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The Washington Post Asks: Should 8chan Be Considered a Terrorist Recuiting Site? (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post:
As most of the world condemned last week's mass shooting in New Zealand, a contrary story line emerged on 8chan, the online message board where the alleged shooter had announced the attack and urged others to continue the slaughter. "Who should i kill?" one anonymous poster wrote. "I have never been this happy," wrote another. "I am ready. I want to fight...." The persistence of the talk of violence on 8chan has led some experts to call for tougher actions by the world's governments, with some saying the site increasingly looks like the jihadi forums organized by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda...
8chan's founder, Fredrick Brennan, said Jim Watkins [8chan's sole administrator] owns other Internet businesses and has built a technical fortress to guard 8chan from potential takedowns: He owns nearly every component securing the site to the backbone of the Web, including its servers, which are scattered around the world. "You can send a complaint, but no one's going to do anything. He owns the whole operation," Brennan said. "It's how he keeps people confused and guessing...." Watkins is content to lose money, Brennan said, because he sees it as a pet project: "8chan is like a boat to Jim. It doesn't matter if it makes money. He just enjoys using it...."
8chan, however, is shielded in another way: the U.S. web-services giant Cloudflare, which helps websites guard against "distributed denial of service," or DDoS, attacks that online vigilante groups have used to target 8chan in the past.
The Post reports that Brennan "worries there are no true technical solutions beyond a total redesign of the Web, focused around identification and moderation, that could undermine it as a venue for free expression." Brennan tells the Post that "The Internet as a whole is not made to be censored. It was made to be resilient. And as long as there's a contingent of people who like this content, it will never go away."
On Tuesday, 8chan posted tips on Twitter for what to do "If your ISP is blocking a website you'd like to browse" -- a tweet which is now pinned to the top of its feed.
8chan's founder, Fredrick Brennan, said Jim Watkins [8chan's sole administrator] owns other Internet businesses and has built a technical fortress to guard 8chan from potential takedowns: He owns nearly every component securing the site to the backbone of the Web, including its servers, which are scattered around the world. "You can send a complaint, but no one's going to do anything. He owns the whole operation," Brennan said. "It's how he keeps people confused and guessing...." Watkins is content to lose money, Brennan said, because he sees it as a pet project: "8chan is like a boat to Jim. It doesn't matter if it makes money. He just enjoys using it...."
8chan, however, is shielded in another way: the U.S. web-services giant Cloudflare, which helps websites guard against "distributed denial of service," or DDoS, attacks that online vigilante groups have used to target 8chan in the past.
The Post reports that Brennan "worries there are no true technical solutions beyond a total redesign of the Web, focused around identification and moderation, that could undermine it as a venue for free expression." Brennan tells the Post that "The Internet as a whole is not made to be censored. It was made to be resilient. And as long as there's a contingent of people who like this content, it will never go away."
On Tuesday, 8chan posted tips on Twitter for what to do "If your ISP is blocking a website you'd like to browse" -- a tweet which is now pinned to the top of its feed.
Because that's where we're headed. No one will be anonymous anymore. We must all think and act the same.
Sure, but only if Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Whatsapp, Hotmail, Gmail, and all radio and TV broadcasts are also considered terrorit rectruitment sites. Otherwise it just seems like scapegoating and hypocrisy. Though that's pretty par for the course I guess.
The real question is: Should the Washington Post be considered Jeff Bezos Blog?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The people who ask that question are the same people who called Jordan Peterson's book a recruitment book even though its content serves to deradicalize people and give them a purpose and responsibilities to eradicate hate and suppress it rather than feed it, a book which is also a good rehab program for criminals and not only those with depression and confusion.
If i had to define a site great for terrorist recruitment, it's the mass media leftists who don't pass a day insulting someone, throwing labels of nazism and fascism, trying to rile up terror squads against a bunch of Covington kids, and feeding hate because it gives them clicks.
8chan isn't the one mainstream society goes to in order to get their hate-fuel, it's mass media instead, CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, Vice, Buzzfeed, all GAWKER crap, New York Times, etc. Surprise surprise, when your journalists wage a politics of identitarianism, it produces terrorists.
Shit wasn't this bad before 2011 or such when all this shit started aflame.
You want to wage politics of privilege and victimhood? You'll be creating terrorists. That's the start and end of it.
Surely driving them even further underground will only make things better!
Oh, quit being such a fucking snowflake. Why are so many conservatives little more than trolls who see every silly little thing as proof of a worldwide conspiracy against them?
That icon comes and goes pretty much at random. I've seen it on any number of stories, irrespective of the political status of the subject matter. Unfortunately for conservatives, they're more often the ones threatening or encouraging violence, and therefore more likely to be called out.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Woke: The Internet is a terrorist recruiting site.
