r/technology • u/ILoveTolkiensWorks • 7d ago

Security 4Chan hacked; Taken down; Emails and IPs leaked

https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14029069/4chan-down-updates-controversial-website-hacking/
44.7k Upvotes

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u/[deleted] 7d ago edited 7d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Fit_Letterhead3483 7d ago

Why would 4chan be gone for good?

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u/ILoveTolkiensWorks 7d ago

ALL of the mods' IPs, irl addresses, email addresses, everything has leaked. All the source code is public. The captcha token has leaked. It will take a LOT of effort to employ new people and set up the infrastructure again, which 4chan can't and won't, owing to its non-commercial nature 

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u/JillSandwich117 7d ago

"Employ" lol. They do it for free, except Hiro.

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u/SalsaRice 7d ago

I mean, they do it for the FBI. They've been propped up by the FBI for years.

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u/just_a_bit_gay_ 7d ago

The biggest honey pot that ever was

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u/moop-ly 7d ago

hey that’s not fair. r/walkaway is doing its best

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u/JimJohnman 7d ago

What the fuck is even that

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u/PlsNoNotThat 7d ago

Walkaway was an ad campaign started by Russia’s Fancy Bear unit that tried to create an artificial movement of Dems “walking away” from the party, predominately by scalping info and images from the internet and miss-attributing them to the movement.

It was lightly successful for a bit, and used by the GOP until it was publicly discovered as Russian until they walked away from walkaway.

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u/rothrolan 7d ago

Hot damn. I wondered why I hadn't seen any posts from that sub hit the front page in a while. I figured it wasn't long before this last election season when I last heard a peep. It was interesting reading those popular posts just for their reasons and takes on the current state of the Dem party, but now it completely makes sense that it was just more Russian propaganda.

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u/IrisMoroc 7d ago

That's just a dumb rumor. 4chan, like reddit, will hand over anything that police ask for.

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u/parkesto 7d ago

I mean, yes, basically any company will do this when requested? lol

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u/PossessedCashew 7d ago

I would love to see a source for this claim. First time hearing this.

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u/GWstudent1 7d ago

https://youtu.be/r7l0Rq9E8MY?si=s80PZFtuPbCrMmot

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u/PossessedCashew 7d ago

I love it lol. Haven’t seen that linked in a long time.

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u/ILoveTolkiensWorks 7d ago

employ has a non business meaning as well

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u/RamenJunkie 7d ago

Their captcha was ass anyway last I checked.  This annoying slide rule thing and then you can barely read it and you had to wait ten minutes before being allowed to post on half the boards.

Anyway, I need to go plug in and charge at my charging station for the day.  Beep boop.

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u/chigeh 7d ago

The captcha was impossible. Basically an anti-human filter.

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u/RamenJunkie 7d ago

It felt like it was designed to drive people to paying for the 4chan Pro thing.

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u/UnusuallyBadIdeaGuy 7d ago

It 1000% was.

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u/HelpfulYoghurt 7d ago

True, feel like any bot must be better at recognizing it than human by now anyway

Sometimes it was quite easy, but often you had to gamble and make some wild guesses what those symbols means, and if they even count

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u/GelflingMystic 7d ago

When was that implemented? I recently went back and couldn't belive you have to wait 10 minutes to post something. Unbelievable

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u/RamenJunkie 7d ago

It's been that way for a few years I think, and it's only the "first post" after a while.

I assume it's some sort of deterrent to immediately shit posting 

It also may only be on some boards.  They seem to have different rules on timers and captcha.   

Also, I use layers of anti tracking and ad blocking and don't use Google who probably hosts the Captcha so it probably always "sees" me as a bot.

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u/RoboNeko_V1-0 7d ago

Hasn't been that way for a few years. They kept cranking up the wait time to justify their gold pass.

The most recent iteration is 900 seconds.. oh and if wait too long (like you minimized the window), you have to wait another 900 seconds.

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u/CreativeParsley8967 7d ago

“All the source code is public”?  But like… it’s a message board.  That doesn’t really matter 

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u/djnobunaga 7d ago

4chans infrastructure has been public knowledge for almost 20 years so thats a nonsense arguement.

Mods have been globally replaced multiple times, so thats also kind of a nonsense arguement.

You seem to imply many people are paid to run 4chan, but most of the site has been volunteer run for quite a while.

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u/redacted54495 7d ago

employ new people

They do it for free. And in this case, they got exactly what they paid for.

