A shock site is a website that is intended to be offensive or disturbing to its viewers, though it can also contain elements of humor or evoke sexual arousal. Shock-oriented websites generally contain material that is pornographic, scatological, racist, antisemitic, sexist, graphically violent, insulting, vulgar, profane, or otherwise of some other provocative nature. Websites that are primarily fixated on real death and graphic violence are particularly referred to as gore sites. Some shock sites display a single picture, animation, video clip or small gallery, and are circulated via email or disguised in posts to discussion sites as a prank. Steven Jones distinguishes these sites from those that collect galleries where users search for shocking content, such as Rotten.com. Gallery sites can contain beheadings, execution, electrocution, suicide, murder, stoning, torching, police brutality, hangings, terrorism, cartel violence, drowning, vehicular accidents, war victims, rape, necrophilia, genital mutilation and other sexual crimes.
Internet censorship in Australia is enforced by both the country's criminal law as well as voluntarily enacted by internet service providers. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has the power to enforce content restrictions on Internet content hosted within Australia, and maintain a blocklist of overseas websites which is then provided for use in filtering software. The restrictions focus primarily on child pornography, sexual violence, and other illegal activities, compiled as a result of a consumer complaints process.
Ogrish.com was a shock site that presented uncensored news coverage and multimedia material based for the most part on war, accidents and executions.
Graphic violence refers to the depiction of especially vivid, brutal and realistic acts of violence in visual media such as film, television, and video games. It may be real, simulated live action, or animated.
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, music, history, technology, anime, physical fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Registration is not available, except for staff, and users typically post anonymously. As of 2022, 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of whom approximately half are from the United States.
Censorship of video-sharing platform YouTube occurs to varying degrees in many countries.
Fitna is a 2008 short film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Approximately 17 minutes in length, the film attempts to demonstrate that the Qur'an motivates its followers to hate all who violate Islamic teachings. The film shows selected excerpts from Surahs of the Qur'an, interspersed with media clips and newspaper cuttings showing or describing acts of violence by Muslims worldwide.
Internet censorship in New Zealand refers to the New Zealand Government's system for filtering website traffic to prevent Internet users from accessing certain selected sites and material. While there are many types of objectionable content under New Zealand law, the filter specifically targets content depicting the sexual abuse or exploitation of children and young persons. The Department of Internal Affairs runs the filtering system, dubbed the Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System (DCEFS). It is voluntary for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to join.
Cloudflare, Inc. is an American company that provides content delivery network services, cloud cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, wide area network services, reverse proxies, Domain Name Service, and ICANN-accredited domain registration services. Cloudflare's headquarters are in San Francisco, California. According to W3Techs, Cloudflare is used by more than 19% of the Internet for its web security services, as of 2024.
bestgore.com was a Canadian shock site active from 2008 to 2020 and owned by Mark Marek, which provided highly violent real-life news, photos and videos, with authored opinion and user comments. The site received media attention in 2012, following the hosting of a snuff film depicting the murder of Jun Lin. As a result, Marek was arrested and charged under Canada's obscenity law with corrupting public morals.
Ruptly GmbH is a Russian state-owned video news agency specializing in video-on-demand, based in Berlin, Germany. It is a subsidiary of the Russian state-controlled television network RT. Ruptly owns the media channel Redfish and is the major shareholder of the digital content company Maffick. Its chief executive is Dinara Toktosunova. Upon Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the company faced a staff exodus. In January 2023, Toktosunova was sanctioned by Ukraine.
Anonymous social media is a subcategory of social media wherein the main social function is to share and interact around content and information anonymously on mobile and web-based platforms. Another key aspect of anonymous social media is that content or information posted is not connected with particular online identities or profiles.
James Wright Foley was an American journalist and video reporter. While working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, he was abducted on November 22, 2012, in northwestern Syria. He was murdered by decapitation in August 2014 purportedly as a response to American airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first American citizen executed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
8kun, previously called 8chan, Infinitechan or Infinitychan, is an imageboard website composed of user-created message boards. An owner moderates each board, with minimal interaction from site administration. The site has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, racism and antisemitism, hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings. The site has been known to host child pornography; as a result, it was filtered out from Google Search in 2015. Several of the site's boards played an active role in the Gamergate harassment campaign, encouraging Gamergate affiliates to frequent 8chan after 4chan banned the topic. 8chan is the origin and main center of activity of the discredited QAnon conspiracy theory.
Fredrick Robert Brennan is an American software developer and type designer who founded the imageboard website 8chan in 2013, before going on to repudiate it in 2019. Following 8chan's surge in popularity in 2014, largely due to many Gamergate proponents migrating to the site from 4chan, Brennan moved to the Philippines to work for Jim Watkins, who provided hosting services to 8chan and later became the site's owner.
Voat Inc was an American alt-tech news aggregator and social networking service where registered community members could submit content such as text posts and direct links. Registered users could then vote on these submissions. Content entries were organized by areas of interest called "subverses". The website was widely described as a Reddit clone and a hub for the alt-right. Voat CEO Justin Chastain made an announcement on December 22, 2020 that Voat would shut down. The site was shut down on December 25, 2020.
/pol/, short for Politically Incorrect, is an anonymous political discussion imageboard on 4chan. As of 2022, it is the most active board on the site. It has had a substantial impact on Internet culture. It has acted as a platform for far-right extremism; the board is notable for its widespread racist, white supremacist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, misogynist, and anti-LGBT content. /pol/ has been linked to various acts of real-world extremist violence. It has been described as one of the "[centers] of 4chan mobilization", a title also ascribed to /b/.
This list of Internet censorship and surveillance in Oceania provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship and surveillance that is occurring in countries in Oceania.
Epik is an American domain registrar and web hosting company known for providing services to alt-tech websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist materials. It has been described as a "safehaven for the extreme right" because of its willingness to provide services to far-right websites that have been denied service by other Internet service providers.
James Arthur Watkins is an American businessman, QAnon conspiracy theorist, and the operator of the imageboard website 8chan/8kun and textboard website 5channel. Watkins founded the company N.T. Technology in the 1990s to support a Japanese pornography website he created while he was enlisted in the United States Army. After leaving the Army to focus on the company, Watkins moved to the Philippines. In February 2014, Watkins became the operator of 2channel after he seized it from its creator and original owner, Hiroyuki Nishimura, later renaming it 5channel. He began providing domain and hosting services to 8chan later that year and became the site's official owner and operator by year's end.
