[krapp]

>I'm not arguing 4chan is great but it's not nearly as impactful as Facebook, Twitter or TikTok in creating extremism.

4chan has /pol/. 4chan inspired Gamergate, Pizzagate, QAnon and numerous incidents of extremist violence. Those other platforms mostly just spread and accelerate the toxic culture that originated on 4chan.

[boelboel]

I'm not sure if most of 4chan was actually so on board with the whole gamergate thing and all the things which followed. pre-/pol/ 4chan was a whole different thing. It was outsiders joining 4chan which did most of the posting, twitter and facebook were the ones which allowed this to happen.

Internet starting with a 1000 4chans wouldn't create what we have today (you'll just get lots of small fringe groups), internet starting with a 1000 facebooks/twitters/... will always end in extremism of a big portion of the population.

[direwolf20]

And — this is really shocking — Jeffrey Epstein caused /pol/ to exist, which makes him indirectly responsible for almost all stupid internet politics of the last decade.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/epstein-met-4chan-...