Lawmakers Summon 8chan Owner to Testify Before Congress

Lawmakers Summon 8chan Owner to Testify Before Congress

Lawmakers from the House Homeland Security Committee summoned the online imageboard 8chan's owner to testify before Congress and explain how insiders are working to investigate and mitigate the proliferation of violent extremist content across the site, according to a letter penned this week. 


The move comes in the wake of a mass shooting that left 22 people dead and 24 more wounded at a Texas shopping center Saturday. Minutes before the attack—which is currently being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism—the alleged gunman appears to have published a manifesto filled with anti-immigrant, white supremacist sentiments to the site. 


“Experts have described 8chan as a platform for amplifying extremist views, leading to the radicalization of its users,” Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Mike Rogers, R-Ala. wrote in the letter published Tuesday. “Americans deserve to know what, if anything, you, as the owner and operator, are doing to address the proliferation of extremist content on 8chan.”


Though it’s been mostly offline since Monday—when network infrastructure provider Cloudflare suspended its service calling 8chan a “cesspool of hate”—the site operated for years as a sort of internet forum where users could create their own message boards and post anonymously without any prior programming experience. At its peak, the platform endured content-driven controversies, even changing its URL for a period in 2015 after being reported for allegedly hosting child pornography. 


But scrutiny around 8chan escalated this year as at ..

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