites. learn about Tor, learn about networking, you know, to be able to access these kind of sites. That it would kind of put more friction into the process of discovering these sort of violent extremist communities. This wouldn't happen as often. So, yeah, maybe my reasons are partially selfish, and obviously American society is screwed. But, yes, I think it would help to a degree yeah do we have any reason to believe

that the shooting in el paso might end with frederick getting what he wants here which is a chan coming down yeah i think there are sort of two ways that this could be accomplished the first way for a chchan to come down would be basically for it to get evicted from the internet by all of the sort of service providers, the web hosts, the DNS registrars, the various like middlemen who allow websites to get online and stay online. And actually today we've already seen a lot of that. So 8chan is down right now, in part because Cloudflare,

one of the companies that is sort of a provider of services, security services to 8chan, pulled it off its platform because of the mass shooting. Another site that it tried to go to as a result of that was also pulled offline by its provider. So they're sort of casting around looking for a new home. Somebody somewhere will probably host it. And then there's this obvious sort of more direct way to get it taken down, which would be if Jim decided to take it down. Right. That's the only way to guarantee that A-Chan is down for good

is for Jim Watkins to take it down. Correct. Well, and, like, if you could send him a message after this latest shooting, like, what would you tell him or what will you tell him? Like, what's the message?

I mean, I think the best message is the one I sent this morning before, you know, I went to church to try to calm down. It's just shut the site down. It's not doing the world any good. It is a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there. And you know what? It's a negative to them too. They just don't realize it. Um, yeah, there's a personal question. I don't know what kind of church you go to or how you express your faith, but do you feel like you are looking for forgiveness for some part of your past? I was fishing a little bit here because I don't really know the story, but I do know that he became a pretty religious Christian in the Philippines.

And I just wanted to know, like, what's that about? What did he say? He sort of thought about it and said, you know. Yeah. Yes, in a way, of course. I mean, we all should seek forgiveness. Maybe you have a point. And then it sort of like sounded like he hadn't been asked about it before, hadn't really thought about it.

I'm just saying, like, yeah, maybe you're right. But I go every Sunday. So it's not like I saw this happen and then I'm like, oh, I better go to church for forgiveness. No, it wasn't like that at all because it's like I go there every Sunday. But then again, at the beginning of your interview, he said, I needed to go to church because I don't want to have to think about this latest mass shooting. And here he's saying to you, yeah, there's something to that. I mean, this is clearly a person wrestling with his own culpability. Yeah, I certainly would interpret it that way.

Do you think you're ever going to be able to escape HN? You know, I remain optimistic that I will just be such a thorn in their side that they will shut it down. I have to remain optimistic that this is not going to keep happening until like 2030 or 2040. I don't know if I could deal with that. All right, Frederick, thank you very much. I'll let you know about the podcast too. It's kind of this incredible image here.

You have this American living in the Philippines, watching from a distance as this site that he built is playing this horrific role in mass shootings back in the United States. And the one guy he thinks can actually do something about it is right down the street from him, also watching all of this from afar. Yeah, it's a very strange detail in a very sad and strange story.

Kevin, thank you. Thank you for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Good morning. My fellow Americans, this morning, our nation is overcome with shock, horror, and sorrow. This weekend, more than 80 people were killed or wounded in two evil attacks.

In a speech on Monday, President Trump condemned the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, singling out the gunmen in El Paso who deliberately targeted immigrants. The shooter in El Paso posted a manifesto online consumed by racist hate. In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Trump called on the FBI to take whatever steps necessary to disrupt hate crimes

and called for better ways to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. But he made no mention of new gun laws. Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun. And the trade war between the U.S. and China entered a dangerous new phase on Monday when China allowed the value of its currency to hit a record low compared with the dollar. China's currency is tightly controlled, and its leaders left little doubt that they had deliberately dropped its value as a countermeasure to President Trump's latest tariffs. A lower Chinese currency hurts the U.S. by making Chinese imports more affordable

to American consumers and making U.S. exports more expensive to Chinese consumers. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bavaro. See you tomorrow.