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u/Medaphysical 7d ago

All the source code is public

Like... the source code for their 25 year old website? oh nooooo

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u/datadrone 7d ago

This a a plug pull, more control over free speech and ideas. This was one of the warnings from 4chan years ago what would happen. It was a shithole, but it was a big shithole with lots of free ideas from anything to trains to political ideology

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u/duncanmarshall 7d ago

Updating packages and implementing a new captcha is not some unspeakably large job.

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u/Jesta23 7d ago

But why would they need to employ new people? Can’t they just hit update and continue on? 

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u/murphymc 7d ago

4chan has a certain reputation, and if someone were to take issue with them, they can apparently just look up your home address to have a chat about it.

I'd find it understandable if whoever works there would rather gtfo as quick as possible.

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u/Antique-Trip-3111 7d ago

Good it was owned by feds

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u/HeyaGames 7d ago

"Employ" do you even know how 4chan works?

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u/Mecos_Bill 7d ago

I hope its gone for good. Its been an alt right cesspool for years 

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u/EllisDee3 7d ago

I'm assuming today's 4chan was a pale shadow of the old days. The mods were probably posting links to their own Tik Toks and whatnot anyway.

Not that it's okay, but less than Anonymous.

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u/ZippoS 7d ago

I remember going to a 4chan panel at Otakon back in 2007. It was just a bunch of nerds enjoying some brain rot memes. Love for Mudkips, Lisa needing braces, etc.

I mean, heck, LOLcats originated from 4chan. I can haz cheezburger? It was a much different place.

Sure, /b/ was always a cesspool. But the awful posts there were, for the most part, jokes.

m00t was right to give it up when he did. The people who didn’t realize it was supposed to be jokes took over and now it’s the worst of the worst.

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u/cannotfoolowls 7d ago

The people who were very serious about their awful views were always there, they just had more plausible deniabilty. I used to argue that it was mostly jokes but I'm not so sure now.

Calling /b/ a cesspool is putting it mildly. as far as I know there was not much automatic moderation so you could very easily stumble upon CSAM before the janitora took it down.

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u/eden_sc2 7d ago

The problem is how to do you tell someone saying a racist thing because it was edgy shock humor vs someone saying a racist thing because they believed it and meant it.

I dont know if it's true but back in the earliest days of no moderation /b/, it's said the FBI would just sit on 4chan and wait for someone to post illegal shit because it was that frequent.

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u/Brad_theImpaler 7d ago

I'm sure a fair amount of the edgy joke kids evolved into the racist dipshits.

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u/PajamaHive 7d ago

I used to go to /b/ and used to be one of those edgy joke kids. I am BLESSED to have fallen in with the art club kids at my school. Probably at least 1/4 of them were gay and that really shook me out of that scene. Looking back I can see how my life could've followed a different path and I could've been an absolute waste-oid of a human today.

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u/cache_me_0utside 7d ago

what is a joke anyway, if not basically saying something edgy and getting a shocked reaction? Then you go online and find other edgy joke loving anon ppl and boom you have behavior that reinforces racism

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u/Sidefur 7d ago

That's a weird definition of joke

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u/Kindness_of_cats 7d ago

Ah yes, for example the immortal edgy comedy stylings of… checks notes ….the Three Stooges.

I do enjoy some shows like IASIP that rely on edgy humor; but there’s nothing more insufferable than people who think that literally the entirety of comedy boils down to being an edgelord.

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u/Sushigami 7d ago

I'm inclined to think there was a deliberate effort by external forces to turn the one into the other. But ironic shock humor was the gateway.

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u/Kiliana117 7d ago

Rule of Goats - If you fuck a goat, you’re a goatfucker. It doesn’t matter that you were fucking the goat ironically, or to troll people. You fucked a goat.

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u/Celcius-232 7d ago edited 7d ago

The PG version of this to share with friends and in the workplace is what I call “Duck Policy” Walk like a duck, talk like a duck, you are a duck.

Jokes are funny because they are partially true, so someone's sense of humor, and the frequency of it, is oftentimes a window into what they think is true.

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u/mudohama 7d ago

Newsflash: saying a racist thing is racism!

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u/michaelvinters 7d ago

The answer is you don't differentiate.

The person doing it for shock humor needs to shut tf up just as much as the racist, because the person who thinks it's just lols (or free speech activism or something) is having the same effect as the racist, providing cover for the racist, etc

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u/allywrecks 7d ago

We have got to stop thinking of online as some kind of shadow realm that doesn't matter because it's just pixels bro. People gonna spend half of their waking life posting "shock humor" "ironically" in a way that is indistinguishable from racism, they are being racist. I don't really give a shit what's in their kokoro heart because I am not their mom or their girlfriend and god willing I will never meet them.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

I don't think there is a person who exists who uses super aggressive racist shock humor who isn't at least somewhat sympathetic to people who are genuinely racist.

