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This really shows the value of anonymity on the internet. Buzzfeed may try to label 4chan a “haven for far-right trolls and white nationalists” but it’s exactly

This really shows the value of anonymity on the internet. Buzzfeed may try to label 4chan a “haven for far-right trolls and white nationalists” but it’s exactly the type of platform we need right now. It’s at the very least a check on mainstream media, which has proven itself very untrustworthy.

joshuamorton 7y ago
How does this show any of that? That reported by the channer wasn't materially different than what was reported by the mainstream, they just broke the story earlier and, as mentioned, possibly by doing something illegal. To be clear, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with anonymity on the internet. But anonymity on the internet, this story showing the value of that anonymity, and this relating the the mainstream media aren't at all related, at least in my mind. Mind clarifying? As I see it, one can be anonymous on, say, twitter, which is still moderated, and therefore has (less) open organization of "far-right trolls and white nationalists". So its not clear to me what unique anonymity 4chan provides.
- jchw 7y ago
  Nitpick: Twitter doesn’t allow anonymity, all posts are associated with at least a pseudonym.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  It’s valuable because you can compare what the media reports to what was posted on 4chan and look for discrepancies. It may also keep the media reporting more honest as they know the story broke on 4chan and deviations will be noticed. Twitter is an ultra short form platform that has already demonstrated political censorship. It also requires account verification through email and sometimes phone number. I don’t think it compares to 4chan for something like this.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    > It’s valuable because you can compare what the media reports to what was posted on 4chan and look for discrepancies. This only works if you hold 4chan to be more reliable than the media. Given its history (think, like, QAnon) and love of trolling, this doesn't really work. This story was notable mostly because 4chan is notoriously unreliable. > Twitter is an ultra short form platform that has already demonstrated political censorship. Right, but you said that anonymity was important, not censorship. Is anonymity important, or is lack of censorship what matters? They're not the same thing.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      > > It’s valuable because you can compare what the media reports to what was posted on 4chan and look for discrepancies. > This only works if you hold 4chan to be more reliable than the media. Given its history (think, like, QAnon) and love of trolling, this doesn't really work. This story was notable mostly because 4chan is notoriously unreliable. IMO, it also works if you view them both as unreliable but in different ways. Them agreeing is a stronger signal of truth than either independently.
      - LyndsySimon 7y ago
        I agree. I keep up with current events mostly through a couple of very popular niche forums, each with a few hundred thousand members. The news posted there is biased, of course, but mostly it's a selection bias. I use it because my interests (if not necessarily my perspective) overlap with those forums' topics. When I find something that piques my interest, then I'll seek out other sources for that particular story. I spend the majority of my "what's going on in the world?" time on ar15.com - but I don't assume that the stories posted there are accurate. I judge the reputation of the source from which it came, and if it's contentious, I'll purposefully look for alternative reporting. The bottom line is that no news outlet, "mainstream" or not, is without bias. There are decisions made on what constitutes news and stories are editorialized both explicitly and implicitly. There was a time when I spent a decent amount of time on 4chan, but the SNR is so low these days and the format is so hard to keep up with that I haven't bothered in years. Instead, I watch secondary sources who are watching the chans.
