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I find it sad that a project with as much cultural influence as 4chan didn't make the owners sufficient money. It's sad, because the whole idea behind 4chan is
by Mirioron 8y ago
I find it sad that a project with as much cultural influence as 4chan didn't make the owners sufficient money. It's sad, because the whole idea behind 4chan is that people can be unfiltered and say what they want to say. But sadly, this means that the site can't make much money, because advertisers aren't willing to risk advertising on the site.
- ipnon 8y agoIt makes enough money to remain.
- icelancer 8y agoAll rewards need not be financial. Poole will be remembered forever and has used - and can continue to use - his fame for various benefits.
- VectorLock 8y agoHe tried to leverage his notoriety in another startup but apparently that wasn't enough.
- xfitm3 8y agoYoutube used to be like this - now it is advertiser driven. It's a net negative for humanity.
- komali2 8y agoHow is Youtube a net negative for humanity? It generates value, it teaches skills, it provides entertainment, it provides careers, and youtube kids is keeping an entire generation of parents sane.
- haimez 8y agoI think the parent comment is calling Advertising a net negative for humanity.
- tenpies 8y ago> youtube kids is keeping an entire generation of parents sane. Can we hold off on considering this a positive until we see how exactly this generation of kids that think Google is a benevolent babysitter/genie grow up? Parents have been parenting for millennia without handing off their kids's attention to a glorified advertising network.
- debt 8y agoMany celebrities and writers for very famous shows without a doubt ape a lot of their material from 4chan/somethingawful. A bold claim, I know, but definitely appears that way.
- fossuser 8y agoI don't really understand the romanticization of 4chan - it seems mostly like people yelling at each other, trying to be offensive/shocking, and memes. It's like if reddit was entirely its lowest quality content. If anything it seems to support the idea that anonymous environments bring out the worst kind of discourse. I get the draw of a place where people can be unfiltered without having to worry about their reputation, but in practice it doesn't seem to create a great environment for any interesting discussion.
- malvosenior 8y agoMost memes on Reddit originated on 4chan.
- Sargos 8y agoI feel like you just haven't spent much time there. Lots of interesting discussions are to be had on a vast number of topics. Much of Internet culture originated there as well. I feel like 4chan has shown just how needed an anonymous forum is to experimentation and community.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sl1ck731 8y agoIt shows people want the worst kind of discourse. You might not like it but if such a sizable community does its a shame it can't live on its own. Not everyone gets online to peruse HN or even learn anything at all and there isn't anything wrong with that.
- setr 8y agoWell no, it shows that people are willing to accept some worthless discourse; but that doesn’t mean it all is. It’s the same as when you spend an hour trafing memes with your friends — its utterly worthless, but that doesn’t mean all of your conversation looks like that. But anyone else who wanders in blindly might only see the meme trading and think that’s all you do. In the context of 4chan, its just wandering into the wrong board (eg /b/), or the wrong thread, and thinking that was the only thing that happened round these parts. Like the whole hacker and gore thing came out of a single subcommunity, but became the public face of 4chan; but none of the other boards cared about it (although bots would randomly start getting through captcha and spam gore/loli porn, which most users simply hid or ignored. Some people praised the bots for keeping out the riffraff (those unwilling or unable to ignore things they dislike), but otherwise, they were far more an idea people had about 4chan and its users than the userbase actually did or supported
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- aaaaaaaaaaab 8y agoIt’s actually a good thing. Advertisers demand “family friendly” crap. 4chan is perfect as is.
- btilly 8y agoThe purpose of the project was to find the founder free porn. It succeeded. Not all people are seeking strictly financial rewards.
- microwavecamera 8y agoSeriously though, would you buy something advertised on 4chan? Besides, your motivation for doing something you believe in shouldn't be financial. And if your motivation is financial, why do you care?
- HanayamaTriplet 8y agoTo address the advertising situation, moot's successor spun off all of the worksafe boards into 4channel.org last November, which now has AdSense ads. Note that "worksafe" only applies to images; you still would not want your boss to be reading the text, which is as just as (almost entirely) unfiltered as it was before the split.
- c3534l 8y agoI think if the goal had been to make money, it wouldn't have had any impact.
- pessimizer 8y agoI find the assumption that things that make people happy should generate income to be weird.