8chan was a bulletin board website which let people create and manage their own boards, founded by former Wizardchan adminstrator Fredrick “Copypaste” Brennan on October 22, 2013. It was given to NTTEC on May 12, 2016¹⁾²⁾ who rebranded it as 8kun on October 6, 2019.³⁾⁴⁾

In its prime, 8chan was an edgier 4chan and, while GamerGate is no longer relevant, they have left a lasting impact with its idealization of free speech. Afterwards, the website entered a lull and lost its relevance, with violent radicalization being the last thing it was known for until it collapsed on itself. After the 8kun rebranding, it's mostly been home to old nationalistic geezers with everyone else fleeing to other refuge websites.

The story is that Brennan wrote 'infinite chan' on a mushroom trip, while browsing 4chan, and was inspired by Foster's infamously poor management of 4chon. From there, he began to hack away at the Tinyboard fork, Vichan, with a “Reddit-style imageboard” in mind and developed 'Infinity' within two days.⁵⁾ While it was called 'infinitechan' (∞chan), everyone wound up calling it '8chan' instead.⁶⁾

“First, I'm not a gamer, the issues never really mattered to me. I took the opportunity to host GamerGate discussion on 8chan while I owned it but never really cared about game journalism.”
– Fredrick Brennan⁷⁾

The website started as this obscure refuge for niche, foreign communities⁸⁾ until September 16, 2014, when somebody established the first GamerGate board.⁹⁾ This drew in many GamerGate refugees, after 4chan banned it,¹⁰⁾ and this greatly influenced 8chan's overall tone. Soon after, 8chan partnered with 2channel under NTTEC,¹¹⁾¹²⁾ though Brennan was unaware that they actually stole 2channel at the time.¹³⁾

In January 2015, 8chan was DDoS'd¹⁴⁾ and its “8chan.co” domain got suspended,¹⁵⁾ so they moved to their “8ch.net” domain.¹⁶⁾¹⁷⁾ On May 8, 2015, the Kiwi Farms founder, Joshua Moon, started developing 'Infinity Next' to replace their 'Infinity' software.¹⁸⁾ The software migration began around September 2015, but it failed and caused a lot of downtime,¹⁹⁾²⁰⁾ so it got canned by January 26, 2016.²¹⁾

“Although I gave away 8chan voluntarily, it was never a fair fight. I was set up to fail.”
– Fredrick Brennan²²⁾

On May 12, 2016, the Watkins family and NTTEC are given control of 8chan.^23)24)25) A year later, 8chan was hacked via Tinyboard exploit on April 1, 2017, forcing an emergency week-long shutdown,²⁶⁾ and the users eyed an active IP logger²⁷⁾ that would be quickly dismantled.²⁸⁾ The recovery was done in batches, preserved below, and the administration felt the need to fork 'Infinity' into 'OpenIB' for some reason.²⁹⁾

Batches will be restored in the following order:

1. /a/, /b/, /hwndu/, /pol/, /v/
2. /co/, /tv/, /tech/, /k/
3. /tg/, /monster/, /christian/, /hgg/
4. /n/, /newsplus/, /polk/, /brit/
5. /argentina/, /egy/, /asmr/, /cuteboys/
6. /erp/, /loli/, /cow/, /kc/
7, /pone/, /fur/, /furry/, /leftypol/

QAnon was banned from 4chan around November 25, 2015, so their cult leader began to utilize 8chan as the alternative³⁰⁾³¹⁾ and the cult gradually followed suit.³²⁾ After years of complaints, the board owner of /pol/ would finally be removed on May 27, 2018, and /pol/ was turned into a global board.³³⁾³⁴⁾ However, this action had dire consequences that nobody really expected.

