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by causality0 812 days ago
It's absolutely baffling to me that despite the sheer amount of garbage, people still choose to post non-garbage content there at all. You sort through a hundred neo-nazi and race-baiting posts and then you find news that happened less than thirty seconds ago and won't be on CNN for two hours. I wish these "insiders" would find a better place share their information.
3 comments

That was Twitter. Twitter was just 4chan For Everyone. But it was a company with investors and content with political ramifications, so they changed things to suit advertisers and politicians. They changed the timeline algo. And the reply algo. And the Trending algo. And they added "Verified" accounts. And then Musk bought it.

It can be made again. But whoever does it has to learn from past mistakes.

There is no voting system by which to gauge one's popularity. There is no profile or personal brand to be crafted. There is no follower count to build. Post ranking is most-recent-reply first, and nothing more.

This model attracts all manner of idiocy and hatred, and it's much too easy for one provocateur to hijack the system. The result is that the site requires several containment zones like /b/ and /pol/.

However, the upshot of 4chan (or any imageboard, really) is the total lack of narcissistic incentive. If you stick to blue boards, consciously avoid the containment zones, and you ignore the provocateurs (big IFs, I know), 4chan hosts some remarkably eclectic discussion of the arts, science, and entertainment. It's really good at elevating things that are thought-provoking or avant garde, if only within the bounds of a polarizing and inaccessible platform.

It's the very fact that it's unmoderated that it can be unfiltered.

If you happen to get footage of a "happening" and post it on 4chan, people will notice (and call you various slurs).

If you post it anywhere else it's liable to be deleted, or worse, ignored.