The infamous messageboard 8chan responsible for spreading hateful content against minorities and people of color has been forced to go offline after hosting company Voxility booted the site off from its server. Voxility’s decision came right after the website security firm Cloudflare announced cutting off its services for 8chan.
Cloudflare’s decision came hours after it was reported that 8chan has been linked to three recent mass shootings in the United States. 8chan, which has been used by white nationalists to spread hateful content and propaganda then moved to Epik hosting before being removed by the company within a few hours.
However, Stanford researcher Alex Stamos revealed in a tweet that Epik rents Voxility’s servers.
https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1158392795687575554
After the tweet went viral Voxility responded by confirming that “the 3rd party hoster is blocked completely.”
It is worth noting that Gab.com, far-right propaganda and social media website is also home to Epik since the company chose to become its registrar. Gab.com was used by a terrorist behind 2018’s terrorist attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh killing 11 people. Currently, Cloudflare is also providing its services to Gab.
Moreover, Epik owns cyber security company BitMitigate. BitMitigate also provided hosting to Daily Stormer, who in 2017 suffered a similar fate as 8chan after being booted off by Cloudflare and other hosting companies before ending up on the dark web — Both Gabe.com and Daily Stormer were also booted off by GoDaddy.
On the other hand, 8chan’s owner Jim Watkins said in a statement that “8chan is an empty piece of paper for writing on, it is disturbing for me that it can be so easily shut down. Over the weekend, the domain name servers for 8chan were abruptly terminated by the provider Cloudflare it becomes time to find a new home.”
8chan, which is also known as Infinitechan or Infinitychan was originally launched as an imageboard website on October 22, 2013, by Fredrick Brennan. However, In July 2016, Brennan handed over the site to Jim Watkins but in a recent interview with the NewYork Times, Brennan wants 8chan shut down for good.
However, this is not the first time when 8chan has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In January 2015, multiple complaints were filed to its registrar blaming the messageboard for hosting child pornography.
At the time of publishing this article, 8chan was down. Stay tuned, this article will be updated in case the site comes back online.
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