Congressional leaders are requesting that the owner of 8chan, Jim Watkins, testify before the House Homeland Security Committee to inform the body on what the fringe forum is doing to combat the proliferation of extremist content.
“Regrettably, this is at least the third act of white supremacist extremist violence linked to your website this year,” Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) and Mike Rogers (R-AL) wrote. “Americans deserve to know what, if anything, you, as the owner and operator, are doing to address the proliferation of extremist content on 8chan.”
Over the past four months, three suspected white supremacist terror attacks occurred after the shooters posted racist screeds describing their motives onto the fringe message board, 8chan. Two of those attacks took place in the United States. The initial American attack was a synagogue shooting in Poway, California, and the second occurring over the weekend in El Paso, Texas.
These two shootings were likely inspired by the Christchurch, New Zealand attacker who first published a racist, white supremacist essay on the message board this past April before killing dozens of people in a mosque. The Christchurch shooter live-streamed this attack on Facebook and re-uploads of the footage still show up on the platform and others like Twitter to this day.
As a response to Christchurch, Thompson reached out to the social media companies asking them to prioritize the removal of the footage and other far-right domestic terrorist content from their platforms.
The committee’s letter was sent to Watkins through the mail, email, and Twitter. 8chan and its representatives have yet to respond publicly to the request.
Comments
Waste of time, pinning this on a forum host isn’t the answer.
By cranky_old_man on 08.06.19 6:05pm
No? Then what is the answer.
By Passing Thru on 08.06.19 6:57pm
Make it harder to buy an assault rifle than it is to rent a car.
By mrkite on 08.06.19 7:48pm
Could you please explain how it is easier to buy an assault rifle than it is to rent a car? This is blatantly untrue. I assume you mistakenly wrote "assault rifle" instead of "assault weapon" without realizing that those are two completely different things. Even if you meant to say "assault weapon", your statement is still completely wrong.
By GoBucks13 on 08.06.19 9:51pm
You have to be 25 or older to rent a car.
By mrkite on 08.07.19 1:19am
Yep, you also need a license to rent a car. It’s definitely easier to buy an assault-style rifle than rent a car
By Iamjason on 08.07.19 7:35am
You need government ID to buy a rifle. You also need to complete an FBI background check. Last time I checked you didn’t need to do that bit to rent or buy a car.
By ghost55 on 08.07.19 9:00am
A government ID is easier to get than a driver’s license and you only need a background check if you buy from a licensed dealer. A private sale require no background check in most states. So no, it’s super easy to legally buy an assault weapon.
By Iamjason on 08.07.19 9:13am
You don’t need to prove that you have vision to get a gun.
By udenjoe on 08.07.19 10:16am
…or that you can hit what you’re aiming at.
By DylanMB123 on 08.07.19 11:32am
Depends on the state and what kind of purchase you’re making. There are plenty of states where private sales can be made with literally zero info or a background check done.
By Abbott77 on 08.07.19 12:16pm
Off topic, as I see this a lot, but you do not have to be 25 to rent a car (common misconception). Each company has their own policies, but what typically occurs is a "young driver fee" for people under the age of 25, ostensibly to cover the higher frequency of accidents for those drivers.
To keep your point though, Enterprise does not allow cars to be rented to individuals under 21 years old (state laws permitting), which is still older than the age to buy many types of guns (18).
By xPutNameHerex on 08.07.19 8:42am
That’s right, focus on the semantics rather than the issues. You know what he meant—the items used to commit the killing. Smugly honking about how AKSHEWALLY it’s not an assault weapon is arguing in bad faith, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
None of us here are lawmakers, or making statements that affect law in any way. We don’t need to be quite so exact.
We’re intelligent enough to understand that not everyone knows the exact terminology involved. Focus on the issue, not the wording. Otherwise you sound frightened and jealous.
By Miniaturised Jim, the Tiny Ribald Scot on 08.07.19 5:27am
The problem is that an assault rifle is select fire. It’s fully automatic. Those weapons have been heavily controlled since 1934, and the manufacture for civilian ownership has been point blank illegal since 1986. People don’t like it when the people drafting legislation that will directly effect them don’t even seem to understand the very thing they are regulating/banning. It’s like men writing anti-abortion legislation.
By ghost55 on 08.07.19 9:02am
When it’s my turn to bring about laws, I’ll be certain to message you for guidance. I mean that sincerely—I don’t know much about US gun terminology (I’m English, though I’ve written for some US security/law enforcement training companies. They didn’t seem to know a lot about what words to use, either.)
For now, let’s try to talk about our thoughts on the relevant issue, without pouncing on semantics to ‘prove’ a point, yeah?
Nice one.
By Miniaturised Jim, the Tiny Ribald Scot on 08.07.19 10:09am
However, I really doubt that Verge poster "mrkite", the person whose comment sparked this discussion above, was the person drafting the legislation.
If "mrkite" is actually a Senator or something, I guess this is a good point, though.
By joshsisk on 08.07.19 2:37pm
ok, gun, any sodding gun, mr pedant, they all do the shooty death thing you muppet.
By Tosh Fieldsend on 08.07.19 10:40am
I agree! You need to be 25 and produce an ID to buy a car. You need to be 18 and produce ID to buy a gun.
You should be required to show ID to vote, too.
Now, tell me why I’m wrong.
By vergeofmadness on 08.07.19 11:09am
I’ll play! You are wrong because… you don’t need to be 25 to buy a car, nor do you need to show an ID to buy a car…
By joshsisk on 08.07.19 2:41pm
Yes you do.. and you need to register the car with the state. No dealer will sell you a car without you also providing proof of insurance.
By mrkite on 08.07.19 7:51pm
You can sell a car to someone (or buy a car from someone) without doing anything but signing over the title and taking your license plates off. I’ve done both, never had to show my ID (or ask for one). Dealership sales are not the only type of auto sales.
By joshsisk on 08.15.19 12:59pm
There isn’t a single answer to this problem. However, doing this is part of a bigger solution.
By privilegejunkie on 08.06.19 7:16pm
No but it seems a reasonable request to ask those most knowledgeable to testify, how else are they to properly understand what’s going on? We’ve already had uninformed idiots trying to blame it on video games, let’s try to do a little better.
You can make this entirely separate from the issue of gun ownership if you want, I’d argue that with or without guns those people still would have tried to murder a bunch of people so it’s not something that can/should just be ignored.
By Series on 08.07.19 7:28am
There isn’t any indication that congress is trying to "pin this" on the forum host. Testify just means appear before congress and answer questions. Celebrities do it all the time. The CEOs of major companies are asked to testify to answer specific questions that congress cannot get the answer to or wants an official answer for. Jim Watkins will probably say that 8chan believes in no censorship of content and that the acts of a few extremists cannot be blamed on an internet forum. He might have something to say about how tragedies can be detected or avoided. I don’t think this is a waste of time.
By nickguy69 on 08.07.19 11:46am
Can they really do anything here? I mean, if they WANT to host extremist content (which does appear to be the case), then is there any legal action that can be taken against them? The first amendment specifically blocks most interference of that type.
I suppose getting them to explicitly admit that they court that sort of thing could make hosting their content difficult, but beyond that, what can be done?
By neilowen on 08.06.19 7:54pm