8chan owner to restrict some access during emergencies -House panel testimony

By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - 8chan, the online message
board linked to several recent mass shootings, plans to restrict
parts of the website during a "state of emergency," the site's
owner Jim Watkins told a U.S. House panel in a written
statement.
"If 8chan comes back online, it will be done when 8chan
develops additional tools to counter illegal content under
United States law," Watkins said in the statement released by
his lawyer.
"If 8chan returns, staff would implement a way to restrict
certain parts of the website during a state of emergency, in
which case any board in question would be put in a read-only
mode until it would be deemed safe enough to enable posting
again," it said.
The comments were posted ahead of a closed door deposition
of Watkins on Wednesday after the U.S. House Homeland Security
Committee last month subpoenaed the American living in the
Philippines to answer its questions.
Critics last month pressed tech companies to shun 8chan,
which in its Twitter profile describes its location as “The
Darkest Reaches of the Internet" and has become a hotbed for
white extremist content.
Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat and the panel's
chairman, and Mike Rogers, its ranking Republican, said in a
joint statement that the shooting deaths of 22 people at an El
Paso Walmart store was "at least the third act of supremacist
violence linked to your website this year."
"Receiving testimony from Mr. Watkins is critical to our
oversight on this matter," they added.
Benjamin Barr, a lawyer for Watkins, said in a statement to
the committee, that "8chan has never tolerated illegal speech
and has a consistent track record of working with law
enforcement agencies when appropriate."
Watkins said 8chan "has worked responsibly with law
enforcement agencies when unprotected speech is discovered on
its platform. No single platform can sensibly prevent all
hateful, illegal, or threatening speech - it can only act in due
time to remove it."
The company did remove some posts soon after mass shootings
in Texas, California and New Zealand, he said.
But Watkins added "my company has no intention of deleting
constitutionally protected hate speech. I feel the remedy for
this type of speech is counter speech, and I'm certain that this
is the view of the American justice system."
The message board has been voluntarily down since late
August.