Speaker 1: Hello everybody. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: the podcast where every week we talk about the worst
Speaker 1: people in all of history, and today we have a
Speaker 1: very special episode. Today we're talking about the man keeping
Speaker 1: eight chan alive, or at least trying to fellow named
Speaker 1: Jim Watkins Um And I should probably summarize from my
Speaker 1: listeners who have not somehow caught this story, even though
Speaker 1: I've covered it pretty heavily. All of twenty nineteen, a
Speaker 1: chant was started as a radical free speech bashion on
Speaker 1: the Internet and kind of the the the image of
Speaker 1: a site called four chan. One of its sections, Pole
Speaker 1: became a high of about right Nazism and gradually grew
Speaker 1: dedicated to inspiring acts of terrorism. In March of this year,
Speaker 1: one of the members of Pole live streamed video of
Speaker 1: himself massacring Muslims and mosques in New Zealand. This was
Speaker 1: the christ Church massacre. I'm sure everybody heard of that.
Speaker 1: Since then, eight chan members carried out two more shootings
Speaker 1: in Pawe and El Paso before the site was pulled
Speaker 1: off the Internet, and the weeks since there's been one
Speaker 1: more shooting in Hall, Germany, which was eight out by
Speaker 1: another poster from Pole. The website is currently down, but
Speaker 1: it's new owner, in the subject of today's episode, Jim Watkins,
Speaker 1: is working tirelessly to bring it back online. But before
Speaker 1: we get to Jim, we should probably talk about the
Speaker 1: elephant of the room, which is the fact that my
Speaker 1: guest today, Frederick Brennan, is the creator of eight chan
Speaker 1: in the first place, back in two thousand thirteen. Hello Frederick, Hello,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today? I'm doing, you know, as
Speaker 1: good as could be, uh expected? Yeah, this is uh,
Speaker 1: this is an entry, an odd episode. I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: one I I didn't expect to record. Um, but you
Speaker 1: and I have started working together a little bit over
Speaker 1: the last couple of weeks. We just put out an
Speaker 1: article in Belling Cat about the state of California's failure
Speaker 1: to bring eight chan back on, and you've you've become
Speaker 1: pretty pretty much an activist against the site's resurrection. I
Speaker 1: think it'd be fair to say, sure, yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be fair. Um. So again, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners, you've done a lot of interviews before, so
Speaker 1: I don't want to go too crazy into detail on
Speaker 1: on you know, your whole back story, because people can
Speaker 1: find plenty of that if they want to. But for
Speaker 1: the sake of making this whole episode internally consistent, could
Speaker 1: you like kind of walk us through a little bit
Speaker 1: of your background up to like what kind of inspired
Speaker 1: you to create eight chan in the first place? Right, So,
Speaker 1: you know, I was an image board user for a
Speaker 1: very long time, starting in UM when I was twelve
Speaker 1: years old on four Chuan. So obviously that's a great
Speaker 1: place to spend your teenage years there, there's um no
Speaker 1: problem with that at all. So obviously, you know, it
Speaker 1: kind of warps how you think about, you know, broader
Speaker 1: society and yourself and all sorts of things because you
Speaker 1: spend all your time in anonymous communication basically, UM, I
Speaker 1: you know, had been involved in fortune for those years.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand and ten, when four tans owner
Speaker 1: removed the board that would later become the poll board,
Speaker 1: it used to was originally called and for News, So
Speaker 1: he removed that, and he also removed the R nine
Speaker 1: k board. It just turned out that those were the
Speaker 1: two boards that I at that time at least was
Speaker 1: using the most. So and what was our nine kuh
Speaker 1: robot nine thousand, I don't know where that name really
Speaker 1: comes from. I do know that the original intent of
Speaker 1: our nine k was that you couldn't make the same
Speaker 1: post twice, meaning if anybody had ever posted something, it
Speaker 1: couldn't be posted again. That was the original intention, right
Speaker 1: it started me, I suppose, but it quickly just turned
Speaker 1: into uh a very sad, very kind of depressing word
Speaker 1: to be honest, because because people couldn't really repost memes,
Speaker 1: you know, they would mostly just tell stories about their life,
Speaker 1: and the images they would post would tend to be
Speaker 1: because they wouldn't want to get muted by the automoderator
Speaker 1: that will not allow you to post the same thing twice,
Speaker 1: So they would tend to post, you know, stories about
Speaker 1: their life, stories about things that had happened. And given
Speaker 1: that we were all you know, image board users, teenagers
Speaker 1: that were most likely socially awkward, you know, the stories
Speaker 1: quickly all became depressing. Um. Wizard chan grew out of
Speaker 1: R nine K, as did I would say a lot
Speaker 1: of the modern cell. Now would you would you explain
Speaker 1: what wizard chan is because this is we're getting into
Speaker 1: some deep Internet lore um that I am most most
Speaker 1: people aren't familiar with. So there's four chan and eight
Speaker 1: chan the sites that I would say that most I
Speaker 1: guess news conscious Americans would know, right, But there's all
Speaker 1: these other smaller chance like the one you just covered
Speaker 1: earlier today for Bellancare you know, do googla chant in
Speaker 1: Brazilian in Brazilian Portuguese. So there's all these other chance
Speaker 1: because especially before, they weren't that hard to set up,
Speaker 1: you know, there weren't really that many people trying to
Speaker 1: take them down. UM, So any any ciss admin with
Speaker 1: a little bit of experience could set up one of
Speaker 1: these chans. And that was how wizard chan started. I
Speaker 1: didn't start it, as has been reported by a few.
Speaker 1: It started I think around two thousand twelve, and the
Speaker 1: guy who started it was UM basically kicked out for
Speaker 1: being UM. The idea of wizard chan is that all
Speaker 1: the posters are going to be male virgins. So the
Speaker 1: original creator was kicked out, uh for having a homosexual relationship.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say that came to light, so
Speaker 1: he had to retire. UM. I took it over and
Speaker 1: then I eventually, you know, would have a relationship with
Speaker 1: a woman, so I had to give it up. The
Speaker 1: next person it went to, I think they UM, I
Speaker 1: think they committed suicide, but nobody's really sure. And now
Speaker 1: I think it's on its fourth or fifth or it
Speaker 1: could even be sixth. Owner I haven't really been keeping
Speaker 1: tracks we were talking about is very different, it seems,
Speaker 1: or at least in my understanding, from like the in
Speaker 1: cell community, because it's not like this um conspiratorial like
Speaker 1: I haven't gotten laid because women are evil sort of thing.
Speaker 1: It's more like a kind of a support system like I.
Speaker 1: I guess what you could Yeah, what you could say
Speaker 1: is that these community grew into the modern in cell community.
Speaker 1: For sure, are nine K wizard Chan, all of them
Speaker 1: grew into what we see today as like the modern
Speaker 1: in sales. I suppose, I don't you know, certainly there
Speaker 1: were a lot of toxic users when I was wizard
Speaker 1: Chan's admin for that short period it I didn't even
Speaker 1: make it a year. Um Certainly there were a lot
Speaker 1: of toxic users. There were a lot of suicides, at
Speaker 1: least four in the time that I was admin, and
Speaker 1: you could see the beginning of toxicity beginning to um start.
Speaker 1: Because after there were so many suicides, I put up
Speaker 1: a suicide hotline from multiple countries, and that started to
Speaker 1: become very controversial, and that was one reason that I
Speaker 1: was very disliked among the users, because they said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no way that Norman can ever understand us, so
Speaker 1: us calling a suicide helpline is the worst advice you
Speaker 1: could give. Basically, that was their whole spiel. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a very dark time. Um, Like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't create it, and I only lasted in its
Speaker 1: administration for a year. The skills that I learned, you know,
Speaker 1: definitely informed h JAM, you know, the skills with the
Speaker 1: image board software, the administration, what to do about, you know,
Speaker 1: certain types of attacks that were kind of in their
Speaker 1: infancy at that time. UM. Yeah, this is getting us
Speaker 1: a little bit off topic, but I'm really fascinated by
Speaker 1: the general subject of kind of how the internet went
Speaker 1: from where it was when uh I was younger, a
Speaker 1: teenager and like where it was when you were a teenager,
Speaker 1: to like where what we're dealing with right now. Um,
Speaker 1: and I like, definitely you have some pieces of that puzzle.
Speaker 1: I think everybody who was extremely on online in the
Speaker 1: late nineties fly two thousand halfs just for the sake
Speaker 1: of number one. Since you talked about like kind of
Speaker 1: your background here, I'll give it a little bit of
Speaker 1: my own. I grew up on something awful on those forums,
Speaker 1: which kind of gave birth to four chan in a way,
Speaker 1: because Moot, the guy who founded four chan. Um, I
Speaker 1: think got Piste off at the moderation of something awful
Speaker 1: for being too strict right the same story as me. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And Christopher thought that there's something awful mods are too
Speaker 1: stricts starts four chan, and I think Christopher pools so
Speaker 1: I started, Yeah, there's a lot of that actually later
Speaker 1: in this story to um. It's very circular. But you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that always struck me. I got
Speaker 1: banned from something awful when I was younger for I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's probably fifteen or sixteen, and I said
Speaker 1: something racist. I don't even remember what it was, but
Speaker 1: they would ban you for that and it costs you
Speaker 1: ten dollars when you got banned. And it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that something awful forums are still around today,
Speaker 1: there's still not a complete toxic pile of like, uh, radicalism. Um,
Speaker 1: it really all you need is a little bit of
Speaker 1: of like I went back and forth on this myself
Speaker 1: as a young man, because I had this period where
Speaker 1: I was like a kind of very absolutist on the
Speaker 1: free speech issue, and I'm still not super far from that,
Speaker 1: but I have come to the conclusion that if you
Speaker 1: want these communities to not be toxic, you have to
Speaker 1: draw some lines, like you really do you have to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: well you can't be a Nazi. We're not going to
Speaker 1: have that here. I definitely understand, and you can actually
Speaker 1: see a little bit of how um, something awful kind
Speaker 1: of informed four Chance because a lot of these rules
Speaker 1: against being racist are actually applied to of four Chance boards.
Speaker 1: The thing that Christopher Pool changed is that Okay, he
Speaker 1: made it so that he created a few boards you know,
Speaker 1: be in particular, but then later also the end and
Speaker 1: then the pool where you could be a racist. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like he opened the door to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of interesting lessons for the future and
Speaker 1: their people take them. But we should continue with the story.
