The far-right hate repository 8chan suffered outages after Cloudflare terminated their online protection following the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.
Cloudflare made the announcement after it was reported that the El Paso gunman used the site to post an anti-immigrant screed before opening fire at a Walmart.
"We just sent notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time. The 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," Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a blog post.
The move came after the company told CNN just hours earlier on Sunday that it had no plans to pull services from 8chan, where the El Paso gunman posted a “manifesto” minutes before the shooting.
The shooters involved in the Poway synagogue attack and the New Zealand mosque attacks also announced their plans on 8chan.
"We continue to feel incredibly uncomfortable about playing the role of content arbiter and do not plan to exercise it often," Prince wrote.
8chan founder calls for site to be shut down:
Fredrick Brennan, who started 8chan as a free speech alternative to 4chan, a similar message board, told The New York Times that he now wants the site shut down because of the evils it has unleashed.
“Shut the site down,” Brennan said. “It’s not doing the world any good. It’s 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.”
The site is now run by Jim Watkins, a US Army veteran based in the Philippines.
“I’ve tried to understand so many times why he keeps it going, and I just don’t get it,” Brennan said. “After Christchurch, after the Tree of Life shooting, and now after this shooting, they think this is all really funny.”
8chan back online:
After suffering outages when Cloudflare pulled their service, the website was back online by Monday thanks to the service BitMitigate, a Washington-based provider, Vice News reported.
Throughout Sunday, users on the message boarded praised the El Paso shooter as “our guy” and celebrated the number of people he killed.
