https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/men-qanon/story?id=73046374
Brennan has been actively tracking Watkins-connected or owned businesses and when he finds them urging internet service providers to deny Watkins a platform.
Late last month, Brennan caused a stir among QAnon researchers when he posted an image of an IP address in a tweet that he said proved that Watkins’ 8kun was sharing the same IP address with QMap, one of the largest dissemination websites on the internet for "Q drops," with 10 million visitors a month in recent months, according to the web analytics site SimilarWeb Ltd.
"Oh my God," Brennan declared in an Aug. 23 tweet. "This is not a drill, people. Jim Watkins is the owner of QMap.pub."
Brennan told ABC News that the image suggested for the first time that Watkins is profiting from both "Q"'s original posts on 8kun, as well as from QMap.
"These were previously thought to be two separate entities," Brennan said.
Earlier this month, the fact-checking website Logically identified QMap’s developer, or operator, as an IT expert living in New Jersey. The IT executive denied any association with Watkins to Daily Dot, a tech-centric website.
Until it went offline, QMap was hosted by the same content delivery network (CDN) service as 8kun. The CDN only hosts two other domains: Watkins' domains and The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website.
The host service company “was started right … at the end of October, 2019,” Brennan said. 8kun launched weeks later.
https://jacobin.com/2021/04/fredrick-brennan-8chan-internet-4chan-qanon
BHASKAR SUNKARA
I’ve been avoiding Q stuff, even though that’s the thing that’s going to get all the clicks, but do you think Ron Watkins is Q?
FREDRICK BRENNAN
He became Q. Absolutely.
BHASKAR SUNKARA
And do you think at the beginning it was probably a Trump operative or someone else?
FREDRICK BRENNAN
I have no way of knowing if it was a Trump operative or not. I tend to think that it wasn’t, because if you look back through the archives of the /pol/ board on 4chan, you can see that there were many similar LARPers, as we would call them — just people that were pretending at the time.
But these guys would get bored, and they’d either stop posting or admit it was all fake and go away.
With Q, that never happened — they never gave up the game. That made it valuable when it landed in 8chan’s lap for Ron Watkins to take over.
..... I do agree with you that we need a way to enforce existing laws and standards, because Jim and Ron Watkins impersonated a federal agent for gain. That is a federal crime, and they weren’t ever punished.