4chan was hacked and taken down in a major cyberattack on Tuesday morning. Users on a rival image board have claimed responsibility for the hack and leaked the entire site's backend online,...
4chan was hacked and taken down in a major cyberattack on Tuesday morning.
Users on a rival image board have claimed responsibility for the hack and leaked the entire site's backend online, containing source files and email, IP and IRL addresses of the site's moderators and "janitors" (mods with fewer privileges.) The hack allegedly occurred because the server had been running on versions of FreeBSD and PHP which hadn't been updated since 2016...
It also coincides with when Moot sold the website to Hiroyuki Nishimura (the founder of 2channel, the Japanese imageboard that 4chan was inspired by.) It's clear the new owner had neglected the site.
It also coincides with when Moot sold the website to Hiroyuki Nishimura (the founder of 2channel, the Japanese imageboard that 4chan was inspired by.) It's clear the new owner had neglected the site.
Soyjak Party. They spawned as an offshoot of 4chan when moderators removed the QAnon board and started removing any memes or even mention of the word "soyjak."
Soyjak Party. They spawned as an offshoot of 4chan when moderators removed the QAnon board and started removing any memes or even mention of the word "soyjak."
Not QAnon, Q&A, Question and Answer. It was originally intended to only be used during the transfer from moot, but they left it up and didn't moderate it. That was where the Soyjak "community"...
Not QAnon, Q&A, Question and Answer. It was originally intended to only be used during the transfer from moot, but they left it up and didn't moderate it. That was where the Soyjak "community" formed.
IIRC QAnon actually started on 8Chan. I KNOW it was big there.
What does it say about society that unmoderated communities seem to result in this? I'm not asking rhetorically, but because I don't know. On one hand it makes me feel like this is who we are as a...
What does it say about society that unmoderated communities seem to result in this? I'm not asking rhetorically, but because I don't know.
On one hand it makes me feel like this is who we are as a people, deep down inside. I lost a lot of sleep to that thought.
On the other hand, I could see it being that unmoderated communities are the only safe space for bad ideas, so they will always end up with a mess of cross-infected bad ideas. That feels nicer on my brain, but something about it nags at me. Unmoderated communities are more likely to be where ideas go that are illegal or bad PR. So this take still leaves me questioning whether these are ideas we as a people agree are generally bad, and so have chased them into unmoderated corners, or if they're actually things that we want but aren't allowed to talk about in public.
And to be clear, I'm using "we" to mean the entirety of my country's (USA's) citizens. I know that I don't want the things I see in these communities.
I don't really know what I'm saying so I apologize for the rambling and welcome some perspective.
It's quite well-talked-about that moderate people will leave spaces that become populated by unchecked extremists (e.g. the Nazi bar story, also estranged parent forums, and that post about...
It's quite well-talked-about that moderate people will leave spaces that become populated by unchecked extremists (e.g. the Nazi bar story, also estranged parent forums, and that post about community moderation), so totally unmoderated spaces inevitably collect extremist voices and lose moderate ones.
The other thing to bear in mind is just how many people there are in the world. There are something like 340,000,000 people in the USA. Arbitrarily eliminate half for people too old, too young, or otherwise unable to use such communities, then assume that only the worst 0.01% of people have these bad ideas, that's still 17,000 people in the US alone. 17,000 voices in any one place feels hugely significant when the other 339,983,000 people aren't there to disagree.
This is not it. The Nazi bar thing is brought up all the time, but the Nazi bar is a space with limited seats and everyone is exposed to each other. You can stay in boards or even threads that...
This is not it. The Nazi bar thing is brought up all the time, but the Nazi bar is a space with limited seats and everyone is exposed to each other. You can stay in boards or even threads that have their own thing going and not interact with insane people at all. 4chan is also very far from "totally unmoderated", but you're not going to be booted for disagreeing with the mods, which is how basically every other community with open registration operates at this point in my experience. Whitelisted places like tildes are perhaps an exception (hard to say). And because there's no upvotes or accounts or posting history, each post is mostly judged on its contents. It's basically the only place on the internet that I could talk about some niche/specialty topics with people who know what they're talking about.
I don't think people are naturally mean and nasty. Instead, people don't act like rational actors when it comes to certain deeply held beliefs that are driven more by emotion than logic. They then...
On one hand it makes me feel like this is who we are as a people, deep down inside. I lost a lot of sleep to that thought.
