Editing 8chan (section)

==Current Events and Controversy==
For an overview of why 8chan is under fierce media scrutiny right now, see [[:/pol/|/pol/]].

8chan has been blocked in Italy due to pedopornography. 

The shooting in El Paso, Texas on the 3rd of August was meant to mirror the Christchurch attacks and it was widely reported that the manifesto of the shooter, who claimed to be acting to protect the environment from the American lifestyle, was posted on 8chan's /pol/ a little under 30 minutes before the shooting. This comes after both the Christchurch shooter and the Poway shooter manifestos were widely reposted on 8chan. Former admin Hotwheels, who had by now distanced himself from the site and most of his older views, said to "shut it down," saying that the site isn't good for anybody. This controversy caused DDOS protection Cloudflare to drop the site, despite their earlier claims such actions would be a terrible attack on free speech. 8ch briefly went live with an alternative DDOS protection, but that service rented hardware from Vultr and Voxility who breached contract with the provider by withdrawing service in a way not allowed by their contract. This left 8ch dead again. For multiple days 8ch was viewable read only, without images, with direct IP connection, but this too had gone offline. According to the official Twitter account 8ch was still preparing a comeback. It had been further announced that service would resume on or after September 5th, when Jim Watkins testified before Congress.

The site would be remain offline for several months, sending its userbase into a series bunkers connected as a webring. During these months, Brennan admitted in IRC to paying for at least some of the DDOS attacks that took 8ch offline because he disliked being associated with the site. This would eventually cumulative in criminal charges against Brennan and a warrant being issued for his arrest.

After obtaining an alternative DDOS protection, 8ch relaunched as "8kun". This launch was never really complete and only a handful of boards were migrated, with random others being restored at a glacial pace, and an obnoxious disclaimed attached to every post. The restored boards appeared to be quite random, as even popular, non-controversial, SFW boards like /sw/ were never migrated to the new site. This new site would limp along for months, with substantial activity remaining within the old webring rather than migrating to the "restored" site, especially when their boards weren't restored. This would change when /v/'s board owner (who was also had the unusual position of a minor, paid, 8kun employee at this point) would leak messages between him and Ron (8kun's CTO and Jim's son) revealing the admins made a policy of not migrating loli boards. This would result in drama where the board owner was fired and Ron assuring users /delicious/ (one of the main loli boards before shutdown) would be migrated in a week. This migration never came, and instead 8kun decided to go full retard and ban loli entirely after consulting with an attorney who deemed it illegal. This would result in a mass Exodus back to the webring, causing 8kun to lose nearly all of its remaining userbase save for the /qresearch/ board.

The invigorated webring would proceed to have a week of incredibly active posting, more than the webring and 8kun had combined when that site was still up. This would not last, as someone using the name "Esther Aronowitz" would start contacting hosts and registrars to shut down the webring. "Esther"'s emails often didn't even bother to find anything controversial and including totally random posts, correctly assuming the hosts wouldn't even bother checking and just shut the sites down at first controversy. In the midst of this attack, the now-former owner of /v/ teamed up with the owner of the old GamerGate board to launch a new site at 8chan.me. This was quickly taken offline by "Esther"'s efforts and just as quickly came back as 8chan.moe. Styled by anons as "8moe", the site offered user-created boards and a free speech administration, and quickly drew in familiar boards like /co/. The site has pledged itself as a sort of bastion against deplatforming and eventually became the most active of the 8chan splinter sites (though this would be mostly on account of an exodus from the Hispanic Hispachan -- the English-speaking population is comparatively small and centralized on /v/'s Gamergate general thread). Activity across the webring would plateau over time as the divided communities struggled to sustain themselves, with drama both internal and external winnowing anons. 

Largely shadows of their former selves, while speaking positively of 4chan is still widely mocked, it's not uncommon to hear admissions of cross-posting for simple lack of userbase and activity.