4chan is running out of money–and Martin Shkreli wants to help out
arstechnica.comI love 4chan. It's a bastion of raw unmitigated free speech and anonymity. Because of this, people naturally use it to say things they can't normally in public or with a account that might be linked back to their real name.
There are no points, only replies. Unpopular opinions aren't hidden. Popular opinions are boring and those threads disappear from a lack of replies. The most provocative threads are the ones which thrive. This is the exact opposite of voting sites like hacker news and Reddit.
We need a place like this to exist where people aren't saddled with long term consequences for making their real opinions known. Users on 4chan are rewarded with replies for thinking outside of the box and breaking rank.
Losing it would be a terrible loss for discourse. Sure there are lots of trolls there. Yes there is lots of racism and offensive content and gore. If you dont like that sort of thing you are free to not go there. But there must be a place for people to hash these ideas out and get unpopular opinions off their chest.
Convenient anonymity on the Internet is dying, and if it does ultimately go so will freedom of speech. Because nobody will be free to speak their mind when a deviant or unpopular opinion may incur the wrath of a targeted campaign against them to destroy their professional and private life at any point in the future. Especially when those opinions which were once common are now out of style. (See Brandon Eich or Palmer Luckey)
The lack of rules and consequences is precisely the reason 4chan has always been a creative powerhouse where trends and content are born at a rate that is unmatched elsewhere. Some of the funniest things I've read have come from the unrestrained banter between people from different countries on the /int/ (international) board.
Despite all this, it's always been difficult to keep that place above water. They need a sort of Reddit gold type epiphany.
> They need a sort of Reddit gold type epiphany.
Can't you already pay for a 4chan premium account that allows you to... I can't remember, post more, ignore the captcha, etc?
You can't buy it for someone else though. That was the key to the Reddit gold success.
I recall several netizens posting concern about the buyer of 4chan, how he ran some other Japanese sites into the ground. Now on /. there is someone claiming the new owner turned ads down and tried to promote 4chan passes, which now don't work.
Another person points out that even if you hate 4chan (or especially if you do), it'd be better left intact to contain the culture that foments there. Otherwise we might see /r/The_Donald style posts all over the internet.
In any case, when you avoid the dregs of the site, the other boards can have unique and even informative discussion.
> Another person points out that even if you hate 4chan (or especially if you do), it'd be better left intact to contain the culture that foments there. Otherwise we might see /r/The_Donald style posts all over the internet.
That you are pointing to a subreddit as an example of the problem that might exist elsewhere in the internet if 4chan doesn't survive to "contain the culture that foments there" would seem to indicate that 4chan does not, in fact, effectively contain that culture now.
Containment seems almost fractal to me. /pol/ drains other boards of people who complain about black people and Jews all the time and also drains the nastier sorts out of /r/The_Donald.
/r/The_Donald, in turn, drains Trump fans from /r/politics and the like.
Of course, containment isn't perfect.
>I recall several netizens posting concern about the buyer of 4chan, how he ran some other Japanese sites into the ground.
The situation with 2channel was actually a business dispute, at its core. That's not to say Hiroyuki isn't shady, but Jim Watkins/NTTEC (who played an important part in it, and was on the board of 2channel) was also at fault.
Summary: Jim Watkins's company/NTTEC wrote something like 4chan Premium for 2channel back in the early 00's. This was intended to help keep costs under control, and it succeeded by paying for all of the infrastructure and profiting at some point.
But this was not to continue forever: around '13 the application, which didn't encrypt credit card data and associated all posts made using the application to the individual's real names for an arbitrary period of time, experienced a breach.
Because Hiroyuki had given control of the domains and servers over to Jim Watkins, who had up until that point just been his colo, to dodge legal obligations in Japan, Jim Watkins took over. Hiroyuki had nothing to do with the administration or creation of the software that was breached.
They're shady individuals: both are manipulative (they play dumb) when you try to interact with them on their respective forums. But not knowing the specific timeline or everything that happened in the business dispute, it's hard to say who's more at fault in the 2channel situation.
It might also be important to note that the "legal obligations" that Hiroyuki was dodging in Japan are fines for libel, due to Japan not having an equivalent to the USA's Communications Decency Act §230.
I think it's more likely that without 4chan, the general trolling and immaturity may leak onto the rest of the internet, and the really intense racism/misogyny/conspiratorial weirdness will go further underground and anonymous. Whether this would be a good thing is debatable; I liked that 4chan was open enough anyone could check on it and see which way the undercurrents of the internet were heading, but it probably was a bad thing that lots of generally bored slightly strange teens got linked to that level of racism.