Speaker 1: So around two thirteen, uh is when you coded a
Speaker 1: chan you want to I mean that that's a story
Speaker 1: that involves drugs for one thing, which I know my
Speaker 1: audience will like and I always like to hear. So
Speaker 1: if if you don't mind. You can give the cliffs
Speaker 1: notes of that one. Yeah, so you know, I was
Speaker 1: on a drug trip at the time. Um, for me,
Speaker 1: it's like I keep repleting one small part of that
Speaker 1: drug trip, which you know it later turned out to
Speaker 1: define a big part of my life. But you know,
Speaker 1: and I think back to that drug part drug trip,
Speaker 1: I should say it was just like one small moment
Speaker 1: in a bigger experience. But anyway, I was kind of
Speaker 1: still really high, but like over the peak, I guess
Speaker 1: you could say. And I was on the computer, and
Speaker 1: I was screwing around on four Chan, which was normal
Speaker 1: for me in you know, I had kind of at
Speaker 1: that time forgiven Pool because he put our nine k
Speaker 1: and uh he added a new board which was at
Speaker 1: the time called Pool. So even though I wasn't very
Speaker 1: happy that he didn't add the board back as news
Speaker 1: and that it was a pink board now and not
Speaker 1: a blue board, I know that that might be basically
Speaker 1: it was not safer work versus safer work, right, that's
Speaker 1: the only different right. So But anyway, you know, I
Speaker 1: decided to just let bygones be bygones. And I was
Speaker 1: using four channel a lot at the time, and I
Speaker 1: just decided or I just started thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: my experience as being a wizard Chad's admin in the
Speaker 1: past at that time, and all these other smaller image
Speaker 1: board communities, and I just thought, you know, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be great if, like Reddit, the users of these image
Speaker 1: boards could decide the boards and not the admin, right like,
Speaker 1: because I felt like the main problem at that time
Speaker 1: was the admin of four Chune was unaccountable and he
Speaker 1: could just add and remove boards, and a board could
Speaker 1: be requested for years by many users and he won't
Speaker 1: add it just because he doesn't personally see the appeal
Speaker 1: or doesn't like it. So that's kind of why I
Speaker 1: decided to start h H. And I figured, you know,
Speaker 1: Reddit works, and it works for Reddit, so why couldn't
Speaker 1: it work for uh eight chan, I suppose. So it
Speaker 1: was essentially like this desire to like hybridize Reddit in
Speaker 1: eight chan and make a place where the users would
Speaker 1: have even more control over the structure of the community
Speaker 1: and what was said there and the right and and
Speaker 1: and one really weird part of this story is that
Speaker 1: like there's there's like, you know, eight chan, which was
Speaker 1: very different than what we now what we know in
Speaker 1: especially you know, yeah, yeah, where basically, yeah, basically, nothing
Speaker 1: is really set in stone until gamer Gate. You know,
Speaker 1: there's really no community. And a few months after I
Speaker 1: started eight chan and nobody was using it, I just figured,
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of failed, but it's still it's
Speaker 1: still a cool technical demo. So I'll leave it online.
Speaker 1: I'll put it on my resume, air portfolio or whatever,
Speaker 1: and that'll be it. You know, I was kind of
Speaker 1: very surprised by, uh, gamer gate type thing. I didn't
Speaker 1: I wasn't really expecting it. Yeah, And so gamer Gate,
Speaker 1: for our listeners that don't know, was, uh, it's one
Speaker 1: side would say it was about ethics and video game journalism.
Speaker 1: The other side would say it was a harassment campaign
Speaker 1: against primarily female video game journalists. Um, it was this
Speaker 1: big social movement on the Internet that was fairly reactionary
Speaker 1: and kind of fed into and was manipulated by guys
Speaker 1: like Steve Bannon, guys like Milianopolis, and kind of metastasized
Speaker 1: into large chunks of what we started calling the alt
Speaker 1: right in two thousand sixteen. I think that that's kind
Speaker 1: of a succinct way of describing gamer Gate, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, gamer Gate it's one of its big organizing places.
Speaker 1: Initially was on four Chan, and when the harassment of
Speaker 1: some of these women journalists got too serious, they were
Speaker 1: kicked off of four Chan and migrated to eight chan.
Speaker 1: And that's really what grew it into like started the
Speaker 1: process of it attracting enough people to really grow into
Speaker 1: a large site. Right. And that's exactly or almost exactly
Speaker 1: where Jim Watkins comes into the picture, because yeah, that
Speaker 1: is exactly where and this is where we should get
Speaker 1: into the actual written article that I had. And I'm
Speaker 1: before you start, it's like, I'm not trying to minimize
Speaker 1: my own involvement. You know, my deciding to allow han
Speaker 1: to be a place where anybody could post anything that
Speaker 1: was legal was not smart. You know. I was very
Speaker 1: young and naive, you could say that, but I it
Speaker 1: wasn't smart. It was probably wrong, you know, it was
Speaker 1: wrong to start h han when I had basically no experience,
Speaker 1: instead of looking to what had happened in the past. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: But I really feel that the reason it's more about
Speaker 1: Jim Watkins is because he was an older man who
Speaker 1: had been doing this for many, many years, and he
Speaker 1: kind of just for me, was somebody that represented it's
Speaker 1: all okay because Jim says it's okay, or it's all
Speaker 1: okay to do this because Jim is even taking legal liability,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So I want to there's
Speaker 1: a couple of things I want to get into so
Speaker 1: that will make a little more sense. Is Number one,
Speaker 1: how how old are you when you start this site?
Speaker 1: So you're you're you're I mean, you're a kid. I
Speaker 1: think we can all agree nineteen year olds, they're legally adults,
Speaker 1: but you're a kid at nineteen. Um, it's a very
Speaker 1: that's a very young person. Uh. This site explodes in
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen. It gets expensive to run, it
Speaker 1: gets to be a gigantic time sync to keep online.
Speaker 1: And Jim Watkins a millionaire with a business network overseas.
Speaker 1: And we'll get into Jim in a little bit here
Speaker 1: and explain where he comes from. But this millionaire business
Speaker 1: owner comes in and says, I'll buy the site and
Speaker 1: I'll keep it online, and I will give you a
Speaker 1: job if you keep it running in our the face
Speaker 1: of this company. That's essentially the deal, Yes, essentially, And
Speaker 1: you know, had he not showed up, it would have
Speaker 1: probably totally disintegrated. There's one other thing I want to ask,
Speaker 1: because you mentioned it is sort of like this decision
Speaker 1: to allow anything as long as it's legal on eight chan. Um,
Speaker 1: was there a moment where you were first sort of
Speaker 1: confronted by you know, the Nazi ship and and had
Speaker 1: to kind of was that a debate you had with
Speaker 1: yourself or was it kind of present enough for in
Speaker 1: the beginning that when you decided to kind of let
Speaker 1: the community continue, you were deciding to accept that as
Speaker 1: part of it. You know. The weird thing is four
Speaker 1: chan itself kind of evolved, I guess you could say
Speaker 1: on this, and I felt that because four chune was
Speaker 1: a much more popular site. I really felt at the
Speaker 1: time that I couldn't disallow anything that four channel allowed
Speaker 1: because I wouldn't be able to correct users that way.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I was right about that, but
Speaker 1: that's how I felt. And four chune at the time,
Speaker 1: like I said, they delete did the and board for
Speaker 1: news and then they brought it back as politically incorrect,
Speaker 1: And I I believe that small cues like that to
Speaker 1: users really matter. Like they could have called it poll
Speaker 1: for politics that would have been just as acceptable, right,
Speaker 1: But Pool decided to call it politically incorrect. So it
Speaker 1: seemed to me at the time like he wanted to
Speaker 1: attract all of the real far right Nazi people to
Speaker 1: that board, and the theory is that it would be
Speaker 1: like a containment board, like he will contain them in
Speaker 1: this politics board, this politically incorrect board. So you know,
Speaker 1: it was it wasn't really a debate for me because
Speaker 1: I would just argue it to myself and others as well,
Speaker 1: how can you say that h n can't have a
Speaker 1: poll board when four chun does. You know, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: shitty and it's very much all about practicality, but that
Speaker 1: that would be how I would explain it to you
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, And it's you know, I understand
Speaker 1: there's probably gonna be people listening to this, UM who
Speaker 1: don't think that I'm grilling you enough on the moral
Speaker 1: questions on this, And I want to say here, that's
Speaker 1: partly because I've been watching what you've been doing over
Speaker 1: the last three or four months, UM, and how much
Speaker 1: effort you've put into keeping this site offline. And it's
Speaker 1: partly because when I was eighteen nineteen years old, I
Speaker 1: held a lot of political beliefs and beliefs about the
Speaker 1: nature of you know, free speech and stuff like that
Speaker 1: that I do not currently hold. And I said things
Speaker 1: that I regret now and that I wouldn't say now.
Speaker 1: And I think most people have something like that. We
Speaker 1: just didn't know how to code image boards and have
Speaker 1: an idea to make one. Um. So it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where I think it is important for you
Speaker 1: to like take stock of your your part and all
Speaker 1: this and and and regret making the site. Um. But
Speaker 1: I also think it'd be unreasonable for someone who expect
Speaker 1: you to wear a hair, especially since you were out
Speaker 1: of the picture by the time people started getting shot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: far out of the picture. Yeah yeah, So um we
Speaker 1: should we should, We should get into Jim Watkins's story
Speaker 1: well before we get into gym story. It's actually a
Speaker 1: time for a really awkward ad pivot, uh now, Frederick.
Speaker 1: Sometimes when I do one of these ad pivots, I
Speaker 1: will let my my guests suggest a random product that
Speaker 1: they just think people should buy. Do you have any
Speaker 1: random products you would like people to buy or you'd
Speaker 1: like concepts were you know, concepts are products you know. Um,
Speaker 1: I have really been enjoying recently Bluetooth speakers. There's so
Speaker 1: much more fun than um those little headphone things that
Speaker 1: always fall out of your ears and hurt your ears,
Speaker 1: at least for me may because my ear canals are
Speaker 1: not the right shape. So I have been putting them everywhere. Um,
Speaker 1: it's becoming a bit of a problem. Oh I have
Speaker 1: one in my Yeah, I have a few in my
Speaker 1: a few in my m condo where I live, a
Speaker 1: few in my car. You know. Uh, I've even been
Speaker 1: thinking of like putting them like in the bathroom and
Speaker 1: just playing constant. You know, I don't know. Elevator music.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, that's my product. I I feel
Speaker 1: the same way. I love sitting outside having a campfire
Speaker 1: with a Bluetooth speaker listening to rap music. It's a
Speaker 1: great way to spend a Thursday night. Um, so buy
Speaker 1: Bluetooth speakers, fill your house with them, and fill your
Speaker 1: house with these other products that actually paid our show something.
Speaker 1: We're back all right, So uh we've gotten through kind
Speaker 1: of the background here. Um, and uh, the situation that
Speaker 1: we've moved up to is like you've you've built this website.
Speaker 1: It's big, it's increasingly influential, and it's increasingly expensive and
Speaker 1: a gigantic pain, and he has to keep online. There's
Speaker 1: clearly a ticking clock on how long a chan can
Speaker 1: last if you alone continue to on it. And into
Speaker 1: this situation steps a man named Jim now James Arthur
Speaker 1: Watkins was born in Dayton, Washington on November twenty, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four. He was raised on a family farm out
Speaker 1: in Muktio or Mukidio, Washington. People are gonna yell at
Speaker 1: me from getting this wrong Muktio Washington. Uh so out
Speaker 1: in the country. He's a he's a farm boy. His
Speaker 1: mother worked for Boeing and his father worked for the
Speaker 1: local phone company. Now, growing up in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: James didn't have a history with computers, obviously because it
Speaker 1: was the sixties and seventies and very few people did.
Speaker 1: Um And he joined the U. S. Army when he
Speaker 1: was eighteen in nineteen eighty two. He was eventually provoted
Speaker 1: to the rank of sergeant first class, and he spent
Speaker 1: most of his time in the service working as an
Speaker 1: attack helicopter mechanic and later as a military recruiter. So
Speaker 1: he's he's a pretty long career in the army. Actually,
Speaker 1: um Amy would give James his first experience with computers
Speaker 1: late in his service. In the nineteen nineties, they sent
Speaker 1: Jim who a tech focused school in Virginia where he
Speaker 1: got a crash course in the gadgets that would later
Speaker 1: dominate the world and his life. Now. I can't speak
Speaker 1: to Jim's overall technical competence, but it seems clear that
Speaker 1: he at least immediately understood how influential the Internet was
Speaker 1: quickly going to come to be um recognized that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what he wanted, that's the business he wanted to
Speaker 1: be in. I can speak to it. He's not necessarily
Speaker 1: great with computers. He understands networking very well though, and
Speaker 1: he understands like all of the domain registrar. He understands
Speaker 1: basically a lot of the stuff that keeps him from
Speaker 1: being deep platforms. Like he's really good with networking. But
Speaker 1: he's definitely not a programmer, no, And I think he's
Speaker 1: more a guy who underlike gains kind of a basic
Speaker 1: technical understanding of what the Internet is at a stage
Speaker 1: when the Internet is still pretty young, and I think
Speaker 1: he realizes that it's going to be huge, and that
Speaker 1: there's going to be a funck load of money and
Speaker 1: in figuring out to use right um. And he was
Speaker 1: one of the first people to really capitalize on a
Speaker 1: very specific part of the Internet, pornography. UH. In the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen nineties, while he was still in the military,
Speaker 1: he launched a website called Asian Bikini Bar, which he
Speaker 1: would later describe as one of the largest video streaming
Speaker 1: adult websites in the world. So that's very classy, um,
Speaker 1: but legal. I've never heard any allegations that it involved
Speaker 1: anything underage or anything like that. Um so oh no.