I don't think people are naturally mean and nasty. Instead, people don't act like rational actors when it comes to certain deeply held beliefs that are driven more by emotion than logic. They then seek out rational positions that support their emotional beliefs and cling to them for dear life.
I think all of us are guilty of this to some degree, and it leads to both good and bad outcomes.
It depends. One reason that road rage is a huge problem is that people tend to assign good-intent to themselves while driving, but evil-intent to others, and this is in part because we typically...
I don't think people are naturally mean and nasty.
It depends.
One reason that road rage is a huge problem is that people tend to assign good-intent to themselves while driving, but evil-intent to others, and this is in part because we typically see ourselves, but we see other cars - not their drivers.
When posting anonymously, you don't see the other people, and it is much easier to be nasty. Also when there are no consequences for being nasty, people will tend to be nasty. You certainly get trolls coming out of the woodwork in such cases.
People will leave nasty notes on cars, but won't go knock on the door to confront those people, or if they do, will tend to be rather more polite in such cases.
Man, I haven't thought of QAnon in forever. What happened to it? It seemed like it was permeating mainstream media for a good while there but seems to have dried up. Was this a targeted thing or...
Man, I haven't thought of QAnon in forever. What happened to it? It seemed like it was permeating mainstream media for a good while there but seems to have dried up. Was this a targeted thing or folks just lost interest?
I can promise you that the QAnon folks are still around, but fewer than before. Trump being in office has made them mostly quiet while they wait and "trust the plan". My grandmother is still all in.
I can promise you that the QAnon folks are still around, but fewer than before. Trump being in office has made them mostly quiet while they wait and "trust the plan".
a fun post was removed from reddit suggesting that they found Musk's account... which, well, the content of the later posts says just this. https://archive.is/T31NL wild if true.
a fun post was removed from reddit suggesting that they found Musk's account... which, well, the content of the later posts says just this. https://archive.is/T31NL
Where's the smoking gun? Am I missing something? This could be any 4chan edgelord trying to build a following by posting weird provocative nonsense. Why (besides the content of the posts) are...
Where's the smoking gun? Am I missing something? This could be any 4chan edgelord trying to build a following by posting weird provocative nonsense. Why (besides the content of the posts) are people associating this with Musk? Seems pretty speculative if you ask me.
This is a really level-headed synopsis of the site, imho. It's a stupid meme site that happens to be flooded with porn and gore, but also happens to be big enough to be influential and therefore...
4chan is an ostensibly anonymous internet forum that functions like the dark underbelly of the web. Most of the time, it’s an image board that seems to be populated by bored users who try to shock each other often by posting some of the most vile content imaginable. Other times, 4chan’s cultural exports seep into the real world as innocuous memes or as hateful rhetoric that inspires right-wing terrorism.
This is a really level-headed synopsis of the site, imho. It's a stupid meme site that happens to be flooded with porn and gore, but also happens to be big enough to be influential and therefore has become the source of a lot of mainstream online hate movements and like, straight up terrorism.
Weird to see online journalism giving such a concise read of a nuanced topic, insomuch as they could have just said "Known terrorist forum 4chan" instead.
It's overindexing on /pol/ and adjacent boards IMO. All parts of 4chan are more "crass", let's say, compared to other forums on the internet due to the overall culture as well as the inherent...
It's overindexing on /pol/ and adjacent boards IMO. All parts of 4chan are more "crass", let's say, compared to other forums on the internet due to the overall culture as well as the inherent anonymity. But the majority of the site was just the same old hobby talk you'd find anywhere else.
People on /g/, the Linux/tech-y board, were not "trying to shock each other", for instance. It was just the same boring linux nerd conversations. Toxic, sometimes, but not dedicated to it.
Exactly. It's not often that journalists get what 4chan is about. Yes, it's toxic as all hell, and you probably shouldn't go there, and if you do, make extra sure you don't let the toxic part...
Exactly. It's not often that journalists get what 4chan is about. Yes, it's toxic as all hell, and you probably shouldn't go there, and if you do, make extra sure you don't let the toxic part become a part of your identity, but it's just an anonymous imageboard.
I'm not defending it since there's a lot of shitty people there, but it's refreshing to see someone reporting it like it is.
Anyways, please flag my parent topic as offtopic since we're not talking about the hack anymore.
