8 ms·

> it's beyond clear to me that it absolutely had the potential to radicalize shooters and terrorists I mean, it literally radicalized white supremacist terrori

> it's beyond clear to me that it absolutely had the potential to radicalize shooters and terrorists I mean, it literally radicalized white supremacist terrorists. There's no "had the potential" anymore, it's a fact. It also sounds like it held plenty of child porn, so I don't understand why it took until now for anyone to do anything about the site.

javagram 7y ago
I doubt the CP part is accurate, the government could take the site down in that case (unless they were intentionally leaving it up as a honeypot).
- dd36 7y ago
  The government sure got Backpage down quick and thoroughly.
  - dwighttk 7y ago
    $$$
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    It only took a decade for the government to get Backpage shut down...
- duskwuff 7y ago
  I'm afraid that part is largely accurate. While 8ch administrators and global moderators did respond to reports of CP hosted on their site, they handled these reports on a largely reactive basis -- the anonymous-imageboard model used by the site made it impossible to block individual posters in any effective fashion, and I don't believe the site had any way to block specific files from being reposted.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > I'm afraid that part is largely accurate. So it ran as a honeypot? I understand that 8chan wasn't hosted anonymously, the owners are known. If they provided a safe haven to child pornography, I assume law enforcement would put an end to that very quickly, especially with obvious and easy ways to apprehend the owners. They've been very active and successful in bringing down hidden services, it's not plausible that they looked the other way for a clearnet site.
    - duskwuff 7y ago
      > So it ran as a honeypot? I don't think so. What seems more likely to me is that one or more of the following is the case: 1) The "fast-flux" nature of imageboards makes it difficult for law enforcement to effectively respond to illegal content hosted on them. 2) Deleting content upon reports places board administrators technically within the boundaries of the law. 3) The arm's-length separation between the owners of 8ch, the users who operate boards on the site, and the users who post content on the site allows the owners to claim a lack of responsibility for that content.
      - luckylion 7y ago
        In that case, we're talking about something different though. Saying "they have CP" to mean "there is CP posted which then gets speedily removed by mods before LE can act on it" implies that AWS, Google, FB, Youtube etc also host child pornography. Certainly it will be uploaded and they will remove it. Only when the platform embraces it does that statement make sense, which apparently 8chan did not if I understand you correctly.
  - the8472 7y ago
    > they handled these reports on a largely reactive basis I don't see anything wrong with that considering the limited and volunteer-based resources they have. Youtube-style content ID pre-censoring built into everything shouldn't be a goal we're striving for.
  - hgoel 7y ago
    Exactly how are they at fault for responding to the issue in the only way the site design can allow? Do you also blame Twitter for only banning people after they've posted something deemed to be breaking the rules? or that it takes 5 minutes to make a new account? Unless you aren't attempting to imply anything about them being at fault. Although, as long as they are making that good faith effort to take down CP, they can't be taken down by the US govt at least.
komali2 7y ago
CP gets knocked off the board fast. 4chan and 8chan know the line, though it is in a weird place (it probably should be on the other side of "fomenting white supremacy")
- ethbro 7y ago
  *Formenting \w+ supremacy
  - colanderman 7y ago
    GP is correct: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foment https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foment
    - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
      I think "\w+" is regex for "one or more non-specified words," so they're nitpicking that it should be "* supremacy" instead of "white supremacy", in a weirdly obtuse and technical way.
      - ethbro 7y ago
        Aside from the misspelling, it was because I didn't want to look up how to escape italics.
  - Godel_unicode 7y ago
    You are correcting someone who used the word correctly. You have also misspelled "fomenting". https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/foment https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/foment
- eridius 7y ago
  Do posters get banned? If it's not accepted on the board then why does it keep getting posted, and posted sufficiently often that many people are claiming 8chan has CP?
  - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
spaginal 7y ago
Are you of the belief that hatred and radicalization doesn’t exist in environments that lack free speech? Lot’s of places on this planet have hyper radicalized portions of their populations that commit aggregious acts of violence, and they lack free speech. Yet free speech is being used as the red herring to blame. Unequivocally, your assessment of these forums causing the radicalization is wrong. Plain wrong. These people exist in any environment, they go into the shadows, they continue to lash out, and removing and restricting rights for every person DOES NOT STOP THIS BEHAVIOR.
- Spellman 7y ago
  They may already exist, but that doesn't mean we should amplify their voices and give them the ability to recruit more to their cause and ideology. Now, that's not to say disruptions of communication systems (e.g. censorship) is the right answer. But existence doesn't mean we shrug our shoulders and do nothing. At the very least you can stop encouraging and normalizing them.
- eridius 7y ago
  This isn't a free speech issue. We have free speech in most parts of our country without radicalization. This is an issue of a specific environment that actively celebrates hatred and awful behavior. "Free Speech" is a red herring. Just because it's legal to say this stuff doesn't make it okay to say it, and it's society's job to stamp out this kind of thing.
  - afiori 7y ago
    Something relevant here is that I believe that there is a significant amount of illegal speech on 8chan (or also twitter for that matter). Moving the discourse over to better enforcing current laws looks like an underestimated approach.
    - spaginal 7y ago
      Clearly it is not illegal speech. Regardless of that, is your solution to a decades old problem that pre dated the internet is to ban online forums that don’t tow approved narratives? I think you will be incredibly disappointed in the results of your solution.
sneak 7y ago
> I mean, it literally radicalized white supremacist terrorists. There's no "had the potential" anymore, it's a fact. Other than the fact that 8chan had things on it that you didn’t like, where is the evidence to support this claim? How do we know that it was a website that was responsible for the views of its userbase, as opposed to any other media they accessed? How do we know that 8chan specifically was the factor that caused the outcome?

