
8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now - evo_9
https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/el-paso-8chan-4chan-mass-shootings-manifesto.html
======
wyldfire
I think that technology has brought us some truly marvelous things. But they
also enable us to avoid casual social contact while enabling us to withdraw
from meaningful social contact.

Online anonymity permits endless Sybil attacks -- helping turn communities'
frustration from anger and rage into violence. I'm guessing/assuming that
8chan is an anything goes censorship free community (like 4chan was/is?). And
maybe it's not explicitly in support of racist ideals but instead refuses to
condemn any ideologies or discussion. But because of other communities'
moderation, they likely become one of the bastions of the racists. So even if
their ownership never had any interest in hate speech, their platform becomes
a de facto mechanism for its spread.

As much problems as anonymity causes I sure don't think that some new Real
World Identity driven Internet would be a good idea. But sites with next to no
content moderation seem like a bad idea. Not that I can imagine a resolution,
really.

~~

I imagine how frustrated I might feel if I didn't have some kind of daily work
or creative task to keep me busy and fill me with purpose. If I felt depressed
I might be willing to blame it on someone. If everything I read said that in
fact there is someone to blame, I wonder: would I be able to see through that?
Would I stand up and say 'no, that's wrong: those people aren't the source of
our problems'? I like to think I would. But I've definitely caught myself
(long after the fact) buying into BS groupthink/hivemind conspiracy hogwash.

~~~
irvwash
> I'm guessing/assuming that 8chan is an anything goes censorship free
> community (like 4chan was/is?). And maybe it's not explicitly in support of
> racist ideals but instead refuses to condemn any ideologies or discussion

More or less. More so than 4chan.

8chan is like Reddit (and unlike 4chan) in that it allows anyone to set up a
subcommunity that they can moderate however they like. Only illegal content
(and nude/sexual images of children, and certain spam) isn't allowed at all.
Individual boards may be moderated very tightly.

There are all kinds of boards there, even for communists, and for Muslims.
They're scrupulous about allowing even things they don't like.

/pol/ is the board where these manifestos keep getting posted. The shootings
generally get celebrated there. It's actively moderated, as visible in the
moderation log:
[https://8ch.net/log.php?board=pol](https://8ch.net/log.php?board=pol)

But /pol/ is not just any board. I stopped paying attention after the
Christchurch shooting, but at that time, it was the only large global board, a
board owned by the administration. Global site volunteers, who are normally
only authorized to handle illegal content (aside from roles they have on other
boards) were allowed to moderate /pol/. The site owners set the rules and
policies for the board and appointed its ordinary (non-global) moderators.

/pol/ became a global board after its previous owner mismanaged it and the
administration seized it. The community was already like that, and if the
administration tried to change things locally people would just flock to a
different more permissive board. But I think 8chan is a little more than just
a platform in this case.

~~~
BoiledCabbage
Think about that for a min. Racism is allowed, but not Spam.

They will allow Racism, but actively moderate out Spam.

What type of joke is this? There is no hiding behind it, they intentionally
and actively allow it to become a breeding ground for violent racists.

It's like what in the world did you guys imagining Al Qaeda recruiting msg
boards l look like.

"No Al Qaeda msg boards have people claiming for death to Americans".

And 8chan boards are also doing the same thing. It's disgusting, but people
are desensitized to how absurd it is.

~~~
irvwash
> They will allow Racism, but actively moderate out Spam.

Reddit used to be like that as far as I know, and though there's plenty to
criticize I don't think Reddit was intentionally set up to become a breeding
ground for violent racists.

8chan's policy about spam is very different from how a policy against racism
would look. What it in practice means is that if someone posts the same
suspicious link on a hundred boards they may be hit by a global ban instead of
leaving the mess for individual board owners to clean up. Even very principled
proponents of free speech usually don't mind that.

There's no guarantee that spam will be cleaned up, it just doesn't get the
protection of it being up to the board owner. For a long time 8chan didn't
even have a functional anti-spam system. It's a practical matter foremost.

A rule against racism would be much more thornier. It would have more edge
cases, and it would have to be enforced more consistently. It would be a lot
more work and it would be more arbitrary. And it would go against the
sensibilities of the original founder, who's a libertarian (I don't know if
he's racist).

8chan wasn't created to be a breeding ground for violent racists. It was
created to be a make-your-own-forum website with minimalist rules. For the
first year, before gamergate drove more people to it, it was just that. In
July 2014 an innocent roleplaying board was the most popular:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20140701141242/https://8chan.co/b...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140701141242/https://8chan.co/boards.html)

~~~
throwaway5d097
A global ban for promoting genocide or murder doesn't seem too complicated

~~~
irvwash
It's still more work, because some people will get upset that they're not
allowed to promote genocide. It still has edge cases (I've seen some hairy
examples from Facebook moderation guidelines). It's also still more of a free
speech issue than deleting spam is.

That doesn't mean such a ban would be bad, but it is complicated, and someone
who doesn't like genocide might still not want it.

~~~
throwaway5d097
I think I sort of get it now.

Moderating spam is easier. Apparently it's hard to tell between "we should
kill these people" and "these people are being killed" due to a language
barrier sometimes, and it's hard to automate.

But wow. You all think "let's kill these people" somehow has more value than
"buy my shit/here is a malware link", nice. downboat away

------
throwaway0129
My friends and I used to visit the *chan sites when we were younger. Sometimes
the discussions there were good e.g. if you browse the exercise forums.

