4chan and 8chan (8kun)
4chan and 8chan (8kun), imageboard websites that are characterized primarily by the anonymity of their users and their loosely moderated, sometimes graphic or extreme content. Imageboards allow participants to post text and photos and to host threaded conversations on topics as varied as music, movies, food, sports, video games, technology, religion, and politics. 4chan helped popularize the image macro, an image with superimposed text used for humorous effect, and it was the source for some of Internet culture’s most enduring memes.
Posters on 4chan and 8chan have also been linked to extreme political ideologies and criminal behaviour. Alt-right, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist groups have used the sites as a recruitment tool, and conspiracy theories (most notably “Pizzagate” and QAnon) have originated and propagated on 4chan and 8chan. The sites have been used to organize harassment campaigns against individuals, groups, and other websites and to spread child pornography. Mass shooters have posted manifestos on these platforms, along with links to live streams of their crimes. As a result, various Internet hosting companies, content delivery services, and telecom providers have at times refused or terminated services to these platforms.
A brief history of 4chan and 8chan
4chan
4chan was created by teenage Internet entrepreneur Christopher Poole (under the username “moot”) in 2003. Poole had been a poster on Something Awful, one of the Internet’s most active and influential discussion forums. Something Awful was, however, heavily moderated, and its community discouraged memes. 4chan was founded, at least in part, to escape these restrictions, and it was built using the same code as the Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel (also known as 2chan). Although it was created as a place to post sexually explicit anime images (a practice that had been banned on Something Awful), 4chan soon gained a reputation for its extremely lax moderation policies; practically all speech and content that was not explicitly against United States law was allowed. Its /b/ (“random”) board was consistently one of the most frenetic, vulgar, and sometimes grotesque locations on the Internet, but it also served as a birthplace of the hacktivist group Anonymous. After its creation in 2011, the /pol/ (“politically incorrect”) forum became a haven for far-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories. In 2015 the site was purchased by Hiroyuki Nishimura, a Japanese entrepreneur who had founded the message board 2channel (not to be confused with 2chan). 4chan attracts some 20 million monthly visitors who use imageboards devoted to different topics and themes. There is no registration process, and posts are anonymous.
8chan
8chan was created in 2013 by Fredrick Brennan, a self-taught computer programmer. Brennan’s imageboard was similar to 4chan, but it gave users the ability to create their own topic boards; in this way, it integrated one of the most important capabilities of the social media platform Reddit. 8chan initially had only a handful of users, but it experienced an explosion in popularity in 2014 after 4chan banned any further discussion of Gamergate, a controversy ostensibly about ethics in video game journalism that was, in fact, a targeted harassment campaign against women in the video game industry. Gamergaters on 4chan’s /v/ (“video game”) board had “doxed” (revealed personal details with malicious intent) and even issued death and rape threats against several women. They had also carried out “raids” by descending en masse on other websites to harass the local community or overwhelm the site architecture. Both doxing and raids were expressly prohibited by 4chan (to say nothing of death and rape threats, which are violations of U.S. law), and this led to a mass exodus of Gamergaters to 8chan. Once there they would provide part of the foundation of what became the alt-right movement.
Brennan tried to address 8chan’s soaring maintenance costs by soliciting donations through the crowdfunding site Patreon, but 8chan was soon banned for violations of Patreon’s terms of service. Brennan sold the site to American businessman Jim Watkins in late 2014, but Brennan remained associated with 8chan as the site administrator until 2016. The site’s growing extremism and a personal clash with Watkins led Brennan to sever ties with both 8chan and Watkins in 2018. After several high-profile instances of far-right violence were connected to the site in 2019, 8chan was taken offline when key Internet infrastructure companies revoked their services. 8chan rebranded as 8kun and returned to the Internet in November 2019. 8chan (now 8kun) receives some 500,000 monthly visitors.
Crimes and controversies tied to 4chan and 8chan
Although both platforms host content and discussions about ordinary topics, they have frequently been tied to far-right extremism, child pornography, and acts of violence. Media sources have routinely labeled their posts as crude, sexist, and racist and labeled comments on their sites as misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-Islamic. The platforms have frequently pedaled false information and hosted attacks against media personalities and news sites. In 2015 Google briefly blacklisted 8chan and banned its postings from its search results for “suspected child abuse content.”
