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‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

nytimes.com

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Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#11

Post by kennywinker »

Waterluvian wrote: post #8
pram wrote: post #7

What exactly makes 8chan the preferred platform for this kind of stuff, and not other websites? Genuinely curious, is it just because it’s unmoderated?

It's always possible that many sites were candidates given their traits. And one in a semi random manner became it.

Isn’t the story that all this crap was on 4chan, and then 8chan was created because 4chan started cracking down on this kinda stuff.

It may be argued that 4chan’s existence gave a home to this crap, or that it created it. Hard to know one way or another.

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#13

Post by closeparen »

codesushi42 wrote: post #5
zaroth wrote: post #4

So literally everyone so much as reading 8chan/pol is on a watchlist, right? And what about the people posting they are about to “go kill as many brown people as they can find and they plan on being dead by the end of the day?” It’s a felony terroristic threat. How about we just arrest everyone posting terroristic threats before they can do this kind of damage? 8Chan, or whatever public forum these discussions are oc…

How is this realistic? How do you know he wasn't using Tor?

People who post threats via Tor tend to get caught for being the only plausible suspect using Tor at the time of the threat.

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#14

Post by astura »

pram wrote: post #7

What exactly makes 8chan the preferred platform for this kind of stuff, and not other websites? Genuinely curious, is it just because it’s unmoderated?

I think this is the reason (from TFA):

>The site remained on the fringes until 2014, when some supporters of GamerGate — a loose reactionary collection of anti-feminist video gamers — flocked to 8chan after being kicked off 4chan. Since GamerGate, 8chan has become a catchall website for internet-based communities whose behavior gets them evicted from more mainstream sites.

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#15

Post by Sevii »

zaroth wrote: post #4

So literally everyone so much as reading 8chan/pol is on a watchlist, right? And what about the people posting they are about to “go kill as many brown people as they can find and they plan on being dead by the end of the day?” It’s a felony terroristic threat. How about we just arrest everyone posting terroristic threats before they can do this kind of damage? 8Chan, or whatever public forum these discussions are oc…

The US police aren't that organized or technologically advanced. If these shootings keep up though, we may end up building out the infrastructure to catch these people based on their online posts.

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#16

Post by Alex3917 »

kpU8efre7r wrote: post #6
zaroth wrote: post #4

So literally everyone so much as reading 8chan/pol is on a watchlist, right? And what about the people posting they are about to “go kill as many brown people as they can find and they plan on being dead by the end of the day?” It’s a felony terroristic threat. How about we just arrest everyone posting terroristic threats before they can do this kind of damage? 8Chan, or whatever public forum these discussions are oc…

>I keep reading about blimps watching us 24/7, license plate readers tracking everywhere we drive. It's almost as if this "surveillance state" you all imagine doesn't exist. There are checks in place and warrants needed for this. If you see something illegal online you could report it to the FBI perhaps?

> It's almost as if this "surveillance state" you all imagine doesn't exist.

How do you imagine that billing for EZ Pass and license plate scanners works?

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#17

Post by save_ferris »

zaroth wrote: post #4

So literally everyone so much as reading 8chan/pol is on a watchlist, right? And what about the people posting they are about to “go kill as many brown people as they can find and they plan on being dead by the end of the day?” It’s a felony terroristic threat. How about we just arrest everyone posting terroristic threats before they can do this kind of damage? 8Chan, or whatever public forum these discussions are oc…

NYT's "The Daily" podcast discussed this a little over a year ago in response to the Parkland shooting, and I found it to be quite insightful. I believe it was this episode, but I could be wrong[0].

A major factor impeding law enforcement is the sheer number of people posting violent threats on social media. I can't remember the statistic, but they mentioned that the US justice system basically wouldn't be able to effectively process everyone in a timely manner that posted indications of violent activity on social media, it's just too frequent. It's easy to look back after a shooting and ask why law enforcement failed to see the warnings, but it's much harder to predict looking into the future. Simply posting angry threats on social media doesn't meet the threshold of committing a crime, but perception around that could be changing.

Another major issue is that this isn't a mental health issue, despite how it's characterized by politicians and the media. Deeply angry young men aren't mentally ill by any classical definition of mental illness; they're just really angry. They don't necessarily exhibit traits of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder; they're driven by hatred and anger, and that's just not something mental health professionals are equipped to diffuse.

0: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/podcasts/the-daily/gun-ac...

Re: ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says 8chan’s Creator

#20

Post by JackFr »

rolph wrote: post #3

Ones moral constitution is supremely revealed in the manner of conduct chosen when no perceived consequences exist. e.g. Lord of The Flies.

There was a great quote from some WWII officer who said about war crimes (paraphrasing & I can’t remember his name) “We observe the rules of war not for the sake of our enemies, but for the sake of ourselves.”
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