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The mass murders that headlines in the United States usually have three things in common: a mental alienated, a weapon with an important rate of fire and a manifesto hung in 8Chan, an Internet forum in which the most delusional conspiracy theories they intermingled with memes, racist delusions and legitimate leaks leading to a strange digital ecosystem in which it is strange to know when someone was serious or when he was joking.

A website linked to numerous scandals in the physical and virtual world that, after the publication of the El Paso murderer manifesto, is facing serious problems to stay online because Cloudfare (the company that hosted its servers) has decided to end to their contractual relationship and the majority of companies in their sector are choosing to maintain an identical veto policy in fear of encountering a communication crisis . At the time of publication of this article, the forum is only available through the Deep Web .

Before accommodating the manifesto of Patrick Crusius - the architect of the massacre in El Paso - 8Chan housed the manifesto of the murderer of the mosque in the Christchurch neighborhood in New Zealand and that of the Poway synagogue (California) among others.

A web "friend of freedom of expression"

To understand 8Chan it is necessary to understand his older cousin, 4Chan, one of the most extreme websites on the Internet that began to put limits on its contents at the beginning of this decade (through more strict moderation and the prohibition of certain issues) by consider that some of its contents could violate the law or encourage systematic harassment of some personalities.

Under the claim of maintaining the original essence of 4Chan, 8Chan is born, a forum in which the only theoretical limits are those established by the law but which, in practice, had a much more anarchic operation since, for several periods, its web stopped being indexed in Google because it hosted images with child pornography.

Although the drop that has filled the glass of this website was the publication of the racist manifesto of the murderer of the massacre of El Paso (Texas), in 8Chan it rained on wet. From this popular page , systematic harassment campaigns such as Gamergate have been orchestrated , false warnings have been given to the special forces of the US police, various conspiracy theories have been disseminated , murderer manifests have been published and theories of the conspiracy of all nature, class and condition.

A series of mixed contents such as an amalgam and accompanied by jokes that really made it difficult to know which users genuinely believed the contents they published , which simply took advantage of the wave to publish jokes with a (more or less) black humor and who were really curious who dedicated to stir in the threads of this forum.

8Chan was devised during a young man named Fredrick Brennan after having consumed hallucinogenic mushrooms . According to its conception, the page must be a "friend of freedom of expression" website, given what the programmer considered an increasingly repressive and hostile surveillance climate on the Internet.

Three years after its foundation, Brennan left the web and left it to its owner: Jim Watkins. After the tragic events in Texas and Ohio, Brenan says he regrets having launched this website.

" I created a monster, " he said in a recent interview with Reuters in which he argues that " if I could go back in time and not create 8Chan, I probably would ."

A position that Watkins does not share. In a video uploaded to his YouTube channel and anchored in the official Twitter account of 8Chan entitled " Sorry for the inconvenience but common sense will prevail, " Watkins "regrets the tragedy" and claims to be working to find a company that can Re-host your forum on the Internet and make it accessible from the web .

Gamergate, the origin of its popularity

8Chan's popularity skyrocketed thanks to the hashtag movement known as #GamerGate. An initiative born on the Internet that a priori intended to denounce an alleged collusion between video game developers and industry critics but that soon became polarized and resulted in a systematic campaign of harassment and demolition against journalists and professionals in this industry.

Swatting Cases

When the Gamergate movement began to slap, some 8Chan subforums began to host organized groups of individuals who were looking for Youtubers that were not to their liking to organize what is popularly known as Swatting .

This practice is to find out the direction from which a YouTuber is broadcasting a live video to call the police posing as a scared neighbor who reports being heard shooting at the YouTuber's home.

Once this is done, it remains only to wait for the special forces of the US police (SWAT) to access the home of the carefree YouTuber while he plays live .

An exercise considered by many a heavy joke that, however, the Swatting has claimed the lives of several innocent victims during these assaults by special forces.

QAnon and other conspiracy theories

8Chan is also a forum where all kinds of conspiracy theories coexist and coexist. Some of them even contradictory to each other.

This website is, for example, one that has fed the conspiracy of QAnnon. A theory that defends the existence of a secret government (and favorable to the Democratic Party) within the US administration that Donald Trump would be fighting to dismantle.

This theory owes its name to an anonymous user with the alias of Q (which the conspiranoicos come to think that it is even Trump himself) who is announcing blows to dismantle this government in the shadow that supposedly would act against the legitimate president .

As with other conspiranoias, the QAnnon theory links at some point with the Pizzagate theory - which defended the existence of a pedophile plot linked to the Democratic party - since some of its supposed protagonists would be common.

Filtration place

In addition to the conspiranoias, 8Chan is also home to news leaks of different nature. For example, it was one of the first platforms chosen to distribute aerial videos taken by a drone from the mysterious island-mansion of Jeffrey Epstein , a financier investigated for sexual crimes.

Also, the web was also found in the eye of the hurricane of public opinion when an alleged document was leaked with the name of anti-fascist militants "signed" by the Louisiana police (prepared from people who participated in a collection of signatures calling for Trump's resignation) that, although it appeared to be false, it was actually used by the State police who refused to respond to the transparency information related to this document claiming that "it could affect ongoing police operations" without contributing More details about the case.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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