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The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

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Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#161

Post by carry_bit »

ibejoeb wrote: post #55
fallingfrog wrote: post #36

I’m pretty sure that anyone who is willing to swallow massively implausible theories like qanon is not the kind of person who will be amenable to logical arguments and fact checking. You can’t just argue those people out if their positions because it’s not about truth for them, it’s about feeling like one is a member of the elect. Denying reality is not a bug, it’s a feature of every millenarian belief system. Facts…

I've been able to avoid it entirely. Can you point to a good primer on qanon? Not an opinion piece or a takedown or anything, just an explainer. The only thing I know is what I've heard from MSM, and that has been that there is a secret cabal of pedophiles, and many members occupy powerful positions.

The movement according to itself: https://www.neonrevolt.com/2018/07/11/who-is-qanon-an-introd...

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#162

Post by aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA »

theplague42 wrote: post #121
fallingfrog wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoted! Look: we here on hacker news are used to thinking about the world in a logical way. We test our ideas against reality and reject what doesn’t fit. We have rational enlightenment ideals about democracy and reason. Well some people don’t! They really don’t. They have a prescientific, premodern understanding of the world. I know this is hard to accept but it’s clearly true. And every time they turn on the tv…

HackerNews is just as vulnerable to confirmation bias and reactionary behavior as any other group of people. Being an engineer does not make one magically immune to cognitive bias.

As the recently-departed James Randi pointed out repeatedly, scientists are among the easiest people to fool with magic tricks for this very reason.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#163

Post by bleepblorp »

cheweh wrote: post #61
pwinnski wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this line of thinking is absolutely correct when conspiracy theories are fringe or harmless. You don't believe we landed on the moon? Okay, buddy, have a nice day. Occasionally, though, conspiracy theorists escape the harmless fringe and become actively harmful to society, which is what many of us believe is happening in the USA today. A racist conspiracy theory that posited, contrary to all evidence, that ou…

Note that Obama's birth was a conspiracy around 2008, before 8chan existed. I would argue that "the Donald" on reddit was a driver of Trump's online popularity. This argument is not for striking down individual websites as much as it is for pervasive rumor-quashing. One could look toward China's internet policy to measure the success of playing "whack-a-mole" at the rumor-level. Propaganda there still gets made and s…

I sincerely hope there's some effective middle ground between allowing the kind of unrestrained rumor/conspiracy propagation that puts unhinged people in public office and Chinese-style ubiquitous law enforcement. Neither option is particularly attractive.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#164

Post by macintux »

Jetrel wrote: post #139
jmnicolas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm not mistaken the NZ killer was on 8chan? It's the same argument with serial killer movies (at the risk of showing my age there was a strong controversy with "Natural Born Killers" at the time): you don't kill people because you chatted on the internet or watched a movie. You kill people because you had it in you. The things you were exposed before might color your act but that's it.

I've long been sympathetic to ideas like this - I remember as a little kid, blowing off the big stigma around the (then-novel) 3d shooters that had just come out, like Doom. Ironically I agree with exactly what you said, but simultaneously think you might miss something in the analysis. I think that maybe a better way to phrase the idea is: In the rare case that you're positive for a trait, you can be incited to it b…

In addition to your excellent point, the fact that there is such a groundswell of people who tacitly buy into these destructive theories is incredibly demoralizing to many.

The fact that there are so many Americans who accept this is enough to make me rethink my participation in society here. Who are we if we've become enablers of this? I can't fight this, there's no "there" there.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#165

Post by googthrowaway42 »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #155
googthrowaway42 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many tech companies ban things for political reasons and provide these types of explanations as cover. Similar to how Reddit banned the_donald because of supposed anti-cop violent threats on the subreddit which is of course completely and utterly absurd.

Do you have a source for that claim? Reddit admins were quite vocal about the many noncop reasons for banning TD https://www.dailywire.com/news/reddit-bans-the_donald-subred...

A source?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/reddit-quarantines-pro-trump-s...

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#166

Post by macintux »

bogwog wrote: post #30
jameskilton wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least the trash is in a know location, it doesn't spill everywhere. Please do a little more research and thought before posting such things. There is no "trash can", it IS SPILLING EVERYWHERE. We even have a QAnon supporter most likely headed to Congress. People are dead because of these hate-filled groups. Shutting them down saves lives , not only in the US but throughout the world. You can't just "leave these…

I wonder how many Qanon believers are hate-filed extremists, people going through mental health issues, or just edgy kids/teenagers. I doubt that the people who would actually commit a public shooting are in the majority, and I strongly doubt that taking down their website is going to kill the group. If anything, it will just strengthen the beliefs of the paranoid people who frequent it. What we should be doing is go…

> I wonder how many Qanon believers are hate-filed extremists, people going through mental health issues, or just edgy kids/teenagers.

