The founder of the hate-filled message board 8chan Fredrick Brennan now wants to take it down, to stop the pro-Trump conspiracy QAnon.
For the past week, a battle has been raging in the dark corners of the internet. It’s a fight between the owners of the hate-filled message board 8chan, who are trying to revive the controversial website, and the site’s founder, who's doing everything in his power to keep the site — and QAnon — offline.
Ever since 8chan was de-platformed in August, in the wake of the El Paso mass shooting, the company that owns the site, NT Technology, has been promising to bring it back. Last week it unveiled 8kun as the successor to 8chan, and it's been trying to get its old users back on board.
In recent days, 8kun.net has briefly flickered online before disappearing again, thanks mostly to the work of 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan, who has been pressuring hosting and networking companies to drop support for the site.
Brennan is clear about why he never wants 8chan and 8kun to come back online: QAnon.
“One of the reasons I am trying to get this done, preemptively, is so that QAnon cannot come back,” Brennan told VICE News from his home in the Philippines. “It is critical that 8kun does not come back at all, in any form, for any length of time.”