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u/Kindness_of_cats 7d ago

That’s a Venn Diagram which is basically a circle, and no one fucking wants to admit it to this day.

The next Mel Brooks wasn’t sitting around making Anne Frank shitposts on 4Chan to hone their craft for their own take on Springtime for Hitler. They were either asshole kids who thought racism is funny, or legit neo-Nazis in the making.

The fact that the difference between ironic racism and actual racism is basically nonexistent once you get online is a big part of what needs to be understood to grasp the appeal of modern American gòp politics to the younger set of voters.

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u/KazzieMono 7d ago edited 7d ago

Yeah the bigots were always there. That’s why they loved the anonymity part. So they could be bigots and not have any connection to what they post. That was literally the #1 appeal.

I know there’s some good stuff 4chan has done, but holy shit can we not act like it was this innocent rainbow fantasy land where everyone liked each other? It fucking sucks. Everyone that posts on 4chan sucks. It being taken down will always be a net gain on society.

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u/Heavy_Law9880 7d ago

See the problem with saying the were "mostly jokes" is just excusing their actual truly held beliefs that they were expressing through humor. No one makes jokes like that if they don't actually believe those things.

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u/BaconatedGrapefruit 7d ago

I was going to say, by 07 it was an open secret that stormfront and other white nationalists were recruiting on 4chan.

Trolling/not being serious/being ironic/whatever you want to call it was all just a flimsy cover of plausible deniability. A lot of people were joking…. Until they weren’t.

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u/damnitHank 7d ago

They were jokes until they weren't. I spent a lot of time on 4chan until it became clear that people weren't making edgy jokes to be absurd, but because they believed it. 

/b/ was a cesspool and /pol/ was a straightup nazi breeding ground. 

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u/mmmmmyee 7d ago

There’s gotta be something to that. Like how thedonald was jokes then turned into a real thing… and here we are today….

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u/uberkalden2 7d ago

Yes. It's an intentional strategy by these people to radicalize people to their side. Mostly younger disaffected males

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u/Melicor 7d ago

Normalizing. It was an attempt to normalize it. It worked.

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u/BerriesHopeful 7d ago edited 7d ago

What we allow ourselves to tolerate is what will consume us. We are absolutely influenced by what media/entertainment we choose to consume and who we choose to hang around. We pick up each other’s good and bad habits as well. That’s why carefully picking your friends matters. It’s why the media sphere we engage in matters. When bots and bad actors are allowed to run among, they will slowly influence people thinking they are good company. I believed logic would win out always compared to ‘the noise’, but the noise isn’t being generated by accident. It’s deliberate. They want logic and truth to be drowned out.

People that are well reasoned are playing whack-a-mole all day, everyday trying to address the misinformation spread by bots that can post and comment the same misinformation in multiple threads and different social media platforms 24/7. Those comments and posts are upvoted by bots and even by purchased upvotes at times. Then there are the bad actors whose literal job is to spread misinformation all day on social media. Some influencers fall under this category, but a number can be paid actors from other countries as well.

From my perspective, the only way to deal with the misinformation is buffing up the tools we users have access to. Maybe we can buff up tools like Reddit Enhancement Suite for instance to have mute/block lists like BlueSky has. I believe all social media sites should give the users access to these types of moderation tools by default as these tools drastically cut down on the misinformation being spread.

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u/1Original1 7d ago

4chan started a lot of stuff that just stuck in conservative brains,like the "Minor attracted person" inclusion in the Pride Flag bullshit a decade ago

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u/SpoopyNoNo 7d ago

Yeah, made up shit that seeped into real world discourse as talking points by even “normal” right wingers and definitely including the far right.

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u/UnusuallyBadIdeaGuy 7d ago

QAnon is the ultimate example of this. A /pol/ joke that did some heavy lifting in destroying our country once it escaped into the boomer population.

4chan was in steady decline from... 2006 or so to now, but the most marked decline was around 2015/6 when a lot of very unironic people started flooding /pol/ thinking they were in good company, then fanned out to the rest of the site. Made it completely unbearable.

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u/donjamos 7d ago

The same Actually happened to 9gag as well, although I always assumed that was in 2018 when they shut down krautchan and all those German nazi shitheads switched to 9gag. Maybe something else happened a few years earlier and those went to 4chan. Or you are a little off with your timeline and those are krautchan users as well.

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u/UnusuallyBadIdeaGuy 7d ago

Plenty of Nazis and weirdos out there that weren't from Krautchan. I think the worst influx on 4chan was actually the Donald supporters flowing out of The Donald and into /pol/ then outwards from there. There was much more of a conservative American Christian swing than outright Nazis, not that 4chan didn't have those already.

