Owner of 8chan, site of multiple mass shooter manifestos, called before Congress

Before he opened fire in an El Paso Walmart on Saturday, the shooter posted his manifesto on 8chan, an image board found in the darker corners of the internet.

He wasn’t the first mass shooter to do so. The men responsible for the March shooting at a New Zealand mosque and the April Poway synagogue shootings also posted on 8chan before carrying out their attacks.

Now, the owner of the internet forum, Jim Watkins, has been called to come testify before Congress.

“Americans deserve to know what, if anything, you, as the owner and operator, are doing to address the proliferation of extremist content on 8chan,” wrote House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson, D-Mississippi, and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Alabama, the ranking Republican committee member.

This marks the latest setback for the site, which has become well known as a hub for racist and extremist content on the web. On Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported that internet security provider Cloudflare announced it would no longer distribute 8chan.

“Unfortunately the action we take today won’t fix hate online,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a blog post. “It will almost certainly not even remove 8chan from the Internet. But it is the right thing to do.”

Since Cloudflare pulled its service, 8chan experienced intermittent outages on Monday. On Tuesday afternoon, the site was back up and running.

An effort also sprang up Monday to get Twitter to kick 8chan off of the social media platform, with the hashtag #untwitter8chan trending.

Though 8chan has not released a statement about the congressional letter, owner Watkins released a video statement on Tuesday.

“Our company has always worked with law enforcement to help them with their investigations. We have never protected illegal speech, as it seems that we have been accused by some less-than-credible journalists,” Watkins said in the video. “There are about 1 million users of 8chan. 8chan is an empty piece of paper for writing on. It is disturbing to me that it can be so easily shut down.”

This story was originally published August 6, 2019 at 3:16 PM with the headline "Owner of 8chan, site of multiple mass shooter manifestos, called before Congress."