CENTRE FOR RESEARCH AND WEW BOARD EVIDENCE SECURITY 2 2 MINING THE CHANS 2 What role /pol boards play the far-right online ecosystem and how might security practitioners better mitigate the threat the

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH AND WEW BOARD
EVIDENCE SECURITY
2
2
MINING THE CHANS 2
What role /pol boards play the far-right
online ecosystem and how might security
practitioners better mitigate the threat they pose?
66 Concerns have grown that /pol boards function as radicalising 99
echo-chambers and constitute gateways to more radical content
Over the past two decades, ever-evolving their attacks, promote their manifestos, and/or
series of anonymous image-board forums knowns share the live recordings of their crimes.
as ‘chans’ have proliferated on the internet, with
4chan being the most well-known of them all. Concerns have grown that /pol boards function
as radicalising echo-chambers
Although these online forums contain a wide gateways to more radical content, and thus occupy
variety of content, including discussions of subjects a particularly problematic position within the
from cooking to video games, they quickly drew broader far-right online landscape.
the attention of security practitioners due to the
more extreme and sometimes illegal content In response to this, a research team has analysed
they host (extremist ideological material, fetishist/ several notorious /pol boards to specify the type
child pornography, weapons instructions, etc). of extremist interactions hosted these forums;
better understand the role they play in the far-
Scrutiny from security practitioners further right online ecosystem; and suggest how best to
increased following a spree of far-right inspired mitigate the threats posed them.
attacks in 2019, including Brenton Tarrant’s attack
of the Christchurch mosques, whose perpetrators This guide gives a summary of the team’s analysis,
used the so-called ‘/pol’ (‘politically incorrect’) findings and policy recommendations.
board of one of the chans (8chan) to announce
The research team Drs Stephane Baele, Lewys
Brace, and Travis Coan from the University of /POL BOARDS ANALYSED
Exeter, scraped the content of six /pol boards
over more than six months, using custom Python 4chan/pol
coding. ВКип/ро|
The textual and visual content of the boards was
organised in a database that also included relevant Endchan/pol
metadata (date/time of posts, length of posts, etc). Infinitychan/bestpol*
The analysis relied on a series of computer-
assisted content analysis methods such as *accessible only on the dark web
occurrence networks, correspondence analysis,
or hyperlinks detection.
A three-tier model was derived from a qualitative The three-tier model also derives from the many
assessment of the quantitative datasets the external domains that are linked to in posts.
research team. A board’s position within the model Contributors to Tier 3 boards post proportionally
is determined simultaneously, the volume of its more links to far-right websites and content than
posting traffic and the extremity of its content. See those in Tier 2, who themselves post proportionally
table below. more than Tier 1 contributors. Additionally, linked
far-right websites and content in Tier 3 tend to be
more extremist (neo-Nazi communities, weapons
instructions than those of Tier 2, with the same
being true for Tier 2 compared to Tier 1.
Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3
4chan/pol 8kun/pol All other boards
High levels of posting traffic Much less traffic than 4/chan/ Comparatively very little traffic
and less-extreme content than pol but significantly more racist but the most extreme content,
8kun/pol. content. usually openly neo-Nazi or
fascist.
themes linked to far-right concerns, which partly
stems from their low popularity.
While 4chan/pol in Tier 1 is far the most popular This may result in less of a group identity than what
board and its content may be distasteful, in a is at play on 8kun/pol and 4chan/pol. These boards
context of limited resources it is advisable to focus are consequently less of a ‘radicalising force’ despite
attention on boards in Tiers 2 and 3. their more extreme content, which is already at the
most extreme end of the ideological spectrum.
While the boards in Tier 3, such as Infinitychan/
bestpol and Neinchan/pol, contain more extreme
content and more developed ideas, 8kun/pol in
Tier 2 should be the focus of granular analysis.
Shutting down the boards can potentially be
Despite it being possible that the right-wing
counter-productive, but only if part of а rapid,
terrorists listed in the table below visited Tier 3
sustained and large-scale effort to shut them all
boards, engagement with these boards is minimal
down at the same time, and to close any new ones
and the anecdotal data available from these cases
that may appear.
indicates that the majority of their radicalisation
happened on 8chan/pol.
