- Initially Mr. Brennan envisioned 8chan as a kind of amalgamation of the online communities built at Reddit and 4chan. In 2014, when 4chan moderators began removing threads relating to GamerGate—a grass-roots reaction against the perceived influence of liberal politics in the videogame industry that was widely seen as bullying and misogynistic—many of 4chan users fled to 8chan, Mr. Brennan said.
“I saw the GamerGate controversy as a way to expand 8chan,” he said. “I wanted to unseat 4chan and to me it didn’t matter how it happened.”
Will there ever be an end to the ripples in the Internet universe caused by Gamergate? We may never know.
- "A lot of these sites cause more misery than anything else.”
From the very get-go, the coders knew that censorship was nearly impossible so they espoused libertarian ideals that made censorship unnecessary. Then censorship became essential so they espoused libertarian ideals that made censorship useless. Then the shit hit the fan so they espoused libertarian ideals that made censorship regrettable. Then people died so they espoused remorse. History will not judge this era of programmer kindly. "Well shit I guess the nanny state was right all along," said every fucking apologia these shitstains leak outWill there ever be an end to the ripples in the Internet universe caused by Gamergate? We may never know.
Mr. Brennan describes himself as a lapsed libertarian with no fixed ideology. But he believes that there is no way to stop the toxic speech that has come to define the site without reshaping the internet more broadly. For that to happen, he says, the internet as a whole needs “to be totally redesigned and re-engineered with more censorship in mind.”