8chan Struggles to Find Any Web Support for Forum After Shooting

(Bloomberg) -- The 8chan message board was knocked offline Monday after various internet firms that provided service and support for the controversial site cut ties following a mass shooting that linked it to the alleged killer.

Cloudflare Inc., a U.S. internet firm that helps websites protect and distribute content, terminated its support for Philippines-based 8chan at midnight Sunday. The alleged gunman in a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, appeared to post an anti-immigrant screed on the online messaging forum, encouraging others to spread the word. It was the third killing linked to 8chan this year, after the massacre at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a synagogue in Poway, California.

8chan tweeted early Monday that there "might be some downtime in the next 24-48 hours while we find a solution."

After Cloudflare pulled the plug, 8chan had intermittent service through domain-name firm Epik, which has a history of supporting sites that others won't. But when Epik's web-hosting company Voxility discovered the connection to 8chan, it dropped service too.

London-based Voxility said it only realized Epik was servicing 8chan after being alerted to a tweet sent Monday by former Facebook Inc. Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos.

The tweet prompted an internal investigation and Voxility said it banned Epik as a customer a few hours later. Voxility has only been providing hosting services to Epik since late April, the company said. Maria Sirbu, vice president of business development at Voxility, said Epik had spent about “a few thousand euros a month” on Voxility's services.

In an interview, Sirbu said that the when Epik became a customer of Voxility, the company didn't realize it was servicing 8chan. “None of the checks we did disclosed anything” about the relationship to 8chan, Sirbu said. “We knew a few things about Epik, but we didn't make the connection when we started working with them.” Having only worked with Epik for three months, “it's not like we've been supporting them for a lifetime,” Sirbu said. “I think we've caused some damage today."

Cloudfare also had strong strong words for 8chan, which its Chief Executive Officer Matthew Prince condemned as a "cesspool of hate."

Cloudflare is planning an initial public offering later this year. The San Francisco-based company provides technical, performance, and security services to website owners, including protection from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Without its assistance, 8chan may become more vulnerable to being taken offline by such brute-force methods.

"The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths," Prince wrote in ablog post.

8chan founder Fredrick Brennan -- who no longer runs the website -- echoed those comments in an interview on Sunday, saying "Shut the site down." Though both Brennan and Prince's Cloudflare have previously advocated free speech justifications for the creation and maintenance of fringe online communities, Brennan said that 8chan is "not doing the world any good. It's a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there."

The Cloudflare CEO urged a wider conversation about the spread of hateful messages online in the wake of two mass shootings in the U.S. over the weekend, leaving about 30 dead.

"In taking this action," Prince wrote, "we've solved our own problem, but we haven't solved the internet's."

To contact the reporters on this story: William Turton in New York at wturton1@bloomberg.net;Vlad Savov in Tokyo at vsavov5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, ;Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

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