In 2016 anonymous users on 4chan popularized the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. According to 4chan posters, a pizza restaurant named Comet Ping Pong in Washington, D.C., was the centre of a global pedophile ring. The restaurant’s owner and employees were subsequently harassed, and on December 4, 2016, a heavily armed conspiracy believer entered Comet Ping Pong to “self-investigate.” The gunman fired several rounds from an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in the crowded restaurant during his quest to uncover the nonexistent basement where a cabal of pedophiles was reportedly operating. He was subsequently arrested and imprisoned for four years on weapons charges. Another Pizzagate believer tried to set fire to the restaurant in January 2019, but patrons and employees were able to douse the flames before they spread. The arsonist was apprehended after assaulting a police officer and was sentenced to four years in prison.
In October 2017 a 4chan user with the moniker “Q” stated that the arrest of Hillary Clinton was imminent (a claim that was demonstrably false). In later posts Q claimed to possess a top secret “Q clearance” and ties to U.S. Pres. Donald Trump. Although many of the “Qdrops”—as the posts came to be known—simply repeated the outlandish and already disproved claims that were at the centre of Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory, which became known as QAnon, found many adherents among Trump’s supporters. QAnon cast Trump in the role of a messianic hero who would bring “The Storm” to sweep away the “deep state” agents at the heart of Pizzagate.
While the identity of Q was never conclusively proven, two teams of researchers determined that QAnon was most likely the work of South African software engineer and 4chan moderator Paul Furber and 8chan/8kun administrator Ron Watkins (son of 8chan owner Jim Watkins). It was believed that Furber launched the conspiracy on 4chan’s /pol/ board, possibly as a live-action role-playing (LARP) exercise. LARPing was not uncommon on the /pol/ board, and posters routinely claimed to be highly placed government sources. QAnon spread far beyond 4chan, however, and many believers were exposed to the conspiracy on more mainstream sites such as Reddit, YouTube, and Facebook. In early 2018 there appeared to be a struggle for control of the “voice” of Q, and it was at this point that Qdrops migrated to 8chan and Ron Watkins likely became Q. Neither Furber nor Watkins had any kind of special access to classified information, but both were extremely well-versed in the language and culture of conspiracy-themed message boards. Both also publicly denied knowing the identity of Q, although Watkins appeared to admit to having authored Qdrops to a documentary filmmaker in 2021. Watkins retracted this admission almost immediately.
In 2019 8chan was associated with a string of murderous hate crimes that left 75 people dead. In each instance the killer posted his manifesto on the message board; themes included the racist replacement theory conspiracy and the anti-Semitic blood libel superstition. The first attack was a mass shooting at a pair of mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, that killed 51 people and wounded dozens more. The killer streamed a live video of the attacks; posters in 8chan’s /pol/ board praised the shooter and encouraged others to top his “high score.” On April 27 a gunman entered a synagogue in Poway, California, and opened fire on congregants who had gathered for the last day of Passover. One person was killed, reportedly when she tried to shield the officiating rabbi with her body, and three others were wounded. Had the shooter not fled the scene when his weapon jammed, the death toll likely would have been much higher. On August 3 an 8chan poster invoked the Christchurch murderer as an inspiration before launching into a hate-filled white supremacist rant. Minutes later he entered a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, and opened fire, killing 23 people and injuring more than two dozen. The U.S. House of Representatives subpoenaed Jim Watkins to appear before its Homeland Security Committee to address 8chan’s role as a haven for violent extremism.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Australia and New Zealand responded to the Christchurch massacre by banning 4chan and 8chan, as both sites were hosting copies of the shooter’s video. After the El Paso shooting, 8chan was taken offline when Internet security firm Cloudflare terminated its service to the site. Without the protection provided by Cloudflare, 8chan was vulnerable to dedicated denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and it was knocked off the Internet almost immediately. Other companies followed suit, and 8chan struggled to find vendors who would keep the site online. These actions have spurred debate about free expression and the role of private Internet infrastructure companies in regulating public speech and undesirable content.
In November 2019, after three months offline, 8chan changed its name to 8kun and began transferring content to the new site. Absent from 8kun was /pol/, the 8chan board that had been the site’s hive of violent extremism, but every attempt was made to resume the QAnon narrative where it had left off. Although many Q believers and Trump supporters had migrated to other platforms during the time that 8chan was down, 8kun became a hub for participants in the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. As a result, Jim Watkins was again summoned before Congress to testify to the U.S. House of Representatives’ January 6 Select Committee investigating the attack. Both 4chan and 8kun continue to operate under the general concept that anyone can post anonymously on the sites.