Cloudflare announced it will no longer provide its services to the anonymous online forum 8chan in the wake of the shooting in El Paso, Texas that killed at least 22 people.
Cloudflare provides a range of internet services including protection against cyberattacks to over 19 million properties.
El Paso Shooting Gunman Posted On 8chan Before Attack
Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a statement released on Sunday that the suspected terrorist gunman behind the El Paso shooting has been inspired by 8chan, which has become the go-to forum site for people who post racist and misogynist content.
Prince said that the gunman appears to have posted on 8chan before he attacked at the El Paso Walmart, killing and injuring people.
Cloudflare Terminates Service To 8chan Forum Site
After the attack, Prince said that Cloudfare will be terminating its service to 8chan and explained the online forum's role in perpetrating violence even if it did not violate the law in refusing to moderate what he described as "hate-filled community."
"The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths," Prince said.
Prince acknowledged that Cloudflare's move will not likely keep 8chan offline for long as the forum site could find another service provider. He nonetheless said that terminating Cloudflare's services to 8chan is the right thing to do.
Prince said Cloudflare will terminate its services to 8chan effective Aug. 5 midnight Pacific Time. The message board suffered intermittent outages after Cloudflare cut its services.
8chan Moves To Bitmitigate
8chan, however, was brought back online through Bitmitigate, 8chan administrator Ron Watkins said.
All our domains have been removed from cloudflare, so we will be moving to another service asap. Please excuse any downtime as we migrate to the new service. — Ron (@CodeMonkeyZ) August 5, 2019
Bitmitigate is a Seattle-based company that provides similar services to Cloudflare, such as providing protection against DDoS attacks, content delivery network, and DNS services. Unlike Cloudflare, however, BitMitigate has more liberal terms with its services.