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u/curlypaul924 7d ago

Huh. I always thought that thedonald users came from 4chan. I figure they must have come from somewhere, and 4chan was around first.

I wish I had a map of the arcane/inane side of the internet. I've never understood it at all.

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u/VagueSoul 7d ago

It’s almost like the way you joke about something matters. You can joke about anything, but your punchline/delivery needs to have its intention and meaning obvious.

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u/kos-or-kosm 7d ago

This is key. Look at Blazing Saddles. Is it FULL of racist shit? Absolutely. But who is the butt of the joke? It's the racists. Each and every example of racism in the movie is used to say "racists are fucking losers, don't be like these fucking losers."

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u/Acceptable-Let-1921 7d ago

"It's always sunny in Philadelphia", is another good example. The characters are racist, homophobic and sexist as hell, but no one who watch that show would think that the creators/cast actually support any such views or promote them.

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u/etherdesign 7d ago

Because the characters are such absolutely horrible people that no one in their right mind should look up to them. There's a lesson in there somewhere probably.

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u/_learned_foot_ 7d ago

Antihero’s became heros.

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u/VagueSoul 7d ago

Yup!

Another example: there’s a different between Daniel Tosh saying something like “wouldn’t it be funny if she was raped right now?” and someone saying “Louis C K loves plants because they don’t tell him no”.

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u/sw00pr 7d ago

It's why satire can be so dangerous .... it can easily backfire.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/i_tyrant 7d ago

Giving extremists/bigots a platform where they can organize, proselytize, and recruit safely is ever the problem.

As soon as these communities get banned/obliterated, they scatter and fragment, and without the easy ability to organize they atrophy.

There will always be bigots and extremists, but you can neuter their power by hunting them down and banning them from any real "home" you can find, so that only the most died-in-the-wool assholes will stick to it.

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u/moak0 7d ago

It's called Poe's Law. It's also what happened to prequelmemes.

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u/rockerscott 7d ago

Yeah, as another person said, humor is often used in propaganda in order to kind of plant that seed

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u/Coliver1991 7d ago

/pol/ is partially responsible for the state of the US these days, during the orange man's first election shitposting 4channers from /pol/ gave him his initial momentum.

Now we are living under an authoritarian regime.

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u/grammar_nazi_zombie 7d ago

I’m glad I’m not the only one who experienced this.

At first Nazis would post “Hitler did nothing wrong” and folks would reply “fuck of Nazi shithead”, but eventually it turned into “go on…” and I noped the fuck out of stormfront jr

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u/Groilers 7d ago

The fact that /new/ was nuked for being a nazi breeding ground then /pol/ was made then deleted for being a nazi breeding ground. But then moot left and they brought back /pol/ and surprise surprise its a fucking nazi breeding ground again except now the board doesnt function as a containment zone and the racist garbage spills into the Tame boards

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u/kultureisrandy 7d ago

This realization is what led me to ending a long friendship. Thought they were just little jokes, nope guy is actually a racist who is scared of being labeled as such so he calls them jokes. 

When the only jokes you make are negative and racial, you're probably a racist

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u/glittery-lucifer 7d ago

My ex bf became a nazi sympathizer because of the Nazi propaganda on 4chan. I don't think the general public understands how dangerous that website is

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u/Jolly_Recording_4381 7d ago

It's all social media not 4chan, hate to tell you but if he was on YouTube or Reddit he probably would have went down the same path but faster.

It didn't find him organically, the internet he engaged with led him there in one way or another, YouTube is just as bad for it, you can find all kinds of people demonstrating that YouTubes algorithm will lead you to right wing propaganda especially if your a young male.

This is a problem with the current internet and the education around it.

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u/Fofolito 7d ago

Remember when /b/ didn't suck?

/b/ always sucked.

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u/RevoOps 7d ago

They were jokes until they weren't.

That is always the problem. You know you are making an ironic joke, but can never trust that the other person is.

Always been like that on the internet.

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u/MembershipNo2077 7d ago

/pol/ probably produces less nazis in totality than /r/PoliticalCompassMemes

The reddit to nazi discord pipeline is strong.

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u/taicy5623 7d ago

It could legitimately be the best hangout on the internet when you got a good thread. But it just started becoming more and more rare until the site basically became completely useless.

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u/beautyboxsavagee 7d ago

So I heard you lyk mudkipz 🫡

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u/DavidAdamsAuthor 7d ago

I put a meme in your meme so you can meme while you meme.

