https://hexbear.net/post/93094

“ChapoChat'' was always intended as a temporary name. When first building the site, we needed something to rally around and had to move fast. Until now, ChapoChat has been focusing on the practical of “what” the project did, but the “why” also needs to be part of the story and give reasons for our comrades to believe in it. We’ve outgrown the “ChapoChat” name and are at a new stage. [...]

Being strictly associated with the Chapo Trap House name has actively blocked us from being an option for a number of organizers as the pod is increasingly viewed by other leftists as more associated with stupidpol and SocDem politics than other more leftist causes.

This site and its community has grown into something far more dynamic than just the fans of a SocDem political podcast. We have comrades from every tendency and continent talking together, finding solibearity, and yes sometimes fighting to the death.

That's the official reason for the rebranding

I don't think it was any one thing specifically said by the hosts of chapo, just the general vibe, like hexbear moving more left past the BernieBro stuff of 2020?

IIRC someone was invited to do an AMA and we needed to do a lot of explaining that chapo.chat had no affiliation with the Chapo podcast

I think besides what was already said, one of the main reasons given at the time is we had trouble working with outside entities by being named after El Chapo.

I really struggle to imagine it being that driven by breaking with the podcast on strictly ideological grounds when we have plenty of fuckers here who are way more reactionary than Chapo is. More likely that side of it is based on people disliking or not caring about the podcast (both of which are fair enough) and therefore it being used as an identifier no longer made sense.

It came down to wanting to do our own thing and half the people at the time weren’t even listening to cth anymore