Speaker 1: But but one thing you should be aware of and
Speaker 1: that all your listeners should be aware of. One thing
Speaker 1: that Jim was very clever about very early in his
Speaker 1: career is he realized that the Internet, one of the
Speaker 1: main ways that you can make money with it is
Speaker 1: by taking advantage of different jurisdictions. So you can do
Speaker 1: something legal in one jurisdiction that's illegal in another, and
Speaker 1: market it to the jurisdiction where it's illegal. So that's
Speaker 1: the main way that these businesses made money. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were in Japanese and but hosted from the United States,
Speaker 1: So basically they were porn websites in the United States
Speaker 1: that didn't have to follow Japan's censors censorship laws around pornography. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was exactly what I was about to get into
Speaker 1: because Japan's no no, no, no, no, You're doing great.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I think it might surprise people because like
Speaker 1: Japan's reputation in America there involves a lot of like lascivious,
Speaker 1: nous pornography and what because that's what gets across the
Speaker 1: Internet to US, but especially back in the nineties, they
Speaker 1: had really strict laws. Um so yeah, exactly like you said, Jim,
Speaker 1: sites were hosted in the US, but they were in
Speaker 1: Japanese and the goal was allowing Japanese people to access
Speaker 1: and share pornography without getting censored. So uh, there's actually
Speaker 1: a fun quote from Jim's current business partner, a guy
Speaker 1: named Tom right l am I pronouncing it right? Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've met this guy multiple times. Yeah, and we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about him a number of times in the article. Um,
Speaker 1: but this is a quote from him talking to Splinter News.
Speaker 1: In two thousand sixteen, they figured out a loophole in
Speaker 1: Japanese censorship rules. Adult material in Japan has to be censored,
Speaker 1: but Japanese people could access content that resides outside of Japan. Bingo.
Speaker 1: The work we did in the following years was really
Speaker 1: just marketing uncensored Japanese content to users in Japan. So
Speaker 1: I this is a story that I think Jim and
Speaker 1: the people around him like to tell a lot. It's
Speaker 1: clearly something he's proud of, like figuring out this loophole
Speaker 1: and building a business around. Yes. Yeah, they really feel
Speaker 1: like this makes them sound very clever, and they love
Speaker 1: they love telling it to everybody who will listen, especially
Speaker 1: libertarian minded people. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing speaking as
Speaker 1: a recovering libertarian, there's nothing libertarians like more than a
Speaker 1: story of getting one over on a government. Um. I'm
Speaker 1: not all the way over that, but I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it's entirely a bad thing. Um, but in this case,
Speaker 1: always we'll call it a neutral thing. Uh Now. Um,
Speaker 1: Watkins ran his first porn side. Like I said, Well,
Speaker 1: he was still employed as an army recruiter, which makes
Speaker 1: him one of the least shady army recruiters in the
Speaker 1: history of the service. Um he told them that was
Speaker 1: a joke from my army friends there. Um he told
Speaker 1: the joke the army that he was starting an online business,
Speaker 1: although he didn't tell them that the business was a
Speaker 1: porn site, but this doesn't seem to have created any difficulties.
Speaker 1: The actual first thing that caused him a problem with
Speaker 1: his business was the website's name Asian Bikini Babes, because
Speaker 1: you know, you had to pay to be a member
Speaker 1: of the site, and as Jim noted in two thousand
Speaker 1: and fifteen, that did not go over well with people's wives.
Speaker 1: So this was basically showing up on people's credit card
Speaker 1: statements as an Asian bikini website, and people spouses were like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing spending money on this ship? So
Speaker 1: Jim changed his company name to something that would look
Speaker 1: more innocuous on credit card statements. In T Technology, the
Speaker 1: acronym stands for nothing. It's just the blandest and safest
Speaker 1: name j could think of. Yeah, so, um man, it's good.
Speaker 1: It's a good name for a porn website to have.
Speaker 1: Nobody's gonna think anything now. Int Technology initially made most
Speaker 1: of its money selling advertising on an expanding network of websites.
Speaker 1: Jim added more and more adult sites to the network,
Speaker 1: helping countless horny Japanese people access pornography that would have
Speaker 1: been illegal at a certain point. INTI technology expanded into
Speaker 1: web hosting two in nine seven, either one or two
Speaker 1: years before Jim left the Army, depending on which interview
Speaker 1: you read. They're not all completely consistent, so I can't
Speaker 1: say for sure he's either ninety eight or ninety nine
Speaker 1: that he quit, though, But in nine seven Jim Watkins
Speaker 1: met Tom Rydell uh Now. At the time, Rydell was
Speaker 1: an art student living in Pittsburgh. Here's how he recalled
Speaker 1: their meeting. One day in the summer of nineteen nine seven,
Speaker 1: my roommates ran in and told me they met the
Speaker 1: King of porn in the park walking his poodle. Watkins
Speaker 1: apparently headed off with these teenage boys uh and told
Speaker 1: them he was looking for artists to make banner ads
Speaker 1: for him. And I think Rightel's about nineteen years old
Speaker 1: too when this happens. Wow, can you imagine that Jim
Speaker 1: Watkins going to an art school looking for Hello, fellow kids,
Speaker 1: would you like to make some bad our ads for me? Like? What?
Speaker 1: I you know? I actually, I think there might be
Speaker 1: some logic in the through line of him working with
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen year old kids who have a talent that
Speaker 1: he needs, but they're also young enough that they don't
Speaker 1: know what they're worth for one thing, like they're notulaically exactly.
Speaker 1: He's a man who spent sixteen years in the military
Speaker 1: at this point, he's certainly more capable of negotiating. And
Speaker 1: isn't isn't being an army recruiter all about manipulating? Yes,
Speaker 1: lying the children boys? Yeah, So I feel like there's
Speaker 1: a repeating pattern here. Um. He definitely is one of
Speaker 1: the people who's been most successful at building a business
Speaker 1: from lying to teenagers. Um, he's he's great at that.
Speaker 1: So he he gives right El and his friends some
Speaker 1: freelance work, and then right El says, quote after that,
Speaker 1: I started working full time, and the next summer I
Speaker 1: drove with him and his family across country to Seattle,
Speaker 1: where we set up an office. So right Del and Jim,
Speaker 1: you know, expand INTI technology and and you know, start
Speaker 1: hosting more sites in a wider variety of sites. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in nineties eight or ninety nine, Jim quits the
Speaker 1: army after about sixteen years. He was at that point
Speaker 1: less than a presidential term away from a government pension. Um.
Speaker 1: But he quits before getting the pension because he decides
Speaker 1: it's a better call to dive head first into his
Speaker 1: internet businesses um, and that would this would prove to
Speaker 1: have been a pretty wise call. I suspect he made
Speaker 1: more money in those years than he would have gotten
Speaker 1: from his pension. Um. Yeah, Jim got in on the
Speaker 1: ground floor of the online porn business uh, and he
Speaker 1: made a huge amount of money uh doing that at
Speaker 1: a time when it was still very easy. There was
Speaker 1: this kind of sweet spot in between about nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven and like two thousand one or two um, before
Speaker 1: like the dot com bubbles started to crack um where
Speaker 1: you could really make This is also the same time
Speaker 1: John McAfee made his fortune. Um. There's a number of
Speaker 1: kind of similar libertarian guys who sees this six seven
Speaker 1: year window in the Internet and make fucking bank and
Speaker 1: Jim is one of them. Now. In two thousand, Jim's
Speaker 1: hosting company picked up a very significant client, to Channel.
Speaker 1: This site had been created in nineteen nine by hero
Speaker 1: Yuki Nishimura. It was a text only discussion board that
Speaker 1: wound up becoming a central part of early Japanese internet culture,
Speaker 1: and it's still very popular today. Yeah. To Channel is
Speaker 1: mostly commonly abbreviated as two C h UH. And it
Speaker 1: quickly grew to become one of the largest sites in
Speaker 1: the Internet. By two thousand and eight, it was bringing
Speaker 1: in five million page views a month. Now, if we
Speaker 1: view gigantic, barely regulated web boards as a monarchical line,
Speaker 1: to Channel was the progenitor of the dynasty. It inspired
Speaker 1: the creation of an image board, which is basically the
Speaker 1: same as a forum, but the discussion focuses around posted
Speaker 1: images named in its honor, named to chan. I think
Speaker 1: people can probably figure out where we're going from here.
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, fifteen year old American named Christopher
Speaker 1: Pool got tired of the moding policies and something awful
Speaker 1: and creates four chan, which is pad and off of
Speaker 1: to chan um So to chan made or to channel
Speaker 1: made great money, and by two thousand eight, Nishimura was
Speaker 1: bringing in around a million dollars a year in profits.
Speaker 1: Uh he told Wired at the time, the only person
Speaker 1: who gets money from two channel is me. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess I pay for the servers and off Coast There's
Speaker 1: servers were owned by Jim Watkins. Now, by the end,
Speaker 1: Watkins charged a lot. You can see that in the
Speaker 1: in the court filings. Yeah, he made a very good
Speaker 1: amount of money off of too channel UM, and by
Speaker 1: the early two thousands he really needed Nishimura's money because
Speaker 1: the dot com bubble had truly popped UH and internet
Speaker 1: porn had gone from the wild West to a very
Speaker 1: crowded market. Int technology was still profitable, but the money
Speaker 1: wasn't rolling in as heavily as it had years before.
Speaker 1: This seems to have impacted Jim's decision to move to
Speaker 1: the Philippines, which is a much cheaper place to live
Speaker 1: UH and to operate a business UM. His main impetus
Speaker 1: for this seems to have been the fact that he'd
Speaker 1: vacationed there before, so in that two thousand six article
Speaker 1: by Splinter, Jim claimed he'd moved to the Philippines in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, but a Washington Post article from two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen disputes this timeline. They point to a printed
Speaker 1: notice in the Mandila Times about Jim's pending naturalization as
Speaker 1: a Filipino citizen. Jim was required to pay for this
Speaker 1: as part of the naturalization process, and in the notice,
Speaker 1: Jim says he moved to the Philippines on October two,
Speaker 1: two thousand one. He married a Filipino woman less than
Speaker 1: twenty days later. Now their child was born a couple
Speaker 1: of months after that, so it's not as shady as
Speaker 1: it sounds. I did not know. So it's interesting because,
Speaker 1: like you hear, okay, he moved to the Philippines, he
Speaker 1: marries a woman eighteen days later. That sounds like, okay,
Speaker 1: he just found someone to marthy the green card. But
Speaker 1: they had a kid like three months after that. So
Speaker 1: clearly the relationship must have existed for I don't know
Speaker 1: where it started. I don't know if you visited the
Speaker 1: Philippines before, but it clearly started before he moved to
Speaker 1: the Philippines because biology. Um, yeah, so that's that's all interesting,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a again that's very interesting because as well,
Speaker 1: obviously get too later. I'm opposing his petition, So you're
Speaker 1: telling me some things I didn't know. Yeah, well, and
Speaker 1: even this timeline is not certain. In an interview, Watkins
Speaker 1: told The Washington Post that he first started migrating his
Speaker 1: life over to the Philippines in two thousand one, but
Speaker 1: he didn't really commit to moving there until two thousand four,
Speaker 1: and he didn't finish moving there until two thousand seven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like there's some things in that petition that are not true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he claims to be able to speak Filipino. He doesn't.
