Shutting Down 8chan

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.3 • 107.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2019

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow. This is The Daily.
0:09.2	Today.
0:11.7	For the third time this year, a mass shooter has posted his manifesto on HM,
0:18.8	the battle over whether to shut the site down.
0:22.7	It's Tuesday, August 6th.
0:34.7	The Christchurch shooters specific part of the internet that he came from was a message board
0:40.1	called Achan and specifically a chunk of Achan's called slash pole.
0:43.7	The suspected gunman in Poway posted praise for Achan just before the shooting, saying,
0:54.7	I've only been lurking for a year and a half yet. What I've learned here is priceless.
0:59.5	It's been an honor.
1:05.6	We're back with the breaking news of mass shooting in El Paso, Texas at the Cielo Vista mall.
1:11.5	Minutes before the shooting in El Paso, Texas, the suspect posted his racist anti-immigrant
1:17.1	manifesto to the online message board Achan.
1:20.2	Posted a manifesto on the website Achan moments before the shooting.
1:24.3	He posted that hate was his motive on Achan.
1:26.9	Achan claims they deleted the post nine minutes after it was published, but other calls to
1:31.8	violence remain.
1:32.7	Kevin Rus, it feels noteworthy that we now routinely turn to our technology columnist you
1:42.4	after every mass shooting.
1:43.6	But tell me where your head went after the news broke this weekend of this shooting in Texas.
1:49.0	I immediately thought about Frederick Brennan. He's the founder of Achan and he was sort of a
1:55.7	vocal defender of this community for a long time. And then recently has been expressing
	...

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