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Article

7 Aug 2019

Author:
Julia Carrie Wong, The Guardian

USA: 8chan releases statement deflecting blame for platform's alleged role in disseminating hate speech

"8chan: owner of extremist site lashes out as scrutiny intensifies", 07 Aug 2019

The owner of the extremist message board 8chan broke his silence on Tuesday in a...video statement that attempted to deflect blame for the role the platform plays in disseminating hate speech and inciting violence... Jim Watkins...defended the website amid growing outcry over reports that the alleged El Paso gunman, as well as several other mass shooting suspects, used the site to publish white nationalist manifestos ahead of violent attacks. “My company takes a firm stand on helping law enforcement, and within minutes of these two tragedies, we were working with FBI agents to find out what information we could to help in their investigations,” Watkins said... Watkins went on to denounce as “cowardly” the decision of the infrastructure provider Cloudflare to stop providing 8chan with its services... After Cloudflare cut ties, other service providers followed suit... “First of all, the El Paso shooter posted on Instagram, not 8chan,” he said. “Later someone uploaded a manifesto. However, that manifesto was not uploaded by the Walmart shooter... Instagram said the company has “found nothing to support this theory”... The Cloudflare chief executive, Matthew Prince, also confirmed on Sunday that the company had seen evidence that the manifesto was uploaded to 8chan before the attack... 

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