It has been demonstrated at least twice in the last
two to three years that, when faced with being shut
This working assumption is supported the team’s
tent Specificall down, these communities simply migrate to new or
content analysis. Specifically, as one progresses
У у dormant chans all implement the same HTML
from Tier 2 to Tier 3, the boards start to exhibit
structure and are very easy to replicate.
a more heterogeneous assemblage of different
Date Suspect Location Announcement method
27/10/2018 Robert Bowers Pittsburgh, USA Post to Gab
Christchurch, New
15/03/2019 Brenton Tarrant Post to 8chan
Zealand
27/04/2019 John Earnest Poway, USA Post to 8chan
03/08/2019 Patrick Crusius Paso, USA Post to 8chan
10/08/2019 Philip Manshaus Post to Endchan
09/10/2019 Stephen Balliet Halle, Germany Post to Meguca
Table 1: High-profile attacks linked to chan sites during late-2018 to early-2020. Note: Meguca is also а chan-like image board
The possibility of migration to other platforms,
such as Discord servers, also exists. While one such 66
migration is easy to implement, multiple migrations
inevitably incur costs and risks to their extremist One such tactic would aim at
users: internal strife may erupt, user bases
making these boards
fragment to more than one successor platform,
less interesting for their users.
enthusiasm may wane, etc.
Attempts to shut down these platforms come with 99
а risk for practitioners. Given the role they play as
gateways to the wider far-right online ecosystem,
members to mock the DHS and sow increased
shutting them down diminishes useful intelligence
distrust in foreign policy.
into what other communities and domains exist in
this area.
The issue of source credibility is particularly
roblematic when dealing with the chans, for two
This recommendation should be viewed in the
reasons:
context of the ‘hydra effect’ nature of these chan
sites and their insertion within a much larger
1. п${апНу suspicious of any poster
landscape of fringe discussion spaces (slug.com,
who does not use the very specific language
kiwifarm, etc.).
and unwritten interaction codes of the group,
both with regards to terminology and memes.
In conclusion, shutting down these sites should 8
only be done as part of a sustained and large-scale 2 is hight about bei
The user base is aranoid about bein
effort (such as the one conducted in December hed а A
researched and surveyed. Any substantia
2019 IRU on ISIS Telegram channels), У у
belief of this occurring, such as counter-
and only after considering the potential migration
narratives appearing, would trigger rejection or,
effects and resulting loss of intelligence.
if sustained, platform migration.
There are also practical concerns that should be
considered before any counter-messaging campaign
is proposed. For example, security practitioners
Providing counter-narratives is unlikely to work for should not underestimate how tech-savvy some of
similar reasons as to why the Department of the users are.
Homeland (DHS) 2013 ‘Think Again, Turn
Away’ campaign failed: source credibility. If the office address is not masked, the user base
has shown themselves capable of determining that
While this counter-narrative programme did they are under surveillance or targeted counter-
recognise the key role that social media was narrative measures due to how a particular
playing in ISIS’ online recruitment, it did little more address is only posting suspicious messages during
than provide a platform for ISIS sympathisers and office hours.
About the authors
Stephane Baele, University of Exeter
Given the limitations of traditional tools, more out-
Lewys Brace, University of Exeter
of-the-box tactics should be considered. One such
tactic would aim at gradually making these boards Coan, University of Exeter
less interesting for their users.
One way to achieve this would be to regularly
post content that looks genuine (using the right
language, imagery, etc.) yet is meaningless this
would dilute the message of these boards and
make their threads uninteresting, thereby reducing
their attractiveness and sense of community.
Recent developments in artificial intelligence
enabling researchers to automatically generate
credible extremist sentences make such a tactic
cheap and easy to implement.
Stephane Baele, Lewys Brace Travis С. Coan (2020) The ‘tarrant effect’: what impact did far-right
READ attacks have on the 8chan forum?, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, DOI:
MORE 10.1080/19434472.2020.1862274
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