Speaker 1: He sure does, and that's one. He definitely does not
Speaker 1: speak Filipino at all. And you do, that's the local thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: I do, guy, Yeah, I speak it much better than
Speaker 1: he does. I lived here much shorter time. So that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that we're going to be opposing
Speaker 1: in February. But I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to me too that that Tom Raidel,
Speaker 1: Jim's business partner, told the Washington Post that the court
Speaker 1: noticed Jim had paid for was incorrect. Did not say
Speaker 1: why or give more detail. Um oh, he really told
Speaker 1: the Post that it's incorrect. Yes, Now, in any case,
Speaker 1: Jim moved from the US to the Philippines and the
Speaker 1: early aughts, and by all accounts lived there quite contentedly
Speaker 1: up to the present day. He started a pig farm,
Speaker 1: which does not appear to be profitable, but he also
Speaker 1: created a lot of other businesses. We don't know how
Speaker 1: many he owns or what they all do, but the
Speaker 1: Post has a good breakdown of his the little empire
Speaker 1: he built, and I'm gonna quote a couple of paragraphs
Speaker 1: from their right up. Those include smattering of Manila based
Speaker 1: companies focused on computer services in real world property over
Speaker 1: the years, including a now closed organic food restaurant, and
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, a business called Race Queen,
Speaker 1: probably named for the scantily clad models who pose along
Speaker 1: the tracks of Japanese car races. Located in a dilapidated
Speaker 1: Manila office tower, Race Queen calls itself a software development
Speaker 1: and outsourcing company. According to a torn sign taped to
Speaker 1: the door. It has also been listed as an employer
Speaker 1: on work basis for four employees of h. Jannon Watkins's
Speaker 1: other message boards, including Brennan Philippines Immigration record show. That
Speaker 1: would be you obviously, that would be me. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that's true, and the reason that it's called Race Queen, Inc.
Speaker 1: Is also accurate. Yeah, okay, good. I'm always a fan
Speaker 1: of UM. You know, you get a very professional publication
Speaker 1: by the Post where they really do a pretty good
Speaker 1: job in their normal articles of boiling out personal bias
Speaker 1: and opinion and how much you can say and how
Speaker 1: much shade you can throw just by adding the word
Speaker 1: torn to a sentence, yes, yes, exactly. They can't just
Speaker 1: say due to a sign. Yeah yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: and the dilapidated office build Yeah, definitely, definitely, they do
Speaker 1: throw shade. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be hard not to be so. The naturalization court notice
Speaker 1: said Watkins and his wife had bought several properties across
Speaker 1: the country, including a condo in central Manilla and farms
Speaker 1: outside the city where he said he raised pigs. Philippine
Speaker 1: business records revealed glimpses of a peculiar assortment of businesses
Speaker 1: and Watkins's orbit the company Emerald Pedestal, which is misspelled,
Speaker 1: which lists ownership in Manila condo units and calls Watkins
Speaker 1: chairman of the or. He did that on purpose, by
Speaker 1: the way, to try to avoid certain um suits. That's
Speaker 1: what he told me at least. Yeah, like I know
Speaker 1: a lot of the shell companies. He told me the
Speaker 1: Emerald Pedestal is named wrong on purpose. I don't remember
Speaker 1: exactly why, but I think he thought that it would
Speaker 1: make it harder to sue him. John McAfee and this
Speaker 1: guy would really get along with each other. Um, I
Speaker 1: suspect they would be good friends. So yeah, for most
Speaker 1: of the mid aughts, H Jim's businesses hummed along without
Speaker 1: having any discernible impact on the broader culture. He made
Speaker 1: money for himself and his family, and he didn't get
Speaker 1: into the spotlight in any way that I've ever found
Speaker 1: evidence of. Things started to change in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: because that's the year that you've created eight chan, and
Speaker 1: it's also the year that to channel had a massive
Speaker 1: data breach that exposed thirty people's credit card data. Now,
Speaker 1: this down its own is bad, but since much of
Speaker 1: two channels claim to fame was its anonimit, it was
Speaker 1: seen as a particularly huge funk up the data breach.
Speaker 1: Interviewed with the site's ability to make money now, Tom
Speaker 1: Raidell claims that this is why in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: Inti Technology took possession of too Channel. The website remains
Speaker 1: huge and a significant source of profit to this day.
Speaker 1: Now Two Channels creator Nishimura disputes legitimacy of Anti Technology
Speaker 1: taking possession of his website. He says, they basically stole it,
Speaker 1: and I think the court cases ongoing. Um, yes it
Speaker 1: is and yeah. In an email interview with splinter News,
Speaker 1: Nishimura claimed, of Watkins, all his businesses have failed, even
Speaker 1: his hosting service was not good. Yeah, I have made
Speaker 1: similar claims. You know, it's a big it's a big
Speaker 1: it's a big problem when everything that you're well known
Speaker 1: for you're alleged to have stolen or acquired via shady means.
Speaker 1: I mean, people do get elected to high office with
Speaker 1: that kind of a resume too, So it kind of
Speaker 1: depends on how good you aren't spinning and two do fifteen,
Speaker 1: Christopher Pool sold four chan to Nisha Mura. Um So,
Speaker 1: I just think that's really interesting. Like Nisha Mura creates
Speaker 1: the site that inspires the site that four chan is
Speaker 1: based off of, and then Nishimura winds up buying four
Speaker 1: chan like fifteen years later. It's just a fun series
Speaker 1: of events. Now, the year before that purchase, Jim Watkins
Speaker 1: bought eight chan from Frederick Brennan, making him I guess
Speaker 1: the lord of fifty of the chance something like that.
Speaker 1: Um sure, yeah, uh so he has to channel and
Speaker 1: he has eight chan at this point. Um so, Frederick,
Speaker 1: would you walk us through a little bit sort of
Speaker 1: how he reached out to you and kind of what
Speaker 1: you you know, what the deal was and what you
Speaker 1: had to do in order to take this, because it's
Speaker 1: why you're the Philippines now, so Chan it had basically
Speaker 1: no uh way to make money. You know, deep platform
Speaker 1: NG was being used against it all the way back
Speaker 1: in uh uh not even as like hardcore as what's
Speaker 1: going on right now. But we got kicked off of
Speaker 1: all the payment processors very quickly. I was able to
Speaker 1: find servers who would host us, but I could not
Speaker 1: afford that, you know what I mean, without any money
Speaker 1: coming in. And there was no one who would want
Speaker 1: to advertise on h N even even before it was
Speaker 1: known for what it's known for now. You know, people
Speaker 1: just don't like to have their ads on sites that
Speaker 1: hosts Nazis, I know, big shock, right, but and you know,
Speaker 1: it's even hard to find people who want to put
Speaker 1: their ads, like real big corporations on porn sites, so
Speaker 1: porn and Nazis, you basically can't find anybody. So I,
Speaker 1: you know, knew that h HN's days were numbered, and
Speaker 1: I made this pretty clear. I suppose on the official
Speaker 1: h and Twitter and through other means, you know, posting
Speaker 1: on the board, and I started to get uh offers
Speaker 1: basically from people who wanted to acquire a Chan because
Speaker 1: it had been in the news and it had already
Speaker 1: this big community, you know, as far as chance go,
Speaker 1: and there was at the time a real sense that
Speaker 1: it could take over for four chaan like that it
Speaker 1: could unseat four Chan as the main chance. That didn't
Speaker 1: end up happening. But that's what some people thought, including
Speaker 1: maybe myself in my more uh confident moments. But I
Speaker 1: started looking at these offers and I really could only
Speaker 1: narrow it down to two, and one of them was
Speaker 1: from a company that had no experience in this at all.
Speaker 1: And I really felt like, with enough pressure, if I
Speaker 1: transferred the servers there, they would crack and then that
Speaker 1: would be it, you know what I mean. So I
Speaker 1: decided to take Jim's offer. He very much used the
Speaker 1: fact that he owned two Channel as a way to
Speaker 1: convince me, you know, like that he is the originator
Speaker 1: of all the chans and he can help. And I
Speaker 1: didn't really totally understand it when I agreed. The extent
Speaker 1: to which here Yuki hated him and the extent to
Speaker 1: which he most likely stole to Channel, and the agreement
Speaker 1: is basically, he'll move you to the Philippines, he'll pay
Speaker 1: you a salary and uh and fund everything. Right Basically,
Speaker 1: that's correct, he did not buy h en like itself. Yea.
Speaker 1: What he did was I transferred the data to his
Speaker 1: servers and then he moved me to the Philippines and
Speaker 1: paid me to be its admin. Basically, so he took
Speaker 1: all of the liability by transferring the data to his
Speaker 1: data center. And eventually in two thousand fifteen January, only
Speaker 1: a few months later, he took over in um at
Speaker 1: the end of September, I believe, and then in January
Speaker 1: of the fall one year he took the domain. Also
Speaker 1: like there was a problem with the domain registrar, like
Speaker 1: what they're experiencing right now with two Cows, where two
Speaker 1: Cows doesn't want to register the their domain because it
Speaker 1: is very bad press. So Jim had his own domain registrar,
Speaker 1: or at least that's how he explained it to me.
Speaker 1: He's actually just a two Cows reseller. He doesn't own
Speaker 1: his own like registry with the with the I can
Speaker 1: but anyway that that doesn't really matter. So at the
Speaker 1: time that was seen as very bulletproof. So Han, you know,
Speaker 1: he basically said, look, use my domain temporarily, wink wink,
Speaker 1: and then we'll transfer it back to your domain after UM.
Speaker 1: After you know, you get your domain back. Well, I
Speaker 1: got my domain back H and dot c O, but
Speaker 1: we just kept it on the H dot net because
Speaker 1: basically he had no incentive to transfer it back. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of a shady way that he got ownership
Speaker 1: if you really think about it. Um. Yeah, And there's
Speaker 1: no contract or anything, it's just domain. Yeah. He doesn't
Speaker 1: like contracts, and he doesn't. It strikes me the situation.
Speaker 1: You know, I I hope you're not getting too personal here,
Speaker 1: but you have some pretty significant healthcare needs. Um. And
Speaker 1: part of this deal is he's putting you up in
Speaker 1: a condo that he owns, and he's paying and also
Speaker 1: paying for a nurse and paying for a nurse, and
Speaker 1: there's no contract, which means he could take all of
Speaker 1: this away from you and leave you homeless whenever wants. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's a very unsettling position to be. I can see
Speaker 1: how you would take it and how it would sound
Speaker 1: incredibly enticings like I get to move to just like
Speaker 1: this wonderful foreign country and like live in a condo
Speaker 1: and like get paid to do this for free. It
Speaker 1: was enticing in October, November and December. And then you know,
Speaker 1: when it came time to do go with this domain problem,
Speaker 1: I had no leverage I could use to keep the domain.