It's kind of ironic how the Washington Post which has been inciting hate and identitarianism in the first place is trying to act like it isn't the butt of its own question. Terrorists aren't recruited, they are created, for example by identitarian mass media which release garbage opinion pieces and articles like the Washington Post.
There's a reason the latest statistics show that the public perception of trust has gone lower for the mass media than for the congress, a first in history.
They should look in the mirror regarding who creates terrorists, poor "journalists" who can't even cite a single code of ethics page from the SPJ.
I can bet you that the garbage writer of this article couldn't recite it.
This thing is a lot more complex than just "antifa vs nazi", and trying to simplify like that only make the situation a lot worse.
For example, the christchurch shooter is an "acceleracionist", basically someone that tried to do very specific actions to make a civil war between the left and right happen.
The targets he picked, the memes he used, everything planned from the ground up to make the far left activists have more power and overreact with it, causing an overreaction from the right and so forth, and sadly the NZ government fell for his bait, sink and line.
And finally, nothing justifies violence unless it's a direct immediate threat, If a nazi or an antifa or muslim or poodle fanatic is threatening your life directly such as pointing a gun at you, then you can stop him/her/(a shitton of pronouns), otherwise it's the job of the police to deal with it.
I'll agree proclaiming 8chan a terrorist recruitment organization if you agree to do the same for every activis publication (aka "journalists" aka "Washington Post") which had its "journalists" calling for an organization of terrorist group to see the parents of the Covington kids sacked and bullied, the school dismantled and even torched in some checkmark tweets, the kids killed and terrorized for the rest of their lives, over fake news they themselves created.
Oh, is that inconvenient? SJWs are pretty much a reflection of their appearances i always see, overly white elitist adults with toddler brains who live in a bubble of ignorance and stupidity which spreads hate because that's the only emotion they enjoy having and having to justify, that's also the thousands of "journalists" who got sacked for being unethical SJW garbage who attributed to the problem.
Look in the mirror WP.
to reign in the worst elements of their community. By all accounts 8Chan bills itself as a haven for those sorts.
There are arguments to be made that 8chan shouldn't be considered a terrorist recruitment site. For example, that it's not their intended purpose and that any recruitment taking place is a side effect of their laissez faire approach to moderation. But it's not a fair argument to make that because a terrorist recruiter can post to Facebook that means 8chan's automatically off the hook. Facebook would very quickly ban the individual if there was even a whiff of potential violence. 8chan wouldn't take down a post unless there was a very, very clear violation of law (and there's accusations that even then they'll turn a blind eye).
Also, I think we're conflating up "Should be considered a recruitment tool" vs "is actively recruiting terrorists". There's a big difference. For the former it means the FBI keeps a closer eye on what goes on. For the latter it means the FBI/CIA/Military/local police (depending on the country) raids the place.
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I went looking for the video to satisfy my morbid curiosity, but it was being aggressively removed from my usual haunts, so I went to voat knowing that would be one of the few places not censoring links to it.
I discovered that most of their links were already dead, and that the comments were almost unanimously celebrating the murders. I lost my interest in seeing the video, having even that little in common with those cretins was too much.
And I thought, these are the people who traffic in the conspiracy theory that thousands of American Muslims were celebrating 9/11. But here they are, literally cheering a terrorist, doing the thing that they imagine others doing to rationalize their racism. Not only are they no different than an Islamic terrorist sympathizer, they're no different than the Islamic terrorist sympathizer that their imaginations have constructed. It's like they want to be recruited into terrorism. They don't necessarily hate radical Islam, they envy it.
The alt-right isn't a political movement, it is a sickness that needs to be eradicated. We should treat them the same way we treat members of Al Qaeda and ISIS. When they whine about free speech, we remind them that enemy combatants don't have rights. This will infuriate them, and every time they lash out with more terrorism, the government has another excuse to hit them even harder. Eventually there won't be any fight left in them, or there won't be any left.
"Snowflake" only applies to SJWs, not "conservatives." You can't reverse the usage and make it work, and you look like a complete buffoon trying to do it.
dedicated to making the members of the right wing feel as though they're under attack. That's because once you convince somebody that they're under attack and really drive home the fear of it you can get them to do damn near anything.
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it's job. There's too kinds of Alt-righter. First, there's the leadership, who's just taking advantage of the rank and file to make money.
Then there's the rank and file. They're almost entirely made up of young dudes (usually white) who lost factory and blue collar jobs to outsourcing and don't really have a place in society anymore.
It's why the left is pushing the "Green New Deal". It's a jobs program to neuter the right wing's main source of power (disaffected working age men). The "Green" part is mostly incidental. It's there to steal votes from the Green Party so they can't be used by the right wing to spoil elections.
