Q: Into The Storm goes easy on a guy profiting off child porn

Mother Jones

Cullen Hoback's six-part docuseries features Jim Watkins, who has admitted to profiting off child porn web domains. But you wouldn't know that from watching him on Into the Storm. "The documentary is comprehensive and does flip a lot of stones," says Mother Jones' AJ Vicens and Ali Breland. "Hoback leverages sustained access to key players in the QAnon movement to tell a story about one of the most consequential disinformation operations of the Trump era. He does, however, pass on overturning one rather large stone: chief Q-enabler Jim Watkins’ history of running an internet company that has profited off child porn themes. The omission deprives HBO’s audience of key information on Watkins’ past, especially given his prominent role in movement seeking vengeance against a supposed cabal of elite liberal pedophiles. QAnon is a conspiracy movement based on postings from an anonymous account that purports to be a national security insider with so-called Q-level clearance. The Q posts emerged on 4chan, a notorious online messaanonge board, before moving to 8chan, a web forum that Watkins controlled—and where users frequently posted child porn. (The most recent Q posts appeared on 8kun, a successor site also controlled by Watkins.) In the second episode of the documentary series, Hoback raises this point briefly, asking prominent Q adherents how they feel about 8chan’s sordid reputation and historic ties to child sexual abuse material. Each of them express deep discomfort with the site’s general fare. One, Liz Crokin, says she wasn’t aware about 8chan’s ties to child pornography, calling it 'troublesome.'"