There are enough who are simply run-of-the-mill angry white men to be terrifying.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#167

Post by Nullabillity »

cgh wrote: post #132
gruez wrote: post #10

Are ip address blocks registered to defunct companies a relatively common thing? Clearly ARIN isn't regularly checking whether the owners of ip address blocks are still in business, so I'd imagine there are plenty of other blocks that belong to defunct companies.

Similarly, I wonder about internet ports assigned to dormant or defunct companies. I used to work for a company back in the '90s that had their own IANA port assignment for a proprietary database product. Of course, they don't use it anymore as the company and product are both long gone.

Err, presumably the product still works for existing customers?

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#168

Post by ALittleLight »

vkou wrote: post #105
pwinnski wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this line of thinking is absolutely correct when conspiracy theories are fringe or harmless. You don't believe we landed on the moon? Okay, buddy, have a nice day. Occasionally, though, conspiracy theorists escape the harmless fringe and become actively harmful to society, which is what many of us believe is happening in the USA today. A racist conspiracy theory that posited, contrary to all evidence, that ou…

It has also destoyed families. I know people whose parents have gone down the QAnon rabbit hole, and the outcome is absolutely insane. They can't have a 20 minute conversation without the vast pedophilic conspiracy in Washington intruding (Because the parents cannot understand why their children could possibly be acting in accord with it.) Another one of my friends can't even see his mother, because she doesn't belie…

I haven't (and won't) downvote you for expressing an opinion I disagree with - but I do disagree with you.

Whether or not there is value in QAnon is beyond me. There is value in people being able to say what they want, even if it is baseless, or disturbed, or hateful. One example that comes to my mind is the Rotterham child rape scandal[1], which, were it not printed in the most reputable newspapers world wide, would sound like something out of the QAnon fantasy. Even worse than this scandal itself, which is saying something given that this scandal describes an organization of men raping children for decades with the tacit knowledge of local police and city government, is the fact that there are many similar occurrences in the UK. That is, this is not a one off horrific event, but part of a terrible and disturbing pattern.

Why I bring this up as an example, is, that it seems to me part of the problem the UK has in getting the organized rape of children under control, is an unwillingness to speak about it and be open about it. The UK is so determined to control speech and avoid offending people that they kept secret the organized rape of hundreds if not thousands of children across their country for decades. I would much rather err on the side of allowing people to indulge in dark, even if absurd, fantasies (e.g. QAnon) than forbid or punish people for going public with imperfectly firm accusations (as happened in Rotterham - victims and their families reported the ongoing sexual abuse and rape to the authorities through the many years it was ongoing and the authorities ignored them for fear of being offensive[2]).

The organized sexual abuse of children clearly does happen. Sometimes the government is intimately involved. For example the case with Jeffrey Epstein. It's worth it to let people talk about it and make accusations. Sometimes disturbed people will go too far and make baseless claims. That's not ideal, but preventing people from making anything but perfect accusations leads to a culture where horrible crimes are covered up for fear of not having enough evidence. I think it is a better balance to let mean people say mean things and expose whatever evidence there may be of things as soon as possible.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

2 - https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-ignored-child-s...

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#169

Post by rat87 »

will4274 wrote: post #107
klmadfejno wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, numerous people asserting that QAnon, and conspiracy theories (conspiracy theorists) in general, "are" or "believe" certain things. If one pays close attention to these threads every time they appear on HN (or elsewhere, be it social media or formal media), one may notice that the asserted descriptions are always very vague, and always only include the very worst/silliest of ideas that exist within the…

I actually thought the comment you replied to made a good point, but I think I can explain it differently (with examples), which might make it easier to understand. I browsed some conspiracy sites back in the day, including 4chan and /r/conspiracy. There seemed to be three levels of thought about Jews. A small number of people thought that Jews had a conspiracy whereby they coordinated with each other to run the worl…

> The larger point is - there's a spectrum here that ranges from literally believing Clinton and Trump hang out in the same pizza parlor raping children

One of the things that shows the total bankruptcy of QAnon is that despite the long history of trump sexual abuse and several credible rape claims and the fact that Trump peeked on underage teenage girls changing at a miss teen usa contest, almost none of these conspiracy theories accuse Trump of anything. Instead it's always perceived enemies of trump Democrat or Republican or celeb that doesn't like Trump accused almost always without any evidence

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#170

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

philipkglass wrote: post #145
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Jeffery Epstein hadn't received preferential treatment when he was convicted in 2008, I think few would remember him today (much less harbor so many suspicions about what politicians may have been involved with him.) The Epstein saga, I think, is providing the most fuel for the fire right now. Just yesterday Ghislaine Maxwell's 2016 deposition was unsealed, and it mentions Clinton and Prince Andrew, among others…

Did you mean to link to another PDF? There's only one page of deposition in that file and it doesn't name any Epstein clients. It's just a bit of back-and-forth between the plaintiff's attorney and the defendant's attorney.

Maybe this one? https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7274479/Maxwell-D...

People have been working on unredacting it: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/ghislaine-maxwel...

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