[ases]

As someone who casually browses 4chan (at least some of the less major boards, certainly not /b/) I've got to say that I've never really seen any particularly awful content. Either it's not as ubiquitous as people think or the janitors are really, really good at their jobs.

It's all very silly, of course. But the anonymous thing is fun and I've had some interesting debates where I can just test ideas and say whatever for the hell of it without worrying about any kind of repercussion in terms of my reputation. It's easier to go in guns blazing being wrong and learn something without feeling that it's personal when no one has a name.

[austenallred]

Most people think 4chan is /b/, because that's where all the worst stuff happens. Imagine if reddit had an "anything legal goes" subreddit - it would be pretty messed up. Other boards can be pretty tame.

[LLWM]

No, people think that because it's bigger than everything else put together, the fountainhead of the site's culture, and is the source of virtually everything notable that's ever happened there.

[anon4]

>everything notable

cough gamergate started on /v/ cough

But I get what you're saying. /b/ really is the largest board. In a way it's meant to be the containment board, or the moat around the castle. It's where all the shit goes, so it doesn't pollute the rest of the site. And oh boy, is the internet full of shit.

[david-given]

* raises hand *

What's /b/? Because I don't know 4chan and have been assiduously avoiding learning anything about it.

[austenallred]

4chan is divided into boards (like subreddits). For example, /pol/ is for politics.

/b/ is the "random" board (or "anything goes") and the biggest one on 4chan. Some pretty awful stuff happens on there (as well as some pretty cool stuff). Basically it's a grab-bag of Internet.

[dmerrick]

Reddit actually does have a number of these. I'm not sure I want to link any, though.

[Crito]

Reddit has subreddits dedicated to the foulest stuff that you'll ever occasionally see on 4chan. That has historically included borderline illegal content, with literally illegal content mixed in.

Reddit's reputation of being better than 4chan is entirely undeserved.

[okasaki]

>Reddit's reputation of being better than 4chan is entirely undeserved.

As someone with extensive experience with both... it is entirely deserved.

[wingerlang]

Why are people comparing reddit and 4chan anyway? They are two completely different sites.

[raarts]

I don't think comparing means what you think it means.

No use comparing things that are the same.

[anon4]

Both are interest-separated discussion boards. Reddit bills itself as more news-oriented, but quite often it serves as a regular threaded forum where the first post sets the context.

After reddit got big, we started seeing (well, started speculating that we're seeing) a lot of people come to 4chan after initially cutting their internet discussion teeth on reddit. There were speculations of a secret irc cabal of redditors, who collude to drive threads offtopic and in general mould board culture to be more reddit-like. To this day I'm not sure if those allegations were insubstantiated. We did have several prominent spammers who comandeered fleets of hundreds of proxies and spammed threads they didn't like with random-generated posts. These were obviously not redditors, but given there are people who care enough and have free time enough... In short, 4chan is a magical place.

[austenallred]

I used it as an apparently flawed comparison, assuming HN was more familiar with Reddit than 4chan.