  - amazingman 7y ago
    >It’s valuable because you can compare what the media reports to what was posted on 4chan and look for discrepancies. Okay but how do you verify the validity of what’s posted on 4chan, a troll site of trolls trolling trolls with troll posts?
    - LyndsySimon 7y ago
      You don't. 4chan isn't "valid", it's just another data source. I assume everything posted there is not only false, but a lie specifically crafted by someone very intelligent to mislead me. That said, when someone posts on 4chan that an event has occurred before news of that event has broken elsewhere, it's reasonable to compare the two. If the 4chan version is largely consistent but includes a couple of details that conflict with the "official" version, then I take that as an indication that maybe something was misreported. It would be folly to assume that the 4chan version was correct, even with the supporting evidence of it being first to break. Most of those "discrepancies" are just that, and I don't believe are intentional misinformation. Consider a topic for which you're an expert. Any topic. Now look at media coverage of that topic - is it accurate? Of course not. Details are usually wrong, terms and concepts are used inappropriately, and sometimes an article's entire premise is absurd. It makes sense to me that if reporting is that bad for the things I know well enough to know it's bad, it's likely that bad for everything else; I just often don't know enough about the topic to realize it.
jjwhitaker 7y ago
99% is memes, random boards, or hate/bigotry/odd. The platform we need right now is proper enforcement of whistleblower protections. Mainstream media is 30% Fox, by viewership, with most traditional publishers remaining trustworthy in most reporting. 4chan/8chan ties in with Daily Caller types too often to be of any value 99.9% of the time.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
jchw 7y ago
Unfortunately, news that associates culture with alt-right politics have become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many folks don’t want to be associated with the alt-right. Example: > Pepe, the green frog that has become a mascot for right-wing internet trolls. Pepe was an ultra popular meme on 4chan when this was originally ran in the news. It is unsurprising that alt-right folks on 4chan were using it, since everyone else was too. But since the news ran, people on social media had to stop using it, lest they be associated with politics they despise; ordinary people who read the news and don’t live on the internet would not know the difference. I am not keen on 4chan culture but if I had to guess I’d assume that merely posting Pepe on 4chan doesn’t signify political beliefs unless it’s a specific variant with for example, a MAGA hat. Obviously this is a pretty exploitable pattern.
- michannne 7y ago
  It's a defining feature of chan culture that anything sourced from a chan is poisoned by nature of it coming from a chan, as chans can willingly change the context surrounding some content. It used to be the other way around -- content originating on chans would be repeated and posted elsewhere on the internet, and the content itself usually had nothing to do specifically with chan culture. As media began progressively segregating chan culture from the rest of the internet, content from chans signified that the poster was also a user of chans. As the image of chans have evolved from being a place where you can post whatever you want (within legal limits) to being somehow a bastion of a minority political ideology, so too has the content shifted from being relatable by most everyone who uses the internet to being reviled because of it's ties to the sites. I would not be surprised if a news article came out postulating that Richard Stallman had now become a symbol of the "alt-right"
Analemma_ 7y ago
You know it was the mainstream media (specifically, the Miami Herald) that brought everyone’s attention to the Epstein case in the first place? 4chan never knew anything about him even though all the details of his case were public knowledge.

