What might happen to 8chan? (The Daily Charge, 8/7/2019)

Today on a special edition of The Daily Charge, in the wake of catastrophe, what roles do social media, video games, and online communities play when [UNKNOWN] discourse? We're talking 8chan day. [MUSIC] Good morning and welcome To CNET's daily charge, it's Wednesday August 7th, I'm Ben Fox Reuben, I'm Oscar Gonzalez. Let's take a look at today's story. [SOUND] A mass shooting in El Paso over the weekend thrust the site HN into the news, since authorities believe the shooter's alleged manifesto was posted on the site. Oscar, what's happened with 8Chan Over the last few days, but let's start with some of the basics. What is 8Chan and what is it used for? Okay, so HN is what they call an Image Board where you start a thread using an image and you post various topics. It's spin off, sort of, of 4Chan It was created in 2013 by a guy named Fredrick Brennan with the nickname, he has the nickname Hot Wheels. And he made it because he thought 4chan was kinda being too authoritative, it was being too strict. So an imageboard, that sounds innocent enough, what's so bad about all this? The thing about 8chan is that they have a rule where Don't break the law. That's kind of the rule. And they're very pro free speech, but it's just gotten when 4chan kicks you out, those are the people that want to hate you. And that makes up a lot of people that are really If you put them all together and you make them anonymous, they have a lot of bad things to say, and it gets really foul there. Okay. So get us up to speed on what happened with the site since the shooting started. Let's start off with Cloud Flare. All right, so Cloud Flare is a security platform so we are [UNKNOWN] will protect your site from getting attacked by DDoS attacks too where hackers attack. They pulled their support and because of that it makes HN vulnerable. And following that, HN lost their hosting, their register, so everybody is pulling support from HN. Tor's site is down. Who knows when it'll come back up. Apparently they're looking to try and bring it back up. But as of right now it's still down and we'll see what happens. Okay, so, Jim Watkins, who runs a 8chan, started a YouTube video yesterday, where he was defending his site and saying it works with law enforcement. BDG let's listen to a little bit of this YouTube video Clearly a political move to remove HN from Cloud flare. It has forced a lot of people to find other places to talk, it has dispersed to peacefully assemble a group of people talking. This silence them effectively So what do you make of his statements? I mean, like, that also sounds innocent enough, that this is just people talking. Is that something that we should be taking at face value? He's definitely putting a spin on it. The fact is, the manifesto from the El Paso shooter was posted on HN. And it's the third one, the Christchurch shooter, the San Diego synagogue. They posted their manifesto as well.>> Pittsburgh, I believe, right. No, the San Diego. Thank you.>> Yeah. And so it is the sort of haven where. And mass shooters have put what their plans are and people cheer them on from, I mean, other users. So he is trying to play it up as, hey, we're just like free speech but there's more going on there. And he's definitely Trying to make it seem like they're victims. So HN has now gotten international attention due to this. I mean, this is the third incident in which a manifesto has been posted on the site. This year, by the way. This year. Yes this year. So what is your expectation as far as what might happen with the site, it seems to me at least, that it's gotten enough attention that somebody. out there is gonna find a way to help the site get back online. Does that make sense? Well, if they do, they're gonna face a lot of backlash, especially from the public. Congress has now got involved. House of Representatives, Homeland Security Committee sent a letter that they want Jim Watkins to speak in front of them. He said he will. Really Yeah. He said, he's coming back to America. He's based in the Philippines. He said, Hey, you got my phone number, give me a call. So that should be an interesting one. I'm sure we'll watch it>> Very much. So if Congress is getting involved If someone does support them, they are taking a big risk. Not only based on their own business, I mean, revenue, security. I mean, they're taking a huge risk and it seems unlikely, but who knows? Yeah, well, lastly, President Trump said the US needs to curb violent video games to help stem mass shootings. CNET's Mark Serrels wrote a commentary piece. Rejecting this idea so please check it out. This is certainly an interesting topic and it's something that's raised pretty often after mass shooting. So I wanted to get your take on that. It's such a common Republican talking points after a shooting. It was the first thing people were saying on Fox News the following day. It's just such a boring tactic, and for most of the video game community, it just makes everybody's eyes roll. We pay no mind. Okay, thanks again for joining us. Tag us online. Let us know what you want to see on the show. We're the Daily Charge. I'm Ben Fox Rubin. I'm Oscar Gonzalez. Thanks for [UNKNOWN] [MUSIC]