But then one of my closest friends killed himself silently. That was when I
realized that these sites are no jokes. Some of the people there have fallen
so deep into the pit of hate and depression. Nowadays I don't even link nor
share the name of the sites to my younger friends where I see the early signs
of hate growing. My personal belief is that all of this is happening due to a
lack of a proper father figure for boys growing up, making them socially
illfit, making them outcasts and making them blame everything on immigrants
and so on when they can't find a girlfriend or friends.

~~~
codingslave
I think there's more going on in our current society than is being discussed.
What it is exactly, and why its happening, is really hard to tell. We cant see
the forest from the trees.

But I don't think its young men's fault, I think that things have gotten
objectively worse for them. People are responding, and are increasingly
responding with huge negativity. I think this has nothing to do with how
they're raised, and every thing to do with how they're treated and the
opportunities they're being given. There is real discontent here.

~~~
darawk
I think it's essentially draws back to the incel/hikkomori phenomenon. You
never see young men in relationships doing these kinds of things...whether
it's a white right wing mass shooter or an Islamic suicide bombing. People
seem to want to pin these things on ideology, because that's the reason the
perpetrators themselves give for what they do. But it seems more likely to me
to be a reaction to a life they view as having no future, by which I mean no
prospect of a successful romantic relationship with the opposite sex.

~~~
belltaco
I don't think the Christchurch shooter was an incel, apparently he had
pictures on social media partying with women. And he killed 50.

~~~
tomhoward
He didn't seem to have a successful social life.

I don't want to spread any more content about him by sharing links or quotes
here, but I think it's important to dispel the suggestion that he had a well-
functioning social or relationship life.

Media interviews with people who knew of him all indicate that suggestion is
false.

------
wisty
We could talk about how this is largely a mental health problem. A lot of
depressed young men do stupid risky stuff with no concern for their own well-
being. I know a few guys who have wrapped their cars around trees. I bet most
shooters were just throwing in the towel in a more hateful and dramatic way.

I see the main issue as a marketing problem for psychology. Men are focused on
solving problems, and I'd bet they see psychology as a bunch of talk-therapy
(like it's portrayed on TV shows and movies). Women might want to talk about
their problems to find some kind of scapegoat, but men would often rather
solve them. The ironic thing is, modern therapy is often quite problem-solving
focused.

A related issue seems to be that a lot of these guys can't talk to women. As
in, they can't ask women out. It's rarely their personalities or looks (look
at domestic violence perpetrators if you want to see how awful you can be and
still find a girlfriend), it's often that no-one wants to tell them how to ask
women out (except on certain dark corners of the internet).

Recognising and addressing these kinds of problems means humanising them
though. We can humanise Palestinian terrorists and drug dealers, but can we
really humanise depressed and nerdy young men? I dunno.

~~~
lumberjack
It's not a mental health problem. It's a propaganda problem. These people
aren't clinically insane. They are just enveloped in hatred. In particular
dehumanization propaganda brainwashed them into seeing others as not even
human.

If you go to places with decades long conflicts, you'll see this mentality on
display everywhere. So it's not a mental health issue. All these people aren't
insane. They are just really convinced that some other people are the enemy
and that those other people are not even worthy of existing at all and that
their life is worthless.

~~~
tomhoward
I can agree that it's not a problem of mental health in the sense of
diagnosable conditions like major depression, schizophrenia, etc.

But it is linked to the inability of people to achieve positive life outcomes
- i.e., healthy friendships and intimate relationships, satisfying and well-
paying jobs, and a sense of community engagement.

This kind of deep hatred only develops after you've spent enough of your life
absent of acceptance and love.

There currently isn't an obvious path to a better life for people in this
situation.

------
chvid
Does anyone have an idea of how big 8chan and 4chan is in terms of users?

Just from the visible activity in there I can see they must be massive.

I think Slate is incorrect in describing them as expression of traditional
neo-nazism. To me they are quite their own thing. Born out of Anime culture
and gaming-culture becoming a playground for role playing, trash talking,
trolling, real-life pranks degenerating into what it is now ...

To me they are very hard to understand. You start by joking that you are a
jew-hating nazi and then after a while you become an actual jew-hating nazi.
How does that work psychologically?

~~~
eej2ya1K
You start out by making relatively innocent jokes about jews, and notice that
certain portions of the anglosphere left and right really respond to this. Not
only do they tell you that you can't say that, they also shower you with
threats of violence. Successful troll is successful. So you go a bit further,
start moving into actual anti-semitic jokes, conspiracies. Still just for the
lulz, but it gets an even better reaction. Meanwhile, your image board/irc
buddies, the only people in your life who treat you like a real human being,
keep egging you, some of them pointing to the reactions you're getting as
proof that there's some kind of underlying truth behind the jokes. "Yeah,
sure, the protocols of the elders of zion isn't real, but look at the
reactions you're getting for what amounts to lazy trolling! And from people
with actual power - political power, media power, financial power..."

I think you can see where it goes from here - the road to hell isn't always
paved with good intentions, but when turning around means accepting that the
people who hate you are right, what are you going to do?

~~~
charlchi
If you think this is all just playing devil's advocate and trolling there is
something deeply flawed about your assumptions about how these
people(alienated young white men) experience modern culture and politics.

~~~
eej2ya1K
I was responding to a very specific by question by chvid and certainly don't
think it's all about trolling.

(Oh, and as anyone who has seen a /pol/ meetup knows, they're not all young
white men... alienated, though - yeah, I can see that...

------
Causality1
One feels compelled to point out that, despite 8chan being a breeding ground
of hate, threads by mass shooters are typically removed in minutes and threats
or manifestos containing identifying information are forwarded to the
authorities, with at least one known incident being prevented by them, a
planned shooting at Bethel Park High School.

Which, frankly, is the surprising part since I don't know why any sane person
would set foot there. I visited once a few weeks after its founding and it had
already degenerated to the point most regular users probably deserve to be on
some kind of government list. Going there is just asking for trouble and I
would urge anyone curious to look for screenshots instead of actually visiting
the website.

