8kun

*"It's not doing the world any good, It's a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there. And you know what? It's a negative to them, too. They just don't realize it." -Fredrick Brennan Founder of 8chan*

8kun is the current name for the apparent decedent of the 8chan server. This is where Q posting aggregator sites like qmap.pub and qanon.pub scrape their data. It isn't necessarily true that posts to these sites are actually canonical Q posts, given No outside comms. It was decreed on 8chan that there would be "NO comms made outside of this platform", it's debatable whether 8chan and 8kun are different platforms. The owner of 8chan Jim Watkins, and 8kun is clearly the same.

## History

### Beginnings

8chan the predecessor to 8kun was created by Fredrick Brennan after a psychedelic mushroom trip driven my increasing frustration towards moderation on 4chan with the goal of creating a message board with absolute free speech.[1] On key feature differentiating 8chan from 4chan and other message boards was the ability to create new boards whereas 4chan was limited to the ones created by its administrator Christopher "moot" Poole.

### Gamergate Controversy

In 2014 discussion Gamergate were banned from 4chan for violating the sites anti-harassment policies leading to a mass migration of users from 4chan over to 8chan increasing the traffic the site from 100 posts per day to over 5,000 posts per hour.[2] At the time Brennan welcomed the new users to the site looking to unseat 4chan as the largest image board.[3] The large increase in users lead to 8chan running up against its bandwidth limit and its offensive content lead ISP's remove it. At this time Jim Watkins offered to host the website through his company NT Technology and migrated Brennan to the Philippine through his company Race Queen to work on it.[4][5]In 2015 Brennan transferred the 8chan domain to Jim Watkins.

### Brennan's Departure

In 2016 Fredrick Brennan quit as administrator of 8chan but kept working for Jim Watkins on his other message board 2chan. He quit working for any of Jim's companies in December of 2018.[6] According to an episode of the Qanon Anonymous podcast he said he left due increasingly erratic and threatening behavior from Jim as well as a desire not to be associated with Q.[7]

### 2019 Mass Shootings

Since the influx of users from Gamergate 8chan had become a haven for its extreme user base including neo-nazi's and pedophiles. In 2019 this congregation of extremists lead to real world violence in a least three major mass shootings. The first of these mass shootings connected to 8chan was the March 15th Christchurch Mosque where an Australian white supremacist killed 51, prior to the attack he posted his manifesto on 8chan.[8]This was followed in April 27th by the Chabad of Poway shooting where the poster released a similar manifesto and claimed inspiration from both the Christchruch and the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting.[9]The Final mass Shooting was the August 3rd El Paso shooting who similar to the previous shooters posted a 4 page explanation of his actions.[10]

This lead Cloudflare to drop 8chan as a client removing their protection for DDoS attacks, though they still appear to provide services to other sites owned by Watkins. This ultimately killed the 8chan branding in it would not return for several months when it was rebranded as 8kun.[11]

### Revival as 8kun

8chan remained offline for several months unable to find server space, protection from DDoS attacks, or keep their site registered. During this period 8chan creator worked to keep the site down. Eventually the site rebranded with as 8kun a play on Japanese honorifics and was able to maintain some online presence, receiving internet security from VanwaTech and registering its domain with Eranet International Limited. Two key features where included in the relaunch as 8kun, the return of 8chan's tripcode system allowing verification for Q and migration of boards from 8chan to 8kun by emailing the sites administrator.