8chan: Extremist site blamed for far-right shootings goes offline

8chan, a website with posts that have been linked to a number of far-right shootings, has been taken off the internet.

The website is no longer available after being dropped by internet company Cloudflare, in the wake of a number of deadly shootings in the US.

In one of those shootings – when a man killed 20 people at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas – he appeared to have left behind a racist statement on 8chan. Among other things, the statement made reference to the Christchurch massacre, when the shooter also left behind a racist message on the site.

8chan had "repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate" and that it was no longer able to provide services to it, Cloudflare said.

Cloudflare is a web infrastructure company that provides the services that allow websites to stay online and accessible. As such, it is not responsible for the sites themselves, but gives them the tools to stay online.

The company said that it did "not take this decision lightly", and that generally it tries to provide its services to as many users as possible. In many cases it takes the decision to "reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible", but would not support "platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design", it said.

Cloudflare announced the decision in advance and said that the protections would come to an end at midnight pacific time, or 8am in the UK. When that time passed, the website went offline and it stays that way at the time of publication.

Matthew Prince, Cloudflare's CEO, said that it was unlikely that the site would stay offline forever.

"Unfortunately, we have seen this situation before and so we have a good sense of what will play out," he wrote, making reference to the site's decision to kick the Daily Stormer off its services.

"That caused a brief interruption in the site's operations but they quickly came back online using a Cloudflare competitor. That competitor at the time promoted as a feature the fact that they didn't respond to legal process.

"Today, the Daily Stormer is still available and still disgusting. They have bragged that they have more readers than ever. They are no longer Cloudflare's problem, but they remain the Internet's problem."

8chan's official Twitter account suggested that it would be trying to find a way to come back online. "There might be some downtime in the next 24-48 hours while we find a solution (that includes our email so timely compliance with law enforcement requests may be affected)," it wrote.