The idea that 4chan (and similar imageboard forums) are all racist is such a tiring and false trope. It's easy to get that impression, but there are jokes and actual racism and people who are indifferent. Part of the effect is that some users there have managed to trick most people into thinking 4chan is some scary, racist hellhole that no civilised, "mature" person would ever go to.
Rather, I find that 4chan and similar places (8chan etc.) dependent of the board, are very good sources for unrestricted discussion. You don't get your post hidden or deleted people it's abhorrent or people disagree with it. You don't get reported or "flagged" because you used some profanity. People don't coast along on high score points. If you screw up you can start again, because you're anonymous anyway, and nobody will care. Nobody will know.
If you don't believe what I'm saying, I'd suggest taking a deeper look at imageboard culture. I've helped people with programming problems and I've been helped by others. I've learned new things and commented on the news. I got into new hobbies. I discovered plenty of music. I discuss my religion; all on 4chan and 8chan.
And before you may be influenced to think I must be a racist or misogynist or "immature" etc. or have such tendencies by virtue of being a user, I will say that I'm a hard-left supporter of equality and rights for all. And I came to that status via debate and learning on the "worst" parts of 4chan.
Take from that what you will, but please do not spread misinformation or unknowingly (if it is unknowingly) perpetuate this culture of fear for 4chan. It's tiring and is one of the causes for 4chan's decline - people are turned away without having ever used the website.
I am extremely familiar with imageboard culture, and have spent a lot of time on anonymous boards. 4chan is not "all racist." 4chan also has a lot of organized and motivated racists, which have had a particularly negative effect on its culture. The general white supremacist internet centered around Stormfront before the term "alt-right" gained any traction was openly organizing and recruiting through 4chan, and to act as if racism hasn't been a core aspect of 4chan's community since the advent of /pol/ indicates a lack of experience with the board. Let me reiterate exactly what I said: the top poster indicated that the negative aspects of 4chan would seep into the rest of the internet, and I expected that instead, the lighter negative aspects, of immaturity and trolling, would spread to the rest of the internet, while the fomenting of racism, misogyny, and overall reactionary rebellion would go deeper underground.
4Chan isn't a prison, it's an incubator. See: Pepe.
Pepe is used for everything. You can take any symbol and make it horrible if you start adding nazi paraphernalia to it. 4Chan happens to add that sort of stuff to everything
It even it has its own bronze age style end of days cult which promotes Trump for a more through destruction of the world. Got to admire how they managed to sell their stuff to early Trump shills and play internet frog illuminati.
Sure you say that, but try wearing a big swastika around and explaining its history.
Prison is a criminal incubator.
Not all prisons, just the ones stuck in the 19th century... so that's all American prisons at least.
>Another person points out that even if you hate 4chan (or especially if you do), it'd be better left intact to contain the culture that foments there. Otherwise we might see /r/The_Donald style posts all over the internet.
I used to believe this pretty strongly, but lately...I'm already seeing /pol/ style posts all over the internet, despite its existence, so I'm starting to doubt the 'containment board' thesis is valid.
> Another person points out that even if you hate 4chan (or especially if you do), it'd be better left intact to contain the culture that foments there. Otherwise we might see /r/The_Donald style posts all over the internet.
I can't help but to think this is pure fear mongering.
If hacker news went down would you not use other discussion sites? Why would this not hold true for others who post things you don't like?
I somehow would guess that few people only use HN, in the same way that few only use 4chan.
They have distinct uses and cultures. I use both. Destroying an outlet for a culture leads to migrants and discord at the new host.
This was demonstrated repeatedly when moot would attempt to delete a problem board like /b/ or /pol/ (diffusing that culture to other boards) or when digg would make a significant change causing an influx of migrants to Reddit.
I doubt they would come here though. If 4chan were to disappear entirely, most users would end up going to 8chan. Voting sites are not compatible with the provocative nature of image board cultures.
Exactly, and neither is strict moderation or a userbase that has no interest in that kind of thing, and no strong inclination to respond in kind. Still, the idea that somehow 4chan acts to contain the problem is unlikely. If you lance a cyst, you make a mess for a while, but that doesn't mean you've done much more than expose what was already killing you.
I think it's healthy to have outlets like 4chan where a range of ideas can be thrown against the wall both ironically and seriously.
