Brennan's comments about shutting down 8chan appear to be in contrast to his views from 2015, when he spoke with Ars Technica about why anonymity could be beneficial for the internet, among other topics. In that interview, he suggested that closing sites like 8chan and 4chan wouldn't help when it comes to stopping toxic content from spreading.
"If you shut down 4chan, shut down 8chan, you're just pushing it under the rug," he said to Ars Technica. "Underground, it's just gonna get worse."
Now, Brennan has shifted his thinking, telling the Times that shutting down sites like 8chan may stop such attacks from occurring so often.
"Shutting it down, having these chan sites pushed underground, it wouldn't totally stop these kinds of things from happening," he said to the Times. "But it wouldn't happen every few months."