The main controversial boards are /pol/, /r9k/, /b/ and /s4s/. Even then, /b/ is much tamer than what it used to be in the early days when it was an "anything not highly illegal goes" place. Aside...
The main controversial boards are /pol/, /r9k/, /b/ and /s4s/. Even then, /b/ is much tamer than what it used to be in the early days when it was an "anything not highly illegal goes" place.
Aside from pornographic boards (of which several exist), discussion on the other parts of 4chan was far more hobbyist and more akin to Reddit, except maybe with more liberal use of slurs.
Is it? 4chan is not notorious for /g/ or /v/ or /a/ or even, like, /d/. It's notorious for /b/ and, to a lesser extent, /pol/ and /k/ and their ilk. The parts of the site which are more-or-less...
Is it? 4chan is not notorious for /g/ or /v/ or /a/ or even, like, /d/. It's notorious for /b/ and, to a lesser extent, /pol/ and /k/ and their ilk. The parts of the site which are more-or-less insular don't really matter, because they stay on the site. It's the parts which coordinate raids and/or literal terrorism off-site and IRL which matter to everyone who's not just posting yet another APOD to /wg/.
(Also, at one point /b/ was a significant majority of the site's traffic, but I have no idea if that's still the case.)
4chan was hacked and taken down in a major cyberattack on Tuesday morning.
Users on a rival image board have claimed responsibility for the hack and leaked the entire site's backend online, containing source files and email, IP and IRL addresses of the site's moderators and "janitors" (mods with fewer privileges.) The hack allegedly occurred because the server had been running on versions of FreeBSD and PHP which hadn't been updated since 2016...
Somehow I would have thought that their servers would have been the most battle tested out there considering their notoriety. Guess not.
No kidding… no updates in nine years? That’s downright negligent, and shocking.
Uhm... What? If that's true I'm honestly surprised that hasen't happened years ago if they've been this negilgent.
It also coincides with when Moot sold the website to Hiroyuki Nishimura (the founder of 2channel, the Japanese imageboard that 4chan was inspired by.) It's clear the new owner had neglected the site.
Anyone know who this rival imageboard is? I wish they were more specific in the article
This article claims something called "soyjack" but I am too far from that side of the internet to know what exactly that board is about.
Soyjak Party. They spawned as an offshoot of 4chan when moderators removed the QAnon board and started removing any memes or even mention of the word "soyjak."
Not QAnon, Q&A, Question and Answer. It was originally intended to only be used during the transfer from moot, but they left it up and didn't moderate it. That was where the Soyjak "community" formed.
IIRC QAnon actually started on 8Chan. I KNOW it was big there.
What does it say about society that unmoderated communities seem to result in this? I'm not asking rhetorically, but because I don't know.
On one hand it makes me feel like this is who we are as a people, deep down inside. I lost a lot of sleep to that thought.
On the other hand, I could see it being that unmoderated communities are the only safe space for bad ideas, so they will always end up with a mess of cross-infected bad ideas. That feels nicer on my brain, but something about it nags at me. Unmoderated communities are more likely to be where ideas go that are illegal or bad PR. So this take still leaves me questioning whether these are ideas we as a people agree are generally bad, and so have chased them into unmoderated corners, or if they're actually things that we want but aren't allowed to talk about in public.
And to be clear, I'm using "we" to mean the entirety of my country's (USA's) citizens. I know that I don't want the things I see in these communities.
I don't really know what I'm saying so I apologize for the rambling and welcome some perspective.
It's quite well-talked-about that moderate people will leave spaces that become populated by unchecked extremists (e.g. the Nazi bar story, also estranged parent forums, and that post about community moderation), so totally unmoderated spaces inevitably collect extremist voices and lose moderate ones.
The other thing to bear in mind is just how many people there are in the world. There are something like 340,000,000 people in the USA. Arbitrarily eliminate half for people too old, too young, or otherwise unable to use such communities, then assume that only the worst 0.01% of people have these bad ideas, that's still 17,000 people in the US alone. 17,000 voices in any one place feels hugely significant when the other 339,983,000 people aren't there to disagree.
