Jim Watkins (businessman)

James Arthur Watkins (born November 1963) is an American businessman, QAnon conspiracy theorist, and the operator of the imageboard website 8chan/8kun and textboard website 5channel.

Watkins joined the United States Army in 1982 when he was 18 years old and served until 1998 or 1999.

The Army sent him to a technology school in Virginia in 1987, where he learned about computers and the early Internet.

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.

Over his time in the Army, he worked as a helicopter mechanic and recruiter; he reached the rank of sergeant first class in 1994.

In 1998, while still enlisted, Watkins created a website for Japanese pornography called "Asian Bikini Bar".

By hosting it in the United States, he was able to circumvent the strict pornography censorship in Japan.

He later renamed the venture "N.T. Technology", which according to Watkins was a meaningless acronym meant to make pornography purchases less conspicuous on credit card statements.

N.T. Technology, which is based in Reno, Nevada, initially sold advertising, and later also sold web hosting services to other Japanese adult entertainment websites that couldn't be hosted in Japan.

In 1998 or 1999, during the dot-com boom, Watkins left the army to focus on N.T. Technology.

It was created in 1999 by Hiroyuki Nishimura, and is the predecessor to all other "chan" sites including 4chan and 8chan.

In 2005, Watkins opened a Manila-based software business called Race Queen, which has subsequently been listed as the employer on Philippine work visas for several employees of Watkins'.

Watkins also runs the Manila-based business Loki Technology.

He has also been involved with a book narration company called books.audio; he narrated some of the books himself under the alias "A.J.".

Watkins is also listed as the chairman of the board of a company called Emerald Pedistal, which sells piglets.

Nishimura was believed to be making $1million a year from advertising and premium memberships to 2channel in 2008.

He hosted the site on N.T. Technology's servers.

After a 2013 data breach exposed user credit card data, Watkins seized the 2channel domain in 2014, and took full control of the website and assumed the role of site administrator.

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.

Watkins and his son, Ron Watkins, are prominent advocates of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and have close ties to the Q movement.

James Arthur Watkins was born in Dayton, Washington, and grew up on a family farm in Mukilteo, Washington.

His mother worked for Boeing and his father worked for a phone company.

In 2016, around the time he purchased 8chan, Watkins created a news website called The Goldwater (named after former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater).

The site's content has been described by The Washington Post as "notably conspiratorial and amateurish".

The videos featured on The Goldwater were hosted by American associates of Watkins and by several "attractive Filipina women" who delivered pro-Donald Trump news in heavily accented English.

Watkins himself appeared in some of the videos under the alias Jim Cherney.

Watkins intended the site to be "a public service to provide news to the 8chan community."

However, it became unpopular with many 8chan users, which Watkins attributed to the fact that "Goldwater" is a Jewish-sounding name.

One video addressed the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, with Watkins commenting that he believed that the child sex ring existed, though not that it was connected with a pizzeria.

He has continued to run the website since, renaming it to 5channel in October 2017 to avoid potential trademark litigation from Nishimura, who owns the "2channel" trademark.

The highest point for The Goldwater came when it was accredited to cover Trump's June 2018 summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore.

Watkins claimed in a September 2022 stream that he purchased doxxing forum Kiwi Farms after it had been removed from several web hosting services, and that he was looking to bring it and 8kun back to the clearnet.

The announcement received mixed reactions from Kiwi Farm's userbase, and site owner Joshua Moon denied it in a Telegram post.

2channel is a textboard website that is extremely popular in Japan, particularly among the very right-wing netto-uyoku.

In October 2020, Mother Jones reported that N.T. Technology has hosted domains with names suggesting connections to child pornography, and that regardless of whether child pornography is hosted on the domains, Watkins is "profiting from words that appeal to the real thing".

Watkins dismissed the claim as "an attempt to smear [his] name and print something awful".

Watkins has been involved in many business ventures.

He operated an organic food restaurant in Manila, Philippines, which is now closed.