>If you lance a cyst, you make a mess for a while, but that doesn't mean you've done much more than expose what was already killing you
Except those users don't just go away. there are infinite places to go, none of which are as big as 4chan. So they find pockets of like-minded users and become even more extreme.
This is what happened after the ban wave of Nov 2014. Many different individuals left /pol/ in disgust en-mass to form splinter boards that cater to their particular ideology on places like 8chan. Spurned users also went to other boards and caused even more problems.
Now instead of a giant shitstorm of unbridled banter from all corners of the political spectrum /pol/ is an alt-right echo chamber like a conservative version of reddit.com/r/politics. Meanwhile there are 10 other echo chambers on 8chan for communists, democrats, libertarians and everything else.
The result has been balkanized echo chambers, worsened extremism and less diversity of ideas, discussion and ideology.
That's a bad thing IMO.
I don't think all of that is the result of the "ban wave", it's been a growing trend for years that people prefer echo chambers. That said, if you go to Reddit or Imgur and other sites, you can see the people from Stormfront, /pol/ and the rest are by no means sitting in those chambers without going "abroad".
The issue above all seems to be that not that many years ago, most people who got online did so with a computer, and even though that is trivially easy to anyone here any extra step from "I want online" to "I am online" cuts down the chaff. Now people overwhelmingly stab a button on their phone and bang... the world can hear you.
We're truly approaching a horizon past which everyone is online, and "everyone" includes a lot of marginal characters. The holocaust deniers who used to slip flyers into library books now huddle in their hug boxes, occasionally venturing forth to make some ridiculous claim and flip out at the "sheeple" who don't instantly see their brilliance. Tumblr is... proof that the Right has no monopoly on crazy.
I don't think shutting it down has any benefit, but I don't think that keeping it open does either. It just is.
>if you go to Reddit or Imgur and other sites, you can see the people from Stormfront, /pol/ and the rest are by no means sitting in those chambers without going "abroad".
Yes but reddit is just a series of echo chambers where dissenting views are rapidly downvoted, hidden and removed by moderators.
I think you're right though. While the ban wave was a turning point for 4chan and image boards. The trend of increasing insularity and xenophobia is seen across all social media and political leanings. Making it too large to pin on any single event on a particular board or website.
I think it's the direct result of having too many choices, so people naturally gravitate toward the communities with the most like minded views and then groupthink dominates.
It's really a shame that instead of opening people up and exposing them to different perspectives the internet has had the opposite effect.
I would use other news sites, but that doesn't mean they would have the same culture. The culture of a site is allowed to exist by the site owners and if no site owner wanted 4chan's culture than they would just weed them out as they attempted to migrate.
We could get rid of 4chan's culture by extinguishing the voice of it, and as long as no one else allows that voice on their site then it ceases to exist.
There are a bunch of boards people would migrate to. But the culture would become more fractured and as a result more extreme at each new location. Similar to what happened after the banwave in November 2014.
4chan festers, it doesn't contain.
4chan is viable as an anonymous and ephemeral p2p implementation, 4chan has always suffered from the cost of running the service, which is kept to a minimum (relative to say, reddit) due to the lack of persistence. It can thrive with a peer-to-peer infrastructure since the need for advertising to sustain running costs would disappear, add encryption, restrict content to images and text to avoid the RIAA or MPAA getting close and it could be a veritable outlet for unabridged and uncensored views.
Hasn't this been tried before? If I'm not mistaken Aether is a similar concept but I'm not sure how much traction it's gotten. http://getaether.net/
I guess they deserve each other?
Maybe /pol deserves him but quite a few boards on 4chan where actually pretty accepting and friendly, particularly /I.
/tg/ has its moments as well.
I like /k/ and /int/
/Pol/ used to be more ideologically diverse where you would always see communists libertarians and national socialists duking it out in hilarious exchanges (both sincerely and ironically). But a massive banwave in November 2014 drove a ton of users to 8chan where anyone can create their own board. So now /pol/ is the alt right equivalent of the monoculture seen at Reddit.com/r/politics and 8chan has 10 echo chambers for each political ideology. Echo chambers cement and worsen extremism and the biggest casualty has been the exchange of banter across ideological boundaries.
I've always wondered how to fix this when/if 8Chan's users move towards a peer-to-peer system.
Maybe some kind of "I use this board so I agree to share the content" style feature?
I think it would work like a tagging feature. So if you make a post, you can put a tags on it like #weapons and #politics anyone subscribed to those tags could see your post and reply to it.
Not sure how to prevent balkanization though, undoubtedly people will post to #politics-antidisestablishmentarianism and whatnot.