Notorious 8chan Board Has History Wiped After Federal Judge's Doxing
AmiMoJo writes On Monday, imageboard site 8chan's "baphomet" subboard, an Internet destination known for hosting aggressive "doxing" posts, received a major history wipe the day after one of its users posted the personal information of a federal judge in the Silk Road case. A follow-up post by baphomet's "Board Owner" account stated that "HW," a reference to site founder Frederick "hotwheels" Brennan, deleted "the SSN posts" and told the baphomet board founder, previously identified via an associated Twitter handle as Benjamin Biddix, to "lay low." The same day baphomet's "Board Owner" announced a "doxing for hire" service due to "running low on funds."
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doxing (from dox, abbreviation of documents),[1] or doxxing,[2][3] is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual.[3][4][5][6] The methods employed to acquire this information include searching publicly available databases and social media websites (like Facebook), hacking, and social engineering. It is closely related to cyber-vigilantism, hacktivism and cyber-bullying.
Doxing may be carried out to aid law enforcement, business analysis, extortion, coercion, harassment, public shaming and other forms of vigilante justice.[7][8]
8chan was basically what happened when moot (who was 4chan's admin until his retirement a few weeks ago) banned #gamergate and fucked with /pol/. (Translation: Even he got sick of the gamergaters, and the fact that none of the political whackjobs could keep their shit in the /pol/itics containment board, so he fucked with 'em for the lulz. I thought it was funny as fuck.)
tl;dr: 8ch exists because there are people for whom 4chan is too polite.