[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.