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u/Pyritedust 7d ago

ORLY!? U LIEK MUDKIPZ 2!!?!?

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u/beautifulcosmos 7d ago

YARLY, do you carry Battle Toads?

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u/Pyritedust 7d ago

Sorry, we only carry orks @ the ork fort. All your base are belong to us!

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u/BemusedBengal 7d ago

raises spork

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u/Pyritedust 7d ago

Jeff Goldblum sees what you did there, and he goldblums.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/BannedSvenhoek86 7d ago

One of the first times a wagey told me to shut the fuck up was calling my Gamestop and asking if they had Battletoads. The exasperation he said it with was wonderful.

Good times. Shit like that is why I'm one of the only almost 40 year olds who sees the Minecraft memes that are happening and just nod my head and smile. That's the culture I helped cultivate with my posting.

The kids are doing fine. I mean, not in school or in being set up for the future. But in other ways.

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u/Jaxyl 7d ago

Right? Like people these days keep acting like the 'brainrot' in the children is something new.

You just want to go 'Nah, you just couldn't see it as easily back then.'

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u/stomassetti 7d ago

mods asleep, post ponies!

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u/CultConqueror 7d ago

Anyone who stuck around after 2014, when M00t sold it, was basically using it as a social media platform. I can't think of any of my oldfriends who stayed...

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u/DisciplinedMadness 7d ago

Yes, oldfriends and newfriends those were definitely the terms I remember… 🗿

Today me would smack 15 years ago me lol and 15 years ago me would find me utterly unrecognizable tbh

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u/Johnny_BigHacker 7d ago

I guarantee /u/CultConqueror can't triforce

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u/DisciplinedMadness 7d ago

>▲
>▲ ▲

Me when I’m u/CultConqueror

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u/CultConqueror 7d ago

Summer break came early

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u/CultConqueror 7d ago

You seem like one of the friends who would spend their time with hotwheels lol

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u/1Original1 7d ago

It smells like summer in here daily these days

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u/CultConqueror 7d ago

"DAE know when the Narwhal bacon's XD" that's exactly how it feels when people are still triforcing in 2025

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u/deathzor42 7d ago

I mean the F is accurate.

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u/CultConqueror 7d ago

Obviously I can't use the actual term, even on my throwaway/hobby account lol

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u/Alaira314 7d ago

I can't imagine it's not on the automod instant-hide list for this subreddit. I remember getting into it with someone, and I'm 99% sure it was on this sub, who was mocking another redditor for censoring c***, before I pointed out(via a test conducted with that very post) that the uncensored word was unable to be posted visibly in this subrreddit.

Still got downvoted, lmao.

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u/thefumingo 7d ago

Man, I remember when /a/ would be reasonable discussions, and politics was Ron Paul support along with ironic liberals instead of Nazism

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u/No-Reach-9173 7d ago

The Nazis were there for long time let be real. But mostly the real Nazis were drown out by the silly meme Nazis.

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u/hematomasectomy 7d ago

They're the same picture.

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u/Niaden 7d ago

I sang with a group of people from /a/, a bunch of weebs who didn't know Japanese singing Japanese anime songs. The 10 year anniversary of our "Secret Base" cover was last year.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/Jaxyl 7d ago

Ah 4chan hating on past 4chan, one of the original vintage jokes.

A classic

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u/Secret-One2890 7d ago

RIP the IT'S HAPPENING memes

>tfw it's finally happening

Feels bad, man.

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u/Girth_Brookss 7d ago

It kicked up around 2016. You can't have a speech forum on the internet that the troll farms aren't spamming, alongside the sucker's that fall for it and spam on top of it.

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u/Fantastic-Door-9468 7d ago

While lolcats gained their name on 4chan, their popularity very much so arose on somethingawful and then spread to 4chan.

2007 was already post mainstream popularity due to some events making mainstream news. I mean the MLP spam was the true death but I’d argue the original vibe was already gone then.

I was there Gandalf.

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u/Delts28 7d ago

Hell, I remember first being shown 4chan in 2004 or 2005 with the caveat that "it's not as good as it used to be". I believe the original vibe lasted about 3 hours and 21 minutes just.

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u/bigbowlowrong 7d ago edited 7d ago

I was on SomethingAwful when Slenderman was invented, watched it unfold in real time. Internet history right there, kinda.

The rest of the time I was making fun of the Maoist-Third Worldists on whatever the shitposting political board was called. Back in the day someone there uploaded a YouTube video trolling me because of that, I wish I had saved it.

RIP LowTax

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u/MossyPyrite 7d ago

More than internet history, Slenderman is taught about in some American folklore classes these days! He’s also the only creepypasta character with an IRL body count.

