The New York Times - 06.08.2019

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2019 B1

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TECH ECONOMY MEDIA FINANCE

2 STOCKS & BONDS

The S&P 500 fell nearly 3

percent, the index’s biggest

loss of the year, as China lets

its currency tumble.

3 WORKPLACE

Senate Democrats urge

Google to convert thousands

of temps and contractors to

full-time employees.

7 SPORTS

Saying the ball feels different

this year, Masahiro Tanaka

of the Yankees is tinkering

with the grip on his splitter.

SAN FRANCISCO — Even before 8chan, the anony-

mous message board, went dark early on Monday

morning, the scramble to keep the site online had

begun.

The message board, which had hosted the anti-

immigrant manifesto of the man accused of the El

Paso shooting and the hateful messages of other at-

tackers, had gone down after Cloudflare, a security

company, decided it would no longer provide it with

its services. That left 8chan vulnerable to cyber-

attacks that could knock it offline. Another internet

firm, Tucows, which helps companies register their

web addresses, also pulled its support for 8chan on

Monday, leaving the message board without a func-

tioning web address.

To stay online, 8chan’s administrators raced to

find alternatives. They went to Epik, a technology

company that could help the site register its web ad-

dress again. Epik’s subsidiary, BitMitigate, could

UNSEEN NETWORKS

8chan’s Scramble

For Its Online Life

By KATE CONGER

and NATHANIEL POPPER

CONTINUED ON PAGE B4

Early Monday, 8chan, the anonymous message

board where the man accused of carrying out the

El Paso massacre posted his manifesto, went

offline.

The man most responsible for the outage wasn’t

Jim Watkins, 8chan’s owner, or his son Ronald, the

message board’s administrator.

Instead, the decision to take 8chan offline, at

least temporarily, fell largely to Matthew Prince,

the chief executive of the little-known San Fran-

cisco company Cloudflare.

Cloudflare provides tools that protect websites

from cyberattacks and allows sites to load content

more quickly. It is a critical tool for sites like 8chan

where extremists gather. Without the kind of

protection that Cloudflare offers, 8chan can be

barraged by automated, hard-to-prevent attacks

from its critics, making it nearly impossible to stay

online.

Mr. Prince has become an unlikely focal point

CONTINUED ON PAGE B4

THE SHIFT

Pulling the Plug

Wasn’t So Simple

By KEVIN ROOSE

When the most consequential law governing speech

on the internet was created in 1996, Google.com did-

n’t exist and Mark Zuckerberg was 11 years old.

The federal law, Section 230 of the Communica-

tions Decency Act, has helped Facebook, YouTube,

Twitter and countless other internet companies

flourish.

But Section 230’s legal protection has also ex-

tended to fringe sites hosting hate speech, anti-Se-

mitic content and racist tropes like 8chan, the inter-

net message board where the suspect in the El Paso

shooting massacre posted his manifesto.

The law shields websites from liability for content

created by their users, while permitting internet

companies to moderate their sites without being on

the hook legally for everything they host. It does not

provide blanket protection from legal responsibility

for some criminal acts, like posting child pornogra-

phy or violations of intellectual property.

Now, as scrutiny of big technology companies has

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Why Hate

Speech on the

Internet Is a

Never-Ending

Problem

A ‘Perk’ for Big Tech

Gets a Second Look

By DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI

Because this law shields it.

CONTINUED ON PAGE B5