joshuamorton 7y ago

How does this show any of that? That reported by the channer wasn't materially different than what was reported by the mainstream, they just broke the story earlier and, as mentioned, possibly by doing something illegal. To be clear, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with anonymity on the internet. But anonymity on the internet, this story showing the value of that anonymity, and this relating the the mainstream media aren't at all related, at least in my mind. Mind clarifying? As I see it, one can be anonymous on, say, twitter, which is still moderated, and therefore has (less) open organization of "far-right trolls and white nationalists". So its not clear to me what unique anonymity 4chan provides.

jchw 7y ago
Nitpick: Twitter doesn’t allow anonymity, all posts are associated with at least a pseudonym.
malvosenior 7y ago
It’s valuable because you can compare what the media reports to what was posted on 4chan and look for discrepancies. It may also keep the media reporting more honest as they know the story broke on 4chan and deviations will be noticed. Twitter is an ultra short form platform that has already demonstrated political censorship. It also requires account verification through email and sometimes phone number. I don’t think it compares to 4chan for something like this.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  > It’s valuable because you can compare what the media reports to what was posted on 4chan and look for discrepancies. This only works if you hold 4chan to be more reliable than the media. Given its history (think, like, QAnon) and love of trolling, this doesn't really work. This story was notable mostly because 4chan is notoriously unreliable. > Twitter is an ultra short form platform that has already demonstrated political censorship. Right, but you said that anonymity was important, not censorship. Is anonymity important, or is lack of censorship what matters? They're not the same thing.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    > > It’s valuable because you can compare what the media reports to what was posted on 4chan and look for discrepancies. > This only works if you hold 4chan to be more reliable than the media. Given its history (think, like, QAnon) and love of trolling, this doesn't really work. This story was notable mostly because 4chan is notoriously unreliable. IMO, it also works if you view them both as unreliable but in different ways. Them agreeing is a stronger signal of truth than either independently.
    - LyndsySimon 7y ago
      I agree. I keep up with current events mostly through a couple of very popular niche forums, each with a few hundred thousand members. The news posted there is biased, of course, but mostly it's a selection bias. I use it because my interests (if not necessarily my perspective) overlap with those forums' topics. When I find something that piques my interest, then I'll seek out other sources for that particular story. I spend the majority of my "what's going on in the world?" time on ar15.com - but I don't assume that the stories posted there are accurate. I judge the reputation of the source from which it came, and if it's contentious, I'll purposefully look for alternative reporting. The bottom line is that no news outlet, "mainstream" or not, is without bias. There are decisions made on what constitutes news and stories are editorialized both explicitly and implicitly. There was a time when I spent a decent amount of time on 4chan, but the SNR is so low these days and the format is so hard to keep up with that I haven't bothered in years. Instead, I watch secondary sources who are watching the chans.
- amazingman 7y ago
  >It’s valuable because you can compare what the media reports to what was posted on 4chan and look for discrepancies. Okay but how do you verify the validity of what’s posted on 4chan, a troll site of trolls trolling trolls with troll posts?
  - LyndsySimon 7y ago
    You don't. 4chan isn't "valid", it's just another data source. I assume everything posted there is not only false, but a lie specifically crafted by someone very intelligent to mislead me. That said, when someone posts on 4chan that an event has occurred before news of that event has broken elsewhere, it's reasonable to compare the two. If the 4chan version is largely consistent but includes a couple of details that conflict with the "official" version, then I take that as an indication that maybe something was misreported. It would be folly to assume that the 4chan version was correct, even with the supporting evidence of it being first to break. Most of those "discrepancies" are just that, and I don't believe are intentional misinformation. Consider a topic for which you're an expert. Any topic. Now look at media coverage of that topic - is it accurate? Of course not. Details are usually wrong, terms and concepts are used inappropriately, and sometimes an article's entire premise is absurd. It makes sense to me that if reporting is that bad for the things I know well enough to know it's bad, it's likely that bad for everything else; I just often don't know enough about the topic to realize it.

jjwhitaker 7y ago

99% is memes, random boards, or hate/bigotry/odd. The platform we need right now is proper enforcement of whistleblower protections. Mainstream media is 30% Fox, by viewership, with most traditional publishers remaining trustworthy in most reporting. 4chan/8chan ties in with Daily Caller types too often to be of any value 99.9% of the time.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

jchw 7y ago

Unfortunately, news that associates culture with alt-right politics have become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many folks don’t want to be associated with the alt-right. Example: > Pepe, the green frog that has become a mascot for right-wing internet trolls. Pepe was an ultra popular meme on 4chan when this was originally ran in the news. It is unsurprising that alt-right folks on 4chan were using it, since everyone else was too. But since the news ran, people on social media had to stop using it, lest they be associated with politics they despise; ordinary people who read the news and don’t live on the internet would not know the difference. I am not keen on 4chan culture but if I had to guess I’d assume that merely posting Pepe on 4chan doesn’t signify political beliefs unless it’s a specific variant with for example, a MAGA hat. Obviously this is a pretty exploitable pattern.

michannne 7y ago
It's a defining feature of chan culture that anything sourced from a chan is poisoned by nature of it coming from a chan, as chans can willingly change the context surrounding some content. It used to be the other way around -- content originating on chans would be repeated and posted elsewhere on the internet, and the content itself usually had nothing to do specifically with chan culture. As media began progressively segregating chan culture from the rest of the internet, content from chans signified that the poster was also a user of chans. As the image of chans have evolved from being a place where you can post whatever you want (within legal limits) to being somehow a bastion of a minority political ideology, so too has the content shifted from being relatable by most everyone who uses the internet to being reviled because of it's ties to the sites. I would not be surprised if a news article came out postulating that Richard Stallman had now become a symbol of the "alt-right"

Analemma_ 7y ago

You know it was the mainstream media (specifically, the Miami Herald) that brought everyone’s attention to the Epstein case in the first place? 4chan never knew anything about him even though all the details of his case were public knowledge.