Speaker 1: So because he got total ownership. Yeah, that's that's in
Speaker 1: an unsettling and like a really easily abusable position um
Speaker 1: from his point. And I mean there were lots of
Speaker 1: other easily abused things about my healthcare condition, like he
Speaker 1: you know, there's a Q grifter named Neon Revolt, and
Speaker 1: I guess he somehow got these photos of me in
Speaker 1: a in a bar with Jim Watkins and other associates,
Speaker 1: but they're not in the picture. And you know, you
Speaker 1: can cut this if you want. But on that night,
Speaker 1: it I was not really in control of what was happening.
Speaker 1: They put me in a wheelchair that I can't even
Speaker 1: push because it was first of all too big for me.
Speaker 1: Second of all, I don't have the strength to really
Speaker 1: push a wheelchair anyway. I have to use an electric one.
Speaker 1: And the place that they brought me to had so
Speaker 1: many like bumps in the road. Now, maybe a twenty
Speaker 1: year old would enjoy going to a bar, you know,
Speaker 1: for a few hours, but they kept me there for
Speaker 1: like five six hours and took lots of photos that
Speaker 1: I might have preferred not be taken. And you know
Speaker 1: you can cut this, of course, but there was even
Speaker 1: a part of that which you know, Neon Revolt basically published,
Speaker 1: you know, without my side, that uh I could could
Speaker 1: not even go to the bathroom because they wouldn't take me.
Speaker 1: Like it quickly became distressing. Yeah, and that's just so
Speaker 1: people have some context. The Q and on movement moved
Speaker 1: colt whatever you want to call it, moved to eight chan. Um, sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm really I'm really doing an out of order. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well we we can. I mean that this all happens
Speaker 1: in q and on moves to h chan and is
Speaker 1: hosted there. Um. And you were, you know, not running
Speaker 1: the site at that point. But since in more recent months,
Speaker 1: since you've become one of the major stumbling blocks to
Speaker 1: h Chan getting back online Q and on people, including
Speaker 1: this guy Nean Revolt, have targeted you very heavily, and
Speaker 1: he's essentially doing It's the same thing as when when
Speaker 1: there's a case where like a prominent person sexually assaults
Speaker 1: a young woman and there's a picture of her like
Speaker 1: laughing next to him, um at like a bar or
Speaker 1: something that will wind up getting plaster like look that
Speaker 1: she's smiling. She yes, that's exactly what they're doing. Exactly
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Yeah, you know they're saying, oh, he's smiling,
Speaker 1: but they're not thinking that. Obviously. I was basically being
Speaker 1: taken captive by three very drunk men, and if I
Speaker 1: upset them, who knows what they might do to me.
Speaker 1: So if they asked me to smile for a picture,
Speaker 1: I'll smile, you know what I mean, But that that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be seen as like evidence of happy and it's
Speaker 1: or evidence of wanting to be there obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: these days due to that, how that experience kind of
Speaker 1: scarred me. I don't go anywhere without like an electric
Speaker 1: chair and a phone with the sam that, you know, like,
Speaker 1: I've taken precautions just due to how difficult that was.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't go anywhere here without um, like
Speaker 1: somebody who's on my payroll who can, uh like be
Speaker 1: my advocate. Basically, Now, Frederick, this is maybe, in the
Speaker 1: history of the show, the worst time to do an
Speaker 1: ad pivot um that there's ever been. But it's that time.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. Yes, that's no problem at all, no problem,
Speaker 1: no problem, And I'm sorry if I brought up stuff
Speaker 1: that's like, you know, not that I'm grateful to you
Speaker 1: for sharing, like this is important context to the kind
Speaker 1: of guy he is. Um right, that's what this is
Speaker 1: supposed to be about, is the kind of guy he is. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: you know what's not important context? Uh? These ads? Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back um now, uh Frederick, Uh, let's we we
Speaker 1: jumped ahead a little bit. I want to I want
Speaker 1: to go back to uh two thousand sixteen. Um. Now
Speaker 1: that's the year that the Splinter News article we've quoted
Speaker 1: uh from a few times with Jim was published. That's
Speaker 1: the first article that interviews him that I found. And
Speaker 1: the reason this article was written was because two sixteen
Speaker 1: was kind of the height of what I would call
Speaker 1: eight chance success at culture jamming. The community there first
Speaker 1: exploded as a result of gamer Gate UM, and as
Speaker 1: I talked about a little bit earlier, the movie with
Speaker 1: gamer Gate kind of metastasized into big chunks of the
Speaker 1: online alt right UM and in the two thousand sixteen election,
Speaker 1: they graduated from like focusing their activism on a pretty
Speaker 1: niche area of interest gaming to trying to impact the
Speaker 1: broader American political and cultural scene, and by this point,
Speaker 1: especially on eight Chan, especially a Chance poll Board, there
Speaker 1: was a very distinct, like heavy Nazi influence, Like so
Speaker 1: it wasn't you know gamer Gate. There was some very
Speaker 1: far right and uncomfortable and even some like kind of Nazish,
Speaker 1: anti Semitic stuff that you would see running there. Um.
Speaker 1: But two, that's sixteen. A Chance poll Board is like
Speaker 1: a fully Nazi gathering place online, and they start trying
Speaker 1: to meme Donald Trump into office, but also more to
Speaker 1: the point, trying to meme UM, trying to push some
Speaker 1: of their fringe beliefs kind of closer to the American
Speaker 1: mainstream by creating memes and then seating them into the
Speaker 1: rest of the Internet to try to make them go
Speaker 1: via role and their great success during this period. Their
Speaker 1: biggest success was getting candidate Donald Trump to retweet an
Speaker 1: image mac or they made of Hillary Clinton with a
Speaker 1: star of David next to her head that includes the
Speaker 1: words most corrupt candidate ever. Um. That's like the probably
Speaker 1: the biggest hit that they had during that year. Um.
Speaker 1: But there were a lot of other memes that they
Speaker 1: succeeded in, like getting other prominent political and cultural figures
Speaker 1: to retweet um. And this you know, drew attention down
Speaker 1: on a chan and a number of journalists, including myself um,
Speaker 1: wrote their first articles about the site in that period
Speaker 1: of time. UM, and we all got harassed for doing it.
Speaker 1: I think the board's most responsible were Pole and baff
Speaker 1: ament Um, which was a board kind of dedicated directly
Speaker 1: to like doxing people. So this is what sort of
Speaker 1: first draws mainstream Ish media attention. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: the Washington Post yet, but Splinter is covering it and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: and they talk to John Watkins, Jim Watkins, jesus. Now,
Speaker 1: all this drew a lot of press attention, as I said,
Speaker 1: And the author of that Splinter news article, Ethan Chiel,
Speaker 1: had was pretty heavily harassed when he first started writing
Speaker 1: about the site. So when he talked to Jim Watkins,
Speaker 1: and this is the again, the earliest interview with Jim,
Speaker 1: he asked Jim about all the death threats and whatnot
Speaker 1: that originated on eight chan, and Watkins responded, as long
Speaker 1: as they're not making imminent threats of harm against someone,
Speaker 1: their speech has protected political speech, no different than Trump
Speaker 1: or Clinton or Mr Smith or anyone else. Now, Jim
Speaker 1: also addressed allegations that because of the racism on his site.
Speaker 1: He might be racist himself, he said, I obviously am
Speaker 1: not a white supremacist. I go for days without seeing
Speaker 1: another white face. I put up with racial problems similar
Speaker 1: to that of colored people in the nineteen sixties, the
Speaker 1: black people of the nineteen seventies, the African Americans of
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, the people of color of the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: I am not sure what the politically correct term in
Speaker 1: the twenty first century is. I have lived here in
Speaker 1: this same place longer than anywhere else in my adult life.
Speaker 1: I love my home. As I always used to talk
Speaker 1: collect this, Yeah, he compares himself to the civil rights Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, he would talk like this also in private.
Speaker 1: He would tell me that it is that white people
Speaker 1: in the Philippines have no rights, and it's worse to
Speaker 1: be a white person in the Philippines than to be
Speaker 1: black in the US. Like he would say that constantly.
Speaker 1: So the fact that he said this to the press
Speaker 1: is just you know, uh he he. I guess he
Speaker 1: just has no filter. That's why he doesn't like to
Speaker 1: talk to the president more. It's astonishing, It's it's really astonishing. Um.
Speaker 1: And this this won't be the last time he does
Speaker 1: something like this, but it's quite a take. Like now,
Speaker 1: Watkins describes himself as overall a very boring person. He
Speaker 1: claimed that he had bought eight chan because he wanted
Speaker 1: to protect it. He said he'd seen all these other
Speaker 1: sites at a big potential and then they go away. Now.
Speaker 1: When Ethan from Splinter asked him about the issues he'd
Speaker 1: had since buying the website in two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: like what his biggest issue was, he answer was very clear.
Speaker 1: Social justice warriors quote they called them s JW's. They
Speaker 1: told me by email. They try to embarrass you into
Speaker 1: turning off the channel. It's like, oh, there's a horrible
Speaker 1: post here, will great report the post and will delete it.
Speaker 1: Then they send it to I CAN and the FBI
Speaker 1: and all these people, and it's like, come on, so
Speaker 1: Jim Watkins, Yeah, um. Now, he claimed that people complaining
Speaker 1: about death threats and violent racism on h chan, we're
Speaker 1: creating those posts themselves on the forum. Yep. The people
Speaker 1: like Ron always say that they always it's always about them.
Speaker 1: It's always a conspiracy theory. When I got my death
Speaker 1: threats that were posted on h chan after my second
Speaker 1: article on them, Well, I was after my first article,
Speaker 1: but after it was in a documentary on them. Um.
Speaker 1: When I got those death threats, everyone on eight Chan,
Speaker 1: when they saw me commenting on them, commented that I
Speaker 1: must have created the death threats and posted them on there.
Speaker 1: It's just, you know, it's a convenient thing to do.
Speaker 1: They especially always say that about women. Oh, she just
Speaker 1: just looking for attention. They it's a common line that
Speaker 1: they take. And the fact that Jim Watkins, the admin
Speaker 1: is taking it, you know, doesn't surprise me. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: might help set the tone a little bit though, although
Speaker 1: you know, hard to say who's learning from who there. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're learning from each other, that's the Yeah, that's probably yeah,
Speaker 1: self reinforcing cycle. Yeah. Now when that article was published, Uh,
Speaker 1: you and Jim were still working together. Um. And in fact,
Speaker 1: up until that point when people had questions about h
Speaker 1: H and you've generally been like the media point man
Speaker 1: to answering that. Um. And I'm kind of curious as
Speaker 1: to win sort of those defenses. You started to believe
Speaker 1: in them less, if that makes sense as a question. Sure,
Speaker 1: so right, you're absolutely right. After two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: I was still in Jim's company. I was working at
Speaker 1: two Channel, which is how I know now what an
Speaker 1: important part of it it is for his business money wise,
Speaker 1: like it's where all his money comes from even today.
Speaker 1: So that's that. That's kind of how I know that
Speaker 1: because he put me basically, when I wanted to quit
Speaker 1: from h Jenney put me onto Channel. But yes, I
Speaker 1: was still one of the only ones that would talk
Speaker 1: to media because I just felt like I didn't have
Speaker 1: anything really to hide at the time. You know. Uh.
