* **Summary**: Some online platforms allow users to take advantage of the platform’s features without creating an account. Examples include the Paste Platform Pastebin, and the Image Board Platforms 4chan and 8chan.
* **Belongs to tactic stage**: TA06
| Incident | Descriptions given for this incident |
| -------- | -------------------- |
| [I00100 Why ThisPersonDoesNotExist (and its copycats) need to be restricted](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00100.md) | <i>You might have heard about the recent viral sensation, ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com, a website, launched two weeks ago, that uses Nvidia’s publicly available artificial intelligence technology to draw an invented, photo-realistic human being with each refresh. The tech is impressive and artistically evocative. It’s also irresponsible and needs to be restricted immediately.<br><br>[...]<br><br>Prior to this technology, scammers faced three major risks when using fake photos. Each of these risks had the potential to put them out business, or in jail.<br><br>Risk #1: Someone recognizes the photo. While the odds of this are long-shot, it does happen.<br><br>Risk #2: Someone reverse image searches the photo with a service like TinEye or Google Image Search and finds that it’s been posted elsewhere. Reverse image search is one of the top anti-fraud measures recommended by consumer protection advocates.<br><br>Risk #3: If the crime is successful, law enforcement uses the fake photo to figure out the scammer’s identity after the fact. Perhaps the scammer used an old classmate’s photo. Perhaps their personal account follows the Instagram member they pilfered. And so on: people make mistakes.<br><br>The problem with AI-generated photos is that they carry none of these risks. No one will recognize a human who’s never existed before. Google Image Search will return 0 results, possibly instilling a false sense of security in the searcher. And AI-generated photos don’t give law enforcement much to work with.</i><br><br>ThisPersonDoesNotExist is an online platform which, when visited, produces AI generated images of peoples’ faces (T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0154.002: AI Media Platform, T0086.002: Develop AI-Generated Images (Deepfakes)). |
| [I00102 Ignore The Poway Synagogue Shooter’s Manifesto: Pay Attention To 8chan’s /pol/ Board](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00102.md) | <i>On April 27, 2019, at around 11:30 a.m. local time, a young man with a semi-automatic rifle walked into the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, California. He opened fire, killing one worshipper and wounding three others. In the hours since the shooting, a manifesto, believed to be written by the shooter, began circulating online. Evidence has also surfaced that, like the Christchurch Mosque shooter, this killer began his rampage with a post on 8chan’s /pol/ board.<br><br>Although both of these attacks may seem different, since they targeted worshippers of different faiths, both shooters were united by the same fascist ideology. They were also both radicalized in the same place: 8chan’s /pol/ board.<br><br>This has been corroborated by posts on the board itself, where “anons,” as the posters call themselves, recirculated the shooter’s since-deleted post. In it, the alleged shooter claims to have been “lurking” on the site for a year and a half. He includes a link to a livestream of his rampage — which thankfully does not appear to have worked — and he also includes a pastebin link to his manifesto.<br><br>The very first response to his announcement was another anon cheering him on and telling him to “get the high score,” AKA, kill a huge number of people.</i><br><br>Before carrying out a mass shooting, the shooter posted a thread to 8chan’s /pol/ board. The post directed users to a variety of different platforms (T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0151.012: Image Board Platform, T0115: Post Content, T0122: Direct Users to Alternative Platforms); a Facebook account on which the shooter attempted to livestream the shooting (T0146: Account Asset, T0151.001: Social Media Platform); and a manifesto they had written hosted on pastebin (T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0152.005: Paste Platform, T0115: Post Content) and uploaded to the file sharing platform Mediafire (T0152.010: File Hosting Platform, T0085.004: Develop Document).<br><br>The report looks deeper into 8chan’s /pol/ board:<br><br><i>8chan is a large website, which includes a number of different discussion groups about everything from anime to left-wing politics. /pol/ is one particularly active board on the website, and it is best described as a gathering place for extremely online neo-Nazis.<br><br>[...]<br><br>I’ve browsed /pol/ on an almost daily basis since the Christchurch shooting. It has not been difficult to find calls for violence. On Monday, March 25 of this year, I ran across evidence of anons translating the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto into other languages in an attempt to inspire more shootings across the globe.<br><br>This tactic can work, and today’s shooting is proof. The Poway Synagogue shooter directly cited the Christchurch shooter as his inspiration, saying he decided to carry out his attack roughly two weeks after that shooting. On /pol/, many anons refer to the Christchurch shooter, Brenton Tarrant, as “Saint Tarrant,” complete with medieval-inspired iconography.</i><br><br>Manifestos posted to 8chan are translated and reshared by other platform users (T0101: Create Localised Content, T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0151.012: Image Board Platform, T0115: Post Content, T0084.004: Appropriate Content).<br><br><i>When I began looking through /pol/ right after the Poway Synagogue shooting, I came across several claims that the shootings had been a “false flag” aimed at making the message board look bad.<br><br>When Bellingcat tweeted out a warning about shitposting and the shooter’s manifesto, in the immediate wake of the attack, probable anons even commented on the Tweet in an attempt to deny that a channer had been behind the attack.<br><br>This is a recognizable pattern that occurs in the wake of any crimes committed by members of the board. While the initial response to the Christchurch shooter’s massacre thread was riotous glee, in the days after
