5 ms·

Well, yeah. Some people handle freedom responsibly. Most... don't. If you really want freedom, 4chan, glorious 4chan! Enjoy your cesspit.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
It's worth noting that 4chan is knee-deep in marketing shills and state-sponsored trolls these days. Any open community that attracts enough of a following becomes an object of interest to for those who want to accumulate money and power. Ever been on /pol/ these days? It's so much an echo chamber of sponsored trolls and shills I'm surprised any genuine conversation can happen there at all.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I never visit /pol/. Ever. Or /b/. Or most of 4chan in general. /tg/ is fun sometimes, though.
- apozem 10y ago
  > marketing shills and state-sponsored trolls Gonna need some hard evidence of that. 4chan can barely sell ads on the site, not sure why anyone would bother marketing to them. Frankly, 4chan is kind of irrelavant. A couple million weebs, racists and neo-Nazis spread across the world is pretty irrelevant to state actors. No offense to 4chan users, but no one cares what you think.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Nobody cares what we think either: Most 4chan users don't really care that nobody cares outside of 4chan any more that reddit users care that most people don't care what they do, or HN users care that most people don't care what they do.
  - totony 10y ago
    I think you underestimate the demographics of 4chan
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Very much so: a surprising number of respectable people use 4chan: many HNers show up there from time to time, IIRC, and it really was an intersection of American and Japanese net cultures, with people taking code and ideas from 2chan, but the culture coming from the site's roots amongst the goons of SA, and also from migrants coming from the usenet. It's a pretty interesting site, in general, and fairly neat in some ways. Unfortunately, the best part of 4chan was axed. What was the best part of 4chan? the text boards (aka world4ch): They were less crowded with awfulness, and threads were immortal. It also played host to /prog/, the programmer's chan, which is probably most famous for inventing the now-famous sleepsort (the ancient HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2657277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2657277). Sadly, because threads were immortal, archives were rare, and sleepsort, along with many other threads, has been lost to the mists of time.
- floopidydoopidy 10y ago
  So is Hacker News. And Slashdot. And reddit... The internet is dead.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    By that metric, was it ever alive beyond its infancy?
    - jdietrich 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Pre-ES was the infancy.
lmm 10y ago
4chan was glorious. But it adopted a very different policy regarding Gamergate, and actually ended up following a very similar trajectory to reddit (with 8chan as the equivalent of voat).
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  4chan is far more liberal about free speech than reddit, though. It comes under the category of, "free enough that most people won't notice that there are limitations," which is really all you can ask for.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  4Chan was never glorious, it was always an exercise in digging through scum for something of moderate value. The difference is that now, beneath the layers of sediment, is more sediment.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    Honestly, 4chan always felt like a place that Reddit and Tumblr and other less-horrible media sites should subsidize. You Might not want to go there, but it drives a lot of free revenue for a lot of other sites. It's the equivalent of a whole bunch of rough-and-tumble prospectors panning for gold (or copper, let's be honest). Exhausting, rarely productive, and unpleasant to be around, but ultimately a steady source of valuable material. I can't really imagine using the site regularly, but a remarkable amount of material elsewhere is ultimately 4chan-derived. Imgur pretty consistently has 'greentext' on its front page, which means views derived purely from rehosting 4chan content. To continue my metaphor, 4chan pans for gold (copper), Reddit sorts the results for purity, and Buzzfeed packages it all into something pretty looking at an enormous markup.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Well, yeah. More directly, sites like 1d4chan just take the purest of the gold and saves it.
MBCook 10y ago
Which, surprise surprise, costs too much to run and no one wants to advertise on. So 4chan is running out of money.
clifanatic 10y ago
4chan is populated by uncultured assholes. Reddit is populated by self-righteous assholes. Between the two, I actually prefer the uncultured ones - at least they're self-aware.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sn9 10y ago
  Assuming zero overlap is a rather large mistake.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

It's worth noting that 4chan is knee-deep in marketing shills and state-sponsored trolls these days. Any open community that attracts enough of a following becomes an object of interest to for those who want to accumulate money and power. Ever been on /pol/ these days? It's so much an echo chamber of sponsored trolls and shills I'm surprised any genuine conversation can happen there at all.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I never visit /pol/. Ever. Or /b/. Or most of 4chan in general. /tg/ is fun sometimes, though.
apozem 10y ago
> marketing shills and state-sponsored trolls Gonna need some hard evidence of that. 4chan can barely sell ads on the site, not sure why anyone would bother marketing to them. Frankly, 4chan is kind of irrelavant. A couple million weebs, racists and neo-Nazis spread across the world is pretty irrelevant to state actors. No offense to 4chan users, but no one cares what you think.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Nobody cares what we think either: Most 4chan users don't really care that nobody cares outside of 4chan any more that reddit users care that most people don't care what they do, or HN users care that most people don't care what they do.
- totony 10y ago
  I think you underestimate the demographics of 4chan
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Very much so: a surprising number of respectable people use 4chan: many HNers show up there from time to time, IIRC, and it really was an intersection of American and Japanese net cultures, with people taking code and ideas from 2chan, but the culture coming from the site's roots amongst the goons of SA, and also from migrants coming from the usenet. It's a pretty interesting site, in general, and fairly neat in some ways. Unfortunately, the best part of 4chan was axed. What was the best part of 4chan? the text boards (aka world4ch): They were less crowded with awfulness, and threads were immortal. It also played host to /prog/, the programmer's chan, which is probably most famous for inventing the now-famous sleepsort (the ancient HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2657277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2657277). Sadly, because threads were immortal, archives were rare, and sleepsort, along with many other threads, has been lost to the mists of time.
floopidydoopidy 10y ago
So is Hacker News. And Slashdot. And reddit... The internet is dead.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  By that metric, was it ever alive beyond its infancy?
  - jdietrich 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Pre-ES was the infancy.

lmm 10y ago

4chan was glorious. But it adopted a very different policy regarding Gamergate, and actually ended up following a very similar trajectory to reddit (with 8chan as the equivalent of voat).

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
4chan is far more liberal about free speech than reddit, though. It comes under the category of, "free enough that most people won't notice that there are limitations," which is really all you can ask for.
M_Grey 10y ago
4Chan was never glorious, it was always an exercise in digging through scum for something of moderate value. The difference is that now, beneath the layers of sediment, is more sediment.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Honestly, 4chan always felt like a place that Reddit and Tumblr and other less-horrible media sites should subsidize. You Might not want to go there, but it drives a lot of free revenue for a lot of other sites. It's the equivalent of a whole bunch of rough-and-tumble prospectors panning for gold (or copper, let's be honest). Exhausting, rarely productive, and unpleasant to be around, but ultimately a steady source of valuable material. I can't really imagine using the site regularly, but a remarkable amount of material elsewhere is ultimately 4chan-derived. Imgur pretty consistently has 'greentext' on its front page, which means views derived purely from rehosting 4chan content. To continue my metaphor, 4chan pans for gold (copper), Reddit sorts the results for purity, and Buzzfeed packages it all into something pretty looking at an enormous markup.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Well, yeah. More directly, sites like 1d4chan just take the purest of the gold and saves it.

MBCook 10y ago

Which, surprise surprise, costs too much to run and no one wants to advertise on. So 4chan is running out of money.

clifanatic 10y ago

4chan is populated by uncultured assholes. Reddit is populated by self-righteous assholes. Between the two, I actually prefer the uncultured ones - at least they're self-aware.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sn9 10y ago
Assuming zero overlap is a rather large mistake.