REFILE-8chan owner called before U.S. Congress, as latest host drops site

(In 9th paragraph, corrects spelling of first name of 8chan
creator to Fredrick, not Frederick)
By Katie Paul and Elizabeth Culliford
Aug 6 (Reuters) - Online message board 8chan's fortunes
worsened on Tuesday, as the site was once again made homeless by
a technical services provider and its owner was called to
testify before the U.S. Congress after 8chan was linked to the
weekend mass shooting in El Paso, Texas.
The House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee
demanded that owner Jim Watkins, an American living in the
Philippines, testify about 8chan's efforts to address "the
proliferation of extremist content, including white supremacist
content."
The committee's Democratic chairman, Bennie Thompson, and
Mike Rogers, the committee's ranking Republican, sent a letter
to Watkins asking him to appear before the committee, noting
that the El Paso massacre "is at least the third act of
supremacist violence linked to your website this year."
8chan was offline on Tuesday after Seattle-based Epik became
the latest provider to cut ties. In a statement, Epik's chief
executive, Rob Monster, cited concerns about the site's
"inadequate enforcement and the elevated possibility of violent
radicalization."
In the heavily Hispanic city of El Paso on Saturday, a
gunman killed 22 people at a Walmart store. Authorities have
cited a lengthy anti-immigrant manifesto, apparently posted on
8chan by the suspect, as evidence the bloodshed was racially
motivated.
After the shooting, U.S. cyber security firm CloudFlare
withdrew services from 8chan, prompting it to sign up with Epik
on Monday. Epik's own web infrastructure provider, Voxility,
dropped it as a customer in response. Epik still provides services to neo-Nazi site the Daily
Stormer and "free-speech" site Gab, as well as InfoWars, a
website run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Monster told Reuters that the anonymity on 8chan
differentiated it from other sites. "Nobody has a vested
interest in personal accountability since you always get a new
persona," he said.
Fredrick Brennan, who created 8chan in 2013, has called for
the site to be closed down. "If I could go back and not create
8chan at all, I probably would," he told Reuters in an
interview, likening it to Frankenstein's monster. 8chan did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
But in a video posted on YouTube on Tuesday, 8chan's Watkins
argued the site provided a space for free speech.
"Think of 8chan as a large community of 1 million people
that are now looking for a home," said Watkins, with a shadowy
likeness of American founding father Benjamin Franklin behind
him.
Watkins claimed the Texas suspected shooter's manifesto was
first uploaded not to 8chan but to Instagram, the photo-sharing
app owned by Facebook.
A Facebook spokeswoman said the company has found "nothing
that supports this theory" in an investigation ongoing since
Saturday. Facebook disabled the suspected shooter's Instagram
account, which had not been active in over a year, she added.