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8chan is not the only anonymous, messaging board owned by N.T. Tech. In 2000, it added a client to its hosting roster that would turn out to be one of its most profitable as well as its most tumultuous: 2channel.

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Created in 1999 by Hiroyuki Nishimura, 2channel (also called 2ch) was a text-only web board that became a hub of Japanese web culture by allowing users to express themselves anonymously, candidly and sometimes rudely with little fear of consequence. In 2008, Wired said the "ugly, lo-res site [got] about 500 million pageviews a month."

It sounds familiar because 2channel is the forebear of all the other "chan" sites. It inspired a similarly-named imageboard called 2chan, that in turn inspired a 15-year old Poole to create 4chan in 2003. And then 4chan gave birth to 8chan. Such is the way of the internet: easily copied ideas and constant, but shallow, innovation.

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Nishimura was said to be making a million dollars a year off of 2channel in 2008, both from ads and from members who subscribed to the site's premium service, which let them browse its archives. "The only person who gets money from 2channel is me," Nishimura told Wired. "Well, I guess I pay for the servers."

Those servers were N.T. Tech's.

Things have since gone sour. In 2013, the site had a data breach that exposed the credit cards of more than 30,000 otherwise anonymous users. In 2014, N.T. Tech, which was already hosting 2channel on its servers, took control of the site and the domain, because, according to Riedel, the 2013 data breach meant that the revenue that paid for 2channel's hosting was gone. Regardless of the breach, 2channel remains popular: In September of last year Watkins said it received "between 15 and 16 million unique visitors a day."

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Nishimura is now suing Watkins and N.T. Tech, alleging they stole the site from him. He, unsurprisingly, had nothing positive to say about Watkins. "All his businesses have failed," Nishimura told me by email. "Even his hosting service was not good."

Nishimura remains in the message board business: when Christopher Poole, who is now at Google, sold 4chan late last year, the buyer was Nishimura.

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The world of irreverent, anonymous message boards is an incestuous one.

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You might expect some procedural difficulties to result from owning free-wheeling sites like 2channel and 8chan: Law enforcement requests, DMCAs, annoyed posters, and so on. But when I asked Watkins about the major difficulties he's faced as the owner of 8chan his first complaint was about so-called Social Justice Warriors.

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"They call them SJWs… they troll me by email," he said. "They try to embarrass you into turning off the channel. It's like 'oh there's a horrible post here.' Well great, report the post and we'll delete it…Then they send it to ICANN, and the FBI, and all of these people. And it's like, come on."

Watkins, of course, is the owner of a site whose members regularly engage in swatting (using false reports to send SWAT teams after victims) and other forms of law enforcement-involved harassment. If the irony of his complaining about fruitless emails to the FBI occurred to him, he didn't show it.

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He also suggested that those who complain to him are creating the posts they're upset about. There's no evidence of this sort of sock-puppet account creation, though it is a tactic used by 8chan and 4chan's right-wing groups.

I asked whether he feels any obligation to victims of harassment campaigns organized in part on 8chan.

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"I am not sure what this is," he responded. "If we have a DMCA request we comply."

Watkins lives an ocean away from many of 8chan's users and their targets, and it seems he doesn't fully understand the effects it has on them. Or, even worse, he's fully aware of what the hordes on his site are up to, and simply doesn't care as long as it doesn't violate the DMCA.

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A note on the site admits that 8chan has yet to make a profit, but it's clear that Watkins hopes it will. That hope and his friendship with Brennan are keeping the site alive.

Watkins is still hopeful and eager that 8chan's advertising business will take off. As we got off the phone, he half-jokingly tried to sell me on buying ads there, in order to boost Fusion's profile.

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"Buy some advertising on 8chan. It's only 5 dollars" he said, briefly adopting a mock accent and pronouncing his Ls as Rs: "Five dollar! five dollar!"

Ethan Chiel is a reporter for Fusion, writing mostly about the internet and technology. You can (and should) email him at ethan.chiel@fusion.net