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Cloudflare cuts off extremist site 8chan after multiple shootings

Cloudflare, an online infrastructure service that helps websites mitigate DDoS attacks. Cloudflare has announced that it will no longer provide security services to the far-right site 8chan following the deadly, mass shooting by a white nationalist in El Paso, Texas.

Cloudflare has been reluctant to pull its services from extremist websites, citing free speech issues. One of the few times it has notably done so in the past, it ended support for another white extremist site, the Daily Stormer.

8chan’s original founder, Fredrick Brennan, who is no longer connected with the site, asked Cloudflare to terminate its services to 8chan.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said that pulling support from websites doesn’t solve the underlying problem, though. “While removing 8chan from our network takes heat off of us, it does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online,” he said in a blog post. He noted that “today, the Daily Stormer is still available and still disgusting. They are no longer Cloudflare’s problem, but they remain the Internet’s problem.” As of this writing, 8chan is now unavailable.

Saturday’s shooting in El Paso, where at least 20 people were killed and two dozen injured, is the third mass shooting linked to both 8chan and white nationalist ideology this year. The first, in Christchurch, New Zealand, brought the fringe website into the mainstream discussion back in April.

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