~~~
kartan
> despite 8chan being a breeding ground of hate, threads by mass shooters are
> typically removed in minutes

So, it is ok that people promote and help mass shooters as far as there is no
direct connection the day of the attack?

> Going there is just asking for trouble and I would urge anyone curious to
> look for screenshots instead of actually visiting the website.

Is a screenshot of hate speech promoting hate less than a rendered HTML page?

I will imagine that an Islamic extremist site will be closed within minutes of
gaining notoriety. Why are we sparing white-nationalist propaganda?

~~~
dx87
You'd be imagining wrong. Cloudflare left up ISIS websites because they said
it isn't their job police content.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
You know, I don’t necessarily disagree with Cloudlare’s take on “we shouldn’t
be the internet police”, but do find it kind of funny that their ideology and
approach conveniently aligns with being the absolute cheapest and laziest
approach to the problem.

~~~
cbHXBY1D
Which is every corporations modus operandi.

------
im3w1l
> Personal Reasons and Thoughts: My whole life I have been preparing for a
> future that currently doesn't exist. The job of my dreams will likely be
> automated. (...)

It's only mentioned in passing but this may be the most relevant part for HN
to discuss.

~~~
charlchi
Migration, automation, and the meaning of life in the new western world.

Someone should write a book for white males, sadly we keep leaving this
discussion to neonazis and white supremacists online instead of having it
ourselves in the public realm...

~~~
lm28469
Jordan Peterson comes to mind. But even he gets labeled as an """alt-right"""
even though he is super moderate when you actually listen to him.

------
john_brown_body
A focus on the mediums through which these shooters express their views misses
the forest for the trees, which is that this is fundamentally a political
problem.

There is an ascendant political ideology in the United States, and in the West
more broadly, that is rooted in a fear that White supremacy is being eroded by
immigration and demographic change, and that violence against minority
populations is an acceptable response to these changes.

This ideology is promoted by the President and prominent members of the
Republican Party and the party-affiliated media; government goon squads are
used to harass and ethnically cleanse those populations; and "lone-wolf"
paramilitaries terrorize them directly, while allowing their "respectable"
enablers and ideological supporters some degree of plausible deniability.

The solution to this problem doesn't lie in technology or communication
platforms or mental health awareness or anything like that. It lies in
organizing politically to defeat the supporters of this ideology and take
power away from its proponents.

~~~
JetSpiegel
\- Even if by Sybil attacks that ideology is numerically irrelevant, the media
amplifies their message and drowns out other messages. Bernie was attacked by
centrists for doing an interview on Fox News, it's not just the Republicans
contributing to the current state of affairs.

\- For Trump to support neo-nazis he doesn't even need to praise them (even
though he does it anyway), just selectively unenforce their actions. Inaction
can be a political statement.

------
mikedilger
The theory seems to be that white supremacists just naturally wish to commit
violent hate crimes and that white supremacists use 8chan to indoctrinate more
followers.

What if it turns out that white supremacists primary wish is to have their
arguments heard by society, but society has instead cast them out and refuses
to let them post elsewhere so they can only post on 8chan, and that some of
them, mentally unstable, react to being outcast in extreme ways?

I'm not arguing that they have any good points or that we should give them a
platform. I'm certainly not arguing that any of their actions are justified.
But if this second view of the situation is more accurate, it suggests a
solution to the problem that the first view completely misses. How could we
tell the difference?

I'm thinking of something more akin to this:
[https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-
convinc...](https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-
convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes).

I have to admit ignorance though, I have not read any manifestos (the
Christchurch one is illegal for me to read) I am quite unfamiliar with 8chan
(I've heard people talk of 4chan and checked it out once when researching the
supposed "white power" OK hand symbol hoax) and do not live in America
presently so perhaps this speculation is offbase, and I'm happy to be
corrected.

~~~
empath75
So you basically have no idea what you’re talking about but want to talk about
giving a wider platform to nazis?

~~~
mikedilger
I said "I'm not arguing that they have any good points or that we should give
them a platform."

Also, admitting ignorance doesn't mean I have "no idea". I've read a bit of
psychology on this topic, and feelings of being rejected by society are very
powerful motivators.

------
ghostcluster
Despite the attention these cases get, the US murder rate is half what it was
in 1980 [https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/murder-
rates](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/murder-rates)

~~~
belltaco
Murders are frequently family and gang related. Mass shootings of random
people are a different thing altogether.

How many murders in 1980 were of people that the killer did not know
personally?

------
puranjay
What's even stranger to me is how "normal" mass shootings have become

~~~
wyldfire
Apparently this marks US Mass shooting #250 for 2019 (this was the 215th day
of the year).

[1] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/03/el-
pas...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/03/el-paso-walmart-
shooting-250th-mass-shooting-this-year/1913486001/)

~~~
javagram
Worth considering the varying definitions of mass shooting can inflate the
count beyond what people may think of when they read “mass shooting”.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-
checker/wp/2015/12/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-
checker/wp/2015/12/03/obamas-inconsistent-claim-on-the-frequency-of-mass-
shootings-in-the-u-s-compared-to-other-countries/?utm_term=.60ada5099c1b)

The US is a large company and there are more guns than people. There’s a lot
of opportunity for people to snap and go on a rampage, unfortunately.

~~~
wyldfire
Even if they consider "3" to be "mass" it's a bit alarming.

