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