Attack On The Chans? Rangebans, Hit Pieces And DDoS Attacks

Earlier this week, we were the only news source to report on the apparent "rangeban" of Comcast users from posting at 4chan's /pol/ board. The story must have seemed inconsequential to any mainstream or independent news sources because, though there are multiple threads that have appeared from 4chan and 8chan in the past days about the ongoing situation, The Goldwater has so far offered the only <a href="https://thegoldwater.com/news/19433-Apparent-Comcast-Rangeban-Of-4chan-pol-Users-Ignites-Rumors">press related to the story.</a>

Just about 48 hours after the /pol/ rangeban began the Washington Post (Jeff Bezos' news outlet that is sponsored by the CIA to the tune of over half a billion dollars) <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/we-studied-thousands-of-anonymous-posts-about-the-parkland-attack---and-found-a-conspiracy-in-the-making/2018/02/27/04a856be-1b20-11e8-b2d9-08e748f892c0_story.html?utm_term=.80f9fb888c31">ran a smear piece</a> on the "lies that thrive on raucous online platforms increasingly shape public understanding of major events" centering around the "danger" of such sites as 4chan and 8chan. It was less than a day, around 15 to 16 hours in fact, from that article going live that the (at this moment ongoing) DDoS of 8chan began. I say now ongoing, though, since we post our articles through 8chan, if/when you read this it will mean that we made it back online.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">it was on my iphones news feed. it&#39;s from Washington post entitled &quot;how the p*rkl*nd conspiracy emerged&quot; if you want to look it up. it&#39;s just the basic, trolls and hacker known as 4chan stuff. At least their not saying everyone&#39;s a Russian bot though</p>&mdash; Moliminous (@Moliminous) <a href="https://twitter.com/Moliminous/status/968870984177672194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 28, 2018</a></blockquote>

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4chan rangeban, chan culture hit piece then an 8chan DDoS, sure it could be a coincidence, but odds are just as good that it's not. In the midst of Twitter purges and shadowbanning it's obvious that the tech elite are concerned about the power that's wielded by a handful of "diggers." Especially the influence they might eventually have on your average, citizen (i.e. normies). WaPo writes of the image boards kicking into action to sift through the available information after the Parkland shooting.

<blockquote>Instead the mood seemed jubilant, with posters celebrating that the campaign had reached a broader audience of “normies,” meaning people who typically keep their distance from racist, anti-Semitic and far-right extremist conversation.</blockquote>

As regards the 4chan rangeban, there are theories however that this could be just an attempt to extort channers into purchasing "4chan passes" to get past the ban. As mentioned in the previous article about the 4chan rangeban, when Hiroyuki Nishimura, the current owner of 4chan, ran 2chan he enacted similar scams along with datamining and selling said data. This wouldn't be the first time 8chan had been the target of a DDoS attack, and in fact. In early 2015 8chan started getting DDoSed around the time <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01/13/this-is-what-happens-when-you-create-an-online-community-without-any-rules/?utm_term=.48a14438952e">Washington Post reported on their role in researching GamerGate</a>.