This is not it. The Nazi bar thing is brought up all the time, but the Nazi bar is a space with limited seats and everyone is exposed to each other. You can stay in boards or even threads that have their own thing going and not interact with insane people at all. 4chan is also very far from "totally unmoderated", but you're not going to be booted for disagreeing with the mods, which is how basically every other community with open registration operates at this point in my experience. Whitelisted places like tildes are perhaps an exception (hard to say). And because there's no upvotes or accounts or posting history, each post is mostly judged on its contents. It's basically the only place on the internet that I could talk about some niche/specialty topics with people who know what they're talking about.
slade specifically asked about unmoderated spaces, so that's what I was responding to.
I feel like it's more to do with being anonymous. No accountability.
I don't think people are naturally mean and nasty. Instead, people don't act like rational actors when it comes to certain deeply held beliefs that are driven more by emotion than logic. They then seek out rational positions that support their emotional beliefs and cling to them for dear life.
I think all of us are guilty of this to some degree, and it leads to both good and bad outcomes.
It depends.
One reason that road rage is a huge problem is that people tend to assign good-intent to themselves while driving, but evil-intent to others, and this is in part because we typically see ourselves, but we see other cars - not their drivers.
When posting anonymously, you don't see the other people, and it is much easier to be nasty. Also when there are no consequences for being nasty, people will tend to be nasty. You certainly get trolls coming out of the woodwork in such cases.
People will leave nasty notes on cars, but won't go knock on the door to confront those people, or if they do, will tend to be rather more polite in such cases.
I'm more amazed that Soyjak Party held a four year grudge against 4chan for shuttering a board and banning their regulars.
Man, I haven't thought of QAnon in forever. What happened to it? It seemed like it was permeating mainstream media for a good while there but seems to have dried up. Was this a targeted thing or folks just lost interest?
I can promise you that the QAnon folks are still around, but fewer than before. Trump being in office has made them mostly quiet while they wait and "trust the plan".
My grandmother is still all in.
It's one of the soyjack altchans that spawned from /qa/'s banishment.
Probably 8kun (formerly 8chan).
a fun post was removed from reddit suggesting that they found Musk's account... which, well, the content of the later posts says just this. https://archive.is/T31NL
wild if true.
Where's the smoking gun? Am I missing something? This could be any 4chan edgelord trying to build a following by posting weird provocative nonsense. Why (besides the content of the posts) are people associating this with Musk? Seems pretty speculative if you ask me.
yeah, could be. The first page of the comments has them saying they're Musk -- but its hardly a smoking gun. Just a fun theory from a rando.
This is a really level-headed synopsis of the site, imho. It's a stupid meme site that happens to be flooded with porn and gore, but also happens to be big enough to be influential and therefore has become the source of a lot of mainstream online hate movements and like, straight up terrorism.
Weird to see online journalism giving such a concise read of a nuanced topic, insomuch as they could have just said "Known terrorist forum 4chan" instead.
It's overindexing on /pol/ and adjacent boards IMO. All parts of 4chan are more "crass", let's say, compared to other forums on the internet due to the overall culture as well as the inherent anonymity. But the majority of the site was just the same old hobby talk you'd find anywhere else.
People on /g/, the Linux/tech-y board, were not "trying to shock each other", for instance. It was just the same boring linux nerd conversations. Toxic, sometimes, but not dedicated to it.
Exactly. It's not often that journalists get what 4chan is about. Yes, it's toxic as all hell, and you probably shouldn't go there, and if you do, make extra sure you don't let the toxic part become a part of your identity, but it's just an anonymous imageboard.
I'm not defending it since there's a lot of shitty people there, but it's refreshing to see someone reporting it like it is.
Anyways, please flag my parent topic as offtopic since we're not talking about the hack anymore.
The main controversial boards are /pol/, /r9k/, /b/ and /s4s/. Even then, /b/ is much tamer than what it used to be in the early days when it was an "anything not highly illegal goes" place.
Aside from pornographic boards (of which several exist), discussion on the other parts of 4chan was far more hobbyist and more akin to Reddit, except maybe with more liberal use of slurs.
I would say /b/ is the main board, when people think of 4chan they think of both /pol/ and /b/
Is it? 4chan is not notorious for /g/ or /v/ or /a/ or even, like, /d/. It's notorious for /b/ and, to a lesser extent, /pol/ and /k/ and their ilk. The parts of the site which are more-or-less insular don't really matter, because they stay on the site. It's the parts which coordinate raids and/or literal terrorism off-site and IRL which matter to everyone who's not just posting yet another APOD to /wg/.
(Also, at one point /b/ was a significant majority of the site's traffic, but I have no idea if that's still the case.)