I'm afraid that part is largely accurate. While 8ch administrators and global moderators did respond to reports of CP hosted on their site, they handled these reports on a largely reactive basis -- the anonymous-imageboard model used by the site made it impossible to block individual posters in any effective fashion, and I don't believe the site had any way to block specific files from being reposted.

> they handled these reports on a largely reactive basis

I don't see anything wrong with that considering the limited and volunteer-based resources they have. Youtube-style content ID pre-censoring built into everything shouldn't be a goal we're striving for.

> I'm afraid that part is largely accurate.

So it ran as a honeypot? I understand that 8chan wasn't hosted anonymously, the owners are known. If they provided a safe haven to child pornography, I assume law enforcement would put an end to that very quickly, especially with obvious and easy ways to apprehend the owners. They've been very active and successful in bringing down hidden services, it's not plausible that they looked the other way for a clearnet site.

> So it ran as a honeypot?

I don't think so. What seems more likely to me is that one or more of the following is the case:

1) The "fast-flux" nature of imageboards makes it difficult for law enforcement to effectively respond to illegal content hosted on them.

2) Deleting content upon reports places board administrators technically within the boundaries of the law.

3) The arm's-length separation between the owners of 8ch, the users who operate boards on the site, and the users who post content on the site allows the owners to claim a lack of responsibility for that content.

In that case, we're talking about something different though. Saying "they have CP" to mean "there is CP posted which then gets speedily removed by mods before LE can act on it" implies that AWS, Google, FB, Youtube etc also host child pornography. Certainly it will be uploaded and they will remove it.

Only when the platform embraces it does that statement make sense, which apparently 8chan did not if I understand you correctly.

Exactly how are they at fault for responding to the issue in the only way the site design can allow? Do you also blame Twitter for only banning people after they've posted something deemed to be breaking the rules? or that it takes 5 minutes to make a new account?

Unless you aren't attempting to imply anything about them being at fault. Although, as long as they are making that good faith effort to take down CP, they can't be taken down by the US govt at least.

The government sure got Backpage down quick and thoroughly.

It only took a decade for the government to get Backpage shut down...

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