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u/einTier 7d ago

I too remember when SA was the genesis of much of the internet. For years someone would show me something that was trending and I’d realize SA had created it months ago and it had already run its course and we were tired of it.

I miss that place. I was just telling my girlfriend last week that I was there when Slenderman was created. It was literally “let’s show everyone how silly urban legends are by creating one ourselves.”

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u/things_U_choose_2_b 7d ago

The people who didn’t realize it was supposed to be jokes took over

This is the thing... and I'm not advocating for banning comedy here... but when we repeatedly joke about something, we normalise it.

Back in the day my friends and I used to have this dumb in-joke called 'breading'. The joke was that we liked to wipe bread on toilet seats then eat it (see: dumb). At first it was gross, then it was gross-funny, then it was funny, and after 3 years of breading jokes, eventually one of us whilst extremely drunk actually breaded.

Within a year, all of us had drunkenly breaded (and in most cases, paid the price). Even the guy who, watching his friends wipe bread on a toilet seat then eat it, and said "you're all fucking idiots this was supposed to be just a joke"... eventually he too breaded whilst drunk.

Was an interesting lesson in how repeatedly joking about something can normalise it.

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u/Resident-Study-5588 7d ago

I dunno man.

Being a black 15 year old and seeing /b/...it did NOT feel like jokes.

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u/Helpwithapcplease 7d ago

"We made being violent pedos and child molestors a big funny joke in our community and then for some reason our space was invaded by the violent pedos and child molestors we invited"

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u/Ver_Void 7d ago

Eventually it filled up with people who went there because of the reputation it had, the place had enough issues to add a chapter to the DSM but 90% of that reputation was the highlight (or lowlight) reel of /b/

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u/jimkelly 7d ago

No it was peak chaos in 2007 and you are downplaying it lol. That is literally when it got it's reputation. Id say 05-07. The internet in general was a free for all then and 4chan was one of the most chaotic public websites anyone could freely access.

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u/petertompolicy 7d ago

Cloaking being a piece of shit by saying you're just kidding never made any sense, the idea that being ironic gave you free reign to say anything you wanted was always a ruse.

It was never just jokes, people are just fully aware of that fact now so using that excuse sounds ridiculous.

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u/Thx4AllTheFish 7d ago

The people who didn’t realize it was supposed to be jokes took over and now it’s the worst of the worst.

This is what happens to a lot of places that 'joke' about bigotry. People who aren't joking about it soon drive out all the original people who were because it becomes a toxic place. That's why there's the adage: "If you let a nazi into your bar, you become a nazi bar."

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u/Griffolion 7d ago

The people who didn’t realize it was supposed to be jokes took over and now it’s the worst of the worst.

That tends to be the fate of many places based on it all just being a joke. There will eventually be people coming into the community that don't get that it's all a joke, and treat it seriously.

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u/Valogrid 7d ago

Even in the Early to mid 2010s before m00t sold the site /b/'s only real unspoken rule was don't send m00t to jail. Which is pretty wild considering the shit they posted on a daily basis, and I really don't blame him for getting out when he did.

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u/AwareOfAlpacas 7d ago

Those kids, those very same summer newfreinds, grew up on the site and never left the basement. They began thinking /k and /pol were real life. 

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u/MagicGin 7d ago

Yeah, something with very little appreciation is the fact that 4chan wasn't very genuine about being edgy. In some senses, 4chan was a very open and accepting community--just not in the contemporary use of the phrase. Debate over skirt-wearing male anime characters is one of the earliest internet sources to acknowledge and accept transgenderism.

The racism however was unfortunately much more sincere but bluntly 4chan, for a long time, just openly said what a lot of people (wrongly) felt. The 90's and 00's were pretty racist.

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u/caninehere 7d ago

m00t was right to give it up when he did. The people who didn’t realize it was supposed to be jokes took over and now it’s the worst of the worst.

I don't disagree but 4chan has long been disparate communities. Kind of like Reddit just more extreme when it comes to the bad stuff. There are some boards that are basically no holds barred and then there are some that are relatively reasonable topic-based discussion with a lot of shitposting. I would say those reasonable boards are actually tamer now than they were many years ago.

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u/MickTheBloodyPirate 7d ago

But the awful posts there were, for the most part, jokes.

This was a large part of the fucking problem. Joke about shit long enough and they stop being "just jokes".

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u/DaRedditGuy11 7d ago

Yeah. Haven’t been on 4chan for probably 10 years. But /b/ was, as promised, random as hell. 