~~~
darawk
The problem though is that numbers aren't really the salient characteristic
here. If some gang kills 5 members of another gang, that's not really a "mass
killing" in the sense that this El Paso thing was.

~~~
Barrin92
Not ideologically, but very much in the sense that the state has lost control
of ensuring the safety of its citizens, which is what it boils down to at the
end of the day.

There are very straight-forward steps to be taken to reduce both gang violence
and the fanatic mass shootings, and they're not being pursued.

~~~
darawk
Ya sorry. They are definitely in certain senses the same thing. But in others
they're not. I think when thinking about causes the random killings are
important to consider as a group though.

------
ypcx
Saying that "XYZ media outlet is a normal part of mass shoothing now" is a
hypocrisy, because 1. the real problem you should be focusing on is why "Mass
shootings are a normal part of the society now", 2. hate can and will be
"farmed" in the next outlet, if we ban one.

You could go as far as outlawing anonymous internet access (require identity
in all online actions), but people with these intentions would still find a
way to congregate and develop/use a specific language to evade detection and
control.

We really need to start looking hard at what causes pressure build-ups in our
society and start working on alleviation of these, because while the side
effects of anti-depression medication may act as the last-mile enabler in
these special cases, it's not the core problem and as such will deflect our
attention from solving the core problem/problems. (I'm not touching the gun-
control issue. E.g. in London or Japan, they will kill you with a knife.
Tomorrow it may be a chemical weapon. Etc.)

In my experience the biggest problem is paradoxically the lack of
communication from the side of the government to the side of the people. Many
controversial programs can be explained in a common language so that an
information vacuums aren't created and then filled by "conspiracy theorists".
E.g. _clearly_ explain the logic behind immigration policies (democrats),
explain the logic behind fiscal policies (the FED, the ECB), the logic behind
taxation rates, and so on.

I'm not saying that governments are perfect or that there is zero truth in
some conspiracy theories, but I see the lack of information flow be the
biggest issue because it causes people's disbelief in their governments'
actions and that breeds all sorts of problems.

------
username3
They should monitor 8chan for manifestos and get alerts for PDF attachments.

> _It was originally posted on 4chan, later to 8chan._

> _In each instance, community members denounced the man’s intentions and
> informed LEO._

~~~
deft
the fbi literally pays people to post in threads about mass shooters.

~~~
bowmessage
Citation needed?

~~~
notamy
I can't speak to the accuracy of this, but a quick Google search suggested [0]
which linked to [1], which says:

> What is notable is that next to the “Anonymous” user label on some of the
> posts is a “(You)” marking:

> As it turns out, this text is to let the user know that they are looking at
> their own posts! This means that Special Agent Rod inadvertently exposed
> himself as 8chan user ID “8f4812” by including these screenshots as his
> supporting exhibit.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/c1nnsn/fbi_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/c1nnsn/fbi_agent_accidentally_reveals_own_8chan_posts/)

[1]
[https://ceinquiry.wordpress.com/2019/06/17/fbi-8chan/](https://ceinquiry.wordpress.com/2019/06/17/fbi-8chan/)

------
8456523
The 4-page manifesto posted yesterday:
[https://egbertowillies.com/2019/08/03/patrick-crusius-
manife...](https://egbertowillies.com/2019/08/03/patrick-crusius-manifesto/)

~~~
jrnichols
Has that been verified as actually being his? Twitter reports were saying that
it was a hoax and hasn't been attributed to the El Paso criminal.

------
kartan
There was a time that it was difficult for me to understand how it was
possible that governments in the middle east were supporting domestic
terrorism. It was difficult to imagine how normal people were supporting the
killing of fellow citizens.

Now, that I see this same trend unravel in the USA it becomes easier to
understand. I have seen for the past decades the shifting of what
"conservative" means. Extremists were always there, that I knew. But, it has
been scary to see how moving what normality is toward the extreme has
happened. News, in USA case Fox News, have validated the extremist's views
creating an equivalence between "both sides".

In Europe there are similar movements, but, it has not been televised so much.
Except, maybe, for the rise of extremism in the United Kingdom.

As interesting it is from the political perspective, it is dishearting the
amount of suffering that it is causing. The political discourse is not used to
agree in a way forward for society but as a battleground. And, again, news
outlets share its part of fault. Diminishing investment in education probably
is even more to blame.

The response is not to be angry, but to be calm and help society to value
well-intended discussions over sensationalist posts and news headers.

I hope that it is not too late, the last time that xenophobia was not stoped
it cost over 80 million lives, this time it will be way worse.

~~~
kstenerud
The reason why extremism is having more trouble taking root in Europe is
because there's less inequality there. Where inequality is highest, terrorism
is highest.

