<story><title>8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/5/20754943/8chan-epik-offline-voxility-service-cutoff-hate-speech-ban</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nilkn</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve generally been on the free speech side of this debate, as some of my previous comments on HN will show.&lt;p&gt;With 8chan, I legitimately don&amp;#x27;t know what my opinion is. I&amp;#x27;ve read it before, and I spent a few hours reading it this weekend, and it&amp;#x27;s beyond clear to me that it absolutely had the potential to radicalize shooters and terrorists. I&amp;#x27;m not referring to the simple use of racial or ethnic slurs -- of course this was extremely common there, but I don&amp;#x27;t think this is the part of the site that encouraged actual violence. Rather, among the many ideological threads that were more or less constantly ongoing on 8chan, one of them just straight-up encouraged mass shootings. &amp;quot;The fire rises&amp;quot; is a common phrase I saw there celebrating the frequency of shootings. For instance, here&amp;#x27;s a quote I saw this weekend (I screenshotted a bunch of stuff like this in anticipation of the site going down):&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;holy fucking shit, a third mass shooting toda [referencing an incident near Douglas Park in Chicago], white guy shot 7 people, no one dead yet but the meter is still running!!! shooter still active!!!&lt;p&gt;its absolutely fucking happening !!! the FIRE RISES!!!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This was attached to a picture of Trump with the text &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s happening&amp;quot; superimposed.&lt;p&gt;While 8chan overall was absolutely all over the place, this thread of support for shootings and terrorism was seemingly always present in the background.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DonHopkins</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve lost good friends to 4chan&amp;#x2F;8chan. They were obsessed. At first it was cat pictures and memes, but it went way downhill from there. I&amp;#x27;ve watched those sites cause the transition from normal, interesting, reasonable, open minded, intelligent, happy human beings, to horrible inexcusable pieces of shit who I never want to have anything to do with ever again.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not just that they inspire a few shooters and mass murders. They inspire a hell of a lot of other once-reasonable people to be deeply and irredeemably terrible in many other ways.</text></comment>
<story><title>8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/5/20754943/8chan-epik-offline-voxility-service-cutoff-hate-speech-ban</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nilkn</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve generally been on the free speech side of this debate, as some of my previous comments on HN will show.&lt;p&gt;With 8chan, I legitimately don&amp;#x27;t know what my opinion is. I&amp;#x27;ve read it before, and I spent a few hours reading it this weekend, and it&amp;#x27;s beyond clear to me that it absolutely had the potential to radicalize shooters and terrorists. I&amp;#x27;m not referring to the simple use of racial or ethnic slurs -- of course this was extremely common there, but I don&amp;#x27;t think this is the part of the site that encouraged actual violence. Rather, among the many ideological threads that were more or less constantly ongoing on 8chan, one of them just straight-up encouraged mass shootings. &amp;quot;The fire rises&amp;quot; is a common phrase I saw there celebrating the frequency of shootings. For instance, here&amp;#x27;s a quote I saw this weekend (I screenshotted a bunch of stuff like this in anticipation of the site going down):&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;holy fucking shit, a third mass shooting toda [referencing an incident near Douglas Park in Chicago], white guy shot 7 people, no one dead yet but the meter is still running!!! shooter still active!!!&lt;p&gt;its absolutely fucking happening !!! the FIRE RISES!!!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This was attached to a picture of Trump with the text &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s happening&amp;quot; superimposed.&lt;p&gt;While 8chan overall was absolutely all over the place, this thread of support for shootings and terrorism was seemingly always present in the background.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jolmg</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not really that well informed of 8chan, but bringing it down, while practical, doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like the ideal solution. Isn&amp;#x27;t it just like covering your eyes and pretending the problem isn&amp;#x27;t there? The problem doesn&amp;#x27;t sound like it&amp;#x27;s 8chan, but rather these people and their ideologies. If 8chan was brought down, they&amp;#x27;ll just find another hub to congregate, but now we don&amp;#x27;t know where to reach them to talk.&lt;p&gt;I thought the idea expressed by NearlyFreeSpeech.net in the following link was nice:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nearlyfreespeech.net&amp;#x2F;about&amp;#x2F;faq#TheLongGame&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nearlyfreespeech.net&amp;#x2F;about&amp;#x2F;faq#TheLongGame&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>