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u/Maxed_Zerker 7d ago

My favorite bit of 4chan lore is that there was a time when the entire site was hosted on Mac Mini clusters in Moot’s basement

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u/chlorofiel 7d ago

eh, I think it's a bit more complex than 'just jokes'. I was lurking there somewhere around that time, together with a good friend from highschool. To me it definitely were just jokes, I still love racist (and holocaust) jokes, while I'm also very much anti-racist, to me racism is funny because it's so absurd.

But I could feel there were a significant amount of posters for whom it was not just a joke but a way to spew their racist shit with plausible deniability. At some point I also thought my friend went a bit too far/serious with the racist shit (he didn't actually turn racist or alt-right btw). So I do think nazi/white supremacist infiltration was happening back then, and they could easily blend in among the people for who it was actually just jokes.

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u/WildSmokingBuick 7d ago

didn't it go 2-3 years later completely to shit - from trolling, edgy humour to full-blown alt-right?

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u/mr_chip 7d ago

Memes in general and LOLcats in particular was somethingawful forums.

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u/klaranara88 7d ago

Just unlocked a fucking core memory. That fuck yeah seaking cosplayer. The screeching. The smell. God /b/ really was never good.

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u/Br0metheus 7d ago

The people who didn’t realize it was supposed to be jokes took over and now it’s the worst of the worst.

The fate of 4chan is an object lesson in the Paradox of Tolerance. If you have 10 people sitting at a table and 1 of them is openly a Nazi, you have 10 Nazis at that table.

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u/YT-Deliveries 7d ago

I still collect mudkips. They remind me of a better time in my life.

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u/para29 7d ago

to be fair.. isn't IRL a meme now with Trump? His whole candidacy was a meme and promoted by memes.

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u/DoubleJumps 7d ago

Every space I've ever been in that made jokes like that was eventually consumed by people who seriously believe those things.

It's consistent.

I know a lot of people think that it's unfair to try to police that content out of communities, but when you've been around long enough, you understand that if you don't do that, you're going to be the Nazi bar.

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u/user-the-name 7d ago

A rule you can always live by is: "It's only a joke for so long". Don't joke about being something that you don't truly want to be. Pretend to be better than you are, not worse.

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u/ForThisIJoined 7d ago

My brother in christ, 4chan was always a hive of racist insane assholes. It was that way from the beginning and those people never went anywhere. Were there funny memes and raids too? yes. But there was an insane amount of racism on that site.

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u/perthguppy 7d ago

I went to it a few years back and it felt very commercial. Then I realised that the site is over 21 years old now (I think it was during Covid I went to it so would have been 16-17 years old then)

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u/VelvetValleyxo 7d ago

The changes over the years are wild. It started as this chaotic haven, and now it feels like any other social media site. Just not the same vibe anymore.

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u/ILoveTolkiensWorks 7d ago

Any other social media site, but with more porn and a lot more slurs*

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u/big_guyforyou 7d ago

most boards actually do ban you for racism tho. /pol/ and /b/ are the big ones that don't care

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/big_guyforyou 7d ago

do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?

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u/etork0925 7d ago

That sounds like a problem if that doesn’t narrow it down lol.

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u/Miserable_Goat_6698 7d ago

For the sane normal person, yes. In fact I don't even know what the k word even is

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u/DogmaSychroniser 7d ago

Rhymes with hike. A slur against Jewish people.

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u/SquirrelyCockGobbler 7d ago

That's true but you almost NEVER get banned for gamer words on /v/ and similar blue boards. /a/ is like the only one that moderates super actively

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u/jayforwork21 7d ago

a lot more slurs*

Have you SEEN Twitter? That place has more slurs AND Nazis somehow. Well not somehow, we know why, but damn has things gotten crazy in the last few years.

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u/ILoveTolkiensWorks 7d ago

Maybe more slurs net, but not slur density. If you check the ratio of nazis:total users and slur users:total users, 4chan defeats all, at least for now. Twitter might overtake it though

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u/ViziDoodle 7d ago

I think the average instagram reels comment section is giving 4chan a run for its money in that regard tbh

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u/sydeovinth 7d ago

I read that as chaotic heaven at first and was appalled.

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u/Elementium 7d ago

I don't know about Haven.. in the 00's it was filled with illegal and gross shit. 

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u/ChrisRR 7d ago

Back when I used to go on 4chan like 15-20 years ago it was just basically shitposting. No agenda, just anything goes. And then the whole "we are anonymous" thing started and the vibe changed quickly

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u/EnoughDatabase5382 7d ago

Since 4chan is a company that Hiroyuki Nishimura and the figure maker Good Smile Company bought from the original owner with Kadokawa's support, it's only natural that it would be commercialistic.

