8chan
8kun, previously called 8chan, Infinitechan or Infinitychan (stylized as ∞chan), is an imageboard website composed of user-created message boards. An owner moderates each board, with minimal interaction from site administration.[1] The site has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, racism and antisemitism, hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings.[2][3][4] The site has been known to host child pornography;[5][6] as a result, it was filtered out from Google Search in 2015.[7] Several of the site's boards played an active role in the Gamergate harassment campaign, encouraging Gamergate affiliates to frequent 8chan after 4chan banned the topic. 8chan is the home of the discredited QAnon conspiracy theory.[8][9][10]
For the Robot 8-chan TV series, see Toei Fushigi Comedy Series.
Type of site
English (users can create language-specific boards)
- Jim Watkins (2016–present)
- Fredrick Brennan
(2013–2016)
Yes
Optional
October 22, 2013
Active
Shortly before the 2019 El Paso shooting, a four-page message justifying the attack was posted to the site, and police have stated that they are "reasonably confident" it was posted by the perpetrator.[3][11] In the aftermath of the back-to-back mass shootings on August 3 in El Paso and August 4 in Dayton, Ohio, respectively, the site was taken off clearnet on August 5, 2019, when network infrastructure provider Cloudflare stopped providing their content delivery network (CDN) service. Voxility, a web services company that had been renting servers to Epik, the site's new domain registrar, as well as Epik's CDN provider subsidiary BitMitigate, also terminated service.[12][13] After several attempts to return to clearnet were ultimately stymied by providers denying service to 8chan, the site returned to the clearnet as 8kun in November 2019 through a Russian hosting provider.[14][15][16]