“Shut the site down. It’s not doing the world any good. It’s a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there. And you know what? It’s a negative to them, too. They just don’t realize it.”
– Fredrick Brennan³⁵⁾

In short, 8chan would be linked to the Christchurch mosque shootings on March 15, 2019, the Poway synagogue shooting on April 27, 2019, and the El Paso Walmart shooting on August 3, 2019. Brennan commented after the third incident, sparking the discussions to shut down 8chan,³⁶⁾ and Cloudflare tried to defending a so-called 'moral obligation'³⁷⁾ before backtracking and booting them off the network.³⁸⁾

At the time, 8chan tried following The Daily Stormer to Epik's BitMitigate,³⁹⁾ which worked until Voxility cut off Epik's web hosting service⁴⁰⁾⁴¹⁾ and forced the service to deny 8chan,⁴²⁾⁴³⁾ so the website went offline indefinitely after August 5, 2019,⁴⁴⁾ which would be further delayed by the United States House Committee on Homeland Security issuing a subpoena to Jim Watkins.⁴⁵⁾

During this, there was the Bærum murder and mosque attack on August 10, 2019 which saw Endchan as collateral.⁴⁶⁾⁴⁷⁾ 8chan remained offline until the September 5, 2019 subpoena⁴⁸⁾⁴⁹⁾ where Jim Watkins had promised vague changes,⁵⁰⁾⁵¹⁾ then continued to stay offline.⁵²⁾⁵³⁾ On October 6, 2019, it was announced that 8chan would become 8kun,⁵⁴⁾ initially at “8kun.net”,⁵⁵⁾ allowing Brennan to distance himself.

A few days later, there was the Halle synagogue shooting on October 9, 2019 that used Meguca, a more niche website, as collateral.⁵⁶⁾⁵⁷⁾ Eventually, after much delay, Jim Watkins announced that it was time for 8kun to come back online by November 5, 2019.⁵⁸⁾ The actual return would take place on November 2, 2019, but it, predictably, was not a perfect relaunch by any means.

“Every time I say 8kun the stupider it sounds.”
– Fredrick Brennan⁵⁹⁾

The relaunch of '8kun' commenced on November 2, 2019,⁶⁰⁾ despite the fact that most users had migrated to alternatives in the past three months, and notably marketed to the QAnon cult.⁶¹⁾ Of course, the relaunch wasn't without stability issues,⁶²⁾ temporary ISP deplatforming,⁶³⁾⁶⁴⁾ and domain registrar suspensions.^65)66)67) Curiously, the returning communities were /qresearch/ and, due to an arrangement, /v/.^68)69)70)

Eventually, /v/ moved out after Mark Mann voiced his disillusionment⁷¹⁾ and was fired,⁷²⁾ so 8moe was set up around April 2020, then a phone call gets 8kun knocked offline.⁷³⁾ This prompts Ron Watkins to hype up 'Project Odin',⁷⁴⁾ which doesn't exist,⁷⁵⁾⁷⁶⁾ then Ron Watkins stepped down.⁷⁷⁾ This move has been interpreted as an 'out'⁷⁸⁾ in the scenario that the QAnon cult turns violent.⁷⁹⁾⁸⁰⁾

Following the United States Capitol attack, there was a minor QAnon purge,⁸¹⁾⁸²⁾ so the website hyped up vague 'deep web' plans, then a disgruntled moderator purged /qresearch/ as 8kun fell to irrelevance.⁸³⁾ At some point, Ron Watkins returned to the development team,⁸⁴⁾ set up an AI bot at /safetytest/,⁸⁵⁾ then they hyped up a “9ch.net” project⁸⁶⁾ before launching a 'meme coin' on February 15, 2025.⁸⁷⁾

• Please stop making 8kun boards. The process is slow, no longer automated, and it's an eyesore to see every single post have a disclaimer. You can find better alternatives, like 8moe or Endchan.
• 8chan was not the first English website to let people to make their own boards (AnonIB), and it was not the first English website to replace the '-chan' suffix with '-kun' either (Lolikun).
• It was always funny to see 8chan boards migrate to other user-created boards or other websites.
• When 8chan resurfaced at “8kun.net”, a traceroute allegedly showed an IP address associated with the DoD and this was used to imply that 8kun is a honeypot. It has been debunked.^88)89)90)

• Leftypol

• 8chan.co / 8ch.net - The original 8chan domains, no longer in service for obvious reasons.
  • @infinitechan on Twitter - Used to post announcements and propaganda. Effectively defunct.
• 8kun.net / 8kun.us / 8kun.tw / 8kun.top - The current domains for 8kun.
  • @jimwatkins on Gab - 8kun's distant owner. Still peddling Statesian nationalist propaganda.
  • @codemonkeyz on Telegram - 8kun's former administrator. Still peddling conspiracies.
• @fr_brennan on Twitter - 8chan's founder who distanced himself from 8chan. Somewhat liberal.