As of right now (August 2019), you can't find 8chan on Google (literally have to use a different search engine such as duckduckgo or qwant), and Cloudflare is terminating it as well, simply because a lot of criminals like to use the site, especially within the past year.
It doesn't make sense to do this. The site/owner isn't the one carrying out all of those shootings/attacks - the criminal is, so the criminal is who needs to be punished, not the site itself. Some good people use that site too, not just criminals/extremists.
Even ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have been blocking people from accessing these sites, which, again, doesn't make sense, since you could just use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to mask your IP (Internet Protocol) address and still access the site.
If these media outlets don't like 8chan, then don't use it. Plain and simple. Why censor it simply because you don't like it, or because bad people use it? Bad people use sites like 4chan and reddit too, and they also use discord and WhatsApp, yet nobody is hating on those sites and censoring them like crazy, although those sites may have more regulations on what you can post. I don't like the "boobie streamers" that plague Twitch TV, but that wouldn't mean that I could just call for that site to get censored, or a porn site.
I can understand censoring something that is straight-up illegal, such as child pornography, or doxxing, but as far as I'm aware, there has never been either of those on either 4chan or 8chan. The worst thing was only criminals talking about crime.
As scary as these websites are, I like them for the fact that you can read what real criminals and bad people have to say, understand their point of view, understand their side of things, understand the hatred that they have and how they feel, understand where their coming from, understand the kinds of things they say in their manifestos and how they make the choices that they make, understand why they do what they do and/or think what they think, and/or have some decent information from the criminal's perspective in order to form a solid and more accurate conclusion/opinion. It's good to have a basic understanding of how criminals think and act, and these sites allow people to have just that. Not only that, but websites like these are great for helping people understand the harsh nerve-racking truth about this world - that it is not a nice, happy, fantasy land - that it has a lot of scary things to it, and that many people have such dark and scary thoughts. These sites, however evil they may seem, allow people to write down their hatred and share it with those who are interesting in hearing their side of things.
Not all sites need to be like this, obviously. Most sites, even this one, will have strict rules on what you can post, in order to promote a friendly environment, and that's great. There are people that like themselves a little friendly environment, so they go to websites such as this, and at the same time, there are also people who may either find those friendly environments boring, or may be experiencing so much pain, hatred, and suffering in their lives that they need a site like 8chan to express their hatred without having to worry about getting immediately punished for it due to strict rules. Either way, there's a community-like site for everyone, and people are free to choose what kind of online environment they want to be in, whether's it a nice one with strict rules, or a much harsher one with less strict rules.
Instead of figuring out some more realistic ways of dealing with mass shootings, they're blaming random online forum websites, which are literally just large complex assortments of various "!DOCTYPE html" codes and programming. Censoring these sites most certainly will not deter these forms of crime in the slightest. Crime has existed for centuries, even before the internet became a thing, and it will continue to exist.
A better method of deterring crime is to have armed people there, ready to take the criminal down when he attacks. Police have proven to take way too long, way too often, to arrive during an attack, and by the time they get there, a bunch of people are already dead, so it's just better to have trained people who can deal with the criminal without having to wait for police. Most of these shooters are cowards who will only target people who they know are defenseless. Most of them want free, easy kills, and not fair fights against other armed people.
The absolute best thing that censoring these sites will accomplish, is that it would make a few butthurt people feel better about themselves.
I purposefully wrote this in the "Education" section of this forum and not "Politics" because we can learn something and potentially be educated about something, based on understanding criminals, and understanding their point of view.
