It's definitely an issue worldwide regardless of race, religion or gender and unfortunately no one has the answer. I don't know if 8chan going down really helps stop radicalization but I don't think it hurts. I also don't think it's an affront to free speech if a hosting provider stops doing business with them. If the US government started arresting posters on 8chan that's most definitely a concern but losing your Cloudflare service or hosting is not breaking any first amendment rights.

Not necessarily - more like taking the megaphone away. You're right that some/many will find a hub to congregate in, but if it's discoverable by the current 8chan users, there's no reason to think it won't be discoverable by media outlets/journalists either.

Like most things, obfuscation/suppression isn't going to solve the issue, but by providing spaces that allow for discussions, the views can be legitimised in the eyes of people who otherwise may not believe them. I'm for the most part against suppression of speech or views, but I do believe there is a line, and to me 4/8chan can (and do) regularly cross this line.

So the crime is mostly in allowing individuals to connect with other individuals interested in a particular topic.

In that case, isn't Google a far more reaching megaphone? One can find far more vicious communities through Google. I remember browsing through racist forums as a kid because a friend had found it on Google (presumably because he looked for it). The community in there certainly matched the worst 8chan boards in their belief and conviction in hateful ideals.

The only difference is 8chan is a neutral rank by popularity, while Google also filters by a user-supplied search string. The same type of communities can be found through both sites.

No, the megaphone was the site facilitating the discussion, not the ranking. In fact, by anonymising the discussion, they make it even more difficult to infer whether something is "groupthink" or just a lone spammer.

>In that case, isn't Google a far more reaching megaphone?

This is textbook whataboutism, but yes it is. That doesn't change the discussion in any way other than to attempt to muddy the discussion.

> . I remember browsing through racist forums as a kid because a friend

The internet has changed hugely in the last few years, and comparing what was on Google 10+ years ago doesn't compare to the discussions that are happening in other places today.

Nobody would call for Google to be shut down for the "evil" content they mirror and link to. We all have an implicit understanding that Google is simply a tool, a neutral platform to connect people to websites.

In fact, we believe the exact contrary. For us well educated folks, it's preventing access to Google on the basis of its content that is seen as a backward, deeply offensive move (China, Iran).

We look at the purpose and nature of the platform itself when we judge Google. Well, the purpose of 8chan has never been to promote hate, but instead to provide an open alternative to 4chan, where everyone is welcome to open a board about any topic[1].

The reason why 8chan is ridden by "evil" content has more to do with the heavily controlled state of the giant internet networks, than the nature of 8chan in itself. Nothing about 8chan caters to hateful communities in particular. It's simply one of the few open social networks on the web, which naturally attracts the people rejected from mainstream social networks first. Were it to be more popular, the ratio of "evil" to "decent" communities would trend towards the ratio found in other social networks.

So why do we call for it to be shut down, when its only real fault is to be too small? If you were the user of an 8chan community about cooking cupcakes (or furries, or BDSM), you certainly wouldn't want 8chan to be shut down just because some people are using the site differently.

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Now I don't disagree with the reality that intellectually vulnerable people can be influenced by hateful communities in sites like 8chan, and that this is a problem to solve.

But in my opinion, the solution is to go in the total opposite direction of what you propose. The urge to seek out and enter fringe communities is healthy, and at least a necessary step in one's intellectual development. People will from time to time look to escape out of controlled environments, into the bigger space of possibilities. This won't change for as long as we keep teaching kids that freedom is good.

The problem is that, as conventional social networks get more and more controlled, and havens of diversity suppressed (Tumblr, ...), the only remaining places of freedom are those where all the "evil" has been funneled in. That's how people wanting to escape oppression or simply discover new possibilities, get shoved in places where "evil" looks like the norm.

Therefore, the solution is not to shut down one of the last places of diversity on the internet, Instead, we should try to make diversity and openness of thought as widespread as possible, so that "evil" doesn't seem like the only option to a lost, vulnerable individual.

[1]: the Al-Jazeera documentary about its founder is pretty nice even if skewed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REnlB3631Nw

No free speech rights were trampled on, and no censorship took place.

"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government,[5] private institutions, and corporations."

This is the wikipedia definition of censorship, so that makes your definition wrong.

- did censoring 8chan significantly limit any sort of harmful behavior?

- is censoring 8chan "right"?

- does this merely hide the problem, preventing an open discussion?

- should CloudFlare, an entity with massive control of Internet infrastructure, really be acting as a moral arbiter? Or do we expect some kind of neutrality from them? Do our expectations matter?

The line isn't as clear when you generalize the action.

The notion that we could reach them on 8chan is a bit idealistic, the only thing we're able to reach is the manifestos within seconds of the news breaking as far as I can see. If your goal is to _reach_ them, then do it in reality.

I think it is rather strong[1] implied assumption here that places like 8chan can't change peoples' ideologies.

[1] If you ask me, the assumption is wrong.

Reddit found that banning hate subreddits reduced the overall usage of hate speech on the website. Even though the most dedicated users probably moved to voat, now some clueless kid who just wants to see look at memes is much less likely to just stumble upon that content.

You don't.