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Jim Watkins [of 8chan] September 6 interview, paraphrased...

[From the latter part]

I fully intend to bring 8chan online soon, in a few days. I’ve been building my own version of Cloudflare so we don’t have one central place to shut down the website easily, because these giant companies can just de-platform you. I received threats from big public companies threatening to shut us down.

Interviewer Posobiec asks: Do you think you’ve been unfairly targeted because of the actions of users rather than the entire site itself?

Watkins: I think we’re the first of many, and that if I don’t get back online, that it will be considered a success, and then they’ll go after the next site, and the next site, and the next site, so I feel an obligation to turn it back on.

Interviewer: Do you intend to be more proactive about content?

Watkins: “Proactivity” in America is a super red flag.....(that’s more like what China would do...and about being a first amendment site... this is America)

[From the beginning]

They asked about my finances...I think they were a little bit shocked that 8chan grosses about $12,000 a year

They grilled me about foreign investment and foreign money... 8chan takes donations on the website so anyone can give including foreigners. They asked if I’ve ever taken a loan from a foreign government, and I said no.

They asked... Have you ever worked with a foreign intelligence agency, then they listed Russia, Iran, Syria and Venezuela. For the record, I have never worked with any of those intelligence agencies from those places.

They asked a lot about Russian access to 8chan... I explained to them that the Russian government has blocked access to 8chan.

About the manifestos that were on 8chan at some time concerning the Poway shooting, El Paso, and Christ Church, they asked mainly about the Poway shooting. They were asking... What are you going to do about this, and they were asking if I’m allowing white supremacists, and they asked/explained it to me saying... Did you know that it was a Rabbi that was wounded?

I didn’t know anything about it, of course I know about the shooting now, and first heard about it as C-Span aired a congressional hearing on it. I realized they didn’t know about how 8chan had been talking with the FBI over the years... and so had the 8chan staff put together a packet of documents about it.

One thing I was able to do, and got it into the congressional record, was to give them suggestions about how to work better with the tech industry, and that was to have a central database and an easier way for a tech company to submit a report.