~~~
lixtra
I doubt it’s that one dimensional. One could point out that making things
equal results in (edit) even more terror (as most former communists countries
prove). Of course that reasoning would ignore the Scandinavian “exception“.

~~~
kstenerud
It is actually that simple, because it is a fundamental part of social
psychology. In primitive cultures, when one man amassed too much wealth, he'd
give it away for two reasons: one: it brings him prestige as a benefactor, and
two: it prevents disgruntled members from killing him.

We're socially wired to keep things "fair", and when very unfair things
happen, we have an almost religious feeling of righteous indignation. If
someone is cheating society, we want to punish them and set things right. This
is why there's a tendency towards lynch mobs, or their modern twitter
equivalents.

Equivalently, when someone feels excluded from the basic things he sees others
enjoying freely (food, sex, shelter, leisure), he also feels this injustice,
and will want to lash out, punish, and bring justice back to his society. If
he's excluded for long enough, or to an extreme enough degree, he'll stop
associating himself with that society, and possibly even consider replacing it
with a better one. Of course, not everyone who feels the bad end of inequality
is going to take up a gun and start shooting, but the less emotionally stable
you are from your circumstances, the greater the risk. These "manifests" are a
last-ditch effort to be listened to, respected, and included. I'm not talking
about listening to whatever weird bullshit they're spouting; I'm talking about
listening to their pain and humanity.

The sad part is that many justice systems are designed to exclude those
convicted of a crime, thus excluding the most vulnerable, who need inclusion
the most. It's one reason why you have such high recidivism rates in societies
with more vengeful justice systems.

Inequality is a form of exclusion, and we're wired to fight it. Fighting
terrorism is fighting the symptom rather than the cause. The harder you hit
them, the harder they fight back, because they've got nothing left to lose
that they care about, and they have "righteousness" on their side.

~~~
patientplatypus
That is the most succinct well thought out reasoning on this phenomenon I have
ever read. I wish there was a way to stop this rather than have "rich people
should share", because that just seems really unlikely :<

~~~
kstenerud
All societies drift towards inequality. We can't avoid that because our rules
and laws are imperfect, and people will take advantage to control a bigger
slice of the pie. That's fine, so long as we have corrections from time to
time to redistribute wealth and power (such as the wealth giveaways that
primitive societies practiced, or debt jubilees in more complex societies).

Historically, when inequality goes on for too long, social unrest takes root
and gradually grows worse, divisive factions and subgroups grow, "little
battles" take place, and, if untreated for too long, revolution breaks out.

------
antpls
According to gunviolencearchive
([https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/)),
there were 251 mass shootings in the USA since the beginning of 2019. I don't
know if this number is correct, but I just can't understand why guns are still
allowed in USA.

~~~
resoluteteeth
The American right believes that it needs guns to protect itself from the
government and is terrified that the left will come to take its guns away.

This has gotten more and more extreme to the point that they are now basically
against any gun control laws including restrictions on machine guns or any
sort of background checks.

~~~
DuskStar
> This has gotten more and more extreme to the point that they are now
> basically against any gun control laws including restrictions on machine
> guns or any sort of background checks.

You are aware that ownership of machine guns is both _extremely_ restricted
and rather expensive, while almost all legal gun transfers require a
background check, right? (The transfers that don't require a background check
are private sales in certain states) Or are you saying that people want these
restrictions to be rolled back?

~~~
resoluteteeth
> Or are you saying that people want these restrictions to be rolled back?

This.

As far as I am aware, the NRA is now believes people should be able to own
fully automatic weapons although that wasn't always their position.

(And they obviously are against restrictions on semiautomatic weapons since
their California division had sued the government about them.)

------
fapjacks
People seemed to have invented writing to keep track of grain inventories, and
to record for all eternity the great moral decline of the world caused by the
doings of the author's political enemies, and if only they had the tools to
stop the Bad Ideas from spreading, why, we could all live a utopian existence
of pure harmony.

~~~
inawarminister
The first dictatorship to crack the secret of the mind will be the first
eternal regime, in all likelihood.

For a certain definition of eternity, at any rate.

~~~
mikelyons
What do you think Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, and 1 or 2 others have done?

------
DanBC
It's not just 8Chan. Violence is now normalised across a range of sites.
Here's
Breitbart:[https://twitter.com/EJGibney/status/1157809158902681600?s=20](https://twitter.com/EJGibney/status/1157809158902681600?s=20)

------
Ameo
4chan and 8chan are cancers upon the internet. The sites themselves and their
community members spew toxicity, hate, cynicism, and revulsion wherever they
turn up. They revel in trolling, harassment, and offense for the sake of
offense. This, as recent events demonstrate, often extends further into deep-
seated hatred and racism. I don't know if it's an intrinsic side effect of the
100% anonymous culture or just just the way they developed over time, but
there's no denying that they serve as a perfect breeding ground for this kind
of indoctrination and degeneration.

They're perfect feedback loops - the more time one spends in such places, the
more strongly the mindsets they proclaim become rooted and the harder it is to
break away. People go in feeling alienated and rejected and stay stuck there,
finding a perverse connection in their inability to connect and interact with
the rest of society in a positive manner. As a result of fixating on the
things that set them apart and consuming endless torrents of content from
people similarly afflicted, it makes it even harder for them to escape the
feedback loop. Mental illness is rampant among the users there, and instead of
people afflicted with it being helped or guided into acceptable patterns of
interaction, they're mocked or worse yet praised for the negative behavior
they exhibit.

I've seen this happen to several friends first-hand. One of the most dangerous
and destructive things that I've noticed is a disconnection between ideas and
reality that comes out of a broken concept of "irony." A common claim is that
people started these communities as places where they would "ironically"
pretend to be racist or mentally ill, and as a result they attracted
_actually_ racist and mentally ill people who ended up taking over the
community from within. I think things go a step further: that people who
"ironically" take part in hate speech, homophobia, and other bigoted belief
systems end up slipping into believing them themselves. Or rather, the line
between irony and reality itself dissolves over time after constant exposure,
often at the exclusion of all else.

I don't have any ideas for solutions to the problems that these kinds of
communities create. Their very design makes eliminating the issues or cutting
out bad actors completely next to impossible, and no amount of cleanup work
after the fact is going to eliminate what is clearly a deeply-rooted and
persistent system. Any attempts to exemplify the sickness of their community
will be seen as attacks and just make their beliefs deeper.

