(new name 8kun) is a popular anonymous forum with the ability for users to create their own thematic sections of the site and administer them themselves. He is known for his policy of minimal administration interference in content moderation, which is why he became popular with various dubious audiences.
After lone terrorists left their messages on the site, persecution began on the forum - they were kicked out of all hosting sites, registrars divided domain names, etc.
From a legal point of view, the situation with 8chan is quite controversial, as the administration declares that it follows US laws and removes prohibited content from the site, and also fulfills requests from law enforcement agencies. Claims against 8chan are more of a moral and ethical nature: the place has a bad reputation.
November 2, 2019 to us for hosting 8chan came. This caused a lively debate within our team, which is why we decided to publish this post. The article tells the story of the persecution of 8chan and why we eventually decided to host the 8chan project (which is still closed).
Chronology of events
We will not describe specific episodes of the tragedies, the participants of which are somehow mentioned in the context of 8chan. The attitude to these events is unambiguous for any healthy person and is not a subject of dispute for us. The main question we want to raise is whether the service provider can act as a censor and decide who to refuse to provide the service, based not on the letter of the law, but on their idea of ββmorality.
The danger of such an approach is easy to imagine, because if you develop this idea, then at some point, for example, your mobile operator may turn off communication services for you, because, in his opinion, you are an immoral person, or somehow collaborated with unworthy people. Or your ISP will cut off your internet because you are visiting bad sites.
Google search exclusion
In August 2015, the 8ch.net site stopped showing up in Google search results. The reason for the removal was "Complaints about content containing violence against children." At the same time, the rules of the site explicitly prohibited the publication of such content, and such media content was promptly removed from the 8ch.net site itself.
A few days later, after , the 8ch.net website has partially returned to Google search results.
Disconnecting from CloudFlare
8chan used CloudFlare for DDoS protection and as a CDN. August 5, 2019 on the Cloudflare blog was published about why they decided to stop serving 8chan.
Here are short excerpts from that post:
... it became known that the suspected terrorist was inspired by the 8chan Internet forum. Based on the evidence provided, it can be argued that he delivered an entire speech right before killing 20 people.
β¦8chan has been proven time and again to be a cesspool of hate.
β Cloudflare on 8chan termination
In a post, CloudFlare compares 8chan to another controversial site, an anti-Semitic news outlet. , which also earlier in service. However, the main difference between The Daily Stormer and 8chan is that the first site is directly positioned as anti-Semitic and the content is published by the authors of the site, while on 8chan all content is user-generated, just like in conditional facebook or twitter. At the same time, the position of the 8chan administration is not to interfere with user content "in excess of what is required by US law." That is, the site administration blocks, for example, scenes of violence against minors, but does not prohibit discussions.
CloudFlare are clearly aware of the ambiguity of their decision when they write that they do not like it too much, but it is completely legal.
We remain extremely uncomfortable as content judges and do not plan to do so often. Many mistakenly assume that the reason for this is the US First Amendment. This is wrong. First, we are a private company and we are not limited by the first amendment. Second, the vast majority of our customers, and over 50% of our income, comes from outside the United States, where neither the First Amendment nor similar libertarian protections for free speech apply. The only similarity to the First Amendment here is that we have the right to choose who we do business with and who we don't. We are not obligated to do business with everyone.
β Cloudflare on 8chan termination
The news about CloudFlare's decision caused a stir on the Internet. There were a lot of angry comments under the post. One of the top comments, when sorted by the number of likes, belongs to the habrauser
Free translation:
What? Why do you call 8chan a hate site and accuse it of "lawlessness"? This is just an engine on which anyone can create their own board and administer it on their own. How does this compare to The Daily Stormer, a news site with its own administrator?
And why do you accuse the site of murders? It's people killing people, not a forum on the internet. If they use text messages and mobile communications to communicate with other people, should they turn off mobile communications?
Disable hosting
After disconnecting from CloudFlare, the real IP of the 8chan hosting site was discovered. These were the addresses of the Voxility data center. The official Voxility Twitter account tweeted that the addresses belonged to a reseller called Epik/Bitmitigate, which was immediately disabled.
Moving to Russia
Three months after the hosting shutdown, the site resumed work under the new name 8kun.net. According to the investigation , the site was first deployed on the Selectel site, but was blocked on the same day. Then he moved to us.
Almost immediately, one of our business partners demanded to block the resource because 8kun violated their AUP. We started looking for an opportunity to provide hosting for 8kun without violating partnership agreements, and as soon as we found one, we unblocked 8kun servers. By that time, the resource managed to move to Medialand.
We have made the decision not to block the site as long as it does not violate the laws of the countries in which we operate.
Underground Hosting Medialand
Soon, the 8kun.net domain began to point to the IP address 185.254.121.200, which formally should not belong to anyone, since it is in an unallocated address pool and has not yet been officially allocated to any provider. However, this address is advertised from the autonomous system , which according to Whois belongs to the MEDIALAND provider. This is a Russian underground hosting that gained fame after the investigation of Brian Krebs -
The Media Land company is owned by Russian Alexander Volovik and, according to Brian Krebs and other researchers, is used to host fraudulent projects, botnet control panels, viruses, and other criminal purposes.
Report at the BlackHat USA 2017 conference on the network infrastructure of criminals, in which the Media Land hoster appears.
How exactly this hosting exists is a big mystery.
Domain separation
During the existence of the site, the owner has changed. Due to disagreements with the previous owner, the domain name 8ch.net failed to save. In October 2019 the site was renamed to 8kun.net ΠΈ the project.
While the 8kun.net domain was active, strangers registered several domains with the name.com registrar:
8kun.app
8kun.dev
8kun.live
8kun.org
And set up a redirect to the 8kun.net domain. All these domains were partitioned by Name.com, allegedly for violating the rules, while blocking the ability to transfer domains to another registrar. This was reported .
Soon the 8kun.net domain was divided according to the statement of the former owner.
For some time the site was available at 8kun.us, but this domain was also separated.
A funny moment - the registrar of this domain wrote to us with a request to block the hosting, although they themselves could turn off the domain in one click.
Currently, the 8chan website is completely inaccessible on the clearnet (regular Internet) and can only be accessed via the TOR network using an onion address.
Conclusion
We in no way support violence and intolerance in any form. The purpose of this post is to discuss the technical and legal side of the problem. Namely: can service providers independently, without waiting for court decisions, determine which resource is illegal.
It is clear that any public services that allow the posting of user-generated content are bound to be misused on a regular basis. On the sites Facebook, Instagram, Twitter hundreds of appeals of terrorists are published and even their live broadcasts. At the same time, the question is not raised that the existence of these sites affects the number of crimes.
The 8chan case shows that several private companies can team up and simply destroy another resource, methodically shutting down communication services and separating domains. Any other resources can be destroyed in the same way. It is unlikely that complete censorship of the Internet will lead to a decrease in violence in the world, but it will definitely give rise to many similar sites on the dark web, where it will be much more difficult to trace the authors.
The issue is complex and it is easy to find arguments both for and against blocking 8chan. What do you think?
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Only registered users can participate in the survey. , you are welcome.
Should private companies voluntarily block sites like 8chan without a court order?
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Yes, hosters should block resources themselves based on their views
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No, service providers must only comply with the formal requirements of the law
437 users voted. 69 users abstained.
Source: habr.com