[btrfsck]

I don't think anyone involved in writing, or anyone mentioned in this article has any idea what 4chan actually represents, with the exception of Nisimura and Shkreli.

I think it's really dishonest to represent 4chan as "ground zero for orchestrated harassment" and "[a site where] some of its users created a set of code words to help users make racist and bigoted slurs".

It's like saying Earth is a place where people have their organs stolen and sold and where babies die. It is technically correct, of course, but it's very disingenuous to describe it that way to outsiders.

I would go on and talk about what I think 4chan really stands for, but I assume most people on HN are pretty familiar with the site, so just know that I am in the camp that likes how it is (or used to be?) a last bastion of freedom and anonymity (not Tor-like, but where the UX is designed to not have profiles and usernames) and free discourse on the internet.

The main thing I want to mention is that having money problems is absolutely nothing new to 4chan. Moot's comments have traditionally been along the lines of "4chan will always consume all available bandwidth". The nature of the site limits it to either leery advertisers, or people like JList (where 4channers are almost exactly their target audience). So advertising has always been hard for 4chan.

Personally, I think the 4chan pass is the key way to move forward for 4chan, or solicit donations more openly (perhaps a progress bar that shows % of monthly fees that have been paid?).

Funding 4chan is definitely a hard problem, but it has existed for more than a decade, and has been mostly well-handled for that entire period. Time will tell, though.

[quirkafleeg]

> a last bastion of freedom and anonymity (not Tor-like, but where the UX is designed to not have profiles and usernames) and free discourse on the internet.

I don't think I've heard of anything from 4chan that wasn't being done on Usenet 20 years ago.

Usenet still exists. It's fast, simple to use, costs from cheap to free, has at least one infamously Libertarian/troll friendly provider, posts can be utterly anonymous via remailers, and it could handle in its sleep the volume of traffic, text posts and binary files 4chan gets.

If people on 4chan prefer to keep the site on the web - which is historically a terrible place for free/offensive speech, since the main feature web forums provided over Usenet was their moderation capability and control by a single entity/individual/opinion - they could pay for it.

If its own users don't care enough about it to keep it going, there's no reason for it to exist at all.

[eli_gottlieb]

>I would go on and talk about what I think 4chan really stands for, but I assume most people on HN are pretty familiar with the site, so just know that I am in the camp that likes how it is (or used to be?) a last bastion of freedom and anonymity (not Tor-like, but where the UX is designed to not have profiles and usernames) and free discourse on the internet.

Well, noisy discourse, shitposting, and doubles threads. Actually, not really discourse at all. Mostly just heresy.

[SomeStupidPoint]

Yeah, but have you considered that there's a developmental benefit to having somewhere you can go and just say "vile" things?

I know having that kind of space online as I was coming-of-age was huge for me, it gave me somewhere to experiment with opinions without consequences. Somewhere to say truly, truly disgusting things. And I did, a lot. But over time, it became clear where I was just being offensive and experimenting with "naughty" ideas, where I was trolling, and where I genuinely disagreed with the norm.

That free experimentation with opinions and language is a lot harder to find these days, but it really shaped and honed my ability to even form arguments, my ability to explain my position to people who don't agree with me, and my ability to listen to positions I find offensive.

Not all discourse needs be Discourse, full of profundity and consequence; experimentation, freedom, and privacy are core to the human developmental and creative processes.

[labster]

The problem is that some people never got the memo that says that chanspeak is not acceptable in polite conversation. So the chans end up being a continual generator of sexist, racist assholes who think that it's OK to be sexist, racist assholes. Lots (but not all) gamergaters fall into this basket of deplorables.

Which is not to say that your comment is not valid. Society needs a release valve where people can feel free to vent their creativity along with the darkness in their souls. Imageboards are really great for that, as the ephemeral anonymous nature lets the good ideas survive and the bad ideas fade forever into the aether. Without the fear of consequences or prejudice, the human spirit is unbound to create stuff. Naturally, 90% of everything created is crap.

It's just a terrible place to learn socialization. And a few too many do that.

[SomeStupidPoint]

> The problem is that some people never got the memo that says that chanspeak is not acceptable in polite conversation. So the chans end up being a continual generator of sexist, racist assholes who think that it's OK to be sexist, racist assholes. Lots (but not all) gamergaters fall into this basket of deplorables.

What you revile here with such colorful language is nothing but many developmentally delayed people you likely bully in real life (and certainly, if not you, others do) for not learning social graces and conforming to society at the rate you do forming a community and insisting that they be treated with rather than oppressed by society at large, or they'll tear the place down.

You don't like it, because you were on the oppressing side, and oppressing them is easier than dealing with their very real underlying issues and trying to meaningfully integrate them in to society.

So your suggestion is to eliminate a community that plays a healthy role for normally developing people and a meeting ground for them, presumably in hopes that they'll go back to quietly being oppressed.

> It's just a terrible place to learn socialization. And a few too many do that.

Frankly, I doubt you offered them a better alternative.

[labster]

Good lord dude, I don't know how you got from me stating a problem to me being a bully, an oppressor, and an attacker of the disabled. I also said that imageboards play an important social role, which is a long, long way from saying I want them eliminated.

I have offered an alternative wiki farm, and specifically a wiki about tropes in media. The last time we had to deal with a developmentally disabled person on there, we ended up calling his parents to ask for help. You know, so we could treat him like a real human being and not just a ban evader.

[SomeStupidPoint]

I quoted the part of your comment that exemplifies the behavior I was calling out.

Perhaps I read it wrong: feel free to provide another interpretation of the quoted text. I'd genuinely like to be wrong here, but it reads like you're engaged in culturally approved oppression of the invisibly disabled.

Ed: In particular, you identify a group of developmentally stalled people who didnt receive the help they needed to be properly socialized, and then immediately call them "deplorables" because they acted out.

I think that says it all: these are people you willingly other instead of embrace because they offend your cultured sebsibilities, and the culture you're in tells you to revile rather than help. That's the definition of culturally sanctioned oppression.

[eli_gottlieb]

> Yeah, but have you considered that there's a developmental benefit to having somewhere you can go and just say "vile" things?

Well yes, but the question is, do you value that developmental benefit enough to pay for it? The real problem here isn't "freedom", it's business: how can 4chan pay for itself?

[tarancato]

There are boards and boards. And even in the worst boards there are good threads. It's a culture of its own, though.

[eli_gottlieb]

Yes, I know. I just also don't really have any illusions that the "4chanish" population have any right to a subsidized forum for, well, being 4chanish. Deep down, it's a business run for profit by a private individual, not a piece of public property maintained with tax money.

[RamenJunkie_]

I had a Pass for a year, mostly because I needed one to post via VPN on my phone. What really killed that for me was anytime my phone decided to shuffle IPs I had to go and re-enter it, often after a cooldown of like 15 minutes.

Also their system is buggy, and half the time it would tell me I was banned for one reason or another even though using the Pass is supposed to bypass that and it was some other person being banned on that IP and nothing I had done.

Basically, the benefits I had paid for were spotty in their effectiveness, so I didn't bother renewing.

Also I stopped posting as much because /pol/ started ruining every board.

[k__]

I came 2003 for /b/ which is practically 9gag with older people and stayed for /fit/, which is pretty nice and I have the feeling the boards don't overlap that much in terms of users.

But many other boards are full of hate.

/k/ and /pol/ is full of racists.

/r9k/ and /v/ is full of misogynists.

and many boards are filled with homophobes.

Nicest board I visit was /ck/