------
zapita
It was recently revealed that 8chan is funded primarily by selling sex
tourism-themed audio books on Amazon. To my knowledge, Amazon has still not
answered requests for comments, nor have they discontinued funding.

Here's the article: [https://popular.info/p/exclusive-how-money-flows-from-
amazon](https://popular.info/p/exclusive-how-money-flows-from-amazon)

~~~
irvwash
Jim Watkins owns a lot of things, including 2channel
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2channel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2channel)),
a pig farm, and a VPS/VPN/webhosting provider. It's unlikely that those
audiobooks are the biggest source of income.

------
HNLurker2
Good thing I've got banned on 4chan for a whole year

------
executive
So is Facebook Live

------
bojackstorkman
This ian't the sort of topic that I normally comment on, but today's events
have been particularly disturbing, so I thought I would share what I have
experienced.

I have seen two very different people that are very close to me radicalized
and turned into full-blown white nationalist, violent tinfoil-hat types.

In the first case, my brother (let's call him Bill) struggled with
uncontrollable anger and violent outbursts for his entire life from the getgo.
I've been told that that could be linked to a near-suffocation event that
happened to him during birth, though I suspect that may be neither here nor
there.

Because of his behavioral issues and a terrible juvenile "corrections" system,
he spent the majority of his life from the age of twelve through 25 in
juvenile detention, jail, and eventually prison. He was in some of the most
violent prisons in the United States, and joined a "white power" gang largely
for survival. He regularly espoused the exact views detailed in the manifesto
on a regular basis whenever he was out. However, after a few years out he sort
of naturally came to the conclusion that his whole ideology was bullshit and
abandoned it. At present, he no longer holds those views.

In case 2, a friend (who I will call Bob), had never been in trouble, never
had any family trouble or any serious trauma, started spouting the exact same
stuff as Bill used to. He was about 26 when this started, and it was an
enormous surprise to _everyone_ he knew. I, being extremely curious by nature
and very close to Bob, spent dozens of hours trying to get to the root of what
was going on with him to absolutely no avail.

The important thing with Bob is, his answer to every question about "Where are
you getting that?" was a simple "I read it on 4chan/8chan and I believe it."
Every. Single. Time.

I realized a couple things. First off, Bob was gone. Every conversation with
him was just him repeating *chan talking points over and over again. No amount
of appeals to humanity could provoke a novel thought. He kept to his points
religiously, and he made it exceedingly clear that he was trying to recruit as
much as he could.

Secondly, Bill had originally found himself in his situation through
systematic dismantling of his humanity, whereas Bob was doing it purely for
uh, internet street cred? Bill was able to face the real world after leaving
prison and make his own decisions, but Bob carried something (in my opinion,
specifically regarding this issue of radicalization) far more insidious around
in his pocket. The approval he craved from the chans was something that had to
be sated daily, which made (and continues to make) him a terrifying person to
be around.

My point is that from firsthand experience with people from two very different
backgrounds that I am very close to, the 4/8/whatever chans are far scarier
when it comes to indoctrination than most people could believe without seeing.

TL;DR This issue is far larger and more impactful than nearly anyone would
care to admit, and sites like 8chan will likely have an unpredictable and
indelible impact on many, many people's lives until it is acknowledged and
addressed.

~~~
Ameo
^ This is a really important comment - both of these cases are perfect
examples of the issues with places like 4chan and 8chan.

I find the case of Bob particularly important to recognize since people like
him - people who are by every definition radicalized by violent, hateful, and
destructive ideologies - often don't seem that way from the outside. They can
carry out normal, successful lives while still harboring these extreme views
and internalizing them very deeply.

------
bcaa7f3a8bbc
I believe the World Wide Web is largely positive, but the results like this is
truly inevitable.

> _Or more simply, we’re experiencing the “disruption” of computing that was
> promised. This is not a value judgment: there are tons of good outcomes of
> this and there are bad outcomes as well. And what’s a “good” outcome vs a
> “bad” one is going to be highly subjective and debated ad infinitum._ \- an
> HN user previously told me.

The computing pioneers dreamed the Internet would enable the free and fast
flow of information, create decentralization, promote democracy, freedom of
speech, and liberate us from all the old forms of political control. In the
beginning, things were great. The emergent of the Free Software Movement, the
Cypherpunk Movement, and early online commmunities such as The WELL
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL))
or Usenet all seemed to prove the idealism of the Net. Even today, it still
keeps unleashing human creativity. And even when the tech is increasingly used
as tools of oppression, arguablly, the Net still significant improved the
autonomy of individuals and encouraged free thinking.

One core tenet of personal computing and the Net is empowering individuals,
"we the people". The pioneers of the Net were revolutionary, they wanted to
make the world a better place by digitizing the human society. Unfortunately,
whoever was playing with computers and the Internet in the 1980s-1990s were
elites. They have received extensive academic trainings, and/or came from the
middle class. So the element of populism in the hacker culture played a
positive role. And crucially, the development of the Internet was done in
parallel of globalization and the economic boom of 80s neoliberalism, so there
was no major social conflicts as well.

But after 2008-2010, this populist idea started to show its dark side - after
(1) all the people and all their dogs have been connected to the web, (2) a
tendency of disintegration of the global economic and political order is
coming - the same populism stopped playing the original very-positive role. It
has became clear that, any idea can by popularized and supported by a free
Internet, or propagated more easily (e.g. flat-Earth, anti-vax, extremism).
David Perell called it "the disappearance of the Overton window". Also, all
individuals are empowered, including marginalized groups, malicious attackers
and psychopaths.

