I followed the Q posts from the start. I observed 4chan, 8chan and then 8kun but I didn't post much there. Anyway, a question arose in my mind: it seems to me that 8kun was created solely for the purpose of allowing Q to post securely. OK, everyone else can post but it was created principally for Q.
So anyone familiar with servers can probably answer this:
What would be the cost of the approx. 6 month operation to set up a secure server for 8kun? I would think that it would be quite significant in the realm of tens of thousands of dollars - maybe hundreds?
That being the case, what special sort of LARP would spend that sort of money for a joke or distraction?
What I'm suggesting is that this could be another compelling proof that the Q operation was real, seriously expensive and not some nerd in a basement. Am I right?
The cost really depends on the traffic and content stored. I know that all the chans/kuns were always bustling and I believe they all had multiple communities, and of course they all allowed storage of media (even though they would clean up older media). Roughly I would estimate >10s of thousands of dollars in server and operational costs per month, but I have no idea how much would be the revenues and whether the revenues would offset the cost completely, even providing profits.
Ostensibly, all these servers would have been setup for the purpose of making money. However, and I am talking about community servers in general, not the specific ones Q used - I do suspect that "making money" would probably have a larger non-kosher component. The way it would work is that you will have illegal content uploaded to the server, then get a knock by some agency (lets just call it FBI), and they will get one of their guys to take on the content moderation (or whetever these folks call that role) role on the server with the understanding that as long as you dont interfere with that person, you are gonna be protected.
The reality will be, this person will ensure only "sanctioned" illegal content is allowed on the server. In return, they will channel some ad revenue your way, which is how I believe these servers become actually profitable.
This is pretty much how it happens to all social media sites, whether it be myspace or craigslist. Those who dont play ball will find their business slowly go out of existence. Remember what happened to myspace when facebook came ?
So, my hypothesis is that all these servers were controlled by some intel agency or other. If Q decided to use a particular board, then I would tend to think that some white hat group within the Intel agency took control of the board (and ofc there wont be the illegal content part of the equation in this case), which would mean much higher operational costs.
Obviously, this analysis is more useful in understanding the relation between Q and these boards rather than as a "Q proof".