Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince announced in a blog post that the security services company plans to discontinue support for 8chan services at midnight tonight.
The company made the decision after federal authorities revealed that the main suspect in the shooting had written a 2,300-word manifesto on 8chan before carrying out the deadly attack. On Saturday, 20 people were killed when a 21-year-old opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
Noting previous attacks in Christchurch and Poway, California, where the suspects have been linked to 8chan, Matthew Prince said: “8chan has repeatedly been shown to be a place for hate speech.”.
8chan has been criticized in the past for not making any efforts to moderate the content posted on its site. In 2015, Google banned the site for sharing child pornography on its platform.
“The premise is simple: it has been proven that it is not a legitimate means and that lawlessness has caused many tragic deaths… 8chan has crossed that line.”
According to the blog post, Cloudflare has already notified 8chan that it will end support for its services. If 8chan doesn't find a security provider soon, the portal will be vulnerable to DDoS attacks that could lead to the site.
This isn’t the first time Cloudflare has taken down a website. In 2017, Cloudflare dropped “The Daily Stormer” for supporting white supremacy and allowing racist content. However, Matthew notes that the site was able to get back online soon afterswitching to another service.
"Today, the Daily Stormer is still available and disgusting. It's no longer a problem for Cloudflare, but it remains a problem for the Internet.".