I've been observing various online trolling culture and fringe reactionary
political movements for a few years. Mostly 4chan, but I think it applies to
the web in general. While I don't agree with their intentions or motivations,
but I found it's an extremely interesting phenomenon and pretty post-modernist
in itself.

* The cyclist behind an anti-cyclist Facebook group

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17731220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17731220)

* Recommended comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17731914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17731914)

Here's a story: a biking hobbyist used his spare time and launched an
influential anti-bike movement on Facebook. He posted numerous sensationalized
commentaries, posters and memes to demonize bikers, including the various
"data" and "charts" for the "bikes are a great threat of traffic order"
propaganda, and occasionally advocated violence towards bikers in forms of
half-jokes. He also proposed political reforms to introduce restrictive and/or
discriminatory traffic laws for bikers. Soon, his campaign has gone viral and
attracted a large number of supporters who drive cars. Well, not all bikers
follow the traffic rules and some problems surely exist, but they are only as
bad as the average day-to-day traffic and usually not seen as something people
need to act upon, but this campaign exaggerates it, radicalized it and
polarized the issue and created lot of hate. What is his intention then? His
only intention is laughing at this fact: he was able to manipulate the car
drivers easily and even create a raged populist political movement with a mere
keyboard.

We hardly know who's behind the populist political movements online, but this
is a well-documented case, and I believe it can be a representative sample
which largely reflects the origin, emotions and motivation of the 4chan-like
"for-the-lulz" trolling culture. Also, I can immediately point out the
similarities to the populist reactionary political movements: the nationalism
propaganda used many of the tactics the biking troll has used. Also, Russia is
accused by the media to create an army of bots on social media, such as pro-
LGBT, anti-LGBT, pro-life, pro-choice, religion fundamentalism, atheism,
nationalistic, liberal, etc, with the intention of creating polarized argument
and social conflicts in the United State.

On the other hand, the "for-the-lulz" trolling culture itself, even can be
used as propaganda, is not propaganda in itself. It is a form of complicated
web culture. It's basic definition is "doing some pointless activities to make
others to suffer, and laugh at it", but it stands for a lot of things. It has
a reactionary, or anti-establishment element, as previously mentioned, but it
also includes: (1) cultural jamming, similar to the 70s counter-cultural
movement (see those hoaxes in Fight Club), (2) It understands the art of
exploiting a vulnerability in the system for one's own advantage, similar to
parts of the hacker culture, (3) Also, it has a somewhat nihilist, post-
modernist component, sometimes artistic (The Game was popular on early 4chan:
once you remember playing it, you lose it), and (4), it reflects the worrying,
helplessness and alienating aspects of modern life, and as an entertainment
against them using humor and hate, then finally (5) a populist movement. It's
core logic is: everyone, look how evil/degenerate this thing/person is, the
justice needs to be done! Sometimes, it can be a legitimate popular movement
and serve the right purpose, e.g. Occupy Movement, but other times, it's just
a bunch of angry mobs lynching people. For example, a list of people on
Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Especially, when I grasped these points, I found things went pretty stupid
when, for example, the mainstream media started reporting Pepe the Frog as a
hate symbol in 2016. Yes, it has connections to reactionary political
movements, but itself is only a symbol of the trolling cultural. When the
media reports it, it actually gives it a platform of exposure, and encouraged
trolls to use it as a genuinely political symbol, and personally I think it
makes the issue worse.

What I'm trying to say is, to solve problems like this, we must study and
understand the entire machinery of it, including the underlying social-
economical basis of this conflict using sociology and psychology, and to
provide social solutions to the problem. However, the only proposal the
mainstream media (or us, as online members of online communities) has right
now is "Twitter and Facebook should ban hate speech", or "we should not feed
the trolls", which hardly touches deeper problems.

Also, when the important argument for Internet freedom is that they bring
democracy and equality no longer works, should the Internet be free and open?
Should we still protect and promote the freedom speech? I firmly believe the
answer must be YES. However, if we left these problems unaddressed and only
"ban them", the answer is going to be "no" soon.

Furthermore, I think that stochastic terrorism can not be 100% eliminated
without creating a police state, which is more harmful than a few terrorists.
Lone-wolf terrorism is a feature in modern life, we can only enhance our
understanding of sociology to partially reduce the harm.

P.S: Watch _Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex_ , its plot has a
surprising deep discussion of the consequences of a hyperconnected humanity,
meme culture and random terrorism is an important theme in the show, and
contains great inspirations.

\----

Appendix:

David Perell's excellent 13,000 word essay, "What the Hell is Going On?" [1],
examines and analyzes the current chaos in politics, business and education,
and concluded that it was caused by the transformation from a information-
deficient to a information-rich society, and has a similar argument just like
mine.

Also, if you want to understand more about the trolling culture and its
mechanism, I recommend "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the
Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture", by Whitney
Phillips, published by The MIT Press.

[1] [https://www.perell.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-going-
on](https://www.perell.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-going-on)

------
newshorts
I believe the solution is more systemic; part media, part economic:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordoliberalism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordoliberalism)

------
EdwardDiego
...how have things gotten objectively worse for young men?

~~~
skocznymroczny
It's very hard to find a partner nowadays. In the past, people dated within
the local community, so women were limited to their local dating pool. With
the advent of online dating, women can afford to be choosy and pick from guys
all over the country, if not even all over the world. As a result, many men
that would have found someone in the past are going to be lonely nowadays.

Now, the obvious reply to that is "but online dating is for men too, look at
all these guys meeting a different girl every day". This applies to a very
small minority of men. The confident, attractive types with great bodies. An
average woman will still get lots of attention on dating website and have a
lot of guys to pick from, an average guy won't really get any attention on
such websites.

