Photo credit: 4chan.org

It appears that Comcast users have been range banned from 4chan's /pol/ board. Bear in mind, Comcast is the largest internet service provider in the US with over 23 million internet customers. <a href="https://8ch.net/pol/res/11308990.html#11309012">A thread at 8chan's /pol/ board</a> referenced the issue which has also been brought up by /pol/acks in 4chan's /r9k/ and /tv/ boards. As a result, the /pol/acks of 4chan seem to have been invading other boards at halfchan as well as running to the sanctuary of infinitychan's /pol/ board. Considering the danger in even visiting 4chan since Hiroyuki may be moved past simple <a href="https://pastebin.com/8bfsk6jP">datamining</a> and into <a href="https://kiwifarms.net/threads/owner-of-4chan-hiro-possibly-datamining-users.37498/">installing malware</a> on users' computers, I won't even touch the site, but based on <a href="https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/95119990/">archived threads</a> and snippets served up by search engines' robots.txt there seem to be multiple threads at 4chan regarding the situation, meanwhile, anon at 8chan claims that threads at /pol/ questioning the situation are being shut down one by one.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">RIP 4chan! metropcs, comcast, verizon, everyone got ip range ban from posting on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/4chan?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#4chan</a> <a href="https://t.co/6OsJrokQ67">pic.twitter.com/6OsJrokQ67</a></p>— Jessica (@jessicatoke2) <a href="https://twitter.com/jessicatoke2/status/967905920964587520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2018</a></blockquote>

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A blackout for 4chan users is nothing new. AT&T banned users in 2009. https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/AT%26T_Blocks_4chan Telstra (the largest ISP down under) in Australia was blocking the entirety of the site according to Aussie channels back in 2015. Some anon as of last night belittled the plight of cuck channels banned from their board. Others proposed theories that the rangeban had more mundane roots:

>cuckchanner gets banned

>cycles cumcast modem to get new ip

>gets banned again

>cycles cumcast modem to get new ip

>gets banned again

>>10 more time

>retarded mod sets ban mask to 73.0.0.0/8

>unwittingly takes out major ISP.

<MUH DEEP STATE!

"why discount the deep-state forcing isp to range ban to stop info flow?" another anon pondered. It was further pointed out that NBC (owned by GE, a major player in the Military-Industrial complex as well as parent company of MSNBC) has a rather cozy familial relationship to Comcast. Back in December, it was pointed out by several Twitter users that something like this was liable to happen in a post-net neutrality world.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Dire shower thought: leaning into post-net-neutrality. “Comcast, you allow free access to 4chan, Stormfront, etc. Why do you support Nazis?”</p>— Jason McIntosh (@JmacDotOrg) <a href="https://twitter.com/JmacDotOrg/status/942841274679353351?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 18, 2017</a></blockquote>

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The irony is that the 4chan types will be disproportionately negatively affected by the removal of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NetNeutrality?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NetNeutrality</a>, yet since they’re generally <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MAGA?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MAGA</a> asshats, they probably are happy now. They won’t be so happy when Comcast makes it harder for them to torrent anime butts.</p>— Purple Tinker (@prpltnkr) <a href="https://twitter.com/prpltnkr/status/941494783255633920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 15, 2017</a></blockquote>

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At this point, it seems that halfchan /pol/ users are receiving a universal error of "upload failed" but this may not be isolated to Comcast. Others have claimed issues accessing /pol/ through Verizon and other ISPs. Some users warn this seems like it may be the beginnings of a "soft ban" of the site that may slowly be rolled out. Rangebans from ISPs aren't the only threat to *chan freedom, either, the Communications Decency Act 230 amendment proposed in SESTA (a bill purportedly about opposing sex trafficking) could wreak havoc for the chans themselves. As always, the Goldwater will be following along with this story as it develops and, hopefully, bringing you the freshest news available that you won't find in any mainstream outlets, nor most of the independent news sources.