Speaker 1: I would usually ask them while I was still at
Speaker 1: the company, like should I answer this request? What should
Speaker 1: I say? And you know, they would kind of help,
Speaker 1: like sculpt you know, my answers. But I did really
Speaker 1: start to believe a lot of the I guess you
Speaker 1: can say rationalizations less you know. One of the rationalizations
Speaker 1: I had was that it's all just the American Constitution
Speaker 1: and the founding fathers knew that we all have to
Speaker 1: discuss things and the best ideas will fall out and
Speaker 1: the answer to wrong speed which is more speech, and
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of rationalization view of looking at
Speaker 1: the world. Well, it became hard for me to say
Speaker 1: that to reporters because I knew as a chance admin
Speaker 1: that I had never seen a single good idea fall
Speaker 1: out of a chance discourse like that just doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: Everybody's talking, everybody's making their own you know, political statement,
Speaker 1: but there's no resolution. Nobody's ever you know, the Nazis
Speaker 1: never said, oh, you know what, we're convinced socialism is
Speaker 1: the answer. We're closing our board. That doesn't happen, you know,
Speaker 1: Because so that was the first time I really started
Speaker 1: to doubt. But you know, as long as nobody was
Speaker 1: really getting hurt, you know, it was kind of hard
Speaker 1: for me to just go back on everything I've ever said, right,
Speaker 1: But of course after I saw how little they did
Speaker 1: after Christchurch and then after Poway, you know, it just
Speaker 1: started to build on me that I had to say
Speaker 1: something as somebody who is basically an authority on a
Speaker 1: chan and you know, yeah, I just couldn't allow Jim
Speaker 1: Watkins to get away with it, like to get away
Speaker 1: with doing nothing while terrorists used his website, so especially
Speaker 1: you know, after he did nothing after the first two attacks,
Speaker 1: you know. So yeah, now, um, when the years from
Speaker 1: about six nineteen, it's kind of when h chan really
Speaker 1: reached a significant size. Around one point seven million visitors
Speaker 1: a month. I'm guessing that would be its height, but
Speaker 1: you would know better than I would, right, that would
Speaker 1: certainly be a yeah. And the site was hard to monetize.
Speaker 1: Jim tried a number of tactics. He had a sun
Speaker 1: Craft of cryptocurrency, which you just could buy and then
Speaker 1: pay to elevate their threads on the site um and
Speaker 1: traditionally vaguely anti Semitic fashion. He called it the King
Speaker 1: of the Shekel program, which, if you don't know why
Speaker 1: using the word shekel is vaguely anti semitic, hang out
Speaker 1: with some Nazis on the internet for a day. You'll
Speaker 1: hear the word a thousand times along with yeah, oh boy,
Speaker 1: yeah um now. Jim also launched books dot Audio, a
Speaker 1: book narration company that used Jim and a number of
Speaker 1: his friends and family members as narrators. In two dozen seventeen,
Speaker 1: he launched the I haven't had the heart to listen
Speaker 1: to any of the books he narrates, because he does
Speaker 1: a number of them. I can't imagine he's good at it.
Speaker 1: Just listening to his voice is not yeah, it's it
Speaker 1: seems like an odd business for him to be in.
Speaker 1: In two seventeen, he launched The gold Water, a bad
Speaker 1: news website with the slogan band biased and Honest. Jim
Speaker 1: Watkins showed up in some of the videos under the
Speaker 1: pseudonym Jim Cherney. Uh. And here's the welcome message he
Speaker 1: hosted when he launched the site, Welcome to the Goldwater,
Speaker 1: where we provide an informative view on today's alternative news headlines.
Speaker 1: If you like a video, share it with your friends,
Speaker 1: Stay up to date by subscribing to our channel, and
Speaker 1: visit the Goldwater dot com for in depth articles. His
Speaker 1: voice is very um uh. It's an interesting tactic, like
Speaker 1: he's introducing this new side of his kind of like
Speaker 1: you would a classic sort of media company. Like he's
Speaker 1: not trying to be like hip or or or use
Speaker 1: internet lingo or like like aim it at the kind
Speaker 1: of people who use eight chan. But he's clearly he
Speaker 1: wants The Goldwater to be like a news site that
Speaker 1: they use. And it's just it's odd to me that
Speaker 1: he would think that, Like, yeah, and that's mentioned The
Speaker 1: Goldwater was full of fake news. Yeah, yeah, including an
Speaker 1: article that said the planet New Bireu would destroy the
Speaker 1: Earth in two thousand seventeen. Now did it did it not. No,
Speaker 1: as far as I know. You know, I'm still on
Speaker 1: the planet Earth and I didn't hear about the planet
Speaker 1: ne Bireu destroying it two years ago. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: our fact checkers look into that, um before before we
Speaker 1: go to press. Please get the New York Times fact
Speaker 1: check on this. I really need now. Um. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: Jim wanted it to be like the news gathering place
Speaker 1: for eight chan users, which is part of why I
Speaker 1: think his presentation is so odd. Um. Now, the websites
Speaker 1: chief journalist at coup was getting two of its reporters
Speaker 1: press credentials for the two thousand eighteen Singapore summit between
Speaker 1: President Trump and Kim Jong un, which is evidence of
Speaker 1: how easy it is to get press credentials sometimes. Um.
Speaker 1: They spent most of the trip failing to get their
Speaker 1: camera to function properly because they're not not not good
Speaker 1: at it now. Yes, and they also wasted a lot
Speaker 1: of money doing a bungee jong. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you saw that, Oh my god, what, Yes, one of
Speaker 1: the main things they did on Yeah, you can see
Speaker 1: Tom Ridell doing a bungee jump. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he deleted it, but they do a bungee jump off
Speaker 1: of building in the city, just as part of their
Speaker 1: coverage You're just for ships. Um. They posted it right
Speaker 1: around that time, and it was on the trip, but
Speaker 1: that was the only really actually cool thing that came
Speaker 1: out of it. So um. Throughout this period two do
Speaker 1: seventeen eighteen, Jim posted regular videos in his eighth Chan
Speaker 1: blog where he would do yoga He's way into yoga,
Speaker 1: read selections from books, and brag about his collection of
Speaker 1: expensive pens. He also really likes expensive pens. Now, for
Speaker 1: the next couple of years, eh chan continued to radicalize itself,
Speaker 1: and Paul went from mostly ironic Nazi posting and far
Speaker 1: right ship posting to un ironic neo Nazi. Extermination is rhetoric.
Speaker 1: I can't pick a point for you when that hit
Speaker 1: critical mass, but we all know what happened in March
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, the christ Rich massacre. Now by this
Speaker 1: point you've been away from eight chan for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, and you've been out of anti technology for
Speaker 1: what a year or so? Um, a few months, okay,
Speaker 1: a few months you recently quit. Yes, the christ of
Speaker 1: shooting happened in March, and I had only like totally disassociated,
Speaker 1: and I think November two, Okay, so, yeah, you've been
Speaker 1: out for three or four months and the christ Church
Speaker 1: shooting happens. Do you remember when you heard about it
Speaker 1: for the first time? Uh? Um, I'm pretty sure that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I don't really remember. I kind of remember, like
Speaker 1: I read something about it on my phone and then
Speaker 1: my wife told me that I'm messenger somebody had sent
Speaker 1: her the video. It was really going around. Um, But
Speaker 1: I the h Chan connection didn't really become clear to
Speaker 1: me until I started reading like more articles about it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I wound up kind of getting onto that. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: I wrote an article about it a couple of hours
Speaker 1: after it happened, so I was I was pretty aware
Speaker 1: of that, um, kind of right away, and it was
Speaker 1: one of those things watching the rest of the world
Speaker 1: react to it. There were a number of reactions. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that I think most of the media, I think, hopefully,
Speaker 1: in part due to the article I wrote, avoided kind
Speaker 1: of falling into some of the traps that the guy
Speaker 1: had put in his manifesto and avoided some of the
Speaker 1: more kind of sensational ship that that might have otherwise
Speaker 1: surrounded it. There were some bad reactions, obviously, like the
Speaker 1: Daily Mail posted the entire unedited manifesto on their website.
Speaker 1: That was a poor choice. But in terms of tone
Speaker 1: deaf responses to a massacre, I think the video Jim
Speaker 1: Watkins published three days after this footing has to take
Speaker 1: the cake. Have you seen this, Frederick? I have, yes.
Speaker 1: I actually recently republished it. He deleted it didn't. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's on YouTube still, so we've both seen this, Frederick.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play the first minute of it for our
Speaker 1: listeners so they can get an idea of the kind
Speaker 1: of tactics. Jim Watkins is taking condolences to the victims
Speaker 1: of the New Zealand shootings. So many pious folks lost
Speaker 1: because of psychotic rage. It is a sad thing that
Speaker 1: the mentally infirmed can have access to guns. It is
Speaker 1: just impossible to tell who will snap until they do.
Speaker 1: Going postal is such a sad thing in America. Back
Speaker 1: mark Richard Hilburn went postal. This otherwise normal man became
Speaker 1: so angry that he shot two of his fellow post
Speaker 1: office employees, his mother, and even his dog. After that,
Speaker 1: the post Office took at should put environmental analysts on
Speaker 1: the scene to help make the workplace a better place,
Speaker 1: so that folks would not become so frustrated with rage
Speaker 1: that they would commit acts of mayhem and murder. At
Speaker 1: no time after this terrible tragedy did the United States
Speaker 1: Postal Service consider censoring the mail in order to stop
Speaker 1: announcements of terrorists or violent threats. People have been free
Speaker 1: to say such things always. However, threats of imminent violence
Speaker 1: are not protected speech. They are criminal in nature. There
Speaker 1: is a certain dualism to this, whereas you're free to
Speaker 1: utter reprehensible and violent speech, yet you are responsible for
Speaker 1: the consequences of what you say. And now we're back, okay,
Speaker 1: so um, yeah, it's pretty remarkable. The goal of blaming
Speaker 1: illegal aliens for a christ Church shooting because of illegally
Speaker 1: immigrated Australian and New Zealand is pretty fucking remarkable. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. You know, there is no way to be
Speaker 1: more pro Trump than that statement. Yeah, Like, it's so
Speaker 1: pro Trump that maybe even Donald Trump would be afraid
Speaker 1: to say it. Yeah, that's going. Like even his response
Speaker 1: to the shooting was better than Jim's. Yes, yes, now,
Speaker 1: Watkins was pretty consistent with most of his press responses
Speaker 1: in the wake of the massacre, he talked about how
Speaker 1: he deplored violence. He insisted h chan removed all illegal content,
Speaker 1: and he made commitments vague commitments about getting better at
Speaker 1: policing the site for literal crimes. But while he said
Speaker 1: all this, he also adopted the slogan embrace infamy and
Speaker 1: and blasted on the landing page of ah chan Um.
Speaker 1: So he it's it's clear he um. There seems to
Speaker 1: be an aspect of this that he might have enjoyed
Speaker 1: um now when the Washington certainly did. Yeah, him insight
Speaker 1: into that. I just knowing him and knowing you know
Speaker 1: that one of the main reasons he continued to operate
Speaker 1: a chans attention because as we've discussed, there's no money reason.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any significant money, you know. The only
Speaker 1: other reason would be that, like I guess Q and
Speaker 1: on is really true and there really is a military
Speaker 1: you know, uh operative posting on eight Chans. So that's
Speaker 1: why Jim is doing it. He's a patriot. But in
Speaker 1: all seriousness, there's no reason to run h chan um
Speaker 1: like monetary patriotic whatever. It's just it's just a drain
Speaker 1: on every one who has ever come into contact with it,
Speaker 1: even its users. It's a drain on them. Certainly it's
Speaker 1: a drain on me. It's definitely drained Jim's resources. But
Speaker 1: he seems to like the attention he gets from it
Speaker 1: more than like he's paying more than should be expected. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's paying for the attention basis exactly exactly, like it
Speaker 1: is costing him money to operate this site. And right,
Speaker 1: because if you think about it, it costed a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand pasos, which is like two grand, three grand to
Speaker 1: publish that naturalization petition and that's all out the window now,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like, and that's not the only way
Speaker 1: that money has been wasted. Think of all the he
Speaker 1: claimed on the Goldwater that he spent fifty six thou
Speaker 1: dollars from the time of the shooting to the time
Speaker 1: of UM two September just trying to get eight gen
Speaker 1: back online. Geez. Yeah, So this is it's he's clearly
Speaker 1: getting something out of it that's worth at least fifty
Speaker 1: six dollars. And yeah, there's a quote he gave about
Speaker 1: that the Washington Post when they got to interview and
Speaker 1: asked him about Embrace infamy. Putting that on h chan. Um,
Speaker 1: and this is what he said in response. The newspapers say,
Speaker 1: we're infamous, so we have embraced infamy. It's cute and
Speaker 1: it's appropriate. Weird to talk about Definitely weird to talk
Speaker 1: about your site being cute when people are asking you
Speaker 1: about all the massacres. Yeah, exactly, Like is it really
Speaker 1: cute for the victims of the shootings to see that
Speaker 1: Jim is embracing the infamy that the deaths of their
Speaker 1: loved ones brought him. I don't think that's cute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I assume you know. I'm not an old
Speaker 1: man yet, but I am. I am starting to experience
Speaker 1: what it's like when you watch popular culture and stuff
Speaker 1: pass you by and you don't understand things anymore and
Speaker 1: you feel less relevant. Uh. And I'm sure that's even
Speaker 1: more of an issue when you're fifty sixty years old.
