Many mass shooters in the US talked about their plans on a site designed to counter censorship

A new wave of mass executions swept across the USA (and not only). Authorities suspect that the 8chan website is involved. Now it is unavailable, but until August, the so-called message board was popular with radical users: racists, extremists, neo-Nazis. The site was developed by an 25-year-old programmer with a "crystal man" disease. Because of her, the young man almost did not grow up and ended up in a wheelchair.

Photo: video frame YouTube / World News

Throughout his childhood, Fredrik Brennan broke bones, in the first 19 years of life - 120 fractures. Due to the growth and length of his hands, it was difficult for the boy to move around and take objects. Therefore, he spent a lot of time at the computer, got the hang of typing and wrote the first program in 13, tells hi-tech.mail.ru.

Fredrik wanted to chat and often sat in various online communities, including the 4chan website, which appeared in the 2003 year. He combined forums on anime, sports, technology, travel, and overt content.

Users of Fochan could communicate anonymously and freely. Brennan took this concept as a basis for creating his site.

Brennan said that he launched 8chan (the “endless channel”) when he noticed increased tacit surveillance and the oppression of free speech on the Internet. The launch took place in 2013 year.

The new site was enchantingly lucky: it was possible to entice the audience from the already promoted Fochan. 2014 began a series of scandals under the hashtag #GamerGate (baiting girls who criticized sexism in video games). This topic was forbidden to discuss on 4chan, while on the Brennan website users could argue about the Gamergate as much as they wanted.

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The owner of 8chan was tolerant of any content posted and discussed by forum members. Child porn, pedophilia, beatings - all this was not forbidden either in the video format or in the form of stories, which could be reached from the main page in two clicks.

In total, about 400 of thousands of messages a week appeared on the site, Brennan told the Daily Dot. More than 8 million people visited 1chan daily. For comparison, HeadHunter has the same traffic.

“Each user with us can say what he wants and what he thinks,” Brennan explained. He did not support the content that his site lived on, but considered it a necessary cost of freedom of speech. As a result, extremists and neo-Nazis reached out to the freest resource, bringing with them discussions of apartheid, genocide and terrorist attacks.

Photo: video frame YouTube / World News

For Brennan, this site is like an experiment by a scientist who has gotten out of control. The programmer devoted two years to him, and in 2015 he was tired of the negative and sold his brainchild to Jim Watkins. Brennan himself switched to font development. But he was not given rest by users of the “endless channel”, nor the media, nor his own conscience.

In March, Australian Brenton Tarrant published a post on the 8chan post about a terrorist attack against Muslims, which he intends to launch. On 15 March a man killed an 51 man in mosques in Christchurch (New Zealand). In April, John Irnest, who attacked a synagogue in Powey, California, was published on the site.

In August, before the terrorist attack, Patrick Krusius posted a post on the site, who shot 22 people in the Texas city of El Paso. In his manifesto, the shooter criticized the influx of immigrants into the United States and urged users to kill Hispanics.

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The founder of 8chan wrote on Twitter that the desire of the terrorists to post on his site is understandable: firstly, the audience of the site is “receptive and sympathetic” to their ideas, and secondly, the content is distributed to the maximum. Thirdly, they are not particularly involved in moderation on the site.

“After the Christchurch shooting, I found it hard to believe that I had ever created this site,” says Brennan.

In this regard, Brennan has repeatedly stated that the project must be closed. He felt that he was involved in mass executions and was to some extent responsible for them.

Photo: video frame YouTube / Rappler

Brennan's wish came true: after the tragedy in El Paso, CloudFlare, which delivers content to users and provides protection against cyber attacks, has stopped supporting 8chan. For ethical reasons. The current owner of the site, Jim Watkins, turned to the more accommodating company BitMitigate, which at one time helped the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer. However, the equipment supplier of this company almost immediately stopped servicing the BitMitigate server.

Watkins intends to resurrect the site. One of the 8chan administrators is now trying to do this at least on the darknet, BBC reported.

Meanwhile, Watkins became interested in the White House. He was asked to appear before the US Congress and explain how he fights extremist content, if at all. The owner of the Infinite Channel could not come to Washington, but emphasized that he himself was not an extremist and was ready to cooperate with the authorities.

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