~~~
stefco_
> This applies to a very small minority of men. The confident, attractive
> types with great bodies. An average woman will still get lots of attention
> on dating website and have a lot of guys to pick from, an average guy won't
> really get any attention on such websites.

I don't know where you live/what dating pool you have experience with, but
here are some contrasting anecdotal observations from NYC:

1) Straight women I know here get way more swipes than straight guys, but lots
of straight guys will swipe indiscriminately and immediately unmatch, or will
send extremely lazy or off-putting, salacious messages a ton of the time. It's
not everyone, but it's common enough to be extremely obnoxious and discourage
straight women from swiping right on guys or messaging them. They get more
swipes, but more of those are noise.

2) Straight guys will get way fewer matches, and straight women will tend not
to message them first/respond very often. This encourages some guys to swipe
indiscriminately (see above), though my straight guy friends who are more
measured have far more success.

3) Attractive/hip people tend to date each other. The hot guys aren't out
there dating less attractive women/taking them out of the dating pool for less
conventionally-attractive guys.

4) I've seen awkward, conventionally unattractive straight guys get tons of
dates online. It seems a bit harder than if they are conventionally
attractive, but none of them seem to have any trouble finding dates.

5) Some of my friends have unrealistic standards for their partners, whom they
expect to be more attractive, socially graceful, fashionable, intelligent,
and/or wealthy than themselves. These friends either reject everyone they
might have a chance with on dating sites or complain about their partners.

6) I've seen plenty of really hot women with homely men and vice versa in
couples I know. I can't say I've noticed that women have an easier time than
men "dating up" in terms of conventional attractiveness. It seems like
conventional attractiveness is just a starting point, but good presentation,
social graces, and wealth markers can push overall attractiveness arbitrarily
far in either direction.

It probably varies a lot from place to place, but in my slice of NYC, it's not
particularly dominated by conventional attractiveness, and overall outcomes
seem similar across genders (despite the swiping behavior differences noted at
first). Standards of conventional attractiveness also vary widely of course.

~~~
shubb
I don't know how far it generalises, but a lot of my early 30s female friends
complain about how hard it is to find a long term relationship.

Dates are easy to get, but explicitly looking for a long term thing puts off a
lot of guys because it's just not the expectation. There is pressure to hold
off on deep conversations or say you're just looking for fun when that really
isn't the case.

'sometimes I just tell the guy on the first date that I'm looking for someone
to settle down with. I've never gotten a second after that'

Getting ghosted by mr right for the twentieth time and wondering what is wrong
with you seems as self esteem destroying as not being able to get a date at
all.

I guess tinder just wrecked dating.

~~~
nfrbc
Funny thing: I've also heard the opposite complaint from a lot of people!

But it's true, most people really go to Tinder expecting only dating and one
night stands.

However, when you're upfront and tell guys you want to settle down you're
filtering them, so I guess it's working as intended?

Maybe putting that info in your profile would make it harder to get matches,
but at least you'll won't have bad surprises.

EDIT: Another choice is to just keep quiet during dates and probe the guys
subtly. Works for some people.

~~~
stefco_
Yeah, people who are completely direct about what they want in both their
profile and communications tend to have a much better time on apps. I try to
put things in my profile that will be charming to people I might like and
alienating to people I wouldn’t, and it works very well. You have to have some
standards and filter out obvious bad matches quickly. Since you’re not dating
in your social circles, you don’t have the advantage of a pre-vetted dating
pool, so you have to just recognize that most of the people you see won’t be a
good match at all.

------
rolltiide
Its a normal part of me looking up manifestos and videos that other media
sites dance around when I want to know what happened.

I'll browse a twitter thread for a good 30 seconds after being made aware of a
mass shooting, if everyone is congratulating each other for not saying
someone's name and not posting the gopro video I'll just go straight to 4chan
or 8chan.

------
patientplatypus
This is so weird for me. This keeps happening and I just don't get it.

The __chan* boards are still some of the few places on the internet for people
to actually _learn_ something. I went to university, but I feel I only got an
education when I started reading and 4chan.org/lit was where I went to learn.
This was in my mid-20s - this is where I learned about things like
Middlemarch, The Book of Disquiet, If On A Winters Night a Traveler, etc. This
([https://4chanlit.fandom.com/wiki/Recommended_Reading/sub](https://4chanlit.fandom.com/wiki/Recommended_Reading/sub))
is amazing and can be found nowhere else.

It's also an anonymous board with people who are quite clearly angry and in
pain. Since it's anonymous it prevents backlash for hateful ideologies, but it
also means that these people can't be found to be reached and helped. But
clearly, the solution can't be to allow hate to be public just to help the
haters. It's a sad catch-22.

~~~
faissaloo
I can relate to what you're describing, 8chan's /tech/ is the reason I picked
up C and am dabbling in a bit of Rust and how I learnt about free software and
Richard Stallman. You could literally just get rid of /pol/ and 8chan would be
measurably better, most non-/pol/acks hate them.

------
brynjolf
Reddit is also a big part of it but as long as Steve Huffman aka spez gets the
sweet money from Thiel he is fine with having lots of blood on his hands. He
probably is one of the godfathers of alt right now.

What is the blood of innocents worth when you can make money? Nothing.

