8chan: Owner of extremist site lashes out as scrutiny intensifies | Hacker News Reader

8chan: Owner of extremist site lashes out as scrutiny intensifies

theguardian.com

22 pointsneom13 comments

4 out of the top 10 articles on the Guardian refering to 8chan as an "extremist" or "far right" website. I don't think that is fair to the all the weirdos and pedos... It's a broad church.

It is fairly obvious that he has a forum where he is explicitly promoting extremist speech. And that speech is far right.

The person in question openly admits to this promotion as a place for infamy, in a completely unironic way.

Just looking at the title there appears to be some bias: "extremist", "lashes out" all have negative connotations.

Is the Guardian considered to be a reliable source with regard to this topic? The actual URL contains "8chan-owner-statement-jim-watkins" which I thought to be more impartial.

To the fellow commenters who take issue with the headline: how would you describe 8chan to someone like a parent or grandparent? If you would use something like “Internet forum or discussion group”, then how would you contrast it with something like reddit? What adjective(s) would you use?

True anarchy? If Somalia in the 90s made a website? The final stage of civilization?

It is depressing how every experiment in Internet libertarianism ends at Nazism.

Makes perfect sense to me. The people who are banned and removed from all other platforms, will most likely end up migrating over to platforms that won't ban them. Other communities really have no need for such extreme lack of moderation, therefore the migration on their side never happens.

Pretty clear this is a hit piece against sites that don't fit into what the media says the internet should be used for. Why should the actions of a few destroy what many others find as their only outlet in the "PC" world the media things we all live in?

Your assumption seems to be that the actions of a few (which come with harsh consequences for others) are totally unrelated to the site at hand.

I am not sure if anybody who visted 8chan before will be convinced by that hypothesis. Other than violence in fiction and games, the discourses that take place over there at times do impact people’s lifes in a significant and negative way.

And it really doesn’t matter if it is on the internet or not, if your newspaper would house radical islamists discussing how to blow up the next building, you’d be shut down within a day (and rightfully so). Why should society treat right wing extremism any different?

So if part of a community engages in criminal activities the whole community should be shut down, with no consideration that part of them might not be doing anything wrong? Do you know who has the same reasoning? "They're all a bunch of X, we should Y the whole place." You're doing the same, just from the other side.

No, if part of the community engages in criminal activity and said criminal activity is discussed and encouraged in said community, then the public has an incentive to do something about it.

Maybe the terrorist also had a membership in the local gym, but as long as they don’t discuss shooting people at that gym the other gym members will not have to fear a shutdown by the public.

The problem is not that a terrorist is member of some group, but that the group is complicit in the actions that follow the communicagions within it, just like I would be complicit as an individual if I convinced my neighbour to hang himself.

If there is a direct legal link would remain to be seen in both cases, but arguing that the culpit’s actions are completely unrelated to the communications about said actions within a group is a bold claim that needs evidence to be backed up (which you certainly seem to have).

Edit: I know that there are parts of the 8chan community which are completely unrelated to that incident and these will see their plattform changed by the fallout of the actions of the few. That is how it is. If you don’t want your plattform to get that kind of press, make sure it is not used by terrorists to plan their actions.

Ya. They pretend not to wonder; what's the most effective way to attack a public forum?

Have you see the garbage that's left on 8chan? Go browse /pol/ or /leftypol/ and tell me if these are forums you'd want on your own site. As someone who's been a moderator on web forums before I've tended to use a light touch when dealing with bad actors and trolls but even they wouldn't cross lines that the denizens of 8chan regularly cross and find more ways to be vile in such a manner that is beyond breaking moral codes but also breaking legal ones. Doxing, posting child porn, advocating for genocide, stalking, and etc are all regularly occurring on 8chan since its inception. Basically, 8chan is what you get when you don't use the ban hammer. It's why 4chan oddly is marginally more well behaved because Poole/moot before selling 4chan started laying more ground rules like no-doxing (that happened due to the nonsense around 2014 with Gamergate). So, the fact Watkins refuses to manage his site just shows negligence on his part. If Poole/moot can do it then so can Watkins, otherwise he can just sell the site or shut it down. He deserves no other options in my opinion.

I am totally blown away how the left has developed a "Moral Majority" complex.

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