[pyre]

4chan is just a message board. A forum if you will. Unless you're saying that the administrators had a hand in this, then '4chan' isn't behind it.

That's like saying that 'Hacker News' is behind something just because a bunch of Hacker News users used a thread to coordinate some sort of attack. 'Hacker News' isn't behind anything unless pg/ycombinator/etc somehow had a hand in it.

4chan is nothing but a medium for information shared between people. And to try and group the entire 4chan userbase under the term '4chan' is an effort in futility. There is a very wide and varied group of people that frequent 4chan. Keep in mind that many people visit 4chan without ever visiting /b/ or /r9k/.

[DanHulton]

A good point, and I can't understand why you're being modded down for it.

But that said, it's generally understood when someone says "4chan did it", it's shorthand for "dickhead Anons on 4chan's /b/ did it."

[pyre]

The problem is that when these stories reach the mainstream media, '4chan did it' leads to the assumption that everyone associated with 4chan had some hand in this attack. If these things reach the mainstream media enough, then it will just be a rally cry to 'take down 4chan' without anyone putting much actual thought behind it (much like the people whose only argument against government healthcare is "but it's socialism... I don't want no socialism in my guberment" while those same people will violently oppose getting rid of welfare payments/social security/medicare -- which are all 'socialist' programs).

Not trying to be some sort of grammar nazi or something about this, but I don't want stories like this getting to the mainstream media just to turn people against places like 4chan based on reporting that is lacking in the specificity to tell people that only part of the 4chan userbase is responsible for these attacks.