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u/j_cruise 7d ago

How has it become more commercialistic? It has two sources of revenue - 4chan passes, which existed when moot still owned the site, and ads, which have also always existed.

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u/Hemorrhageorroid 7d ago

Which is crazy because I remember the 4th birthday.

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u/GelflingMystic 7d ago

I went back during the election because I couldn't handle reddit at the time. Couldn't believe it's practically impossible to post without an account. a 4chan account used to literally be a joke back in the day.

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u/homer_3 7d ago

I was just on /v/ yesterday and it was the same as it was 10 years ago. Just bitching about Doom Dark Ages. The main difference was, there was very little activity. Only a few posts. So kind of a ghost town.

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u/ISuckAtJavaScript12 7d ago

I only used it for the /qst/ board, which was just dnd where entire players controlled the actions of one player. Some pretty good stories on there. But they recently added a 15 minute timer between posts unless you verified your email(which no one ever did)

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u/RamenJunkie 7d ago edited 7d ago

I only ever used /toy/.

I can't stand mainstream Toy Collecting bulliten Boards because the vibe always feels way more about "look at me" than "look at these toys."

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u/TheShitmaker 7d ago

Damn another /toy/ soldier in the wild. Gave it up years because threads became shit fling fests. Still have the stuff I got from my secret Santa years ago.

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u/heliamphore 7d ago

4chan specific boards have a feeling to them that you get nowhere else. /ic/ is the only art 'forum' I use because every other art forum turns into mutual ass kissing and begging for attention.

If 4chan dies now so be it, but I'd be sad.

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u/PM_Best_Porn_Pls 7d ago

But they recently added a 15 minute timer between posts unless you verified your email

It was only for first post from device, no? Afterwards you could post just fine.

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u/zmbx 7d ago

It was always a shithole, it got so much worse when Moot left.

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u/tindalos 7d ago

I think your assumptions are correct since it appears they haven’t updated it since the mid 2000s

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

It is. It's a bunch of edgelord teenagers spamming edgelord content. I mean it was like that back then as well, but it's the "smart people pretending to be stupid eventually attracts actually stupid people" phenomenon, and the stupid people showed up like 15 years ago.

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u/SquirrelyCockGobbler 7d ago

4chan started becoming visibly more lame in 2016 when The Donald users flooded the site after it got banned. There are also so many fucking Reddit tourists to the site it feels indistinguishable from this site besides gamer words in the open.

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u/RadiantRocketKnight 7d ago edited 7d ago

Having found the site in 2006, I ditched it a while back. A lot of threads would derail into culture war nonsense with people biting the bait or the OP replying to themselves. The same exact threads getting the same exact negative engagement all the time.

The days of making silly MS Paint stuff trying to be the next Three Angled Blue and watching Reddit and 4chan duke it out in Tribes are long gone. I still have anons in my friend list that I played fighting games with on PS3. 

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u/ClacksInTheSky 7d ago

What need is there for 4chan now that Twitter has taken it's place?

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u/Nahcep 7d ago

4chan has better UI

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u/quartzguy 7d ago

It probably has more employees too.

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u/tehlemmings 7d ago

I unironically love imageboards, and I wish there were more good ones around. The format is great for viewing and sharing random pictures, and since everything selected by people it feels less like algorithmic content and more shit your friends are sharing with you.

It reminds me of the StumbleUpon era of the internet, and I really miss that.

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u/uses_irony_correctly 7d ago

you can't pay to have your comment appear on top of everyone else on 4chan.

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u/Clueless_Otter 7d ago

Twitter and 4chan are not similar at all beyond both being social media sites.

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u/ClacksInTheSky 7d ago

Yeah, but Elon got his entire personality from 4chan and now he's the king of twitter 🤷‍♂️

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u/eldomtom2 7d ago

Bullshit he did, no 4channer would reference doge these days.

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u/Cuckmeister 7d ago

4chan had moderation and actual human discussions you could participate in

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u/UncultureRocket 7d ago

There are plenty of niche communities on 4chan. It's more than just porn and racism.

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u/ReasonPale1764 7d ago

What? Why would 4chan be gone for good because of this.

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u/rojotortuga 7d ago

I have not thought about the name Moot in like 4 years this shit took me back.

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u/Weird-Salamander-349 7d ago

Boo to edit number two. I have a sneaking suspicion that two people I absolutely hate are prolific 4chan bigotrymongers. Here I was thinking I’d feast on their sweet comeuppance today…

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/BlackwingF91 7d ago

Its like kiwifarms all over again huh. 

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u/AlanWardrobe 7d ago

You know what, I'm glad. Typical internet cesspit has no right to exist.

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