The guy who ran 8chan, who spent the last several years in the Philippines, is driving a harassment campaign against a random IT professional in an effort to further the Dominion conspiracy theory.
He's doing it on this website, using the army of QAnon fans he's built for years.
This is not just a particularly amoral way to boost a dying conspiracy theory. And it's not just a terrible thing for democracy.
It's also just a rotten thing to do to a random fellow human, who woke up today the target of horrific threats just for doing his job.
I got started on this beat because an old college buddy of mine became a target of one of these conspiracy theories in the weeks after the worst days of his life.
I know, I know. The guy who runs 8chan is going to accuse random people of being part of the New World Order plot. Water's wet. The sky is blue.
But public figures can denounce those lies, even when they're benefiting from them. Social media platforms can make them fringe again.
It's not an exorbitant ask to expect social media networks to study and quell the systems on their platforms that put the lives of random private figures in danger on a regular basis.
On days like today, when the harm's so profound, it's hard to believe it's not the point.
Anyways, it's all a game to the 8chan guy, and that's fine. But it's not a game to his followers, and the private citizen he's singling out fears for his life now.
Don't take it from me. Take it from Georgia Republicans, who have also seen enough.
The funniest possible TV show is just a straight timeline of QAnon, but the main character is a random civil servant watching it unfold.
—"Finally, undeniable proof of the baby eating. Now the important part: Wait for around for 3 years."
—"Shouldn't we arrest them?"
—"…no."
"Mr. Trump is ready to publicly arrest the cabal for kidnapping and murdering children."
"Okay, cool, let's do this thing."
"No, we must allude to it with vague poems on a site otherwise used by adult diaper fetishists."
"Look, guys, I don't know about you, but the president taking down a cabal of child eaters seems urgent and… important? I really think he should be taking credit for this publicly instead of haikus on the diaper site. He'd be a hero."
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said residents in Flint, MI received robocalls that allegedly told some people that if lines were too long on Election Day, voters could vote the following day, which is not true.