Speaker 1: I think most people combat that in healthier ways than
Speaker 1: paying to operate a chan like, Yeah, that might be yeah,
Speaker 1: a bad late life crisis there. Um, certainly, and um,
Speaker 1: it's definitely not cute at all. No, No, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say so. So. Unfortunately, for a whole lot of people,
Speaker 1: the massacres continued. The Pawe Synagogue shooting happened two months
Speaker 1: after christ Church, the Ol Passo shooting occurred shortly after that,
Speaker 1: and by the late summer twenty nineteen, more than seventy
Speaker 1: people were dead as a result of shootings that started
Speaker 1: out as eight chan posts. The site was finally dropped
Speaker 1: by most of its supporting companies like cloud Flare, who
Speaker 1: provided DIDs protection UH in the wake of the El
Speaker 1: Paso shooting, and Jim was called before Congress to speak
Speaker 1: about his wayward I don't know steps on um he
Speaker 1: did more or less. He did most of his interviews
Speaker 1: with mainstream news sources during this period, and he tried
Speaker 1: to tell the line that he was just standing up
Speaker 1: for free speech and that allowing hate speech was part
Speaker 1: of that. But as the Post reported, eight chan did
Speaker 1: a lot more than just passively allow hate speech. Quote.
Speaker 1: While Watkins has contended there was well he could do
Speaker 1: to rein in the anonymous user base, h chan often
Speaker 1: has appeared to encourage this hateful chatter on its site.
Speaker 1: Its official rules, for instance, included special formatting codes. Three
Speaker 1: parentheses were used in anti Semitic messages to point to
Speaker 1: someone's presumed Jewish background to call them in parentheses out
Speaker 1: as the rules stated, while a single less than symbol
Speaker 1: was used to turn text pink, highlighting what the message
Speaker 1: board called faggot posting. Um. And on a related note,
Speaker 1: here's something Jim said in his prepared statement to Congress.
Speaker 1: By the way, his son Ronald added both of those
Speaker 1: those were not part of h chan originally. So yeah,
Speaker 1: those were Ronald's additions. Um. And, keeping the existence of
Speaker 1: faggot posting in mind, I want to read something Jim
Speaker 1: said in his prepared statement to Congress. Our company has
Speaker 1: built and maintained a digital form that is the place
Speaker 1: where opposing viewpoints and those of minorities such as the
Speaker 1: l g B t Q may express themselves free from
Speaker 1: the fear of their life. Oh man, uh, he really
Speaker 1: knows how to lay it on thick. He sure does.
Speaker 1: He's he's he sure does now. His interview with the
Speaker 1: Post came after his four hour testimony in front of Congress.
Speaker 1: He told them that the ultimate fate of eight Chan
Speaker 1: was the biggest test for freedom of speech since maybe
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. And I had really recommend reading that
Speaker 1: post interview in full if you're interested in this because
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of great moments, particularly this paragraph.
Speaker 1: He appeared to grow upset minutes into the call, responding
Speaker 1: to one question by saying funk off, which he later
Speaker 1: claimed he had intended for his Uber driver. After being
Speaker 1: asked whether an eight chan advertising program this year called
Speaker 1: King of the Shuckle was anti Semitic, Watkins hung up
Speaker 1: through his longtime business partner Tom Right. L. Watkins declined
Speaker 1: to answer later calls, so that's that's how the interview ended.
Speaker 1: He then mailed a postcard to Drew Harwell, who wrote
Speaker 1: the article that said funk off on it. That is
Speaker 1: such a boomer like ship post. Fucking scard, Yes on
Speaker 1: a literal post, okay. Jim. Now, in the immediate wake
Speaker 1: of eight chinsty platforming, which happened after the El Paso shooting,
Speaker 1: he posted a video wherein he promised sorry for the inconvenience.
Speaker 1: Common sense will prevailed. Jim started to make bold and
Speaker 1: bizarre claims next, like that his son Ron Watkins was
Speaker 1: building a protective network to defend eight chan from cyber
Speaker 1: attacks and replace cloud Flare. This network, he said, would
Speaker 1: be composed of vigilante hackers. As a press time it
Speaker 1: does not seem to exist. Yeah, that is his weirdest
Speaker 1: grift that he's doing right now is trying to convince
Speaker 1: them that he's somehow building a cloud Flare on like
Speaker 1: a shoestring budget. Cloud Flare's network is worth like millions
Speaker 1: of dollars literally, Like, the infrastructure that is cloud Flare
Speaker 1: is millions and millions of dollars. You cannot just replace
Speaker 1: that with vigilante hackers and some you know, smart software, yes,
Speaker 1: some kids laptops like part of Like, there's a reason
Speaker 1: cloud Flare is basically irreplaceable for eight chan and it's
Speaker 1: because it costs, yeah, millions of dollars to build something
Speaker 1: that can protect websites that effectively. Yeah, it takes more
Speaker 1: equipment than a bunch of dudes laptops exactly. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Watkins hired Benjamin Barr to prepare him for his talk
Speaker 1: to Congress. Barr was formerly the lead architect of undercover
Speaker 1: operations at Project Veritas James O'Keefe's operation. I just always
Speaker 1: like it when different subjects of different episodes behind the
Speaker 1: bastards in our mangle. It's always exciting. Yeah you didn't
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, sorry, you're teaching me something, and he
Speaker 1: just keeps scanting more and more girls. Yeah. Now, Jim's
Speaker 1: most ambitious plan in the wake of a chanty platforming
Speaker 1: was to launch a communications satellite into space, which you
Speaker 1: believe would be able to beam eight Chan around the planet. Now,
Speaker 1: this seems to have been Ron Watkins, his son's idea,
Speaker 1: and Ron said, quote not an expert on space law,
Speaker 1: but seems like such a setup would have absolutely no
Speaker 1: jurisdiction and be uncensorable. I remember when that was going around,
Speaker 1: and I thought he might have even just been saying
Speaker 1: it to troll the media, but his father might have
Speaker 1: believed it. Yeah, it's kind of impossible to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: because there was a recent live stream where Jim kind
Speaker 1: of has a little moment where he starts to say,
Speaker 1: you know, unless Ron's been lying to me, and it
Speaker 1: seems like he's worried about Ron lying to him like
Speaker 1: quite a lot. So I'm sure this space plan was
Speaker 1: part of that. Now as of right now, ah Chan
Speaker 1: is offline. The earlier this year, really just like a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, they started trying to rebrand as
Speaker 1: eight Kun and relaunch, and they probably get up for
Speaker 1: a hot minute, like a day or so spread out
Speaker 1: between a couple of days of going back up and down.
Speaker 1: It's currently unavailable, um and is at this point still
Speaker 1: be platformed. No way to know if that's going to
Speaker 1: continue to be uh the case, but right now I
Speaker 1: hope it is. Yeah, I hope it is too. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm sure Jim will try if he can afford to
Speaker 1: and find a way to bring it back up. But
Speaker 1: the latest news that just came out a day or
Speaker 1: two before this episode was recorded is that you and
Speaker 1: Jim are going to have you a little bit of
Speaker 1: a legal throwdown. Yes, it does seem like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so's he's not suing you? What is the because it's
Speaker 1: happening in the Philippines and it's this, Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: The legal system here is different than in the United
Speaker 1: States obviously, so I was actually confused when I got
Speaker 1: the subpoena also because usually in the United States you
Speaker 1: don't get served unless you're sued, you know what I mean. So,
Speaker 1: and it was marked as you know, so I wasn't
Speaker 1: like even sure what I was looking at. A lot
Speaker 1: of you know, a lot of the Q grifters who
Speaker 1: are like, oh, this is so great, He's getting sued criminally. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, even Ron Watkins posted, like retweeted a few
Speaker 1: guys that were talking about how I was that we're
Speaker 1: basically tweeting about how like the state had convicted me
Speaker 1: in the Philippines or had indicted me. Well, it turns
Speaker 1: out that all that happened was that Jim Watkins wrote
Speaker 1: a letter to the um. Basically, he wrote a complaint
Speaker 1: to the city prosecutor. And it's just a request from
Speaker 1: the city prosecutor to prosecute me. It's something anyone can
Speaker 1: do basically, like I could write a letter requesting the
Speaker 1: prosecutor indict Jim on on a crime. So obviously I'm
Speaker 1: taking it seriously. But it's not. It's not as if
Speaker 1: the Filipino authority have decided to like throw me in prison.
Speaker 1: That's not what happened here. Yeah, Jim Watkins role. And
Speaker 1: the crazy thing about this is it is a libel allegation.
Speaker 1: The king of anonymous libel is threatening me with a
Speaker 1: libel lawsuit. And not only that, he's using a criminal
Speaker 1: libel statue to try to intimidate me basically, and he's
Speaker 1: threatening me with twelve years in jail, as is his son.
Speaker 1: You know, for cybercrime, criminal libel. That's what is in
Speaker 1: the complaint. Obviously, I've wayered up. Um, we are going
Speaker 1: to write you a response to the prosecutor. Uh hopefully
Speaker 1: it won't even get past you know, like hopefully the
Speaker 1: prosecutor will just look at our response, look at Jim's
Speaker 1: like very feeble complaint. Like half of the complaint is
Speaker 1: just Jim is upset that I said he might be
Speaker 1: going denial, and he disputes that he's going snial. So
Speaker 1: uh yeah. But because it's like not even a criminal
Speaker 1: case yet, I can't depose anyone, you know, like if
Speaker 1: it would be an actual case, all it is is
Speaker 1: the city prosecutor is going to decide whether or not
Speaker 1: to indict me. And you know, my attorney says we
Speaker 1: have a very good chance of it not getting that far,
Speaker 1: like the city prosecutor most likely will throw it out. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's where we are right now. And that's all
Speaker 1: I know about Jim Watkins. Um, now, Frederick, is there
Speaker 1: anything else you want to you want to say about
Speaker 1: the man or or or talk about him, any other
Speaker 1: particular anecdotes you think are useful for for people understanding
Speaker 1: the guy. I know, I know, obviously you knew him
Speaker 1: for years. So yeah, what what I would say about
Speaker 1: what I would say to that in terms of just
Speaker 1: particular anecdotes, is Jim, if he's claiming he's not a racist,
Speaker 1: I would I would very much wonder about that, because
Speaker 1: I have two anecdotes, but I'll just give you one.