javagram 7y ago

I doubt the CP part is accurate, the government could take the site down in that case (unless they were intentionally leaving it up as a honeypot).

dd36 7y ago
The government sure got Backpage down quick and thoroughly.
- dwighttk 7y ago
  $$$
- gamblor956 7y ago
  It only took a decade for the government to get Backpage shut down...
duskwuff 7y ago
I'm afraid that part is largely accurate. While 8ch administrators and global moderators did respond to reports of CP hosted on their site, they handled these reports on a largely reactive basis -- the anonymous-imageboard model used by the site made it impossible to block individual posters in any effective fashion, and I don't believe the site had any way to block specific files from being reposted.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > I'm afraid that part is largely accurate. So it ran as a honeypot? I understand that 8chan wasn't hosted anonymously, the owners are known. If they provided a safe haven to child pornography, I assume law enforcement would put an end to that very quickly, especially with obvious and easy ways to apprehend the owners. They've been very active and successful in bringing down hidden services, it's not plausible that they looked the other way for a clearnet site.
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    > So it ran as a honeypot? I don't think so. What seems more likely to me is that one or more of the following is the case: 1) The "fast-flux" nature of imageboards makes it difficult for law enforcement to effectively respond to illegal content hosted on them. 2) Deleting content upon reports places board administrators technically within the boundaries of the law. 3) The arm's-length separation between the owners of 8ch, the users who operate boards on the site, and the users who post content on the site allows the owners to claim a lack of responsibility for that content.
    - luckylion 7y ago
      In that case, we're talking about something different though. Saying "they have CP" to mean "there is CP posted which then gets speedily removed by mods before LE can act on it" implies that AWS, Google, FB, Youtube etc also host child pornography. Certainly it will be uploaded and they will remove it. Only when the platform embraces it does that statement make sense, which apparently 8chan did not if I understand you correctly.
- the8472 7y ago
  > they handled these reports on a largely reactive basis I don't see anything wrong with that considering the limited and volunteer-based resources they have. Youtube-style content ID pre-censoring built into everything shouldn't be a goal we're striving for.
- hgoel 7y ago
  Exactly how are they at fault for responding to the issue in the only way the site design can allow? Do you also blame Twitter for only banning people after they've posted something deemed to be breaking the rules? or that it takes 5 minutes to make a new account? Unless you aren't attempting to imply anything about them being at fault. Although, as long as they are making that good faith effort to take down CP, they can't be taken down by the US govt at least.

komali2 7y ago

CP gets knocked off the board fast. 4chan and 8chan know the line, though it is in a weird place (it probably should be on the other side of "fomenting white supremacy")

ethbro 7y ago
*Formenting \w+ supremacy
- colanderman 7y ago
  GP is correct: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foment https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foment
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    I think "\w+" is regex for "one or more non-specified words," so they're nitpicking that it should be "* supremacy" instead of "white supremacy", in a weirdly obtuse and technical way.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      Aside from the misspelling, it was because I didn't want to look up how to escape italics.
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  You are correcting someone who used the word correctly. You have also misspelled "fomenting". https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/foment https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/foment
eridius 7y ago
Do posters get banned? If it's not accepted on the board then why does it keep getting posted, and posted sufficiently often that many people are claiming 8chan has CP?
- 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

spaginal 7y ago

Are you of the belief that hatred and radicalization doesn’t exist in environments that lack free speech? Lot’s of places on this planet have hyper radicalized portions of their populations that commit aggregious acts of violence, and they lack free speech. Yet free speech is being used as the red herring to blame. Unequivocally, your assessment of these forums causing the radicalization is wrong. Plain wrong. These people exist in any environment, they go into the shadows, they continue to lash out, and removing and restricting rights for every person DOES NOT STOP THIS BEHAVIOR.

Spellman 7y ago
They may already exist, but that doesn't mean we should amplify their voices and give them the ability to recruit more to their cause and ideology. Now, that's not to say disruptions of communication systems (e.g. censorship) is the right answer. But existence doesn't mean we shrug our shoulders and do nothing. At the very least you can stop encouraging and normalizing them.
eridius 7y ago
This isn't a free speech issue. We have free speech in most parts of our country without radicalization. This is an issue of a specific environment that actively celebrates hatred and awful behavior. "Free Speech" is a red herring. Just because it's legal to say this stuff doesn't make it okay to say it, and it's society's job to stamp out this kind of thing.
- afiori 7y ago
  Something relevant here is that I believe that there is a significant amount of illegal speech on 8chan (or also twitter for that matter). Moving the discourse over to better enforcing current laws looks like an underestimated approach.
  - spaginal 7y ago
    Clearly it is not illegal speech. Regardless of that, is your solution to a decades old problem that pre dated the internet is to ban online forums that don’t tow approved narratives? I think you will be incredibly disappointed in the results of your solution.

sneak 7y ago

> I mean, it literally radicalized white supremacist terrorists. There's no "had the potential" anymore, it's a fact. Other than the fact that 8chan had things on it that you didn’t like, where is the evidence to support this claim? How do we know that it was a website that was responsible for the views of its userbase, as opposed to any other media they accessed? How do we know that 8chan specifically was the factor that caused the outcome?