Jim Watkins, owner of the notorious online messaging site 8chan, says the site will stay offline until he talks to the the House Committee on Homeland Security, which requested he make an appearance in Congress to discuss the platform’s hateful content. There have been three mass shooters who have posted manifestos to the site before going on murder sprees, including the El Paso shooter this month. In response to erroneous news reports that stated a mosque shooting suspect in Norway had posted on the racist troll platform, Watkins uploaded a YouTube video calling criticism of 8chan “obviously a smear by the press” and saying “please don’t blame me.” On Aug. 5, Internet provider Cloudflare decided to stop working with 8chan and the site has been mostly non-functional ever since. In a posted statement, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince wrote that 8chan has “proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths.”
