4chan and 8chan are best known for their message boards that often serve as platforms for users to spread racist and extremist content. The boards are also routinely used as a landing site for content stolen from other outlets, such as videos from gaming sites and streaming services. (Ars also contacted all three sites for this story, but did not receive responses.)
Both 4chan and 8chan have been known to be used for the spread of doxing, an act where a person’s private information, such as an address or email address, is made public online. Twitter last year banned several accounts that had been doxing members of the media.
These two board platforms, along with Reddit, are the primary focus of this piece because they’re the biggest players in terms of the number of extremists that frequent the sites. It’s also notable that 4chan and 8chan, especially, allow users to remain anonymous and untraceable.
This dynamic is important to understand because it provides an avenue for users to disseminate extremist content and, when it hits mainstream media attention, allow them to continue to do so without being tracked down by law enforcement.
4chan has long been known as the birthplace of the “incel” movement—an online misogyny and hatred of women that seeks to blame them for sexual violence.
The incel message board on 4chan launched in 2012, according to a book published in 2013 by journalist Cathy Young, who is the author of “Cultures of Control: From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right.” The page, known as /incels, was created by a man known as “Violentacrez.”
Young wrote that Violentacrez was "an online troll famous for posting 'jailbait' (pre-teens), 'slut' (young women), 'race war' (white people), and (mostly non-white) 'c*ck shots' (penises)."
4chan users are often described as “doxing,” a process that can be used to “uncover the identity of people with controversial online histories,” according to a 2017 report by Citizen Lab, a project at the University of Toronto that monitors extremism online. In this way, the extremist message board serves as the birthplace of the doxing concept.
This can be done by using browser plugins that automatically generate IP addresses of users as they visit websites. The IP address can then be used to figure out a user’s general location, which can then allow a target to be identified, even if they don’t use any other identifying information. This information can also be used to find a user’s social media profile and then find their real name.
This type of targeting can be used for “doxxing” an individual or groups of people in ways that can lead to doxing sprees, which can take on many forms.
In the United States, the FBI is currently looking into the case of a former US law enforcement officer who is accused of killing a 19-year-old woman in Maryland this past February. The FBI believes that this killer, named Austin Helm, was inspired by what was happening on Reddit.
HuffPost has obtained a document that contains an internal FBI report dated February 2018, in which an agent told FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Jeff Sessions that the former law enforcement officer used reddit to discover his target. The reddit user was a former Marine who went by the username “Violentacrez,” which is a reference to the “incel” board.
“The Violentacrez profile in particular shows individuals who are also targets of interest,” the agent wrote. “These profiles are often highly sexualized and include violent and offensive language that serves to discredit the victims and make their exploitation of female Marines appear more natural.”
Other FBI documents that have surfaced since the first reported doxing reveal that the bureau “has been working to understand how the Violentacrez content was used in the Helm homicide.”
An FBI spokesman would not comment on the case or provide additional information.
While no one knows for certain what happened, the reported doxing could have played a part in this case, as well as others like it.
In recent months, there have been cases of an extreme activist group named The Red Elephant, a group dedicated to doxing people, in two different cities. The group has published public Facebook pages and YouTube videos in which they have published the identities and locations of individuals who are they feel are harming America or destroying its way of life.
The videos show that the individuals they attack are often targeted because of their political ideologies or positions on topics such as illegal immigration, guns or Islam.
"Every time you attack a politician, an activist, an institution, an organization or a business for whatever reason, be it race, gender or sexual orientation; be it a personal vendetta; you've doxed them," the group said in a YouTube video that was posted in June. "You've put their address and their family members’ address in a database that can now be used to get you home addresses."
Because of the anonymity of these doxing platforms, anyone can be a target.
Users can often be found trolling on 4chan to figure out where someone is located and then doxing them using other accounts.
Justin Noetzel, a former member of 4chan and a contributor to the site, said that it's clear that 4chan's anonymity can come back to haunt them.
"In many cases, 4chan posters, by virtue of being anonymous, don’t realize just how much collateral damage they cause to their targets," he told Ars. "I've gone through cases where people have suffered greatly from their actions. It really is a two-way street."
The doxing aspect of 4chan, along with the site's long history of hate speech, are two major factors that led to FBI intervention in December, when the bureau announced that it was investigating 4chan and 8chan.
The Justice Department went further in February and said that it would work with state and local law enforcement to determine if there are any violations of criminal law related to these platforms.
This is something that the tech companies have been pushing for.
In its March letter to the companies, the FBI said that it had received information from a number of law enforcement and intelligence officials about extremists using these message boards to post material promoting violence, “intimidate individuals, and incite and encourage violence.”
This type of targeting can lead to extremist plots where, as one example, a user of 4chan is encouraged to kill a prominent Democratic representative by posting their home address online, or when a politician who opposes immigration policies is threatened with violence.
According to multiple sources, there was at least one instance where a major technology company called 4chan.
Facebook and Twitter have been working with federal agencies to identify extremists who may be using their platforms to dox people.
These conversations have led to Twitter banning some users from its site in the past year. Facebook has also banned far-right personalities, but Twitter and Facebook are not known for banning users based on their views, according to critics.
The companies have also worked with groups in Congress and police to identify extremists, according to a June report from the New York Times. This includes working with law enforcement agencies in the United States, Great Britain and Canada.
These types of actions are also being pursued abroad. The British government in November announced that it had found and removed hundreds of accounts that were believed to be engaged in promoting extremist views.
The companies are also trying to get around this issue with a new technology designed to identify potential threats. The new technology is in private beta and is being tested by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft.
This tool analyzes words, phrases, and images that may signal a potential threat.
According to Ars Technica, the technology flags thousands of reports each day and compares them to existing databases of extremist groups and their associated content. If an item doesn’t seem to have any previous connection to extremism, the system alerts law enforcement, so that it can investigate.
"The more technology develops, the more ways that people who wish to do harm can seek to do so," said Noetzel, the former 4chan user who is also a contributor to Ars Technica. "It may seem like overkill to be getting alerts on a regular basis, but it is all about being able to adapt quickly and get ahead of bad guys. The more you have in place the more likely you are to spot people who may be planning attacks and be able to deal with them in an appropriate way."
We have also reached out to the three large tech companies. Twitter declined to comment on the record. Facebook told Ars that it would be sharing more details about the efforts at its public policy summit in the US this week. The company said that it would update this article with more information after the event. Microsoft did not comment.
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