Numerous controversies related to content posted on 8chan have arisen, to the extent that participation by individuals or companies in the website can itself cause controversy. On February 25, 2019,
THQ Nordic hosted an AMA (ask me anything) thread on the video games board of the website, /v/,
for which it later apologized.
Gamergate On September 18, 2014, 8chan became entangled in the Gamergate harassment campaign after 4chan banned discussion of Gamergate, whereupon 8chan became one of several hubs for Gamergate activity. 8chan's initial Gamergate-oriented board "/gg/" also gained attention after being compromised by members of the
internet troll group
Gay Nigger Association of America, forcing Gamergate activists to migrate to "/gamergate/". This replacement quickly became the site's second-most accessed board.
Swatting incidents and violent threats In January 2015, the site was used as a base for
swatting exploits in
Portland,
Seattle, and
Burnaby, British Columbia, most of them tied to the victims' criticism of Gamergate and 8chan's association with it; the attacks were coordinated on a
board on the website called "/baphomet/". One of the victims of a swatting attack said that she was singled out because she had followed someone on
Twitter. On February 9, 2015, content on the "/baphomet/" subboard was wiped after
personal information of
Katherine Forrest, the presiding judge in the
Silk Road case, had been posted there. In 2019, a post threatening a mass shooting against
Bethel Park High School was posted on 8chan; as a result, an 18-year-old individual was arrested and charged with one count of terroristic threats and one count of retaliation against a witness or victim.
Child pornography Boards have been created to discuss topics such as
child rape. While the sharing of illegal content is against site rules,
The Daily Dot wrote that boards do exist to share sexualized images of minors in provocative poses, and that some users of those boards do post links to explicit child pornography hosted elsewhere.
Donald Trump presidential campaign In July 2016, U.S. presidential candidate
Donald Trump tweeted an image of
Hillary Clinton with a background of money and a six-pointed star which resembled the
Star of David, containing the message "Most corrupt candidate ever". The image had been posted to 8chan's /pol/ board as early as June 22, over a week before Trump's team tweeted it. A watermark on the image led to a Twitter account which had published many other overtly racist and antisemitic images.
QAnon 8chan is the home of the discredited far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. The next month, citing security concerns, Q moved to 8chan and only posted there from then on, eventually leading to an international movement.
Sean Hannity has retweeted QAnon hashtags on his Twitter feed. On March 14, 2018, the initial group of Q followers on
Reddit were banned over their promotion of the theory. They quickly regrouped into a new subreddit, which featured posts from Q and other anonymous posters on 8chan in a more reader-friendly format. The subreddit was banned With a flood of new users on the board, Q asked one of the website's owners, Ron Watkins, to upgrade the website's servers in order to accommodate all of the board's website traffic on September 19, 2018. The movement has been linked with the
Pizzagate conspiracy theory. The Q movement has also been linked to the hashtags #TheGreatAwakening and #WWG1WGA, which stands for "where we go one, we go all"; it is also sometimes linked with the phrase "Follow the White Rabbit".
Louisiana Police's antifa list In September 2018, the
Louisiana State Police were scrutinized for using a
hoax list of personal information about supposed
antifa activists originally posted on 8chan's politics board. The document, dubbed "full list of antifa.docx" by police officers, actually contained the names of several thousand people who signed
online petitions against then President Donald Trump. The State Police has refused to disclose the list, claiming it would "compromise" ongoing criminal investigations in which it expects arrests. A lawsuit against Louisiana State Police was filed on behalf of the record requester by Harvard lecturer and former public defender Thomas Frampton, alleging that the Police's refusal to release the list indicates that it actually believed the credibility of the hoax list and used it in investigations and litigations.
2019 shootings The perpetrators of three mass shootings, all in 2019, each used 8chan to spread their manifesto. As a result, there was increased pressure on those providing 8chan's Internet services to terminate their support, Some members of 8chan re-shared it and applauded the attacks. On March 20, 2019, Australian telecom companies
Telstra,
Optus, and
Vodafone blocked the websites 4chan, 8chan,
Zero Hedge, and
LiveLeak as a reaction to the Christchurch mosque shootings. In New Zealand, the main ISPs,
Spark,
One NZ, and
2degrees, followed suit in blocking 8chan and other websites hosting footage of the shooting.
Poway synagogue shooting John T. Earnest, the perpetrator of a shooting at a synagogue in
Poway, California, on April 27, 2019, and an
earlier arson attack at a mosque in nearby
Escondido on March 25, had posted links to his
open letter and his attempted livestream on 8chan, which Earnest also named as a place of radicalization for him. According to 8chan's Twitter, the shooter's post was removed nine minutes after its creation.
El Paso shooting Patrick Crusius, the suspect in a mass shooting at a
Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, on August 3, 2019, allegedly posted a four-page white nationalist manifesto
The Inconvenient Truth on 8chan less than an hour before the shooting began. 8chan moderators quickly removed the original post, though users continued to circulate links to this manifesto. ==See also==