With very few exceptions give a man a job and a woman and he'll settle the fuck down. Mix in an education and he won't fall for demagogues. There will be exceptions (Osama Bin Laden comes to mind) but they won't have enough followers to get anything done before they get caught.
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The answer to crazy conspiracy theories is not censorship. It is information.
In the United States, because of our cherished First Amendment, there is no such thing as 'Hate Speech'. There is just speech, which is protected. If you don't like what someone is saying then don't listen to them. If you believe that their speech poses a danger to society then use your right to free speech to convince everyone else why they are wrong.
The answer to crazy theories and disgusting rhetoric is intelligent debate. It is not shouting people down, getting people banned, or preventing speech.
When you shut people down and prevent them from speaking what you have done is to leave them only one avenue by which to express themselves, and that is violence.
The monster in NZ states in his manifesto exactly what his plan was. The purpose of his attack was only peripherally to kill people he didn't like. His attack wasn't even directed at NZ, though they have been following his plan as if they were co conspirators of his. His attack was directed at the U.S. His purpose was to push the left into banning weapons, censoring speech and taking away rights, because he knew the left doing this was likely to cause the right to stubbornly resist such actions. Initially politically and legally and eventually violently, should the left persist in their actions to curtail rights. NZ is moving right along that path.
Meanwhile, as everyone here can attest, people who want to see the banned information can see it because The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. (John Gilmore)
Orwell was talking about authoritarians, you know... the other axis. A lot of people forget that there's more than the left/right spectrum, and just pretend that the left is libertarian and the right is authoritarian. Authoritarian Left exists, Libertarian Right exists.
You'll find that as far as politics goes, most people are much more willing to get along on the left/right divide than they are on the authoritarian/libertarian divide. Turns out that authoritarians hate people that prefer personal freedoms and people that prefer personal freedoms disagree with people that want overreaching governments.
Do you honestly believe this? That random kids are going to be watching his massacre video, listen his "subscribe to pewdiepie" comment, and that's how they're going to be introduced to a network of alt-lite individuals?
No, it was bait. Pewdiepie is big, the #1 youtuber, has famously had major efforts put towards deplatforming him, and most importantly, people can't seem to shut up about any little thing he does. The shooter said it because he knew people wouldn't be able to resist talking about it, which draws attention towards the actual video, his actions, his purpose, and his ideas, which is the whole point of terrorism.
The answer to crazy conspiracy theories is not censorship. It is information.
The problem is that we are failing to counter this stuff with information. Can you suggest how we can do better, so this sort of thing stops happening?
Facebook and Google have tried presenting information when people view or search for this stuff, but found it largely ineffective. In fact Google found that many of the conspiracy theories incorporate a narrative that the truth is part of the conspiracy to deceive people, so facts sometimes just make the person more convinced of the lies.
The only thing that has been shown to really work (other than censorship) is de-radicalization, which usually involves starting on their terms and using their frame of reference to deconstruct their beliefs. Unfortunately due to moderation and/or being swamped on anonymous forums it's extremely difficult to do online.
His attack was directed at the U.S.
No, that is complete bollocks. His attack was similar to Anders Brevik's, designed to make people "wake up" to the "great replacement" white genocide. He said he expected to be seen the same way as Nelson Mandella, a terrorist on the right side of history and eventually released from jail when people realize his claims are all true. Part of the point of killing so many people was to make it nearly impossible to ignore and censor his message, since that what he believed was stopping people taking action against the Jews behind the "great replacement".
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, you could lock down mass immigration.
He's popular because he tells incels what they want to hear: it's not your fault, you really are owed sex and it's wrong for the world to deny it to you.
Then some vague stuff about promoting monogamy that he refuses to be pinned down on but basically means making women desperate to get a man, any man, and then never leave him.
Basically he's telling young guys that hot girls should dedicate themselves to pleasing them sexually. No wonder he's popular.
He says nothing of the sort. When you spout such obviously slanted things you are just as bad as those that promote conspiracy theories. You are just creating the environment that creates conspiracy theorists. You don't like what he says, fine. But disagree with what he says instead of the very slanted image painted of him by some media members with an agenda (they are even worse than you). The reason for this is you can simply google for his videos. If you view them, you get a very different sense of the ideas he is promoting than your cartoonish image of him. Its so far away from the image you just painted that the thought in their brain is, "they are lying about this guy, what else are they lying about". And that creates the environment for ever more absurd and impossible conspiracies in that person's mind. So now, we have taken an otherwise rational person and presented a series of experiences designed to create distrust in institutions and the media. Now that that's been accomplished, the sky is now the limit. All sorts of clearly wrong theories can be implanted in their head and they will stick and be very difficult to disprove. So just stick to the facts and realistic and fair descriptions of public figures. Otherwise you are just playing into those that seek to radicalize others for their own gain.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."