The Week in Tech: How Does 8chan Whack-a-Mole End?
By Jamie Condliffe Aug 9, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/technology/8chan-shootings.html?emc=rss&partner=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
https://archive.fo/72lPr
Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure and cybersecurity company that served 8chan, wavered over how to react. Ultimately it decided to stop providing its services to the site, leaving 8chan vulnerable to crippling cyberattacks. Cloudlfare’s chief executive, Matthew Prince, wrote that 8chan’s “lawlessness” had “contributed to multiple horrific tragedies.”
If 8chan was a mole, it was whacked.
So the site used Epik, another infrastructure company. The mole re-emerged! Briefly. Voxility, a company that provides computing services to Epik, was criticized for helping to support 8chan, so it dumped Epik, indirectly whacking 8chan again.
What now? Well, someone will almost certainly give 8chan a new lease of life. That might be on a crummy server in Russia, or elsewhere.
Even so, it may not come back full throttle. Leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee have called on Jim Watkins, the owner of 8chan, to “provide testimony regarding 8chan’s efforts to investigate and mitigate the proliferation of extremist content.” So it’s possible that 8chan may yet see its hyper-free-speech sensibilities crimped, at least a little.
If that happens, it’s likely to drive a hard core of alt-right users elsewhere. That’s clearly not as easy as it once was, but an 8chan alternative could surface.
Another possibility: “These kinds of communications could move into encrypted environments,” like Telegram or WhatsApp, said Andrew Sullivan, the president and chief executive of the Internet Society, a global nonprofit. “What happens then is you can’t whack the mole, because the mole doesn’t come out of the hole.”
Such marginalization “could reduce the reach of these communities,” said Rasmus Nielsen, a professor of political communication at Oxford University. But “it could increase cohesion inside the hard core,” he added. It’s hard to know what might be the dominant force.
All told, the takedowns have created immense uncertainty. And that raises a profound question: Who should be making such big decisions about what stays online?