Speaker 1: One time here in the Philippines, Jim Watkins had opened
Speaker 1: up a new business and opened up a new office
Speaker 1: for it, and he was planning on transferring most of
Speaker 1: his local software developers. He has a little team of
Speaker 1: Filipino developers to that office. So he was building up
Speaker 1: this office. He installed like four air conditioners, and he
Speaker 1: was just in the office seeing how the work was going.
Speaker 1: You know, it was freshly painted, the chandeliers were installed, Yes,
Speaker 1: he did install chandeliers. Um. And he noticed that he
Speaker 1: only had three air conditioner remotes, but he was expecting four.
Speaker 1: So he went around the room and he's getting himself
Speaker 1: more and more agitated. Where's the air con remote? Why
Speaker 1: can't I find it? And he's like, you know, opening
Speaker 1: every drawer and um like that. And then when he
Speaker 1: you know, can't find it, he addresses the room and
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of local Filipinos there. I'm there, Tom
Speaker 1: Raydel is there. There's a bunch of witnesses to this.
Speaker 1: And he, in this uh speech he gives, says, I
Speaker 1: understand why the Spanish used to cut off the arms
Speaker 1: of Filipinos. I wouldn't do it myself, but I understand
Speaker 1: it because you guys just don't follow directions. And I
Speaker 1: understand why the Spanish used to cut off your arms
Speaker 1: to teach you a lesson. And he just went on
Speaker 1: and on and he's ranting and raving about how he
Speaker 1: is basically wants to be a conquistador. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't know how any other way to put yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: my wife was a witness to that. And after that event,
Speaker 1: many people ask me why he stays here if he
Speaker 1: hates the Philippines so much. I had to answer that
Speaker 1: question from a lot of his employees because it was
Speaker 1: so confusing, and it hurt morale in the office a lot,
Speaker 1: because people started to think, do do I think that way?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, like, yeah, definitely. It's no
Speaker 1: way to have a good morale among office workers if
Speaker 1: everybody is wondering whether or not the boss thinks that
Speaker 1: they're racially inferior. I mean, what else am I supposed
Speaker 1: to say? Um? Another another thing I would say is
Speaker 1: if you're just giving me time to say whatever right now?
Speaker 1: In terms of the d platforming battle that I've been
Speaker 1: working on for months now, you know, trying to keep
Speaker 1: han offline because I believe that Jim Watkins is an
Speaker 1: especially bad image board admin. I believe that your Yuki
Speaker 1: at four chan does a much better job with a
Speaker 1: much better community, and that it's possible to have a
Speaker 1: site like four chan or like h chan that doesn't
Speaker 1: inspire the violence that h N has, and that Jim
Speaker 1: failed in his duty after christ Church to change things
Speaker 1: to stop for the violence. That's basically my argument. And
Speaker 1: you know, go ahead, yeah, I I what do you think?
Speaker 1: What do you think could have been changed about ah chan? Like,
Speaker 1: do you think once the christ Church master Year happened
Speaker 1: there was anything that could have been changed like that
Speaker 1: would have actually made a chan itself less toxic or
Speaker 1: was it kind of passed a point of no return
Speaker 1: at that state? Well, definitely the toxicity level would be
Speaker 1: something that I don't necessarily know if it could have
Speaker 1: been changed. And I'm not saying that h Chan is
Speaker 1: a its site, or that it should be online, not
Speaker 1: at all. But I am saying that there are things
Speaker 1: that Jim could have done to make it so that
Speaker 1: terrorists would not want to use his website, and he
Speaker 1: didn't do any of those things after christ Church Um.
Speaker 1: For example, he could have closed the poll board momentarily.
Speaker 1: Four chan has a history of closing boards that bring
Speaker 1: big problems to the site and that threat and its
Speaker 1: long term you know existence. So he could have closed
Speaker 1: the poll board for even a week, just as like
Speaker 1: a form of mass punishment, you know, against the community
Speaker 1: for inspiring that kind of attack. He could have made
Speaker 1: it clear that incitements to violence are not allowed. He
Speaker 1: could have told his because he had Filipino employees that
Speaker 1: were moderating a Chan, he could have told them that
Speaker 1: they need to start deleting anybody that says they want
Speaker 1: to kill or shoot or go on a spree, or
Speaker 1: that they think that one should happen, you know, any
Speaker 1: thing that's overtly violent. I don't know that Chan ever
Speaker 1: could have been like a healthy site where normal people
Speaker 1: go to express their you know, feelings. I don't know
Speaker 1: that that's possible, but he's certainly, certainly four Chan shows
Speaker 1: that you can have a community that's very far right
Speaker 1: without terrorist attacks. Constantly, there's a lot of unhealthiness in
Speaker 1: various parts of four channel, but there's a reason it
Speaker 1: didn't spawn what we're dealing basically, Yeah, because the four
Speaker 1: chun administrators and moderators take a very hard line on this,
Speaker 1: and the few attacks that have happened on Fortune, you know,
Speaker 1: there have has either been mass punishment or they've done
Speaker 1: a very good job at scrubbing the manifesto or anything
Speaker 1: like that. You know, mostly what happens on Fortune is
Speaker 1: just like boyfriend will kill his girlfriend and post a
Speaker 1: picture of the body. That's disgusting, but it's not you know, people,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's also the kind of thing when
Speaker 1: it's a community of literally millions of people, some of
Speaker 1: them will be murderers. It's like that happens on Reddit too,
Speaker 1: And it's like yeah, yeah, four chan is ten times
Speaker 1: the size of h Chan, even at a chance peak,
Speaker 1: So that means there is ten times the crazies, and
Speaker 1: yet they kept them under control. Yeah. It's it's very
Speaker 1: clear um that it doesn't really take a lot to
Speaker 1: stop things, Like obviously it takes a lot to stop
Speaker 1: a community from being toxic. But there's there's a line
Speaker 1: between toxic and creates an international terrorist movement. And yes,
Speaker 1: exactly work to stop the international terrorist movement, right, um,
Speaker 1: And just as an image board admin for years, I
Speaker 1: know that there were many things they could have done
Speaker 1: that they didn't do, and they admit as much in
Speaker 1: their congressional testimony. So yeah, they do. They do. They
Speaker 1: talk about how they're like they're taking more steps and stuff,
Speaker 1: which like after the third shooting, like maybe there's no
Speaker 1: more steps to take guy. Um. Yeah, and did you
Speaker 1: hear that before h And went down or eight in
Speaker 1: the final time, it was being hosted by a Russian criminal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a Russian criminal two hours north of North Korea. Yes,
Speaker 1: maybe they'll make it to North Korea next time. Maybe maybe,
Speaker 1: who knows? Yeah, Um, it's it's pretty wild. Um. I
Speaker 1: I wonder kind of closing this out, Frederick, do you
Speaker 1: think you'd ever create another online community? Would you ever
Speaker 1: want to deal with that again? You know, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I recognize from my experience with h And
Speaker 1: that it's tough to run an online community. It's a
Speaker 1: lot harder than anyone would think. There are so many
Speaker 1: crazies out there that can turn things bad, and I
Speaker 1: just don't really have an interest in doing that anymore.
Speaker 1: I would like as much as possible to live a
Speaker 1: quiet life without a JAN. You know, I don't understand
Speaker 1: why jam is still trying to put it Jan back online,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to keep pressuring, you know, whoever he
Speaker 1: works with, just by telling them the truth about him
Speaker 1: and his company and what happened on h JAN and
Speaker 1: why you shouldn't allow it to come back. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I think is interesting and we don't
Speaker 1: have to include this, Frederick if it's a little bit
Speaker 1: too personal, but um, you uh found religion, and it
Speaker 1: seems like more than kind of at least based from
Speaker 1: the other interviews I've read, the thing about your faith
Speaker 1: that was really kind of transformative to your life was
Speaker 1: less the anything written in the book and more the
Speaker 1: community of human beings that you found and interact with
Speaker 1: a daily basis. Now would that be accurate? Sure? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean obviously that things in the book are very valuable,
Speaker 1: but having a community is as valuable. Sure was this?
Speaker 1: Was there not a time in your life before this
Speaker 1: where you had a community of people in real life
Speaker 1: that you, you were spending time around like you are now.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately no, only my co workers. You know, people like that,
Speaker 1: and obviously they are not a good influence on anyone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's I I as someone who spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time growing up on internet communities as well, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, I see value in them. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say like there's nothing good about online communities. Wonderful
Speaker 1: things have been spawned by online communities are no doubt,
Speaker 1: but I do think, um, there's no there. I think
Speaker 1: when I when I look at the people who fell
Speaker 1: too far down the rabbit hole and wound up in
Speaker 1: very dark places, Um, I do think how how would
Speaker 1: it have been different? And if they had found a
Speaker 1: group of people in real life who weren't toxic and
Speaker 1: we're supportive that they could like, I think that would
Speaker 1: I think that pulls almost anybody out of that kind
Speaker 1: of spiral. I really do. Um. Yeah, do you mind
Speaker 1: before we close if I just um say how people
Speaker 1: can help with our d platform and efforts sort of? Absolutely? Okay, good,
Speaker 1: So right now two Cows is the main one that
Speaker 1: I'm trying to deal with. They put a coon dot
Speaker 1: net into client hold. Basically it means that they're not
Speaker 1: allowing the d n s to resolve, but they haven't
Speaker 1: released a statement as to why, and Anti Technology is
Speaker 1: still a reseller of Two Cows as far as I know,
Speaker 1: So I would really like a statement from Two Cows
Speaker 1: just why why did they decide to do this, And
Speaker 1: I hope it's for the right reasons, And I hope
Speaker 1: that they will also not allow Anti Technology to be
Speaker 1: a Two Cows reseller. That they will because basically Anti
Speaker 1: Technology broke there, broke their agreement because they blocked a
Speaker 1: dot net Jim moved e c h dot net over
Speaker 1: to rob monsters epic, and then they registered eight coon
Speaker 1: dot net on Two Cows again via their Anti Technology
Speaker 1: reseller account, So that should be a no go. And
Speaker 1: you know, I would just encourage people to tell Two
Speaker 1: Cows that we are all very curious why they put
Speaker 1: it in client hold, and we would like a statement
Speaker 1: just that basically they should number one not give the
Speaker 1: domain to Jim Watkins. They should not give him the
Speaker 1: domain so that he can keep running or at least
Speaker 1: trying to run his h Chan replacement. H Chan is
Speaker 1: not what the world needs right now. It spawned a
Speaker 1: multiple terrorist attacks as this episode and we talked about
Speaker 1: so Yeah, basically I would encourage people to email two
Speaker 1: Cows and just tell them, you know, don't give Jim
Speaker 1: back his a coon dot net domain. Uh, and don't
Speaker 1: let him be an anti technology reseller. Why do you
Speaker 1: want to work with these people? And yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to look up Two Cows, you can
Speaker 1: find obviously their website if you google their name, but
Speaker 1: you can also find them on Twitter at at two Cows. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, uh if you if you have feelings to
Speaker 1: share with them, Um, I think that would be helpful.
Speaker 1: And of course my Twitter, I'm always keeping track of
Speaker 1: the latest developments. Who's hosting h so that's at h
Speaker 1: W Underscore b e A T Underscore t h A
Speaker 1: T h W beat that and uh, I am on
Speaker 1: Twitter at I right? Okay, you can find this website
Speaker 1: or the website for this podcast Behind the Bastards dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter and Instagram and at
Speaker 1: Bastards pod and you and buy shirts if you're naked
Speaker 1: in need to be covered very quickly at t public
Speaker 1: Behind the Pastords. Uh, Frederick, anything else before we roll
Speaker 1: out into the sunset? No, thank you? Very much for
Speaker 1: having me on, Thanks for being on, man H